Paparazzi Ethnography

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Alaska Energy Forum

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Washington DC on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Expatriates in D.C.

I was in Washington, D.C. attending a party for members of the Alaska Family — persons of high-profile from Alaska, who have since oriented their careers toward securing federal dollars from the U.S. Congress on behalf of the state. What a pleasure to reunite with informants who gathered for a small reception of the annual Alaska Energy Forum.

That is Jack Ferguson, everyone’s favorite (and some say highest-paid) Alaska lobbyist. All around well-liked guy, he has a way with capturing the mood of the moment. I was told of one such an instance when a newly elected Governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski flew to Washington D.C. in the middle of winter to meet with several lobbyists who he had known previously when serving as Alaska’s U.S. Senator. One of the meetings took place over lunch with Tom Roberts, a lawyer for a high profile D.C. law firm. For decades, Roberts has provided lobbying services to the Canadian pipeline construction company, Foothills Pipelines Ltd., who holds critical permits to build the proposed gazillion dollar natural gas pipeline along the Alaska Highway route.

Years before, both Jack Ferguson and Tom Roberts had served, at different times, as Chief-of-Staff to Murkowski while the latter was U.S. senator. Both had continued a mutually supportive friendship. In fact, Roberts served as treasurer on Murkowski’s gubernatorial campaign. Actually, at the beginning of Murkowski’s gubernatorial reign, Roberts was considered part of the Governor’s Kitchen Cabinet, in large part, because that very phrase designating that particular group was assigned during that very luncheon with Roberts — when Jack Ferguson, came in out of the cold, threw off his jacket and bellowed across the restaurant, “there they are, the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’!”. The name stuck and was used throughout the following months to refer to the decision making authority of D.C. friends of the governor and also — as the reason for the lack of decision making authority among highly placed political appointees back in Alaska.

Returning to the occasion, everyone was in good spirits, and there were so many folks that I had not seen in some time. Members of the Press and leaders of Oil Companies, buddy–buddying, schmoozing, rubbing palms and patting backs, just like ole times. Of course, even Alaskans can get on the wrong side of each other, but, according to John Katz, everyone eventually gets “under the tent”.

John has served under seven or eight Alaska governors, I forget how many now — as the Federal-State Director in the D.C. Office. He has so many quotes to sum up the situation. Another of my favorites, especially in the context of energy legislation: “Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan”.

Here we are. That’s energy journalist, William Murray, Political Correspondent for Energy Intelligence, standing next to David C. Nagel, Executive Vice President of British Petroleum (BP).

David just stepped into the seat at the D.C. Office of BP. But his arrival did not disrupt the position of an old playmate, Brian W. Miller, Senior Director, US Government Affairs for BP, who was also in attendance that evening.

Drue Pearce, Senior Policy Advisor for Crowell Moring, was in attendance as well. Drue has had such a long and distinguished career in Alaska politics. I first met her when she was a State Senator in the Alaska Legislature. She then went on to become Special Assistant to Secretary of Interior Gale Norton, in Washington, D.C. — That must have been an amazing experience. I remember meeting the Madam Secretary in her office, with Drue, while accompanying the newly elected Alaska Governor, Frank Murkowski, on his inaugural tour of D.C. heavies.

I wish I had my camera on that occasion! Wow. What a beautifully plush office. Frederick Remington paintings of the Old West hung on the darkly wooden paneled walls, photos from Edward Curtis, capturing the twilight of the West. There was a central drawing room that any executive would envy. I had to hold my breath — so nervous to be in the inner-sanctum of federal bureaucratic power. On such occasions, whenever offered a drink, wine or juice, I declined for fear that I would spill the darn thing and make a fool of myself in front of such a distinguished party.

Drue completed her political appointment career with the Presidentially appointed, and Senate confirmed title of Federal Coordinator, which was an amazing post — and one that is now being held by none other than Larry Persily, former Alaska journalist and political appointee under two Alaska Governors: Tony Knowles and Sarah Palin.

Yup. That is Larry Persily, Federal Coordinator of the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System. The Office of the Federal Coordinator (OFC) was created to expedite the construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline, if it ever got off the ground. Actually, the OFC, is a precursor to the OFI, Office of the Federal Inspector, which was created several decades ago, under President Jimmy Carter, when the original plans for the Alaska pipeline were created. The whole idea behind these offices is to create a one-stop shop for all federal government issues to be handled, so just in case the project does move forward, it does not get mired down in squabbling over regulations.

Wow. That is Rita Stevens, flanked by Oil men from Marathon Oil Company. Geez. I know Rita from my first trip to Alaska, on Kodiak Island, when I was an undergraduate student at Columbia University. Rita is married to Gary Stevens, former college professor and now president of the Alaska State Senate. Both flew in from Juneau, Alaska, for the meeting.

We all hugged, and then went out for dinner, right then and there, with other Alaska politicians from the State Legislature.

Around this time, several months ago now, I was in Houston, Texas, with members of the oil and gas industry on arctic natural gas development. I mentioned the need to create communities of participation, that bring together in one room the principals of energy companies and sovereign arctic officials, so that everyone becomes familiar with each other and understands how to communicate across a broader band-width of demands than what continues to be narrowly construed as, on the one side “economic viability”, and on the other side “increasing local revenue”.

One example of a roundtable meeting took place between Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski and the principals of Alaska energy companies. I believe the mutual understanding that grew from these face-to-face meetings ultimately led to the contract drafted between the Governor and the Alaska oil and gas producers on conditions of a natural gas pipeline project. Terry Koonce, former head of ExxonMobil met with the Governor at pre-arranged roundtables to speak openly about requirements on the Alaska pipeline.

However, when the Governor finally delivered to the Alaska State Legislature the contract, to be ratified, Alaska lawmakers faulted and dropped the agreement. Was it the weakness of the contract itself? Or was it the lack of engagement between lawmakers and principals of energy companies? As an observer, I found the ordeal a missed opportunity.

The need for alliance building through face-to-face roundtable contacts became clear to me while I was having dinner with Alaska’s State Senate Majority Leaders visiting Washington D.C. Seated on the right is State Senate President Gary Stevens, and to his left co-chair of the Finance Committee, Bert Stedman — two of the most influential persons involved in negotiations over energy tax relief legislation proposed by the Alaska governor.

