Category: book

I´M TIRED OF PASSWORDS, I´M NOT A ROBOT

PASSWORDS FOR THE MOODLE

PASSWORDS FOR THE MAIL

PASSWORDS FOR THE BLOG

PASSWORDS FOR THE CPTV

PASSWORDS, PASSWORDS, PASSWORDS

LESS PASS , MORE WORDS! ( ? )

LESS WORDS, MORE PASS !

IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO ACCESS TO ALL THE PLATFORMS AT THE UNIVERSITY, THERE ARE SO MANY, AND EACH ONE WITH BAD DESIGN, BAD INTERFACE, NOT PEDAGOGIC, NOT INTUITIVE, NOT FRIENDLY. A LOT OF BUREAUCRACY, UNNECESSARY PROCESSES. STOP, STOP, STOP.

IT´S INCREDIBLE! I´M FED UP OF LOGIN NAMES, USER NAMES, PASSWORDS.. OPEN MORE ACCOUNTS…AND MORE… AND MORE…. DIFFICULT TO GET HERE… EVERYTHING IS SO COMPLICATED, LABYRINTHINE, WHY NOT MAKE IT EASIER?

MY FIRST COMPLAIN IS THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN THE UNIVERSITY.

LESS PASSWORDS, LESS FINE PRINT, I´M NOT A ROBOT!

VICTOR DEL (M) ORAL

What’s the difference between complaining and criticizing and how do I see myself in con- and reaction with proposed definitions ?

What’s the difference between complaining and criticizing and how is it seen: a) in my family ? b) in society? c) published on “simplicable”? And Why ?

“IF THESE DOORS COULD TALK? WERE MADE OF GLASS?”

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Part III of “Complaint!” by Sara Ahmed is called “If these doors could talk?”. 

During the two chapters contained in this part, various testimonies are told in which doors have represented a role amid sexual harassment and assault situations, encounters of oppression and misuse of power in different institutions, mostly against women.

In some examples, the infrastructure of the places where such violence occurred was justified as allowing the abuse to take place or even used as a weapon against the victim. For example: if the space between the oppressor and the abuser was too narrow, then the victim won’t come out of the room easily.

My concern was, how in many situations the behaviour of someone is justified by the scenario in which the scene occurred, if there were witnesses or not, if their reputation doesn’t match with the acts, among many other things. I also related this questions with the name of Part III of the book: What if all of those doors of the rooms in which once many misconducts and violations have occurred could talk? What would they say? Who would they put into the spotlight? What would change in the institution?

But what if the door and its big role had a shift? What if all of these doors were made of glass? And everyone around could have seen through. Would the oppressor acted the same way? Which would have been the outcomes of the different violences? Also, would anyone dare to force a violent act against the door knowing how fragile it is?

This also leaves me a question on if these barriers were more transparent and the physical infrastructures of institutions were reformed, then would people act completely different? Their actions would be justified if there were witnesses or not. But most importantly, injustices will be visible for everyone.

And at some point it seems to be what most matters when doing a complaint… if you don’t show enough proof, if there is not any witness, if there is no footage to support your complaint then it is not viable.

I made a poster to support the big question Part III of the book left in my head.

“Thank you for calling Expedia lodging support; my name is Lucía. May I have your property ID please?”

The sentence above accompanied my early mornings through the last 11 months before coming to Weimar. I worked as a call center agent for the known French company Teleperformance. I answered the phone and replied to emails in a campaign called Expedia.

------- 
Thought 1. Working as a call center agent is nobody's dream. 
Thought 2. I am feeling ashamed of being a call center agent. 
Thought 3. I did a 5-years bachelor's in Fine Arts in the best university in Colombia; a call Center should not be my place. ( I felt terrible of thinking about this after) 
Thought 4. Whatever...I need money to do my MFA in Germany. 
Thought 5. This is an experience I have to live. I should be grateful for having a job during a world pandemic. 

