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Synopsis

In an era which insists upon judging audio in relation to "authenticity" and "soul," Terre Thaemlitz' latest computer music project, Soulnessless, includes multifarious critical analyses that dissect the intersections of gender, spirituality, and commercial audio production. With over 30 hours of new audio materials, over an hour of video, and a book's worth of writings spanning an 8GB MicroSD card, Soulnessless pushes the boundaries of the album format in today's post-CD era, where MP3 playback time is only limited by FAT 32 <4GB file requirements (a single composition can be up to 29 hours and 40 minutes at 320kB/s). It is without exaggeration an album of unprecedented scale, by which Thaemlitz calls into question marketplace demands for more and more "digital exclusive" materials as a form of labor exploitation that has been ever escalating since the CD replaced vinyl records (twice the playing time, yet producers receive the same or lower advances and royalties). Ironically, despite Soulnessless' completely digital format (MP3 audio/PDF text/MOV video), at 8GB the amount of data involved makes it impractical for download. This is both an attempt to explore the unprecedented recording lengths offered by the MP3 format (a feature which goes largely unrecognized as a result of it's near exclusive use as a format for quick downloads), as well as an act of resistance to online distributorships (Thaemlitz' position on which was made material by his offline MP3 collection spanning two UFD DVD-R's Dead Stock Archive - Complete Collected Works, released on February 11, 2009).

Soulnessless is composed from an openly non-spiritual and anti-religious perspective that sees atheism not as a "solution" to religious organizing, but as an act of self-defense entwined with the hopelessnes of life amidst an unstoppable onslought of spiritual dogmas and superstitions. For Thaemlitz, the actions of non-believers such as herself are, as a precondition, relegated to invisibility and failure:

I concede the inescapability of religious and spiritual dogma to one degree or another in all corners of life - from extremist religious militarism to the seemingly harmless transcendental pretenses of "soul music," ambient, new age, classical, pop, rock, folk, house... No matter how much I wish for the eradication of spiritual thinking, I have no faith in the possibility of an atheist society or godless world. I am truly without faith. In a media marketplace that demands soulness, I can only offer soulnessless. (from "Rosary Novena For Gender Transitioning")

Stylistically, Soulnessless is often conventionally meditative and soulful - some may even say spiritual (cringe). This is, of course, an extension of Thaemlitz' ongoing critique of the socio-material processes that condition the production and reception of audio genres. This critique has informed all of his albums in the unfortunately spiritual-laden genres of Ambient and Deep House (the appeal of which, for Thaemlitz, lies in histories of socialist-inspired Constructivism from the 1910's, and the sound of discotheques frequented by members of direct-action movements from the 1980's which spawned many of today's critiques of identity politics). Drawing from her own experiences as a non-spiritual consumer culturally forced to internalize and identify with dominant spiritual-laden media, Thaemlitz seeks to show how non-believers build affinities for sounds with self-defeating associations. As a result, a producer's arrival at a particular sound is not reflective of the "musician's heart" nor any other claims of authenticity, since the producer's "heart" (or intent) may in fact be betrayed by dominant associations with the sounds at hand. While most listeners and critics would be quick to label such producers as "phoney" or possibly even "culturally exploitative," Thaemlitz asserts the real act of exploitation is the one enacted by dominant culture against the social and subjective interests of those of us who are forced to "fake it" through life. In this sense, Soulnessless, along with Thaemlitz' existing catalog, is testimony to the fact that a producer coming from an anti-spiritual, socio-materialist perspective can culturally arrive at the same sound others are apt to call "soulful," and by extension many of his listeners must also secretly use those sounds for completely different ends than those commonly prescribed. Soulnessless investigates the cultural and interpersonal implications of these processes within the commercial audio marketplace, and presents them as symptomatic of problems of identification and alienation affecting all consumer relations under contemporary capitalism.

Over four years in production, Soulnessless promises to be more than a long anticipated follow-up to Thaemlitz' final electroacoustic album for Mille Plateaux, Lovebomb/愛の爆弾, which was quietly released without fanfare (or payment) at the verge of their bankruptcy in 2003. It shall present a real, material response to the dilemmas of contemporary digital audio production, all the while leading listeners through a multi-media series of twists and turns that takes a minimum of days to consume, and weeks to digest.

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Format

The format of this project is a single 8GB or 16GB MicroSD card (depending on final video size). Although much more expensive to manufacture, it is a nice physical contrast to the expansive amount of data this album contains. It's also way cooler. ;)

Although the MicroSD format may seem exotic, USB card readers are readily available for a low price in most any store selling electronic goods, including many convenience stores. If released on Comatonse Recordings, an optional bundle with a USB card reader will also be made available for a minimal additional fee to cover the cost of the device and postage (approx. ¥500 / &eur;5,00 / $5.00 USD).

