Christie Sentner

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On Assignment: COURIR DE MARDI GRAS

Published here by Defend New Orleans 

At dawn on Mardi Gras day, while New Orleanians are donning headdresses, sequins, and Perlis polos, locals in Eunice and other Cajun towns are stepping into medical scrubs adorned with bells and layers of fringed fabrics. Mardi Gras is a time of escaping reality’s constraints, and the costumes, capuchon hats, and freakish mesh masks, conceal the revelers’ identities. Mardi Gras is a fiercely protected tradition in Eunice, and if you want to participate, you have to dress the part.

The Courir de Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday Run,” is a 15-mile-long procession/party that starts promptly at 7am, when participants are encouraged to take a shot of Evan Williams. You need a little whiskey to chase the most sought after throw out here—no bedazzled shoes or coconuts, just live chickens that are launched into the air by the Mardi Gras Capitain on horseback.

Along the dirt roads that wind through muddy rice crawfish fields, families tailgate and shout for beads. Masked paraders play pranks on observers or get on the ground and slowly crawl toward them with hands outstretched, begging for “cinq sous,” five cents.

Halfway through the run, everyone stops to eat hot boudin and rest. There are no napkins or utensils involved—the boudin lady tears off a link of sausage and plants it in your hand.

After miles of walking, running, hopping on and off trailers, listening to stories, singing Cajun songs, dancing, and drinking homemade daiquiri, we made it back to town where we were greeted with an endless supply of homemade gumbo. It takes three or four bowls and a full day of sleep to fully recover. While we didn’t manage to capture any chickens, we still had a blast taking part in one of Louisiana’s wildest traditions.

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Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing

by Ian Bogost. University of Minnesota Press, 2012. $19.95, 168 pages.

Published here by The New Orleans Review

What do computer microchips, chicken wings, baby pandas, and packs of cigarettes have in common? For one, they are all pictured on the cover of videogame theorist Ian Bogost’s new book Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing, in which Bogost argues that these objects (and literally everything else) hold just as much philosophical import as human beings. Bogost uses contemporary philosopher Graham Harman’s term object-oriented ontology as an umbrella title, under which he places his own philosophy, alien phenomenology. To break this term down, Bogost defines “alien” as “anything—and everything—to everything else” and phenomenology as “the area of metaphysics concerned with how stuff appears to beings.” So although the theory may sound dense, alien phenomenology is simply the practice of considering how everything appears to everything else—Bogost calls the process “carpentry.” An alien phenomenologist creates “carpentry” that must “capture and characterize an experience it can never fully understand, offering a rendering satisfactory enough to allow the artifact’s operator to gain some insight into an alien thing’s experience.” The possibilities of Bogost’s theory applied to fine arts, theater, music, education, and even science are endless.

Bogost puts his work into context, citing the work of Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, and Latour, to name a few. At the basis of these and Bogost’s theories is the rejection of anthropocentrism and the argument for considering things (or “units,” as Bogost prefers) and how they interact with each other outside of their existence for or in relation to human beings. Luckily, readers need not obtain an advanced degree in philosophy to enjoy Alien Phenomenology. Bogost breaks up long discourses on the nitty-gritty details of object-oriented ontology with “litanies,” such as “plate tectonics, enchiladas, tourism, digestion” or “quarks, Elizabeth Bennett, single-malt scotch, Ford Mustang fastbacks…,” that demonstrate his theory in action: “Lists of objects without explication can do the philosophical work of drawing our attention toward them with greater attentiveness.”

As he explains how we must reject a “hierarchy of being,” he juxtaposes the ordinary with the extraordinary, and the massive with the minuscule. Because Alien Phenomenology addresses anything and everything, enthusiasts of all kinds, not just of philosophy, can appreciate Bogost’s call for broader consideration of the world around us, instead of just the world as it pertains to us.

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Instant (Analog) Gratification

Published in NVATE, 2012

Not many people in the camera business today would declare that “the future is analogue,” but luckily Dr. Florian Kaps and his team dubbed The Impossible Project are not concerned with following trends. From inception the project would be devoted to keeping a certain niche market alive in the increasingly digitalized world of photography. It all began when Polaroid Corporation jumped on the digital bandwagon in February 2008, announcing its exit from the film business after sixty years. Back in October of 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy after years of declining sales. With the discontinuance of Polaroid film cameras and the closure of several Polaroid production facilities around the world, many feared the imminent extinction of the iconic white-rimmed 600 series film.

The Impossible Project truly got its start in June of 2008 when Polaroid closed the doors to their factory in Enschede, Netherlands where for years the company had been producing consumer packs of the famous analog instant film. At the closing ceremony, Dr. Florian Kaps, Austrian-born instant film enthusiast and former manager at the Lomographic Society, met Andre Bosman, Polaroid’s Manager of Engineering at the seemingly doomed factory. Kaps and Bosman decided to join forces and take immediate action “against the death of Instant Photography,” according to the Impossible Project’s website. The first steps included purchasing machinery from the closing plant and moving production to a single building, downsizing from the original four buildings that Polaroid had previously occupied. Although these tasks demanded millions of dollars in private capital, they were not impossible. The real hurdle for the founders was to create a brand new film. The dyes and other chemicals necessary to create Polaroid film were no longer available, so The Impossible Project devoted an entire year to experimentation in hopes of inventing a new photo system. Kaps says of the daunting task, “Film experts doubted that this would be possible, chances that we would manage to re-invent a new photo system were 50/50,” hence the company’s mysterious namesake. Four years down the road the mission that seemed impossible is complete. The Impossible Project succeeded in re-inventing analog integral film and breathing life back into countless old Polaroid cameras that would have been rendered obsolete.