A primary question for me that evening was the following:

Can someone please explain to me how it occurs that on their night off in Washington, D.C. the only non-politician having dinner with these Alaska leaders is a Photographist and International Travelry Specialist? And not, for example, Jim Mulva, CEO of ConocoPhillips who could best portray his company’s long term interests in Alaska and explain why he is requesting a tax break from the state?

To be fair to Mr. Mulva, he does communicate in-person frequently with Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, at her office in the Hart Senate Building on Capitol Hill, which is where I first met him, introduced to me by energy lobbyist Don Duncan. It was in this moment of our meeting, actually, that I developed right-there-on-the-spot my initial theory of corporeality of the intellectual professional, based on a handshake with this powerful, charming and charismatic individual.

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Arild Moe

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Houston, Lysaker, Oslo on February 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Above, in the photograph, seated on the left, is Jonathan Stern, with one arm crossed and fingers touching his lips –contemplating the expert commentary of the man holding the microphone — Arild Moe.

Both men are gurus of Russian natural gas development. They are analysts who have known each other — been working with each other — forever. Jonathan, about whom I write in a separate blog, see below, is Director of the Oxford Energy Institute, London. Arild is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, and some say — soon to be Director — at the Norwegian think tank, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, located just outside Oslo, in Lysaker.

I had the opportunity of visiting with Arild at his digs on the outskirts of Oslo, and I am going to write about our meeting now. In fact, on the heels of that discussion, a few weeks later, while in Houston, attending a dinner at the home of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Jostein Mykletun, Ph.D., — his gracious wife Sonia Mykletun (pronounced: moo-kle-TOON), who has been running the Fulbright Scholarship in Norway for some years now, invited me then and there to apply for the Arctic Chair.

The Marvelous Sonia Mykletun, creator of the Norwegian Fulbright Arctic Chair (notice in this image, the size of artwork in the background — forms of distinction making up the time and space experience of diplomatic life — a time-piece Sonia wears, increasingly rare — and seating arrangements, in pairs, facing each other, intensifying face-to-face contact).

In support of the Fulbright application, and as I said, falling on the heels of Arild’s and my unique discussion in Lysaker, Dr. Arild Moe was kind enough to provide me with a support letter for my research in hopes of nailing down the Fulbright award. Of course, at StudioPolar we love to capture the imponderabilia — the little details of events among “high rollers” — as a Calgarian friend likes to refer to such folks, and so I post the letter here as an artifact of Guru Power, pure and simple.

No. 1 — On to Lysaker

Okay, where were we? Oh, right. Visiting the Chalet in Lysaker… Yes. As I was mentioning, I was in Oslo, holed up inside a Hotel near the main square, Rica G 20. There’s an aura about the place…

G 20

For some hours, perhaps days, I lay on my back, with hands crossed over my chest, in the pine-wood coffin position. An idea came to me quite suddenly, without advanced warning, to get up and telephone Arild off-the-cuff — to inquire whether we might meet. In truth, we had not spoken before, though, I did send him a detailed email to which he did not respond. Also, I did see him from a distance… the previous summer at the Petrosam workshop in Oslo, organized by Econ Pöyry, the “Nordic branch” of the global consulting company Pöyry Plc. The photos above, of Arild and Jonathan Stern, talking about changes to the European gas industry, were taken at Petrosam.

Luckily, Arild invited me for lunch at the institute the very next day, about 30 minutes from downtown Oslo by public transportation.

I hung up the phone receiver and after a few moments, returned to my reclining position. There, I went over the exchange on the telephone. My name, academic affiliation and statements of having received US Science Foundation support to study intermediaries (consultants) involved in natural gas development in the Norwegian-Russian Arctic.

The information caught the attention of my listener. I finished the introduction and waited, silently, perhaps several seconds, and then, began again, this time, haltingly, with gaps and pauses:

“I study intermediary actors…they… They’re successful — in mobilizing expectations among the energy industry’s upstream and downstream communities…. [pause] … And. The complexity and erratic business of gas development in the Arctic… It’s created an economic niche for intermediaries who educate leaders about these spaces of uncertainty.”

And then with increasing rapidity: “And despite the growing importance of intermediaries not much is known about this form of expertise as it relates to Norwegian-Russian Arctic gas development, the precise characteristics of knowledge produced, the kind of influence they exert, or their role in influencing the European gas industry.”

There was a great deal of silence after I spoke, as if Arild was going over the sentences in his mind, rolling them and wondering what’s next, not knowing what my specific request would be. It’s a meeting. To Meet. An invitation To Discuss an Idea.

Arild is calm and quiet spoken. There was not much response really. We exchanged emails so that he could send me specific instructions — which train to take, the need to transfer to a bus, and to walk 10 minutes — in order to arrive at the institute. He ended the conversation abruptly but quietly with the words, “look forward to seeing you tomorrow”.

The soul of a train station: The platform. The feel of time clicking with an almost atomic-clock precision. Every second of delay in arrival and departure schedules reverberates of total banality. And still, a heightened sense of expectation remains over a threshold of departure.

The clock on the platform warning of my late arrival.

Late March and still snow on the outskirts of Oslo.

The institute is located away from a main thoroughfare, in the woods. Walking up toward the driveway, I pass palatial homes, courtyards, fences with electronic security, distance between residences are wide. The neighborhood reminds me of where ambassadors live, or where embassies are located.

I walked along the road continuing past the homes for 10 minutes, just like Arild mentions over the telephone, and conscious now, that I am no longer in a city — where city sounds are now replaced by my breathing and tromping over snow and gravel. There, sooner than I expect, but certainly time enough, the institute takes form, and finally the entrance.

resepsjon

The door opens and I am shown into the reception room. I did not inquire into the history of the building, where the institute carries out its operations.

I was announced — and invited to explore the interior while waiting for Arild….

No. 2 — Interiors

The work of hands.

Imagine entering into a room, and noticing suddenly — without picturing even the outline of a face, the presence of a person — through the image of a type of work they accomplish. In this case, someone earns a living by laying out in an orderly fashion, a stack of newspapers, as one of their daily tasks.

Imagine again selecting one journal, to read. Or flipping through another, and still yet another. Nevertheless, within some shortened period of time, perhaps over the next half-an-hour, each paper that is disrupted, is returned to the table, placed back into an orderly fashion.