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Contents

1. Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album
   賃労働とアルバムの死についての熟孝
   Audio Duration: 29:42'31 (h:m's)
   Status: Complete.
   (Excerpt / 抜粋) 1:31 1.4MB MP3 128kB/s
   
2. Rosary Novena For Gender Transitioning (Soundtrack Version)
   性転換のための、ロザリオ九日間の祈り（サウンドトラックバージョン）
   Audio Duration: 00:20'00 (h:m's)
   Status: Complete.
   (Excerpt / 抜粋) 1:33 1.4MB MP3 128kB/s
   
3. Traffic With the Devil (Soundtrack Version)
   悪魔との取引（サウンドトラックバージョン）
   Audio Duration: 00:23'15 (h:m's)
   Status: Complete.
   (Excerpt / 抜粋) 2:00 1.9MB MP3 128kB/s
   
4. Pink Sisters (Soundtrack Version)
   ピンクの修道女（サウンドトラックバージョン）
   Audio Duration: --:--'-- (h:m's)
   Status: Editing w/video.
5. Two Letters (Soundtrack Version)
   二枚の手紙（サウンドトラックバージョン）
   Duration: 00:17'12 (h:m's)
   Status: Complete.
   (Excerpt / 抜粋) 1:33 1.5MB MP3 128kB/s
   
6. Rosary Novena For Gender Transitioning (Alternate Version)
   性転換のための、ロザリオ九日間の祈り（アルタネートバージョン）
   Audio Duration: 00:20'00.00 (h:m's)
   Status: Complete.
   (Alternate Version, Excerpt / 抜粋) 1:32 1.4MB MP3 128kB/s
   

Total Running Time (completed to date): 30:52'58 (h:m's) | est. 31:00'00

• Soulnessless (Introduction)
  「ソウルネスレス」ー魂の完全なる不在ー （概論）
  Pages (Text & Images): --
  Status: English text in process.
• Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album
  賃労働とアルバムの死についての熟孝
  Pages (Text & Images): 52
  Status: English text and graphic layout complete. Japanese translation complete.
• Rosary Novena For Gender Transitioning
  性転換のための、ロザリオ九日間の祈り
  Pages (Text & Images): --
  Status: English transcript complete. Japanese translation complete. German translation in progress.
• Traffic With the Devil
  悪魔との取引
  Pages (Text & Images): --
  Status: English transcript complete. Japanese translation complete. German translation in progress.
• Pink Sisters
  ピンクの修道女
  Pages (Text & Images): --
  Status: English text in process.
• Two Letters
  二枚の手紙
  Pages (Text & Images): --
  Status: English transcript complete. Japanese translation complete. German translation in progress.

Total Pages (completed to date): 52 | est. 100-150

1. Rosary Novena For Gender Transitioning
   性転換のための、ロザリオ九日間の祈り
   Video Duration: 00:20'46 (h:m's)
   Status: English version complete. Japanese version complete. French version complete. German version in translation.
   Summary: Drawomg parallels between spiritual deprogramming and gender deprogramming, only to have sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) threaten to result in a new cult of essentialist gender identity.
   私は宗教やスピリチュアルなものを憎む。同時に、敬虔な過激派軍国主義者から、アンビエント、ニューエイジ、クラシック、ポップ、ロック、フォーク、ハウスなど、一見無害な「ソウル音楽」のふりをした超越論的な見せかけに至るまで、人生のあらゆる局面において、宗教的そしてスピリチュアルなドグマから逃れられないことは認めざるをえない。スピリチュアルな考えの撲滅をいくら願ったところで、無神論者の社会または神の存在しない世界が実現する可能性はゼロだ。そんなことがあるとは信じられない。魂の存在を求め続けるメ ディア市場のなかで、私が提示できるのは魂の完全なる不在だけである。
2. Traffic With the Devil
   悪魔との取引
   Video Duration: 00:24'02 (h:m's)
   Status: English version complete. Japanese version complete. German version in translation.
   Summary: As the stress of living illegally compounds, Filipina(o) overstays in Japan experience an increase in apartment hauntings and terrifying apparitions. Do the ghostly visitations provide psychological release, or additional trauma? While recording interviews in the Philippines, unexpected circumstances introduce a new series of social and anthropological power dynamics that complicate the project beyond resolution. A continuation of "Anthropological Interventionism" from the album Lovebomb/愛の爆弾
   ビザの切れたオーバーステイのフィリピン人に対する日本法務省の取締りによって、心ならずも招かれざる客が別途流入してくることになった。それは「幽霊」だ。正式書類のない移民として暮らすストレスが増すにつれ、オーバーステイのフィリピン人は、アパートにお化けが出没するという経験が増えた。彼らの家に共棲する精霊は、捕まることなく日本社会に暮らす彼ら自身の幽霊じ みた存在を照らし出すものだ。
3. Pink Sisters
   ピンクの修道女
   Video Duration: --:--'-- (h:m's)
   Status: Editing.
   Summary: An attempt to document non-commercial (yet non-liberating) contexts where issues of gender, spirituallity and electronic audio devices collide leads to Roman Catholic convents in the Southern Philippines. A continuation of "Anthropological Interventionism" from the album Lovebomb/愛の爆弾
4. Two Letters
   二枚の手紙
   Video Duration: 00:18'02 (h:m's)
   Status: English version complete. Japanese version in translation. German version in translation.
   Summary: World War I saw the R.O.T.C. militarization of Roman Catholic schools in the U.S., as Catholic German-Americans attempted to prove they were not "the enemy." This video tells two parallel-running stories of my father's experiences within these institutions during WWII. Did Catholic military academies actually serve the secret function of protecting young men - even non-clergy - from being sent to war? What was the price for such protection? The video segment of Soulnessless concludes with a look at the hypocricies and aesthetic butchery born of religious compassion.