STOP LUCY... This complaint of not having job opportunities as an artist in a country like Colombia should be a future post because this post, as I already said, is about talking to a wall.
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Expedia is another vast “American”* company that provides services to find the “best prices” in the market to book flights and hotels (same as Booking.com). I was backstage since I only attended property owners, front desks, and other hotel employees. So, the complaints I received, I heard, were more “polite,” less “aggressive,”…

Less complaint.

It is called “customer service.” However, it is never truly about them.

The kind of complaints that came to me was usually about money. Let me explain to you how payments work for this company: the giant offers two ways to pay hotels the funds collected from travelers. On the one hand, the Expedia Virtual Cards. EVCs could be processed as soon as the guest had left the hotel; the hotelier already has the number Expedia assigned to the card. They only need to charge it.
On the other hand, there are the Invoices. Invoices were always a problem because people, I mean, the hoteliers, couldn’t understand why they needed to ask for payment instead of being paid as soon as they provided the service. I heard voices comparing “our” services (Expedia’s services) with Airbnb more than once. This platform pays property owners what is owed to them as soon as travelers check out. To me, this should be the right way to act. However, big corporations never work like that; they ask for money or work in advance, but they pay in terms of 90-180 days. Thus, small entrepreneurs wear out and die.

That is what an Argentine man precisely told me once. He was distraught because Expedia had not paid the last three months to him. He tried several times to contact Customer Service to understand what was happening, but no one answered. He had the right to be upset; he had been fighting for weeks, always against a vast wall. After working a couple of weeks in his case, I realized the whole problem was absurd and easy to solve. However, internal teams passed the ball from one to the other, and anyone did anything to help this man. Almost three weeks later, I could release the money (by his right) even if it was to the detriment of my “quantitative performance,” or usually called metrics.

I felt proud of myself for having been able to solve the problem. And it was not the only case actually. After all, I was a great call center agent.

Nevertheless, during the 11 months, I always felt frustrated working for a company like this one. The trouble with capitalism and these giant money-producing monsters is that they do not have a face, they have hundreds of people spread around the world…

wait … they are not really from all over the world, they are people who, like me, live in developing countries where labor is cheaper. I cost less money than an American.*

I cost less money than an American.*

I cost less than an American.*

So, Expedia, as well as Teleperformance, are no human beings.

And, it was not me on the phone. It was Expedia.

It was nobody.

It was an entity that cannot be spoken to.

It was a wall. It is a wall.

Thought 5. Is this frustration the same felt by Winston Smith trying to fight against Big Brother? 
Thought 6. However, Big Brother was no more than a vast machine fueled by fear and worship of the ignorant.

* Being Colombian, I shouldn’t say American to refer to the USA. I am American too. But, this is another story, another complaint.

A collage,

The power of the glasses, “Seeing the world through the lenses of complain. After this the world can’t be unseen. It gives you an capacity. An capacity to explain what is happening”. This can be a curse and a blessing. We didn’t choose to wear these glasses. They’ve been put on our faces without requests. They’ve been put on our faces, and now they’ve become a part of who we are.

The morning the glasses found the body.

The morning dawn settled on the empty streets of Ghent. The city is still sleeping. The light is wrestling its way in. The curtains won’t let the morning lighting in.

My footsteps can be heard on the stairs. I’m finding my way to the door. Everything feels surreal. The scent inherent in this ‘famous house’. The posters decorating the white, broken walls. When the front door opens, the light hits my eyes. The glasses rest on my nose bridge.

These glasses reach further than the eyes.
From the neck,
to the breasts,
tummy, hips, right and left leg,
the ankle and the feet.

As a fear of the memorie that the skin beholds.
Lines fill up the empty roll of paper.
Hoping that this second skin will wear off. That the glasses will fall.
Blue and black lines become conscious and subconscious reality’s on paper.

The body starts moving,
the hip makes a sound, the bones form an orchestra.
The violin, cornet, trumpet, bugle, euphonium and trombone are screaming.

As these glasses slowly become the reality.