Here, as with several offices I visited in Oslo, I became aware that this particular task, of ordering the newspapers daily (hourly), is a vanishing movement, soon to enter into the dustbin of discarded historical practice, forgotten, perhaps without nostalgia. It is a reminder of what remains of an earlier time but that still takes place somewhere as part of someone’s present.

There, the newspapers lay, simply and elegantly.

By its appearances, the building of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute looked to have been built at the turn of the 20th century. The ground floor, at the entrance, there is a spacious hall, a living room with a fireplace, and natural light streaming through long vertical windows. The rooms are laden with dark wooden trim, wooden floors, and banisters.

My first thought from glancing at these rooms was of a nightclub in San Francisco, the Red Devil Lounge.

But also of a dwelling for rock bands of the 1960s, in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the residences of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin– with plaster mold busts of famous heads staring out from the corners of the room and occupants slipping on pogo boots, moving their lips in repetition of the lyrics of songs. Who uses a fireplace to keep warm these days?

It was a space of science, belonging perhaps to a former century.

What a contrast to the spaces of Norwegian think tanks located in downtown Oslo, housed in ultra, ultra modern settings.

Lunchtime takes place at the same hour every day, and staff move tables into position in the main room, where everyone sits together. One staffer provides fresh cut fruit. I noticed all of this, but did not participate, as Arild invited me into the smoking room, for a tete-a-tete so to speak.

No. 3 — tête-à-tête …

Now seated facing each other, with the door to the main room closed, I produced from a worn manila folder, a small, shiny 8″ x 11″ hand out, which I placed on the table and slid to Arild. He looked over the hand out, and I stated in rapid low tones all the necessary details of my research. My fanaticism for the idea. Dispassionate ambivalence combined together with a low intensity of speech, as if delivering an incantation.

Arild held the sheet of paper presenting such details as they pertain to the North American Arctic, and began, in a deliberate manner, to compare themes he recognized between gas development in the Shtokman case, of the Russian Barents Sea area, and the Alaska gas play, on the North Slope.

Oil paintings and wall murals figure prominently at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. Each room has a theme. In the dining area, a long table suitable for serving over 20 persons is flanked by painted walls on three sides, depicting medieval Scandinavian themes — lords in gallant dress mounted upon horses, children with mothers holding hands, on-lookers, young adults, and elderly masters.

In the main drawing room, the image of communitas associated with the dining area– consistent with the carnivalesque period of the medieval era — is thoroughly left behind and instead, replaced by a period of the early modern. Here, the baroque is at work, with its stern Christian ethic and separation of the classes.

I want to compare these wall images now, for a moment —

I want to compare these Work Place Images saturated as they are, with an intensity of cultural form and temporal depth – to compare them with the image that hangs beside the Night Porter at Rica G20. At my hotel, downtown, away from the detached and cloistered natural environment of Lysaker (a workspace of the leisure class), the porter has his very own wall image, an object of representation for him of his surroundings. This image is saturated also with temporal significance, that of urban time – of train schedules, delays, departures, the platform, labor shifts, and of course, money (i.e., quantifiable qualities as expressions of value) — all consolidated in the image of the Wall Clock. Here, mimicry of gesture and formalism are absent — there is no image of gallantry or thrift through which one can identify and model behavior — as is associated at Fridtjof Nansen Institute. The Wall Clock, offers a form of mimicry according to which only time-space discipline is the theme.

Presidential Timber.

In the room where Arild and I met, I sat directly in front of an image of a man, who stood directly as an image of a tree. Staring at me from Arild’s vantage point, was an image of an early 20th century Scandinavian modern gracing my presence, in imitation of a fir tree.

Arild presented a list of ideas:

In Russia, power is still centralized where decisions are negotiated in secret (versus in D.C. where decisions are dependent up on three forms – judicial, legislative, executive). From this perspective, the questions that arise surrounding Shtokman do not concern how decisions are made, but when decisions are made.

The logic of Shtokman is less concrete than the case for the pipeline in Alaska. Issues concerning arctic offshore in Russia are broader and much more vague. In Alaska, the controversies and issues are fairly concrete. There is a lot of data surrounding pipes, numbers, completion dates, volumes, etc.

For these reasons above, there is much more uncertainty on Shtokman, and that this uncertainty exists in an earlier state than the Alaska case. Essentially, the Alaska case represents a project located at an entirely different stage of temporality than the Shtokman project.

In this sense, expertise, an issue that my research is about, expertise in Russia, is primarily concerned with the technical and geological. The Russian research institutes are focused with a clear sense of purpose on this point.

Now, here, is where I had to interject and ask about this last point. If it is true that issues are technical, then what do we make of all the talk by people like Jonathan Stern and Arild himself, on these projects, the sense of expectation etc.?

We diverted the question to discuss Global Russians, which I had discovered the previous summer from the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, wherein Russians with education from abroad had returned to Moscow and are now working with western financial firms, and providing assessments of the Shtokman project. According to Arild, they have few links and knowledge about the past. That is to say, the overarching decisions are still made by members of the older nomenklatura, all the strategic decisions are their decisions.

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CO2 Utilization Workshop

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Berkeley on February 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Carbon Dioxide Utilization Workshop taking place today at Haas Business School

Epilogue — we broke up at about 8:30 PM after a fairly long day of activities that I am still a little unclear about, though to most of the technical people in the room, things are rather clear. One thing I can opine, putting my own sociological spin on things, is that Carbon Utilization will be a much more innovative entrepreneurially driven sector than Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). Capturing and herding carbon for umpteen hundreds of years is a different kind of activity than utilization, with all its imperatives to make a profit.

4PM: policy break out group: now we are gathered in a different room with a different set of folks, talking openly about the policy issues associated with Carbon Utilization. And we’re talking about (1) the appropriate role of government; (2) the relationship to carbon taxes and credits; (3) education and communication to the public; (4) What is plan B? (given that we’ve done nothing to deal with carbon over the past 20 years, and we will not seem to be doing anything, what is our alternatives); (5) Transforming CO2 from a cost to a business and technological opportunity; (6) energy security and societal implications (political problems) — as Graciela Chichilnisky stated–and who consulted for the Pentagon– that the U.S. military identifies climate change as a major risk center; (7) energy security; (8) funding by government agencies, potential coordination; (9) energy policy and interrelations.

