Tag: Make the hidden visible

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

SOURCED IN THE PHILIPPINES

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“Sim*Sweatshop“
An online video game by Jonny Norridge (concept and game programming) & Gavin Courtney (back end development) for NOW Nottingham and The Arts Council UK.
Gameplay video by WahWahQueenMew embedded above. Available to play free of charge on the Sim*Sweatshop website here (Adobe Flash needed).

Designer Jonny Norridge creates a game to simulate the experience of the shoe factory work that he’s been reading about. You slide shoe panels into place with your mouse. It ‘pings’ when one’s made. Then you make the next one. The clock ticks. Your energy levels fall. Your pay is terrible. It’s not enough to buy the food that you and your family need. You are interrupted by your boss talking about targets. He doesn’t like it when you want to join a union. It’s a simple, repetitive game that you – as a factory worker – can’t win. The idea is to put gamers in the shoes of the people who make the things that they buy. For them, there’s a familiar task sequence and reward structure. But this is real. It’s kind of fun to play, but also sucks. It’s the kind of game that’s given to school students as a quick and vivid way to explain sweatshop production. If they hate it, the lesson has worked. For those who want to know more, its website suggests further reading. There are other examples of trade justice activism in which consumers go to work in the factories and farms where their things are made (see, for example, the TV series Blood, Sweat & Takeaways on our site here). With these, you’re invited to empathise with someone supposedly like you – the contestants are often pitched ‘as typical’ consumers – trying to do that work. In this game, you’re all doing it yourself. So how effectively can a game-based simulation of factory work can be? What can it convey of the poverty and working conditions of show factory workers? It turn out that the answer is ‘a lot’. Sim*Sweatshop catches on. German and Hungarian versions are created, and it becomes part of other mainstream anti-sweatshop campaigns. But are young consumers the ones responsible for these sweatshop conditions? Should company executives, investors and politicians be playing this game too?

Page reference: Declan Coakley, Jack Johnson, Josh Li, Georgie Mitchell, Jack Saxton & Tom Weake (2024) Pipe Trouble. followthethings.com/sim-sweatshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 12, 2024January 8, 2025 by Mark

A Global Positioning System

followthethings.com
Electronics | Home & Auto

2006

UNBRANDED

GPS NAVIGATION ASSISTANT

SOURCED IN SOUTH KOREA

SOURCED IN SOUTH AFRICA

SOURCED IN ANGOLA

SOURCED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TAKE IT TO PIECES

TRACK & TRACE

FOLLOW THE THING

“A Global Positioning System“
A art work / animated film created by Melanie Jackson, first exhibited at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK.
Two screengrabs from the film are featured above. Watch it in full on the artist’s website here.

If you’re interested in finding out who makes your stuff, it’s important to make a strategic choice about what stuff is best to follow. Artist Melanie Jackson makes an excellent choice – what better to guide your way than the technology that helps to guide your way. An in-car GPS Navigation Assistant. The kind of device you could buy in the 2000s to stick to your dashboard. Type in the destination, and it would help you on your way, showing the route on screen. She gets some funding for a trip to China to visit a factory where they are assembled. But this isn’t anything like enough of the story of this thing. She looks into its in many many ingredients, and finds out where and by whom they are sourced. She reads news stories, collects photographs, and turn to drawing to bring all of these connections together into a 12 minute animated film. There’s something magical about animation. It’s obvious that animation is not an objective account of the life of a thing, but something that’s been imagined and made. Animation allows the complexities of trade to be conveyed in a way that would otherwise be impossible either because the scale of the task would be too enormous, or because permission would not be granted to access the industrial sites that matter. There’s a powerful argument that’s made about ‘follow the thing’ research that things can be – for these reasons – ‘unfollowable (see Hulme 2017). But animation – and other creative approaches to thing-following (click the ‘make the hidden visible’ tactic button) – provide means to work around this. This is a mind-blowing film. Its amazing what you can learn in 12 minutes!

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Global Positioning System. followthethings.com/a-global-positioning-system.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 6, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea

followthethings.com
Money & Finance

CREATE A CHARACTER

FOLLOW THE THING

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

INVOLVE SOME CELEBRITIES

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

“Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea“
A 4 volume fictional book series by Charles Johnstone, the first two of which were originally published by T. Becket.
An 1821 version of Volume 1 is embedded in full above. Click here to read Volume 2, here to read Volume 3 and here to read Volume 4.

Here at followthethings.com we’re keen to appreciate the historical depth of our genre. Up until quite recently, we had traced everything back to Karl Marx’s chapter on the commodity (and commodity fetishism) in Capital Volume 1 which was first published in the 1860s. David Harvey’s teachings about Capital, and his appeals for geographers and otherS to get behind the veil of the commodity and tell the story of human reproduction were what encouraged us to do this work back in the day. But when you ask what inspired Marx, what literature was well known in his day, what had been written before, this impulse to know whose lives are connected by commodities goes back to the 1700s, to the birth of global capitalism (via empire), and to a genre of cheap and unglamourous ‘novels of circulation’. These make sense of this confusing, emerging world from the perspective of the commodities which were becoming part of its expanding consumer culture. There are dozens and dozens of these novels which we could choose to feature on our site, but the first one we want to add is this one – not least because it seems to have been one of the most popular and influential, but also because it’s about money – a commodity (and means of exchange) that academics have found more difficult to follow than most. This story is narrated by a gold guinea coin, starting from its mining in Peru and talking about its life connecting and witnessing the lives of a variety of people who earn, spend and steal it in different places. Because people aren’t careful what they do and say when a coin is covertly spying on them, the tales this coin tells – to an alchemist it meets at the end of volume one, who writes them down because coins can’t write – are scandalous. Some of the people whose lives are included were famous at the time, others were not. This book is both a scandalous exposé of the lives of famous people of the time and an ethical and moral tale about the emerging economic relations of capitalism and empire. It was inventive, eccentric and a huge popular hit. What would a commodity tell you about its life if it could talk? Here’s your answer! Commodities who can speak for themselves are very much part of trade justice activism today. There are lots of our examples on our site, but here’s one of the earliest. What can today’s activists learn from this? Here’s a taster. We’ll return to this later and add some more depth and detail.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea (taster page). followthethings.com/chrysal-or-the-adventures-of-a-guinea.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Our New Commemorative £2 coin