Total Running Time (completed to date): 01:02'50 (h:m's) | est. 01:20'00

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Production Schedule

October 2010: Japanese translations of "Meditation..." and "Rosary..." completed. "Two Letters" video in production.

Unfortunately, since this project is being developed independently without funding, production keeps getting pushed aside by paying work that covers the bills... but it's nearing an end! I sincerely hope to see it released in 2011. I see that the Resident Advisor has recently announced it will be available in "early 2011" - apologies to anyone who is disappionted by my tardiness.

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Genres

AUDIO: Ambient, computer music, electroacoustic, experimental, fagjazz, meditative, modern composition, new music.

VIDEO: Anthropological interventionism, collage, documentary, narrative, science fiction, subtitles/textual.

TEXT: Academic, anti-religious, atheist, autobiographical, Feminist, fiction, Gender studies, Marxist, non-fiction, post-Humanist, post-Identitarian, post-Modern, Queer studies, Transgendered studies.

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Packaging

Soulnessless is to be marketed and sold as an audio cd, although it may also be cross-marketed as a video or multi-media project. The packaging will be a MicroSD card in a small (2cm x 2cm) transparent plastic case, likely with a tiny paper insert with general format information that fits inside the case. Unlike Thaemlitz' previous albums, the lengthy text will not require paper printing, as it will be included in PDF format on the MicroSD card.

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Pricing

Ideally, Soulnessless is to be priced as a normal album or double-album, although the cost of the MicroSD cards will push it up a little.

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World Record

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Record Label

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Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album
賃労働とアルバムの死についての熟孝

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Rosary Novena for Gender Transitioning
性転換のための、ロザリオ九日間の祈り

SUMMARY

Drawing parallels between spiritual deprogramming and gender deprogramming, only to have sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) threaten to result in a new cult of essentialist gender identity.

私は宗教やスピリチュアルなものを憎む。同時に、敬虔な過激派軍国主義者から、アンビエント、ニューエイジ、クラシック、ポップ、ロック、フォーク、ハウスなど、一見無害な「ソウル音楽」のふりをした超越論的な見せかけに至るまで、人生のあらゆる局面において、宗教的そしてスピリチュアルなドグマから逃れられないことは認めざるをえない。スピリチュアルな考えの撲滅をいくら願ったところで、無神論者の社会または神の存在しない世界が実現する可能性はゼロだ。そんなことがあるとは信じられない。魂の存在を求め続けるメ ディア市場のなかで、私が提示できるのは魂の完全なる不在だけである。

というわけで、まず、カトリック教のもとでのしつけを思い起こすというトラウマに満ちた課題から始めよう。ここでのカトリック教とは、私が拒絶した信仰としてのそれではなく、私自身のまさに土台となった教育制度を指す。幼少 期の条件付けの影響が大人になっても影響し続けると信じる者としては、私は、自分の現在の反宗教という価値観が、密教的復唱、儀式や洗脳といった若い頃の経験を通じて、私の心に焼きつけられたメタファーやシンボルによって 導かれてきたのだと思う。

自分の精神に加えられたしつけがいかにしてそれ自身の拒絶へと私を導いたかを探るため、おぼろな、長い間封印していた記憶をスキャンしてみる。トラン スジェンダリズムやクイアの兆候がなかったか探してみる。

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Part I
ROSARY NOVENA FOR GENDER TRANSITIONING

From 1997-2000, I lived in Oakland, California. Although I did not own a radio receiver, the wires in my studio acted as an antenna, filling the line noise with religious broadcasts from a local public-access radio station.

Some might call them messages from God.

I called them fucking annoying.

I hate religion. I hate all religions. Without exception. Yours too. I hate spirituality. I hate all spiritual ways of life. I hate all spiritual thinking. That includes secular spiritualism, agnosticism, superstition, astrology, fortune telling, blood type character readings, homeopathy, crystal power, angels, people who rationalize their belief in the inane with the phrase "nobody really knows what happens after they die," and people who believe Buddhists never started a war.