(1) role for government: well, we’re sort of stuck discussing what the role of government should be… Typically, in energy, government regulates by industry, while in environment, government regulates across industry, so the question of I have is: what is the “object” of CO2 for government… Actually, so we agreed that the role of govt. should be to explore a menu of ideas for carbon management; (2) education…? government should educate itself of the risks for addressing climate change and the increasing uncertainty in energy security, given the problems in the middle east…

3PM: ah, okay, so I participated in the “electrochemical frontiers” break out group, and I cannot really say that I understood too much, it was quite technical, but as a workshop process, we were supposed to come up with some goals and here they are, for what it is worth: (1) a CO2 Utilization Community should be created (it is fragmented at present) to lobby policy and funding organizations; (2) Add-on contact manufacturing could reduce threshold for adopting of new technology; (3) be complementary to CCS; (4) find research on long-term performance of catalyst including regeneration; (5) novel scale-up technology; (6) improve volumetric efficiency and throughput; (7) develop suitable analytical techniques; (8) develop common economics/performance matrix; (9) create a pipeline of engineers and scientists through outreach.

In the end, we “voted” to select a few to bring to the main conference. And it turned out that creating a Utilization Community got the most votes. So, here, the point was that there were several types of technology for utilization that were competing against each other, and this particular group — which included a few venture capitalists, a few scientists from Chevron and DVN and well, I was in there– felt that it would be a good idea for these folks to identify themselves as a community for government and scholarly funding…

lunch: I am starved! all this conversation over “microfluidic reactor for CO2 conversion”, and utilization via “Direct Heterogeneous Electrochemical Reduction” — which I know nothing about, and can barely identify as English, and even looking at all these slides that have all these graphs, and lines going in crazy directions, and “artificial trees”, and such topics, is stressing my pea-brain, and reinvigorating the corporeal aspects of my body, mainly my tummy — that I am hungry!

Let’s look at what’s available to eat:

lunch buffet

lunch plate

noon: Green Cement’s Brent Constanz from Stanford talking about placing carbon in cement. Good grief, it is possible to put all kinds of wastes in cement– and have it sequestered there forever. You can get about 1600 pounds of CO2 in a yard of concrete. And figuring the whole world is cementing over everything, there’s quite a possibility there for some interesting possibilities. Here’s a pretty good graspable article on his work.

China, China, China. Here it is again. We had it last week in Oslo, and now here in Berkeley. China and India, the fact is, a new cement plant once a week, a new coal fired electricity plant once a week. “No matter how you model it, if we go as hard as possible toward renewable, we’ll get to 49% coal fired electricity in 20 years from 50% now”…. Well, that settles it. StudioPolar is going to start a new project in China.

10:30 AM: Clean Coal! Sequoia Capital’s Hogarth is actually talking about how cheap electricity is to produce from coal in the Powder Basin (Utah), and how it makes sense for carbon sequestration. Good grief, this is such a crazy issue! I have to point out that in Norway last week at the Oslo Energy Forum, there was a practical meltdown over Clean Coal, and how the public relation campaigns has taken the natural out of natural gas. Graciela Chichilnisky opined that if we are serious about moving beyond coal we have to cut the government subsidies which ranges in the billions of dollars.

the future as coal

Notice for example, that in this slide on the left, that coal with carbon capture and sequestion (“Coal w/CCS”) is already depicted as the late-bridge beyond natural gas. Moving toward Clean Coal to displace natural gas. Can you imagine!!

10:00 AM: Much of the discussion over the past hour has been on scaling and economics. Scaling up to manage the huge volumes of CO2, taking it and turning it into something useful, from the lab to industrial scale, and the money that no one’s making on it so far. Uncertainties at the industrial scale surround project permitting, project capital, educating the communities, and so, the speakers are interested in getting these parts of the problem in place, practically before even coming up with the idea itself for making CO2 useful… because “once you get to industrial scale, you need to role these things out immediately” — and, it is often “easier to do this outside the United States”….

Graciela Chichilnisky from Columbia University is speaking right at this minute. She is a famous scientist who represented the United States as author of the IPCC report that garnered a Nobel Prize with Al Gore. What an amazing personal website she has. The “externality of Carbon Dioxide can be redressed through the profit motive” — making money from from externalities. Useful ideas to deal with CO2, rather than put it back in the ground.

Berend Smit, from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, however, now speaking about how we should realize that we’re dealing with an Enormous amount of material, the CO2 that we produce is in total abundance. By looking at sheer volumes, he suggests underground may be the only way, as far as sheer volumes. Five years ago, no one worked on CO2, but now it’s cool.

Financier Warren Hogarth, another big gun from Sequoia Capital with an impressive website. Looking for companies that have a valuable economic technology today.

9 AM: This morning, I’m attending the UC Berkeley, Haas Business School workshop on carbon dioxide utilization, discussions on how to capture and re-agentize carbon dioxide. Andrew Isaac, who runs a business exchange with Norwegian companies DNV (Det Norske Veritas) and Statoil, is the facilitator. A few of the folks that I met last week in Oslo are here representing the same companies. DNV is sponsoring the event.

I will be updating what is presented here, in not too technical terms, because this is a unique type of workshop and the only one of its kind in the United States so far. As with always, We have our placards, name tags, complimentary breakfast with yogurt and coffee, and of course the power point projector that feeds us information.

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Oslo Energy Forum

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Holmenkollen on February 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Oslo Energy Forum

Holmenkollen. The hotel where 80-or-so bankers, oil executives and consultants gather for the Oslo Energy Forum to discuss — the future of oil and gas industry.

The first image hotel guests witness is a wall-sized video screen of female swimmers in bathing suits.

The next image is a hotel room.

The third image — a workshop brochure and participant details.

An image of yourself is next, as you are nearing toward entering into a room of participants and at the front or your consciousness appears the exorbitant cost of attendance, access by personal-only invitation, illustrious speakers about whom you gaze at with wonder on the internet prior to arrival, the secrets and closed curtain discussions, Chatham House rule — “what is said in the room, stays in the room”, etc. and so on — the emotional impact of an event that many in the industry place high on a pedestal, the descriptive importance of the Forum, gazes into the future, predictions of energy demands, cocktail introductions, the handling and exchanges of business cards, slight of hand gestures, Moet Chandon flutes.

