Watching Awadagin Pratt

It was a memorable night watching Awadagin Pratt's performance.

The repertoire consisted of:

Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major K. 488

and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Youth (Spring)

 

The representation of private interests ... abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particular consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object."

Marx, On the Thefts of Wood, in Rheinische Zeitung (1842)

This movie is not an easy watch but a necessary one if you wish to understand the perils of unbalanced economic growth.  

Youth (Spring) is a 220-minute mammoth documentary filmed between 2014 and 2019. Separate substories show various workshops in Zhili City, China, the center of the textile industry. You see immigrant youth coming from nearby rural areas searching for jobs in these workshops under poor and unhygienic conditions. The dorms where these laborers work are dingy, rather dark, and depressingly dilapidated. The location is ironically named Happiness Street.

In the first story, we see a couple of lovers (19-20 years of age) having fun and joking about the speed of sewing the clothes and showboating their skill sets in an innocent childish way. Immediately after the intro, you're thrown into the real business which takes place downstairs (some similar structure in all the workshops: the boss's office is downstairs). The mother of the girl is negotiating time off for the abortion of her unwanted grandchild (the child of the jubilant girl upstairs). The boss's objection is business-oriented. Money-oriented. Religious values, Pro-life, and other philosophical/ideological concerns are distant and irrelevant in this material-oriented discourse. This is the heart of the textile industry in the aphotic heart of the Marxist world. They want the order to be prepared ASAP and they cannot offer the luxury of a day off.

The other story depicts a verbal argument between two young men (around 18 years old), The angry boy tries to attack with a scissor only to be stopped by the interference of ladies particularly a mother figure in the workshop, cutting his hand during the process.   

In one story, we have a protest from a group of workers as they express their discontent over their salary to the "bosses" downstairs. Here a couple in their 50s are in charge. The gentleman undermines the protestors and threatens the workers to be fired and replaced easily. Considering the mechanical nature of the job, one can hardly argue on that point. This is another sequence that implies how much violence is hidden behind the rudimentaries of Happiness Street!

Even rare off hours in the movie do not change the gloomy mood. In one of the scenes, we see young siblings in a dark internet cafe discussing and you see the exhausted girl fall asleep in the cafe.

Each story segues into another without a link except for identical environments across workshops. There is no sustained narrative as the director probably intended to provide collages of various substories. 

Youth is about a world reduced to paper bills, soulless transactions, and undignified souls walking their way through trash-strewn alleys (as a side note, you see abundant use of plastic in the environment!).  This is a real picture of an industry with a revenue of 330 billion dollars per year. However, in Happiness Street, the youth are slavishly subordinated to objects and to nondescript bosses who ruthlessly upbraid them. Marx did predict this but not for a Communist-ruled terrain! 

Youth (Spring) is directed by Wang Bing.

Pedram, 4/22/24

“But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.” — Ernest Hemingway

Sonett in der Emigration

Verjagt aus meinem Land muß ich nun sehn
Wie ich zu einem neuen Laden komme, einer Schenke
Wo ich verkaufen kann das, was ich denke
Die alten Wege muss ich wieder gehen.

Die glattgeschliffenen durch den Tritt der Hoffnungslosen!
Schon gehend, weiss ich jetzt noch nicht: zu wem?
Wohin ich komme, hör ich: Spell your name!
Ach, dieser „name“ gehörte zu den großen!

Ich muss noch froh sein, wenn sie ihn nicht kennen
Wie einer, hinter dem ein Steckbrief läuft
Sie würden kaum auf meine Dienste brennen.

Ich hatte zu tun mit solchen schon wie ihnen
Wohl möglich, daß sich der Verdacht da häuft
Ich mocht auch sie nicht allzu gut bedienen.

Bertolt Brecht, 1941-1947

English translation:

Sonnet in Emigration

I envision myself, driven out of my country

Now I must see 

How I can open a new shop

Where I can sell what I think

I have to go the old ways again

Those downtrodden by the tread of the hopeless!

Already on my way, yet I don't know: to whom?

Everywhere I go I hear: Spell your name!

Oh, this “name” was one of the great ones!

I still have to be happy if they don't know him

Like someone with a wanted poster behind him

They would hardly be eager for my services.

I've had to deal with people like you

It's quite possible that suspicion will increase

I didn't like serving them too well either.

I didn't like serving them too well either.