I have never encountered a form of spirituality that did not involve the reification of individual and communal ignorance. Spirituality placates our incomprehension of the material with tales of forces possessing the knowledge we consider missing in ourselves, often personified as omnipotent beings. I pity the gods, born of shame over our collective stupidity, their powers enslaved to answering whatever inane questions we throw at the universe. Faith in the gods is inseparable from our fear of confusion, our simultaneous fear of noise and silence, our juvenile demand for order where there is none. Yet in all the gods' supposed greatness, no "God's Plan" has ever delivered more than a given culture's status quo, with all of its miseries and inequities.

I understand faith's appeal as a means of empowering oneself, particularly among those hoping to escape poverty and violence. I understand that many religious groups provide vital social services, many of which are not provided by local governments. I understand how inadequate social services can create disdain for political process, and give appeal to notions of social order that transcend our material failures. But the quest for 'supra-social' solutions to 'social' problems obfuscates the material processes through which faith-based institutions are formed and operate, seriously complicating - if not thoroughly compromising - processes of social and institutional reform. Faith-based organizing antithetically seeks to alter the material while ideologically negating it via the supernatural... which is why so many religions anticipate salvation through the gods' apocalyptic destruction of the material world. In its anti-materiality, faith-based organizing is inherently anti-social. And positing faith as "a solution for today's world" overlooks centuries of hellish religious domination prior to the relatively new phenomenon of the (never really very) secular state. Religion is not an alternative. It is precedent. It is tradition. It is our collective shit piled miles deep over aeons.

I do not say these things as an "intellectual" dismissing "believers." To the contrary, I speak as someone raised as a Roman Catholic by parents with deep religious roots, my father having been a celibate Brother for 19 years prior to marrying my mother, who kept company with the nun teachers of her youth until their deaths. I was born in an area dominated by Catholic and Jewish faiths. We then moved to a town dominated by anti-Catholic Evangelical Christians, it being the global headquarters of the Assembly of God church. The antagonisms between the faiths I was exposed to, as well as the hatred nestled in their teachings of "God's love" (homophobia, sexism, racism, etc.), led me to disbelief by age 13. At age 14, I avoided the sacrament of Catholic Confirmation by telling my parents I needed more time to develop a worthy faith, which was a lie since I knew I never wanted to be confirmed, but my parents would not respect my judgment in the matter. At age 16, my father announced he "would not be tricked again" and I was confirmed unwillingly after being forced through weeks of nonsensical training. In a last minute act of resistance I attended the ceremony wearing a florescent green sweater and a spiky modified-mohawk, which managed to stop the arch bishop from physically laying his hands on my head during the confirmational blessing. I would like to think his confused, hovering hands having never touched my body means I technically remain unconfirmed.

Beyond struggles with Judeo-Christian communities, as a young adult in New York I helped deprogram loved ones who were members of religious cults including Mahikari and others. And since moving to Japan, one of the world's least religious societies, I still find myself helping loved ones overcome their fear of ghosts. So when I speak against religion and spirituality, I do so not as a person with the rare luxury of a secular upbringing, but as a person who has struggled to overcome one's own spiritual programming, and who sees others struggling to do the same. I assure you, any harshness to my words rests in defensive panic, not arbitrary aggression. I do not stand proudly before you. I am laying prostrate, an anti-Holy Roller speaking in tongues, trying to catch my breath for one more kick and "Fuck you!" against the endless trample of faiths and superstitions framing my existence in this world from birth to death. I concede the inescapability of religious and spiritual dogma to one degree or another in all corners of life - from extremist religious militarism to the seemingly harmless transcendental pretenses of "soul music," ambient, new age, classical, pop, rock, folk, house... No matter how much I wish for the eradication of spiritual thinking, I have no faith in the possibility of an atheist society or godless world. I am truly without faith. In a media marketplace that demands soulness, I can only offer soulnessless.

Because verbalizing disbelief places one in danger of losing family, friends, employment, and social networks, perhaps I should assume that apologist stance familiar to all nonbelievers. A limited inquiry into the influences of Catholicism in my own life would be a safer topic to discuss here, since anything less subjective could be labeled culturally insensitive, bad karma, anti-Semitic, demanding fatwah, or any number of other curses bestowed upon outsiders. I wish to limit the potential for such curses because I have already endured acts of verbal and physical violence at the hands of Christians, and suspect that fanatical followers of the other great religions of the world are no less capable of the same.

So I begin the traumatic task of recalling my upbringing under Catholicism, not as a faith I rejected, but as an educational system that laid my very foundations. As someone who believes the effects of childhood conditioning continue influencing us into old age, I may assume my current anti-religious values have been guided by metaphors and symbols burned into my mind through a youth of tantric repetition, ceremony and indoctrination. I scan shadowy, long repressed memories for signs of how my spiritual upbringing educated me into its own rejection. I seek omens of transgenderism and queerness.