All of this takes place as you straighten your tie or, as in this case, check to see the camera works.

You take your seat among the guests and listen to what will be in store.

You exchange Business Cards.

The next day, you find your seat — listen and engage:

You return to your room where cross-country ski boots await you, so that you can bond with executives on the fields above Oslo.

You unfold your napkin for dinner.

After several days of these activities, you leave for home.

Paparazzi.Ethnography@berkeley.edu

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nsf research – 6

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Teriberka on December 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Heart of Darkness Series: Troika of Heads

It has been nearly one year since we came across a short article in the New Yorker that refers to the sensibility of Andy Warhol‘s Brillo Boxes. The article is worth a read if you want to refamiliarize yourself with the trajectory of thinking by early theorists of the modern art scene and is available in the New Yorker archives, dated Jan. 11, 2010. It rehearses older attempts to pin down the meaning of what (we think) Warhol was doing. In one explanation, the article refers to the art historian Betran Rouge, who distinguishes Warhol’s work by comparison to Marcel Duchamp. As you know, Duchamp’s innovation was to place an everyday object into an art gallery and thereby transform it into art.

Rouge states that Warhol departs from Duchamp precisely by Warhol’s imitation of Duchamp’s ready-mades. That is, Warhol creates an illusion of the real, with a fabrication of the everyday object (e.g., Brillo Boxes)– which he then purposefully placed into an art gallery. Set within the context of historical development, if you will, the everyday object, which Duchamp transformed into art by placing it into the art gallery, is then transformed by Warhol into an illusion of art, and thus, twists the illusion-reality barrier further.

Well what does all this have to do with our Heart of Darkness series, which we began in our previous post (see NSF Research.5 below)?

What the New Yorker article reminds its readers, is that Warhol’s work was usually sold piecemeal to collectors, and that it is easy to forget that virtually all of his art exhibitions were installations. That is, Warhol transformed the art gallery into a supermarket. He produced fabrications of everyday objects that, when placed into an art gallery, actually mimic the reality of the supermarket– which includes the reality of the art-market. After all, what difference does it make between shopping in the fruit section at Safeway or the magnets section at the local Museum. But this is where the New Yorker article leaves us hanging dry. The article concludes by suggesting that the meaning behind Warhol’s artwork was that fine art is a commodity. Rightly, the article acknowledges that the art-commodity link is by now a banal one.

But really this is not the point. What the New Yorker fails to describe, is that the supermarket is an art gallery, populated by objects that are produced by real artists, who have degrees in art design. Consider all the incredible artistic creations that one encounters while walking down the breakfast cereal aisle, with its colorful boxes of Fruitloops, etc. which would be nothing if they are not art objects, and that are available only at a fraction of the price for artistic prints. What Warhol was pointing out, was that these objects are at our disposal and yet, we’re throwing them away, as if these art objects are mere advertisements, and it is the contents inside that is of any significance. Incredibly, the only difference between the supermarket and the art gallery, is that in the art gallery, we have not yet arrived at that point that we tear off the painted canvas from the frame, in order so that we can use the wood.

Of course, this is a total reversal of Theodor Adorno‘s premise, when he criticized the liberal state as a sham, merely a front to allow commodity capitalism to intervene in the deepest recess of our desire. If we were to treat commonly all advertising for what it is, real art, who needs art galleries?

Anyway, let us get to the point: What we want to draw attention to is the important idea that Warhol made available to us. He pointed out that (1) the illusion of the real, and; (2) the installation, are BOTH, the context in which we come to understand ourselves as residing in the factory of the sensible. No mere object stands on its own in isolation, but in fact, must be taken within its temporal and fruitloopy logical and spectral sequence. We live in a present made up of several temporalities, thanks to installation. Let’s take a look at this now in the context of the Troika of Heads mentioned in our previous post.

Internet Electronic Image–This is the Temporal Past. It is a beforehand image to the model image. It does have a future, its own future as having been taken before the model image

Framed Wall-Hung Photo — This is the Temporal Present. It is a model image in the Spectral Present

Internet Electronic Image — This is the Temporal Future. It is an afterward image to the model image. It does have a past, its own past as having been taken after the model image

Okay, this is the first set of images, which you are familiar with from the previous post (see NSF Research.5 below). In that post, we explained how we displaced the materiality of the photograph (center) back into its infinite reproducibility context of the electronic images (left and right).

Now, take the three images as an installation of the everyday: First, they represent three individuals who are seen together as a group, symbolizing the formation of Shtokman Development AG, and; Second, the images reflect a constellation of time. As a serial temporality, they capture a beforehand and an afterward, along with a centrally posed, purposeful model image. As a spectral present, the three images were taken within minutes, perhaps within even seconds of each other. How do we know that the center image is the model image? Because it’s printed and framed! It achieves a notional (abstract) temporal point, by securing the present from its own materiality (it is in a state of decay).

Let’s look now at the same sequence of images, but this time, having taken a few steps back from the wall-hung photo (center).

internet image

framed wall-hung photo

internet image

Okay, let’s look now at the same sequence of images, but this time, having taken even a Few More steps back from the wall-hung photo (center). From this perspective, we can include the actual physical context of the wall-hung photo, and in so doing, create now, a notional or abstract point of reference (the electronic image of the room), from what was earlier a geographical point of reference (a physical room located somewhere):

Internet Electronic Image

room of wall-framed photo

internet image

Again, please click on the middle photo to see that the wall-hung framed photo is there. It is there but it is also now here, in the middle of this press coverage installation. So now we have the full installation line up, as shown here: (left) the beforehand image, which is temporally taking place in front of the model image, but is behind to it; (center) the model image, which exists in the spectral present, and whose materiality had been displaced; (right) the afterward image, which is temporally taking place after the model image, but is in front of it.

Let us move now by focusing on the middle image, the spectral present.

You peer into a room:

room of wall-framed photo

It is a room with a wall framed photo with an image of three inseparable friends.

In front of the photo, you see a row of identically manufactured chairs. They are lined around a laminated rectangular boardroom table. The number of seats, sixteen in all (you do not count them), tells you suddenly that the room has been created for a particular kind of mutual exchange among persons of equivalence.