Today, the company sells some of these vintage cameras, along with two types of Impossible Project film, Silver Shade and Color Shade, on their website and in stores across the world. Tokyo, New York City, Paris, and Vienna all have Impossible Project Spaces. Dr. Kaps remarks that France, the United States, and Japan are the three best selling markets “with extremely enthusiastic and passionate supporters and customers.” When asked about digital competition, including applications like the trendy i-Phone Instagram, which can spit out images with the same dreamy effects as instant film even more instantly, Kaps replied, “We are oversaturated with digital images, they are nothing special anymore.” He believes that The Impossible Project provides consumers with “everything they are looking for in a digital age,” which includes, for photographers, “an original outcome that you can’t duplicate.”

The images that slowly come to life on the Impossible Project’s film are indeed unique and perhaps not intended for the premeditative photographer. However, Kaps believes that with “passion…an understanding for the medium…a spirit of adventure” and an openness to “get to know the film,” anyone can be an instant film photographer. Business is thriving for The Impossible Project, and 2012 has been a productive year: in January they collaborated with Polaroid to present the Polaroid Classic Line, which will feature six to ten new products every year that draw inspiration from Polaroid’s signature style. The company also opened a new store in Manchester, England in May of 2012. Plans for the future include the launch of an 8x10 large format film. The most inexpensive Impossible Project film packs cost around eighteen dollars, which is far cheaper than old Polaroid film sold on Ebay. So dust off the old Polaroid camera and reconsider the possibility of instant fun.

top: untitled Impossible Project polaroids, Maria Sanchez

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Eyes Wide Shut and “The Edge of the Construct”

Assignment written for Interpretive Approaches, a literary theory course at Loyola University New Orleans, in response to Joshua Clover’s book The Matrix.

Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut was marketed to audiences as a spectacle, just like its box office competition The Matrix. The Matrix boasted never-before-seen special effects while Eyes Wide Shut promised audiences gratuitous sex scenes featuring 1999’s hottest Hollywood couple. Rumors of Kubrick’s censorship battle only fanned the flames of hype, but upon its release, Eyes Wide Shut was lambasted with criticism – the sex was dull and disappointing. It is hard to believe that the constructed hype surrounding the film was a misstep by Kubrick and his marketing people. What seems much more likely is that the come down from the hype was calculated in accordance with the film’s overarching message: most of us are prostitutes.

The film opens on a seemingly endless New York City apartment. The walls are lined with bookshelves, and an absurd number of impressionistic oil paintings vie for the leftover space. Tom Cruise’s character, Dr. Bill Harford, searches for his wallet dressed in a crisp tuxedo. As Mr. and Mrs. Harford leave the bedroom, Bill silences the Shostakovich suite that has served as a soundtrack to their preparations for a gala. These opening scenes foreshadow the significant role of wealth and class throughout Kubrick’s film. We are immediately aware that Bill Harford’s wealth sets him apart from the rest of society, but when he stumbles upon the masked orgies of an ultra-wealthy secret society, he hits the “edge of the construct” which Joshua Clover attributes to the fictional matrix. A receipt for the tuxedo rental in his coat pocket and a stalling cab, rather than the customary limousine, reveal Dr. Harford as an outsider, and he is promptly ejected from the secret society’s gathering. While he may have used his money and credentials to manipulate a costume store owner and a cab driver, he cannot penetrate the world of the ultra-rich.

Like the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut speaks to life as it was in 1999. Clover’s critique compares The Matrix to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle as a “classic account of a social shift from a phase of being to a phase of having….in this society, spectacular images reign, and those with the power to produce them, to manage the symbols that seem to occupy the breadth of the public sphere, reign supreme.” This is the society that Dr. Harford encounters; the orgy-goers signify America’s power-wielders in 1999—the few elites associated with countless corporations. Like the corporate elite, the society in Kubrick’s film relinquishes all accountability through anonymity, a privilege which Dr. Harford does not share for long.

In Eyes Wide Shut, Bill Harford’s wallet is a reminder of Kubrick’s intent: to portray life in a world of constant transactions. Everything and perhaps everyone has a price tag. The characters in Eyes Wide Shut may not contend with machine overlords as in The Matrix, but they are still exploited. When Alice Harford helps her daughter Helena complete homework, the math problem is: "Joe has how much more money than Mike?" All the while, Christmas trees loom eerily in the backgrounds of scenes as reminders of capitalist consumerism. Alice's final proclamation, that the only resolution to the couple's marital problems is to "fuck," is delivered  in a toy store at Christmas time and could not be more indicative of American apathy toward the system in 1999.