From the discomfort of self reflection the Virgin Mother comes, patrona of my apologist analysis. For centuries, cults of the Virgin Mother have served as matriarchal counterpoints to patriarchy in Catholic cultures. I recall my own grandmothers - both single Catholic mothers in an era when Catholic mothers simply were not single - calling upon Mary for strength. But I am not interested in espousing Mary's "feminist potential," which strikes me as severely limited and conditional. There is something else about her... a different gender issue at play passed down for generations in Holy Mystery, guiding me here and now to out the Holy Queen as transgendered.

Her first appearance on my "GENDAR" (the transgendered equivalent of "GAYDAR") came in the form of a 14cm wooden phallus sitting on my mother's shelf. It was a gift from her lifelong mentor and friend Sister L. from the progressive Wisconsin-based Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis. Sister L. had educated and cared for my mother since elementary school, and was still around with soft kisses during my childhood. (May they both forgive me for annunciating what they left unspoken.) For this rather nicely sized phallus undergoes a metamorphosis, opening with labia-like doors to disclose an elongated statuette of the Virgin Mother, phallic in a Giocomettian sense, her head appearing from a clitoral hood, with a vaginal slit running down the front of her gown.

While Westerners might easily recognize and discuss such sexual overtones in, say, a statue from Africa, a good Catholic remains willingly blind to that which she worships - replicating but never speaking the meaning of symbols passed down over hundreds of years. The vaginal gothic arch, the church as womb, the eucharist as pseudo-sexual cannibalism ("Just what part of his body did I eat?")... all to be meditated upon silently, yet deemed blasphemous to speak aloud by the gnostic-descendant, celibate church leaders who spread the myth of the virgin birth after a power coup around 400 AD. Their story of a woman who asexually procreates a person of opposite gender - a son whose only human genome is that of his mother - is a tale of individual gender transformation. Much as the Holy Trinity is three in one, Mary and Jesus are two in one. They are not "of the same human body" in the sense that you and I are of the same bodies as our mothers and fathers. On a biological level they are the same body. The Madonna holding the infant Jesus - the best images of which are always melancholic - becomes a "before and after" picture of Female-to-Male transitioning: a feminine figure having given birth to her own masculine form. Conversely, the Pieta is a scene of Male-to-Female transitioning, with the female Mary gazing down upon her abandoned male carcass. Once these spells are spoken, they become undeniable. But the ultimate proof of these absurdities comes from my maternal grandmother, whose name was none other than... Maria.

Holy Mary, mother of Geri, grandmother of Terre...

In 1985, at age 16, I spent the summer living with her. It was the summer when I first began cross-dressing in public. A former seamstress, Grandma Mary helped me piece together odd outfits by modifying old slips and skirts taken from her attic. It was an unusual summer - the peak of our closeness in an often not so close relationship - which we laughed about years later on her deathbed. One day as autumn neared, she brought a box down from her attic and handed it to me. "Don't ever show this to your mother. Don't even breathe a word... Just take it out of my house." Mary forgive me, I have never spoken to anyone about this until now... I pray 25 years of secrecy is enough. Inside, wrapped in cross-stitched portraits of Our Lady, was a wax figurine of the Madonna and child with a highly unusual feature...

[IMAGE OF FIGURINE - MADONNA HAS PHALLUS]

 
NOVENA PRAYER (FOR NINE DAYS)

Hail, O Lady of Gender Transitioning, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, my hope!
To Thee do I send up my sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
O Holy Mother, in this age when feminine napkins are sold by South Korean transgendered celebrity Harisu, as Your imitators we beseech Thee for humility.
Forgive her envy of menstruation as that which she is "jealous of and wishes to do as a woman," and forgive my envy of sexual reassignment surgery as that which I am jealous of and wish to do as a "man."
Bless me, as You have blessed her, in granting faithful imitation and homage to Thine sacred womb, to give birth to my gender opposite.
Bless me with Thine beauty and grace.
Bless me with the heavenly riches necessary to complete such a transformation.
May the financial success of this audio project serve as the sacred seed of my own menstruation, an idillic flow like that seen in tampon commercials, a holy blue flow reflecting the plasticity of gender transitioning, draping my legs like Your blessed blue robe, that I may follow in Thine image.
O Lady of Gender Transitioning, pray for this sinner now and at the hour of my death, and receive me in my resurrection. This I humbly pray in Your name. Amen.