However you imagine entering into this room –as nobility, an aged or student — when you see yourself seated, you can imagine that you are besides someone of equal status. You are seated in a chair whose design and function promotes a law of equivalence in status, size and manufacture.

Seen from this perspective, you begin to peer into the room backwards. Right from the beginning, you see that the floor was not laid, the walls not painted, the light fixtures not installed with the end result for individual reading or examination of conscience but instead, all has been laid out for a type of face-to-face group activity. You realize that you are witness to an intention whose purpose is to create a collective behavior and action, to promote, using an older language, a quality of the social.

But you continue to look because you notice something else, something more, in addition. The arrangement of the chairs themselves. They are pushed closely up to the table and their proximity to each other — flush, side-by-side — provides no movement or natural sense of space for the limbs and the body. Looking closer, you begin to realize that what you see is a surplus of chairs, more than can be contained around the table, and in the last instance, there are chairs sitting on top of the table, making the table itself unusable, much like the arrangement of the chairs themselves. And all of this leaves you with a strange impression. It is a peculiar sight.

On the surface of things, at first glance, you are confronted with a table and chairs, and thus, an invitation to a face-to-face encounter that establishes a status of equivalence. But upon closer examination, you realize that this type of collective action cannot possibly take place. In the end, you see with your own eyes that you are in fact witness to an installation of equivalence, an illusion of the real, or rather, a type of real that is decorated with all the trimmings –cups and saucers, serving trays, etc. — to give the impression of a face-to-face exchange, but in fact, because of its arrangement, right from the beginning, you come now to realize that the floor is laid, the walls painted, the light fixtures installed with the end result precisely for individual examination of conscience.

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nsf research – 5

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Teriberka on December 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The heart of darkness

framed wall-hung photo

Notice please, the inset image to the left. As you can plainly see, this inset image depicts a framed wall-hung photograph. The photograph, of course, when taken on its own is an image in itself. It consists of three men standing, facing the camera, holding hands together and posing in a stance that calls to mind the Three Musketeers, a 19th century novel written by Alexandre Dumas about three inseparable friends whose motto is “all for one, one for all” .

This particular image is unique because (1) it has been printed, and; (2) now appears encased in a frame as a photograph. But when stripped of its paper and wooden frame, the image is actually quite typical enough. For example, copies of this very image or variations on this image (taken during the same event), can be seen splattered across the internet. All that is required in order to view these electronic images is (1) access to a computer; (2) an internet connection; (3) google the words Shtokman AG, and; click the images tab. Directly below, we have pasted multiple variations of the framed wall-hung photo as they appear now on the internet.

Well, as you can see, these images consist of the same three men standing in the same positions. Their names, beginning on the far left is Christophe de Margerie, CEO of French oil group Total. In the middle is Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian gas giant Gazprom and, on the far right is Helge Lund, President and CEO of Norwegian oil group StatoilHydro.

The three executives are seen posing (and not posing) for a press conference which took place in Moscow on February 21, 2008, where they signed a shareholder agreement relating to the creation of Shtokman Development AG. Shtokman Development AG is the group formation that has plans to develop the off-shore Shtokman natural gas field, which is located on the Russian side of the Barents Sea, near the Norwegian border.

internet image

internet image 2

internet image 3

Of course, these four images shown above are not identical. Let’s begin to notice their differences by pretending we have arrived at the back pages of a tabloid magazine, where in the “for fun-section”, we are asked to compare and contrast what at first glance appears as two identical images. It is a simple test of the observation faculty.

Upon closer reflection then, playing along with this little game, we see many differences that appear, so to speak, on the surface of things. One can point to, for example, the difference in camera angles used in these images. There is also evidence of different moments during the press conference when the images are taken. Then, there are the unique stagings of the images, and the different posings, eye contacts with the camera, and exact timings of when these images were snapped.

Of course, they all appear to have been taken within a relatively short span of time, within say one hour, or perhaps even within 10 minutes, or maybe even across a timespan that can be measured in seconds.

In this last instance then, we can say, when taking the four images as a whole, that they comprise a group photo in two senses. First, they represent three individuals who are seen together as a group, symbolizing the formation of Shtokman Development AG. Second, when taken together, the images reflect a constellation of time, a certain specific temporality that captures a beforehand and an afterward, along with a centrally posed, perhaps one might say, purposeful model image.

And it is, in fact, this model image, that hangs as a wall-framed photograph. Let’s focus on the image in the strictest terms as a photograph. First, we notice that the photo exists technically, spatially, and aesthetically outside from these other electronic images. One might say, that while earlier, this framed photograph was an electronic image, circulating across the internet, now, by its very framing, it has both lost it sense of mobility, and, acquired a sense of real life materiality. And this materiality, of course, stands as a complete identity as understood by the concept of the photograph. Speaking frankly, as a photograph, and much like the men and their friendship it depicts, the image hanging on the wall will decay over time. It no longer can be reproduced or instead, has been reproduced for the final time, achieving its own sense of authenticity, against an internet world of infinite reproduction.

Ah-ha. You ask, what next? Well, we must confess to what we have just accomplished. Until now, until this exact moment, until the witness of this post, in fact– there was a special difference separating the wall-hanging photograph from the internet electronic images. A fact that just now has been overcome. To explain: there once existed a difference that denied the unity of these images. They were previously separated by, on the one hand, the physical materiality and self-enclosed authenticity (wall-hung photo), and on the other hand, the downloadability of their unfixity so to speak (internet electronic images)–

What we have accomplished in this post, just now, is to bring the wall-hung photo, for the first and perhaps only time (Ta-Dah!), side-by-side, into alignment along with the other electronic images that circulate across the internet. One might say, that by bringing the wall-hung photograph into the sphere of its circulating companion images, we plan now to displace it’s own present logic, that is, the current logic of its location and field of present positioning– into the sensibility (of its former location) as an image of infinite reproduction.