As these glasses slowly become the reality.
In one of my nightly walks in Weimar, I passed a brown café. Filled with testosterone, men leaving the house to sit around a table with their male friends and get drunk. And the cliché doesn’t stop here, one woman. At the corner of the bar, multiple layers on her face. In need of validation from all those misogynistic men around her. This is a preconceived opinion, my opinion. Soon the café disappears from my sight. And I walk further into the cold.

As these glasses slowly become the reality.
The body makes a movement on the experimental sound the speakers are telling us. Intoxicated body’s are filling up the room. In our own world, we move. And as this is my reality, in which movement is an outlet, I move. The memorie of the skin, the memorie of the body, the memorie of these eyes which wear the glasses happens. The white walls of the room fill up my vision. Girls and boys dancing. Flashlights, in neon colors. The sweat finds a spot on the forehead, the heart is pounding.

As these glasses slowly become the reality the mind and body live in. We try to move and try to live with it. A new lens is placed on the world we live in today.

A personal reflection on migration 

In part II: “The immanence of complaint” of the book “Complaint!” by Sara Ahmed, some examples regarding migration were pointed out to show how complaints are related with this phenomena and this precise topic opened a new vision of understanding complaints for me.

Throughout the reading of the book, I have asked myself in which situations have I made complaints, if the environments were safe, if my complaints were good and fair enough; also, in which ways have I complained in the past that were not necessarily through verbal means, among many other questions. I doubted in my interior: “is emigrating a way to complain?” and that question has been following me for 2 weeks and now, I want to break this idea down, understand it and try to find an answer.

–

(Understanding emigrating as leaving one’s own hometown/country to settle for a permanent or long time in another). In my experience, I emigrated from Colombia to Germany because I wanted to pursue my studies abroad. Besides of all of my reasons to have chosen Germany as the country in which I would started to study, and all of its influence on my specific career (graphic design); the insurance of a higher quality access to study, a better future and a better panorama of what my working life would be, were also big part of the motives to have decided to begin with this journey.

All of this could have not been possible without the finance of my parents of course and the privileges I have access to. 

In my case to emigrate was a decision, taken based on the environment I was being formed into and how I do not fit in it. It was not that I was forced to. It was not that I had no other option; which I know is the only reason some people have to emigrate. It was my choice to come and in some way try to find the place I feel I belong to.

“You might make a complaint because you do not want to remain in that situation; a complaint can be an effort to get out of a situation you are in.” (Ahmed, 103). Even though a wide part of my personality and identity is influenced by latinx culture, I was not really connected to the environment I was born in. I left Colombia maybe to unconsciously stop that feeling and to allow myself to find the places, people and new experiences with which my beliefs and principles are aligned, and the previous quote of the Chapter 3 “In the thick of it” made me realize that.

Of course many of the aspects that bothered me about my city and my country: including the insecurity in the streets, especially for a woman my age, the inequality and many other sad realities that fortunately I have not had to live: hunger, corruption, violence at all levels, the complete abandonment of the government, among many others, still bother me to this day. And every time I have the chance to complain even in the distance, I take it. Every time something happens and I feel the need to express it through words or with my art I do it. But the part that confronts me is when as a consequence of my words comes the typical: “you don’t even live here anymore” as if once you emigrate you’re not allowed to complain.

I have to admit it: in the past I also did that comment. I also was that person that said: “if you left in the first place, then why do you care now?”. Well, Gabriela of 2013, because it is still a part of them!!!. Every problematic still touches their roots, their families, the things and people they know; basically it affects their realities in most of the cases. Just because they leave, it doesn’t mean it stops being part of their stories, and that’s my story too now. The things that I didn’t like before are still happening and as they are not fair, I still have the right to complain.

It is hard enough to be an immigrant. One does not belong completely to any of both places, which make us feel sometimes as passengers, or something on the line. The following quote retrieved from Chapter 4 “Occupied” describes what I exactly feel:

“A misfit occurs when the environment does not sustain the shape and function of the body that enters it.” (Ahmed, 140).