 
HYMN

[SUNG TO MEDICAL FOOTAGE OF VAGINOPLASTY OPERATION]

On that resurrection morning
When all dead in Christ shall rise
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life
Won't it be so bright and fair
When we meet our loved ones there
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life

I'll have a new home of love eternal
Where the redeemed of God will stand
There'll be no more sorrow (No more pain)
There'll be no more strife
Raised in the likeness of my savior
Ready to live in paradise
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life

When ol' Gabriel blows his trumpet
And we walk the streets of gold
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life
No more pain, worry, sorrow
In this wicked world of sin
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life

I'll have a new home of love eternal
Where the redeemed of God will stand
There'll be no more sorrow (No more pain)
There'll be no more strife
Raised in the likeness of my savior
Ready to live in paradise
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life

Oh dear brother are you livin'
For that day when Christ shall come
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life
Graves all burstin'
Saints a' shoutin'
Heavenly beauty all around
I'll have a new body (Praise the Lord)
I'll have a new life

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Traffic With The Devil
悪魔との取引

SUMMARY

As the stress of living illegally compounds, Filipina(o) overstays in Japan experience an increase in apartment hauntings and terrifying apparitions. Do the ghostly visitations provide psychological release, or additional trauma? While recording interviews in the Philippines, unexpected circumstances introduce a new series of social and anthropological power dynamics that complicate the project beyond resolution. A continuation of "Anthropological Interventionism" from the album Lovebomb/愛の爆弾

外国人は日本での暮らしをまじめに考えていないと非難されるが、そもそも最初から、大半の外国人は日本に根づいた生活を可能にする移住の途を閉ざされており、我々の脚は祖国に立ちっぱなしで残してこなければならない。実際は仕事を求めて不法に再入国を図る者をもっぱら狙ったものであるにもかかわらず、空港における強制的な指紋押捺は、テロリストとプロの犯罪者を捕えるた めのものとされている。

ビザの切れたオーバーステイのフィリピン人に対する日本法務省の取締りによって、心ならずも招かれざる客が別途流入してくることになった。それは「幽霊」だ。正式書類のない移民として暮らすストレスが増すにつれ、オーバーステイのフィリピン人は、アパートにお化けが出没するという経験が増えた。彼らの家に共棲する精霊は、捕まることなく日本社会に暮らす彼ら自身の幽霊じ みた存在を照らし出すものだ。

2008年1月、フィリピン南部のミンダナオ島を訪れた際、友人2人がダバオ市から数時間の郊外の町へ連れて行ってくれた。その町は、日本でのオーバーステイや正式書類なしの入国を経験した者に対する支援で知られた町である。私たちは地元出身の友人宅に泊まり、時間が許せば日本から追放された人に1人2人会い、お化けの話を含むオーバーステイとしての彼らの身の上話を聞いて、で きればそれを記録する予定だった。結果はこのポストモダンのホラー映画です。

Part II
TRAFFIC WITH THE DEVIL

The Japanese Ministry of Justice's crackdown on Philippine immigrants who overstayed their visas unwittingly triggers a different influx of unwelcome visitors: ghosts. As the pressure of living undocumented compounds, Filipina(o) overstays experience an increase in apartment hauntings, the spirits cohabitating their homes mirroring their own ghostly presence in Japanese society at large.

This new entry procedure will be put into effect prior to November 2007.
Foreigners entering Japan will be required to be fingerprinted and photographed during their entry procedures.

• Accurate identification of foreign terrorists.
• Prevention of terrorism in advance.
• Measures against foreign criminals and illegal immigrants in Japan.

If you refuse to be fingerprinted or photographed you will be denied entry into Japan and ordered to leave.

When considering why most Filipina(o) overstays claim to experience hauntings at home, a belief in ghosts is irrelevant to the question of what function such stories serve within the community. In psychological terms, given the stress of living as "ghosts" in public to avoid capture, and how the home is a rare place overstays may "re-materialize," one could see the hauntings as projections resulting from exorcisms of the "self-as-ghost." The fantastic tales of home hauntings invert relations outside the home, and in this sense express material life conditions - specifically the tensions, fears and helplessness of living undocumented - as filtered through cultural legends and religion.

No Filipina(o) is ever more than three degrees of separation from a ghostly encounter. If they have not seen ghosts themselves, they know someone who has (usually a family member), or someone who knows someone who has. The "truth" of these visions is adamantly defended, although I find most people are skeptical once they feel it is safe to confess skepticism. Thus belief is a cultural burden and, as in most cultures, generally dismissed as harmless - since publicly challenging such "harmless" beliefs is, ironically, often harmful. Even if one wished to portray stories of hauntings positively, such as suggesting they protect people by "keeping them on guard," such fear-based experiences actually increase paranoia, insecurity and trauma - reducing clarity and increasing the likelihood of mistakes leading to capture.

BEING CAPTURED: It is best to be captured by Japanese immigration officials who will take you directly to a deportation holding facility, rather than by local police who may detain you in a temporary holding cell for over a month before releasing you to immigration officials. Detention can last from 1 week to several months depending on documentation, cooperation with authorities, and the ability to buy your own ticket home. Capture entails a 5 year ban on re-entry into Japan. (It is assumed future visa applications will be denied. The only known exceptions involve marriage visas.)

SURRENDERING: Overstays who turn themselves in to an Immigration Bureau are not detained, but must leave Japan within 2 weeks. Surrendering entails a 1 year ban on re-entry into Japan. (It is assumed future visa applications will be denied. The only known exceptions involve marriage visas.)

