Katastrophenkarussell

Karussel der Katastrophen / The disaster carrousel
Margit Czenki and Christoph Schäfer, Exhibition : Katastrophenalarm, NGBK, Berlin 2008

Single 1: The birth of the crisis manager in the Hamburg flooding

Soundtrack: The dikes are breaking!

The birth of the crisis manager in the Hamburg storm tide of February 12, 1962.

The moment, when police senator Helmut Schmidt breaks the constitution by ordering the deployment of the german army, is being reinterpreted afterwards as a pragmatic coup against bureaucratic ties and democratic reservations.

Actor: Where is the Senator? Where is Schmidt?
Schmidt Interview: In the war, one went through a lot of shit, but one has also learned, how to save in unclear situations, one's own life, and that of the comrade. And you also had to do some things, that were not exiting in the regulations. I have learned that in the war, yes.

While the Hamburg Museum plays down. the police Senator had not "followed the chain of command", two TV-Dramas in 2005 celebrate the breach of the constitution by the war-tested lieutenant of the Wehrmacht.

The act of breaking the constitution is the birth of the hero.

Schmidt Interview: They have reacted like, in a war game, staff in the back area, who are trying to get an idea of the situation.

Actor (playing Schmidt): The following chief officers are being picked up straight fom their homes - if necessary: get them up and out of bed.
Actor (soldier): Ready to get off! Everyone listen to my command! You are here to help - not to fight. So forget the steel helmet for a few hours. But bring it back to the barracks later!

Lieutenant, take over the command.

Single 2: Computer State

Monday it knocks at your door
Arafat is standing there
Tuesday - test alarm
paranoia in the street car
On Wednesday the war is very cold
Breshnew lurks in the public pool

Thursday (you guess it already),
thousand agents in the canalisation
Friday belongs to the mafia
Ravioli comes from Florida
Saturday night lunatic asylum
the KGB in the German forest
Sunday, everything is dead
In the gulf of Mallorca lurks the world war

Stalingrade, Stalingrade
Germany - catastrophy state

We live in the computer state
We live in the computer state
We live in the computer state

Abwärts (1980)

Single 3: The disaster film as the ultimative participatory event

The Towering Inferno (1974): in the time of the supposedly biggest wealth and highest social security in the history of mankind, a new genre appears in the cinema halls: the disaster film.
Here the catastrophe is shown as the ultimative participatory event. The disaster film oscillates between the social darwinistic ideology of the survival of the fittest - and a temporary communism as a state of emergency.

Punk plays with both: a lifestyle that anticipates the disaster, asserting the state of emergency here and now. No Future as alarm bell, as shock, as apocalypse, as promise and revolt.

Actor (Mayor): Helmut! Good you are still awake.
Actor (Schmidt): Here everyone is on his post, Mr. Mayor! Holidays are over?
Actor(Mayor): The Army has flown me. What can you tell me.
Actor (Schmidt): We only had few informations this morning. Again and again the reply: can't get in touch, no contact, occupied. My measures: deployment of the federal army, deployment of the available NATO-forces, everything necessary has been arranged.
Actor (mayor): Federal army? Hope we don't get into trouble! You know the constitution.

Schmidt Interview: We have... I did not car about the laws. I neither asked a legal expert if I am allowed to - or not.

Actor (Schmidt): Paul, people need help here on the spot. I won't wait till they send a care packet from Bonn.

Schmidt Interview: We didn't look at the constitution - to the contrary.

While the Towering Inferno is being shown in the cinemas, Helmut Schmidt becomes Chancellor: the chainsmoking sceptic and hard boiled Wehrmacht-lieutenant acts as a model for the post-utopian, post-idealist politician of the late seventies (his predecessor in office, Brandt, was in Sweden during the war); the conservative change dresses up as un-ideologic crisis management; the natural catastrophe as ordeal for the pragmatic-looking perpetration of the law and the generalized state of emergency during the RAF-crisis.

Single 4: Hurricane Katrina is a political disaster

Newsspeaker: While natural disasters can highlight the best in people, it also can bring out the worst. Now in New Orleans and other places, looters are running free.

TV presenter: With the breach of three levees protecting New Orleans, the landscape has changed dramatically, tragically and perhaps irreversably.

Kanye West: I hate the way they portrait us in the media. If you see a black family, it says "They're looting", if you see a white family, it says: "They're looking for food", and, you know, it's been five days, because most of the people are black.... Just to imagine, if I was down there, and those are my people down there, so anybody out there, that wants to do anything, now we can help. With this setup, the way, America is set up to help, the poor, the black people, the less well off, as slow as possible. And they've given them permission to go down and shoot us! George Bush doesn't care about black people!

The New York Times reports:

When with Hurricane Katrina the water masses brake into New Orleans, the pumps from the nineties fail after a short time. But the old machines from the thirties still work days later.

This fact makes the author think about the time of the New Deal, when those pumps were developed. The politics of the New Deal were marked by the constitution of publicly funded infrastructures, like the railway, the street system, embankments, Nature Parks leading even to the Apollo program. Only in the beginning of the eighties, this era found it's harsh end with the election victory of Ronald Reagan.