This is a long task. But let’s begin by taking a few steps back from the wall, to contemplate now, where the wall-hung image is physically located. The wall-hung framed photograph can be found in this room here, seen in this photograph below:

framed wall-hung photo

Okay, that’s all good. Now let’s take even a few more steps back from the wall, to contemplate where the wall-hung image is physically located. It appears at the far end of a room. Please click the photo to enlarge the image to see for yourself.

room of wall-framed photo

This is not our room. Is it yours? Whose room is this then? That is, in which room has the circulating image taken on material form? In which room has this image been framed and hung, like a trophy of heads or troika of heads, hanging in the den?

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nsf research – 4

Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography, tagged Houston, London, Moscow, Oslo, St Petersburg on December 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Security of Expertise

In this posting, I want to make a few comments on the great deal of security and restriction surrounding participation at energy roundtable events, or when I attend meetings in the offices of industry personnel.

Bodyguard at Executive Roundtable in Houston

Certain forms of security can be transparent, such as the presence of police personnel, as this photograph from CERAWEEK 2010 in Houston shows on the right (click on photo to expand). CERA Week just moved their venue to the spectacular new Hilton (for years they were at the Westin Galleria).

We (then assistant, Alex Karamanova and I) encountered these bodyguards quite frequently, whenever we attended such events, especially if there are over a few dozen people attending. At this particular event, which takes place in Houston annually and gathers together all the most important industry leaders for a week-long discussion on energy trends, you typically can see anywhere from five to seven policemen wandering around in the main lobby area, with their fire-arms on display. These guys are pretty big. We personally would not want to mess around with them.

Bodyguards at Executive Roundtable in Houston

Another form of security is the turnstile, which is often a part of the built in material framework of the entrance for corporate offices, but can also be temporary installations at the entrance of pavilions where, for example, at the St. Petersburg International Economic forum in Russia we encountered them all the time.

Turnstile security is common, and found in many places across the world, we’re surprised not more is written about it. Typically, it is accompanied by a security personnel on duty, and depending on the building, the security personnel can be ominous or feminine.

Turnstile Security at IHS in London

Turnstile Security at Citibank in Moscow

Turnstile Security at Shell in Moscow

Turnstile Security at EconPory Consultants in Oslo

Turnstile Security in St. Petersburg Economic Forum

Metal Scanners at St. Petersburg Economic Forum

The photos above depict some of the more obvious forms of securing the body in relationship to experts and expert knowledges. We use ourselves as decoys to take the photos since there are restrictions surrounding taking photographs of security. There are many more forms. Perhaps the third most ubiquitous form of security, behind the policeman and the barricade, is the identification badge. Everyone wears an identification badge. Such badges typically hang from lanyards around the neck and are used not only to identify the names of clients, but also they typically have bar codes that can be used to access computers or enter into rooms where experts are giving presentations.

Security Badge with Barcode

Security Badge Barcode to Access Computer

Accessing Expert Roundtable Room Via Barcode Security

Did we mention yet what all this security is for? We will just mention at this moment that these places are pretty tony (exclusive, elegant), and security ensures that everyone present can relax in an elite sequestered environment where knowledge is a highly expensive, sequestered commodity.

CERA week drinking fountain (bar) Houston

IHS lobby in London

CERAWeek Meet & Greet under the Chihuly

One way to think about security and sequestration is to consider it from the perspective of having a front-stage and back-stage. This idea was initially developed by Erving Goffman who suggested a person’s identity is continually shifting and based upon performance through roles and consensus between the actor and the audience as a kind of dramaturgical development.

We are also interested in these contexts through which actors take on various roles. In particular, we want to know the way these contexts are specifically orchestrated and become manifest so that actors, whether they be experts or clients of expertise, come to understand themselves, specifically on the basis of their expertise and non-expertise.

One way to approach this idea is to refer to the space where clients are specifically allowed to view, participate, and otherwise have access to expertise as the front-stage and also, to refer to the space where clients are forbidden from entering as the backstage. Moreover, in relation to this backstage, we could posit that spaces are further sequestered by certain rules which relate to what portion of an event a client has paid for. For example, on the photo above, the badge indicates TuesWed, meaning participation is paid up until the end of Wednesday). These sequestrations or perhaps, restrictions, could include also the given status of a particular participant (speaker, sponsor, journalist), or the position of a client within their own organization that accords them with certain privileges and access to events, etc. There are many examples and variations. Of course, when taken from a public point of view, for example, say, the viewer of this site who is unfamiliar with such events, all industry access we typically encounter might be considered back-stagings, since these events require large payments in advance, formal invitations, elaborate vettings of identity, and so on.

Because we are in the process of writing a book about our experience with consultant expertise, and intend to include a chapter on security and the body, we will take some time here to elaborate on issues of front-stage/back-stage, as well as other observations we have made concerning where the body is positioned in relation to expert knowledge. It is a question: how does the body become positioned in relationship to (restrictions on) expert knowledge? Or rather, how does a body acquire identification by its relationship to experts and expertise?

Imagine, for a moment, the bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin called The Thinker. Well, the entire premise of this posture is that there is an appropriate position for carrying out the practice of thinking, for carrying out the activity of receiving knowledge, that is, how to possibly appropriately receive knowledge. In fact, The Thinker is an excellent example of the contemplation of modern knowledge which, as it turns out, requires its own specific bodily position (hunched over with chin on one’s fist). What a contrast to kneeling with ones hands held together (as in contemplation of religious knowledge)!

We used to point out, in fact, during our undergraduate class discussions, that the position of The Thinker is typically the appropriate posture for acquiring knowledge by graduate students when speaking to their professors, while for undergraduates, typically, at least in the courses we have taught, the favored posture is slouching in the chair.

Helsinki Affair: We were in Helsinki recently (see posts on Aleksanteri) and asked by a fellow attendant at the conference to discuss the issue of security in relationship to expertise. Fortunately, a peculiar event took place just one day before that captured our attention in a way that we had never quite contemplated previously.

Typically, by way of background, academic conferences we have attended, which is to say, gatherings of expertly trained professionals working in the monastic realm of university social science research, there are few signs of security, apart from the identity badges hanging on lanyards across the chests of attendees, and in fact, it is often difficult to acknowledge what constitutes a breach of security. Only two instances in our memory standout. In New Orleans this past week at the anthropology meetings, we were asked to wear our name tags by guards at the hotel, a first! Also, several years ago, while attending a 4S conference (science and technology), fellow-colleagues, at the senior level, who founded the organization, began checking attendees for their badges, and possibly even politely interrogating them about why they weren’t wearing their name tags. And this was because attendees were not paying their registration fees for the event, and the organization was worried about how to pay its bills! However, this is all petty memory, nothing more than to establish that security breaches are not typically on the mind of academics who gather to freely exchange their ideas.