MANANANGGAL: a vampire of Visayan folklore who appears as a normal person by day, but at night spreads large bat wings, separates its torso from its legs, and flies off to feed on the hearts of fetuses. The legs remain standing in place, to be rejoined before daybreak. Pouring salt or rubbing garlic into the standing legs keeps the torso from rejoining with them, causing death at sunrise.

Many foreigners working in Japan are demonized as blood suckers who only come here to steal Japan's wealth and fly back home. Foreigners are criticized for not being serious about living in Japan, yet from the start most are denied immigration paths allowing us to take root here, forcing us to leave legs standing in our homelands. For example, my only option for obtaining long-term residency was (and still is) as a "heterosexual spouse" - a bitter pill considering my active criticism of institutions of marriage, sexuality and gender. As of April 2009, Latin Americans of Japanese descent with "Nikkei" work visas are actually asked to leave early. With unemployment at 4.4%, Japan began offering ¥300,000 (€2,400) in airfare to anyone who permanently forfeits their Nikkei status, never to return since most could never afford tourist visas. The policy is doubly shameful considering most Nikkei descend from Japanese who were similarly shipped abroad in the early 1900's to lower Japan's domestic population and social burdens. Meanwhile, mandatory fingerprinting at airports is said to catch terrorists and professional criminals, when in fact it is almost exclusively targeting illegal re-entries seeking employment.

FIELDS OF ILLEGAL EMPLOYMENT: Construction (men), hostessing (women & transgendered), cleaning, factory, restaurant, entertainment, sex work, miscellaneous servitude.

HOW TO OVERSTAY: Obtain visa (tourist, etc.) and overstay granted period of stay. Photo and fingerprints will be documented.

HOW TO ENTER UNDOCUMENTED: Be smuggled inside ship container. Beware suffocation, starvation and extreme temperatures. Longer detention if captured.

PROTECTION AGAINST DEPORTATION: To avoid leaving legs standing in homeland when coming to Japan, pour salt over footsteps between home and port of departure.

In January 2008, while visiting the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, two friends brought me to a rural town several hours outside of Davao City that is well known for helping overstays and undocumented workers enter Japan. One friend was a town local from an influential family, the other was from Davao - both were Japanese deportees. I shared my interpretation of the hauntings with the Davao friend, a lone agnostic. We traveled through a mixed Catholic and Muslim region, the passage involving military searches during which all men were removed from the bus and questioned separately from the women. We were to stay at the local friend's house and, if time allowed, meet with one or two other deportees from Japan to discuss and possibly record their stories of life as overstays, including hauntings.

To my surprise, upon arriving we were escorted to the town hall where I was greeted by a top official (a former overstay herself and a key connection for Japanese visas), and then led to a room of onlookers, 8 of which waited to be interviewed. Suddenly forced to play a "documentarian," I began recording people as they described their lives as illegal workers in Japan in oddly stress-free terms, contradicting stories told off camera - and particularly disavowing hauntings. One reason for their on-camera behavior became clear during a break when, to my horror, a man pulled me aside and asked, "So, how exactly will you get us visas?" Unknown to myself, the local friend had told the community that their interviews could help them return to Japan. Believing their comments would be used to petition the Japanese government, they only wished to speak positively on record about the country. The anticipated casual discussion between a few friends-of-friends turned out to be an anthropological nightmare, as I found myself placed in the middle of local politics, family influences, and public desperation. At a loss, I apologized to the man for any misunderstanding. Fearful of the consequences of honesty, and with no way to leave town until morning, I quickly wrapped up the remaining interviews without addressing the misunderstanding publicly.

EDITORIAL REASONS FOR NOT INCLUDING NAMES OF PEOPLE & TOWN, NOR FACES

1) Protect interviewees from further blacklisting. Refuse to record what Japanese borders insist upon cataloguing.
(Some interviewees felt concealing their faces promoted a negative image of "having something to hide.")

2) Avoid negative associations with a specific town name that could adversely affect legitimate visa applications by its residents.
(The town official took it as a matter of pride for her and the town to be named, displaying fearlessness to constituents seeking assistance with entry into Japan.)

3) Protect local contact from embarrassment or trouble.
(It is still unclear if she acted out of misguided good intentions to impress out-of-town visitors, was pranking the community out of boredom, or if it was all a misunderstanding.)

4) Protect myself from unknown repercussions resulting from presumed alliances with, or criticisms of, the region and its members.
(Friend from Davao concurs.)

