Paparazzi Ethnography

Totenkopf Island

Images from the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow —

Internal Empires

• Hidden techno-scientific infrastructure
• Secret charts and maps
• Sequestered knowledge workers
• Surrounded by water
• Local inhabitants unaware
• Mad scientists

World of Tomorrow #1

Kodiak Island

My first ever glimpse at an island of inland empire occurred while flying over Kodiak Island, Alaska. There, beneath my plane, I saw Terror Lake, a dam built directly at the center of the island to provide hydro electric power to Islanders. In my role as cultural anthropologist, I was interviewing residents about life-ways and history.

When I saw Terror Lake, I realized that that something was going on behind my back. A vast techno-scientific plot, a schema that afforded me the bio-capacity for interviewing informants in winter, in a warm room, with “lights on” and electricity for my recorder.

World of Tomorrow #2
— Kodiak’s Terror Dam

I became aware of the existence of Islands of Inland Empire.

T E R I B E R K A

I snapped the photographs below at the Gazprom installation at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia. They depict the proposed Teriberka Liquefied Natural Gas installation, a futuristic techno-scientific off-loading facility for developing the Arctic off-shore Shtokman energy project.

World of Tomorrow #3

It is a world of tomorrow, an Arctic Inland Empire.

These are images of a modern world hidden at the very center of far away islands. Its technological wonder is remote, especially for villagers living along the shores of these inland empires.

Teriberka is located along the Arctic Barents Sea in Russia. Arriving to the village took us five hours drive from Murmansk. Villagers live amidst modern day ruins.

They also live in expectation that the Shtokman off-shore energy project will bring a new modernity:

Toward a new modernity:
The following are a set of maps and charts — a future of development ensures Teriberka’s fate. A village, cast off to the side of the road, will make room for the future.

The Future as seen from Space.

At the center of an international agreement:

C R A B – K E Y
Island

One of the more famous examples of an Inland Empire derives from the James Bond movie, Doctor No. In this film, a beautiful island paradise, Crab Key Island, is the location for a notoriously sinister Dr. Julius No, Ph.D., who has installed an ultra, ultra modern facility directly in the center of the island.

The entire island is merely a mask for the techno-scientific form.

“Vast Complexity” of inland empires requires they employ many types of knowledge workers — architects important at the design phase, engineers ensuring the facility operates at maximum specification of reliability, less skilled workers responsible for mundane functions which still require sober attitudes.

D R. M O R E A U ‘ S
Island

I would not be surprised if inspiration for 20th century inland empires derives from nineteenth-century novel by H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau. In that book, alongside its many film adaptations, another mad scientist tries his hand at god-like creations.

T E R M I N U S
Island

World of Tomorrow #4

In the video game titled Skies of Deception the final battle takes place on an Island of Inland Empire. 

Aurelia is a peaceful nation currently under siege from its northern neighbor, Leasath, under the command of strong man, Diego Gaspar Navarro. Leasath’s advanced super weapon – the Gleipnir Flying Fortress has decimated the Aurelian military.

Gryphus Squadron, led by ace fighter pilot Gryphus 1 is Aurelia’s last hope for liberating the country. The final battle takes place at Terminus island.

Island of Inland Empire

Cobalt Cave
The Aurelian Navy infiltrates the compound to disable the Fenrir Optical Camouflage.

Archelon Fortress
The Leasath Navy reaches land, where they open the electric power transmitter gate, allowing Gryphus 1 to destroy the Fenrir Optical Camouflage. They proceed to the fortress and withdraw when it is close to exploding.

OBJECT

Years ago, when I became aware of the hydropower installation at Terror Lake, on Kodiak Island, Alaska, I became concerned, as if all of a sudden, that the kind of study I was carrying out was in certain respects naive.

There I was, interviewing Islanders who lived in my romanticized ideal as rural folk. But they do have access to electricity. We used electricity to speak with each other. We used electricity to look at one another. We used electricity to hang out together. Without electricity, my interviews would cease.

But all the while, it never occurred to me to think about this peculiar relationship between on the one hand, my idealized image of rural lifestyle and the certainty that this lifestyle was connected to and supported by a powerful scientific-technocratic form that was sitting nearby silently, humming away, at the center of the island. It was only until I flew over it, and saw what spectacle that was there, in the physical form, that I asked: Who put this here? And if such marvel exists, then what is going on here, in the center of the island, a topic on which no one I knew had any clue. My informants and I lived around the perimeter, entirely dependent upon– this ultra, ultra modern techno-scientific form.

This connection between, on the one hand, (self) ignorance of the conditions that support ambient energy, and on the other hand, the actual conditions that create the sense that ambient energy is just that, ambient without actual conditions, came as a surprise.

In Islands of Inland Empire, I examine the curious condition of islands whose physical core has been refashioned into a highly technological and scientific form, and whose functioning depends upon the presence of scientists and technocrats, who do not seem to be affiliated with a university or any surfacially observable network of knowledge. Everything appears to be operating on innovation that is self-enclosed and ideologically self-sufficient.

When does all this construction take place and by whom and who funds it all?

Who are the architects that come up with such ideas?