But we want to recall this event that took place in Helsinki because it was so unusual in our mind. We had arrived early to the appointed floor where we planned to attend the opening ceremony, perhaps one hour earlier than the event. There, outside the plenary hall, a rectangular table was just setting up with three conference personnel laying out identity badges for participants, as well as glossy, quite elaborate in fact, brochure about the 3-day Aleksanteri conference.

While sitting on the side lines, we noticed a Finnish speaking woman, who entered into the reception area, and then proceeded to stand in front of the rectangular table, pausing for quite some time, without making much of a fuss, but at the same time, without providing any indication of what indeed she was intending to accomplish. We recall that her clothing was rather piecemeal, tattered, and, while not entirely shabby, we noticed that the dress did not reflect the style typical of the academic class of personnel meandering through university buildings, who were clad in corduroys, layered sweaters and scarves with matching color schemes.

Well, what happened next was peculiar. The unknown woman, who remained unnamed despite her subsequent capture and immediate release by conference personnel, actually grabbed a brochure, and began running away with it. And these acts, of deliberately grabbing and running, created an immediate sensation among the personnel at the reception, as if to say, that the product being abducted with, the brochure, was something of rare value, which in fact, while expensively produced, was hardly secretive, in that the information therein was readily available on the internet, and perhaps, quite possibly given the organization’s well funded reputation, had been produced with many extras beyond what was required by participants, so that any reasonable request for the brochure, which had now become some kind of sanctified treasure, would have resulted in a relatively mindless gesture of handing over a copy. But in fact, it was this act of deliberate theft on the part of the unknown woman, or instead, the staging of what could only be at that moment interpreted as theft, that a melee ensued, with the main conference administrator running down the hall way, yelling in English “stop that woman, stop that woman”!

Frankly, we couldn’t believe what we were watching, and at the same time, thoroughly recognized what we were observing. The unknown thief passed us, turned the corner and while attempting to gallop down the steps to another level, was immediately intercepted by some university personnel, who happened to be walking up the stairs, and when upon the immediate arrival of the conference administrator, who after wringing the brochure away from the woman’s hands, and then realizing that the entire situation itself was some how a reaction, or rather, an over reaction (to an impulse of the issues such as running, yelling, abducting), the event immediately in fact, ended, and all was quiet once again.

Well, in fact, the only unfortunateness associated to this event occurred during our discussion of the issue of security and expertise a day after, when with good intentions, we reawakened this peculiar moment to the conference administrators, because we were discussing the topic and had asked them of their impression of this occurrence, under the pretext of understanding in what context, actually, could knowledge surrounding such an open conference transform into delicate secrets that required security. To our dismay, the conference administrator in nervous bodily movements, began making repeated excuses for retrieving the brochure, assuring us that the entire situation was simply a strange misunderstanding. Our own repeated disclaimers failed to reassure that we were only discussing the issue as a rare example of the fact, that only under such strange mishaps as mentioned above does knowledge have restrictions at a social science conference. Well, this was a departure point for our discussion, and we certainly apologized to our hosts if the mere recollection of the chase scene disturbed their conscience. But here again, the notion that they would feel something untoward about their own actions, serves to emphasize the impractical nature and peculiar effect of exercising some kind of privileged authority over the circulation of academic knowledge in certain circumstances as just stated. This is a very different effect indeed, from the deliberate forms of security surrounding what we call the Hands Made of Putty effect.

Hands Made of Putty: whenever we shake hands with experts, especially those in their late 50s and older, we feel like we’re holding the hand of a baby. During earlier fieldwork in Alaska, when we were interested in rural villagers, we noticed how hard their hands were and with what zing they gripped us in handshakes (ow!). Typically, they received this strength from working many decades in the fishing industry where they constantly would be using their hands to turn a cold steel wench, pull an icy wet rope, throw a slimy salmon into a brailer, or whatever activity was required. We spent one summer in the Gulf of Alaska commercial salmon fishing, and we know that physical activity in these work environments is a habitus that is not quickly or easily acquired, but quite often, for persons working decades in these fields, it becomes durable. Among retired fishermen in their 80s, their handshakes were still quite strong and their hands were tough like metal.

And by the way, the reference to Alaskans is not oblique. Many of those client-expertise interactions we witnessed, at least in the formative part of our ethnography were precisely those between Alaskans who had worked for their state and emerged as local politicians striving to make decisions about resource development for which energy experts were required. So in fact, the hand shake was one of the more distinct interactions between expertise and clients of expertise which distinguished what an expert actually is (Dr. Putty Hands).

One thing that strikes us then, about some of the experts we deal with these days, is how fragile their body is physically. This soft cellular physicality, developed from years of typing or holding a coffee mug, could be brought to physical harm quite easily and great damage would result, precisely because of this fragility. This is a serious issue. Even giving an expert a strong handshake is tantamount to aggression and would raise eye-brows. This relationship of enforcing superiority over another person through the handshake by demonstrating physical prowess is strange indeed, and while it rarely occurs, it actually can take place. In those weird instances where an expert is confronted with someone whose aim is to send a message that their inferior status as a intellectual producer could be compensated by the fact that they could handily beat the expert to a pulp is one possible scenario that experts really want to avoid. A good way to avoid this is always to have body guards immediately visible and present. (We might add parenthetically that debates over ideas along with a few drinks can result in various types of ripostes or duel-like banter and in certain circumstances, end in violent exchanges. It happens all the time in bars across the world. To ensure that these fragile bodies are not harmed, there needs to be visibly present, forms of personal security that can act at any moment.)

Variations on Participation: here, for future reference, we aim to discuss different roles that clients can take in participation at workshops and conferences. Journalists, speakers, former employees who have entered industry, academics, etc. all have different forms of access to front stage and back stage. We could begin with out own experiences…

Added-Values and Friendships: here, for future reference, we identify how sometimes friendships allow for possible access to events in ways that they would otherwise not happen, say, of the particular contract a company has with an organization may create opportunities for extra-contact with experts, called added-value discussions.