INTERVIEW EXCERPTS [Audio only]
Man (English): "Every day, work, house, work, house..."
Man (Japanese): "For example, when people are sent back they can never return, so that creates a lot of stress."
Woman (English): "Oh my God, for example, if you have a neighbor Nihonjin (Japanese) and then if you're noisy living in that place, then they will call the police that somebody lives there. That's why I have to transfer house, then have to transfer again, it's so hard to transfer from one place to another."
Man (Japanese): "The first time I was held at immigration for a week, then came back. Second time was police. The Law is totally different. If you are caught by police you are arrested, so detention runs longer. Two and a half months, then to immigration for two weeks, all together three months."
Woman (Bisayan): [Tells a story of when she first came to Japan and could not yet speak Japanese. Her Japanese co-workers blamed her for dirtying the bathroom because they thought she was from the jungle and had never used a toilet before. When they yelled at her in Japanese, she yelled back in Bisayan.]
Woman (English): "At that time there is a lot of work, 1992. You can transfer, in one week you can find job, any job you want. But the second time it's very hard to find a job, really."
Man (Japanese): "Now all my friends are getting caught, so it's more and more difficult to get introduced to employers."
Woman (English): "At that time it's not so stressful because, unlike the present, even the police, it's very hard. At that time even if you met policeman, okay. But now, different."
Woman (English): "Yeah, I was arrested."
Woman (English): "Well, of course, trying to blend in. Like, trying to be... to blend in with the crowd, so not to stand out so, you know, authorities might crack me down."
Man (Japanese): "The first time I was captured by immigration. The second time by police."
Woman (English): "No, it's in immigration. I surrender and then they let me be fingerprint."
Man (English): "I think it's true [that we are like manananggal], because we are Filipinos we have to come back."
Man (Japanese): "The first time I was caught by police. Detention lasted a week. The second time, for a month."
Woman (English): "The food. You can eat anything you want. You can eat apple, you can eat grapes, whereas here in the Philippines only rich people can eat apple every day, grapes every day. But in Japan any time you can eat, as long as you have job."
Woman (English): "A lot of people turned out to be interviewed today because they thought that you would be able to help them go back to Japan, and a daughter of a well known family here, that's what she said to the people."
Woman (English): "I happen to observe there is a ghost in our house."
Woman (Bisayan): "If the number of overstay workers is reduced, do you think that will affect the Japanese economy?"
Man (English): "I think so."
Woman (English): "I find it curious that the men said that they never had experience with any sort of ghost, but I had from first-hand experience that they always talk about those stuffs when I was still in Japan. They've been staying in Japan for fifteen years or more, and I feel they don't want to portray themselves as living stressfully during their stay in Japan."
Woman (English): "Well, this might sound strange, but I found the freedom, like, for... maybe the Philippines is primarily a Catholic country so, this might sound really ironic, but I find as an overstay there I felt free."
Woman (English): "If possible, yes, I would like to go back."
Terre (English): "Do you think that new policy would affect you from coming as a tourist?"
Woman (English): "Yes."
Woman (English): "Yeah, yeah, yes. I only have one year penalty, and then if you were caught, five years. So they told me I'm banned for one year."
Man (Japanese): "I don't think I stand a chance, but... I don't know... I want to come back, I want to return... but there's nothing to be done..."

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS [Reference only - not in video]

• Would you like to speak in Bisayan, Japanese or English?
• How many times have you been to Japan?
• Why did you go to Japan?
• Why did you decide to overstay?
• Was it a difficult decision to make? In what way?
• How long did you stay in Japan?
• What jobs did you do in Japan?
• Were your employers Japanese?
• Was it easy to find work in Japan?
• Were you ever unemployed in Japan?
• Do you have regular and sufficient employment in the Philippines now?
• What's the longest you've overstayed in Japan?
• What was the best part of living in Japan?
• What was the most stressful part of living as an overstay?
• How did you leave Japan (self-surrender or capture)? If captured, how long were you detained?
• Will the new mandatory fingerprinting at Japanese airports keep you from entering Japan again?
• What about after your penalty period is over?
• If the number of overstay workers is reduced, do you think that will affect the Japanese economy or job market?
• Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural?
• While in Japan, did you ever see a ghost, or did anyone you know claim to see a ghost? If so, where?
• Was it near the beginning or end of your/their stay that the stories started?
• As an overstay, did you ever feel invisible or like a "ghost" in Japanese society?
• Do you think the stress of living like a "ghost" could make a person more likely to see or imagine ghosts?
• If so, do you think the stress from the Japanese crackdown on illegal immigrants may actually be increasing the number of hauntings in Japan?
• Do you think the metaphor of the manananggal is appropriate, inappropriate, or...?

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Two Letters
二枚の手紙

SUMMARY

World War I saw the R.O.T.C. militarization of Roman Catholic schools in the U.S., as Catholic German-Americans attempted to prove they were not "the enemy." This video tells two parallel-running stories of my father's experiences within these institutions during WWII. Did Catholic military academies actually serve the secret function of protecting young men - even non-clergy - from being sent to war? What was the price for such protection? The video segment of Soulnessless concludes with a look at the hypocricies and aesthetic butchery born of religious compassion.

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