TV-Ad (80ies): With Reaganomics you cut taxes, with Mondalenomics you raise taxes.

TV-Reporter (2007): When Brad Pitt looks around New Orleans he sees a series of wrongs...

The Neoliberal Politics of Reaganomics created, with it's idea of "small is beautiful", a deterioration of infrastructure and thus caused a situation, that produced the disastrous effects of Hurricane Katrina.

TV-Ad: Reaganomics works for you, Mondalenomics works against you.

Brad Pitt sees it just like that and insists on describing Hurricane Katrina - not as a natural disaster but as a political disaster, caused by decades of political neglect.
His Initiative Make it Right NOLA builds 150 floodsafe houses in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Brad Pitt: It doesn't feel like much of a victory, if you look at the overall problem here, and I...., you know: Katrina was a man-made disaster. The misconception is, it was nature. But this is man-made. Decades and decades of wrong engineering moves, really bad, irresponsible moves, that, I believe, government has a responsibility to make right.

Single 5: The return of the repressed as halfway spooky boat ride - a trip into the Hafencity.

This is where Hamburg's leap over the Elbe takes off. Urban renewal in the flooding zone, areas, where after the storm tide, investments failed to appear.

Hamburg Dungeon: On the 8th of August 1284, vast parts of Hamburg have been distroyed by a fire. Surprisingly, this catastrophe did not disable the residents, but much rather incited them to transform their city into a harbour of world prominence. Many of the old wooden buildings were replaced with first class stone houses by planners and rich citizens. Hamburg gained a reputation as a unique trading metropolis. The city that you see today, is it's legacy.

The belief in technologic control of natural forces demonstrates itself here in the shape of unbroken investor's architecture.
The floor plan of these buildings is guided by the maximum exploitation of harbour-view per square meter. This quality alone has developed into the unique selling point of the Imagecity, since industrial production left town.

Hamburg Dungeon: ...Hamburgers are celebrating, in a remarkably cosmopolitan atmosphere...

Countless buildings in the shape of ships catch our eye, standing around like references to corporate flexibilism and the maritime past of the place. Right in the middle, the destination of our tour: a tunnel of horror in the arches of the storehouse-city. Fear (the repressed truth), as always, in the basement: the latest attraction in "Hamburg Dungeon", is the flood disaster of 1717.

Here the Hamburg history is presented as a chain of disasters; the city emerging out of these catastrophes strengthened and purified, as a powerful metropolis.

Single 6: Disaster Capitalism in Dixieland Park

Sharon Jasper: They're not destroying just... - the government, they're destroying communities that we built. It's not right, it's not fair! They take our homes. What about our children? What about our displaced families all over the United States? I think: every resident has the right to return and have the right to make the decision, about what happen to their home, what happen to their life.

Disaster Capitalism in Dixieland Park. Already before Hurricane Katrina, Investors tried to transform New Orleans into a Jazz-Amusement-Park; and to demolish the projects (social housing built in the New Deal era), where mostly African Americans live. With the flood disaster comes the chance, to get rid off all poor residents at once: out of 30.000 people who lived in the projects before the catastrophe, only 3000 had returned till 2007. Out of 123 state schools only 4 are left after the flooding. 4700 union organized teachers, have been fired.

Bill Quigley: What they wanted, was: they wanted three of us to separate from the rest of you and come up and talk with them. And we said that this is the people's business, and we don't discuss anything behind people's backs.

Activist:We came here to stop the demolition. That's what we're here to do today. We are doing that for the people who have been dispersed out of New Orleans. 200.000 people, 150.000 of them black. We're doing it for the people who're being evicted from the FEMA trailers, being told:" Go, find somewhere to live!" We're doing it for the thousands of people, who live in the streets here in New Orleans. They say: 12.000. It's probably a lot more than that. They're destroying housing, at the time, when people have a desparate need for it. We say: that isn't right! We say: that this system, that built itself up on the back of poor black people, who they first worked in slavery chains, who they worked as sharecroppers, who they brought into the cities and put into these projects, now they say:" We don't need you in the factories no more, we're gonna knock down your houses." We say: that ain't right! We say: that ain't gonna go down without a fight!

Sources:
"Die Nacht der Grossen Flut", NDR-Doku-Drama, R: Raymond Ley, 2005
and original statements by Helmut Schmidt from the same film
"Die Sturmflut", RTL-T.V.-Drama, R: Jorgo Papavassiliou
"Computerstaat", Abwärts, 1980
Natalie Morales on NBC-Today, 2005
Mike Myers and Kanye West on NBC, "A Concert for Hurricane Relief", 2005
Reaganomics, T.V.-Ad, 1980ies, youtube
Brad Pitt interviewed by Ann Curry on NBC-Today, August 2007
Hamburg Dungeon, Hamburg, 2008
Sharon Jasper, Bill Quigley, "A Gathering Storm", WHYnotNEWS, Dezember 2007