followthethings.com
Money & Finance

“Our Commemorative £2 Coin“
Undergraduate coursework written by Mike Swan, Will Davies, Emma Christie-Miller, Becky Woolford, Meagan Wheatley, Maddie Redfern, Robbie Black, Lucy Webber, Jade Stevens, Katy Charlton & Tom Bollands (a.k.a Royally Minted).
Available in full below. Originally posted online here.

In 2010, students start the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ by researching different examples of trade justice activism to add to the followthethings.com website (not all of them made it). Next, students who have researched different examples came together to create their own original examples of trade justice activism. They pick up some important ideas from their own research and what has already been published here on followthethings.com. They know the importance of looking beyond the usual suspects of follow the things activist – phones, fashion and food – and think about something they don’t think about, something that’s made by doesn’t have a ‘made in’ label, something that’s jangling in all of their pockets: coins. They know that they’re made of metal, but have no idea which ones or where they might be mined by whom. They’ve read about commodities embodying the labour of their creators, and being haunted by them. They’re carrying around, they’re spending, the labour of those mine workers. It’s easy to find which metals are in coins. The organisations that mint them tend to say so. And it’s not difficult to find newspaper, NGO and occupational toxicology research that profiles the labour that goes into mining these metals around the world, the multiple forms of pollution caused by this mining and the damage this does to people’s health, social structures and the environment. The group’s task is to think about how best to present their findings, to make those lives part of this thing, to insert those lives into the lives of coins and their transaction. 2010 sees the UK’s Royal Mint releasing a two commemorative £2 coins: to mark 150 years of modern nursing and the 100 years since the death of Florence Nightingale. The group – now calling themselves ‘Royally Minted’ – decide to design a third that will commemorate the labour that goes into mining those coins’ metals. They look at the Royal Mint’s commemorative coin webpages and mimic their format and content. It’s all very celebratory, very collectable. These students are particularly inspired by forms of activism – like the Suffragette Penny [see our page on this here] – which puts political issues into circulation on and as commodities. Money – with its unique status as a commodity and a means of exchange – is a perfect vehicle for political messages. If only the Royal Mint would commission this.

Page reference: Royally Minted (2010) Our New Commemorative £2 Coin. followthethings.com/our-new-commemorative-£2-coin.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Posted on December 4, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)

followthethings.com
Gifts & Seasonal

2013

2018

KMART

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

HUMANISE THINGS

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

ASK FOR HELP

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

FIND THE CHARACTERS

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

FIND LOST RELATIONS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

FIND THE LOVE

LET THE TEARS FLOW

“‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)”
A letter written by ‘Mr Zhang’ (Sun Yi) in a Chinese prison factory and found in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations bought in Oregon, USA by Julie Keith (+ a documentary film starring Sun Yi and Julie Keith directed and produced by Leon Lee for Flying Cloud Productions).
Letter posted online by Julie Keith, reproduced in ‘Letter From Masanjia (trailer embedded above). Search online to watch the documentary here.

In 2013, shopper Julie Keith is unpacking a box of styrofoam Halloween decorations she bought from her local K-Mart. In between the ghoulish plastic gravestones, she finds a folded-up letter. It’s written in English by someone who says that they’re a prison factory worker in China who has helped to make this product. They give the address of the prison (called Masanjia) and say that its inmates work long hours and have been tortured, beaten and insulted. It asks its recipient to forward the letter to the ‘World Human Rights Organisation’. Julie thinks it’s genuine and posts o photo of the letter on her facebook with the caption ‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’. It gets a flurry of responses. Is it genuine? What should she do with it? There isn’t a ‘World Human Right Organisation’. The discussions spread. The post is shared many times. Soon it’s being reported on the local TV news. Next it’s a global news story. Who is this person? How did they write this note? How did they smuggle it into a box of Halloween decorations? How many letters did they write? What did they hope would happen? What danger were they in for doing this? Can journalists find the author and verify the story? And, most importantly, why are ‘made in China’ goods coming from factory labour? Isn’t that illegal? Next, this story is picked up by a documentary filmmaker who tries to answer these questions, and more. He find the author, now out of prison but still living in China. They film secretly. Sun Yi is not only the best travel guide but – helpfully – is also a cartoonist who draws the scenes of his captivity and factory labour to add unfilmable footage to the documentary. The filmmaker arranges for the Sun Yi and Julie Keith to meet in person. It’s an emotionally charged scene. She hands him the letter, they talk about their connected lives and the impact that the story about their connection has had on both of them. They are so happy to see eachother. They seem to care deeply about one another because, together, they have accidentally (her) and on purpose (him) become trade justice activists. They agree that they’re doing the right thing. But what are the consequences? He sought to expose this system of prison labour in China, but she didn’t. It’s illegal to import goods into the USA that are made with forced labour. That’s hugely problematic for the Chinese prison factory complex. So it’s hugely risky for him as the person who was instrumental in exposing this, helping to turn it into an international news story by hopefully writing a letter to an unknown consumer that asked for help. For us, this is an extraordinary example of trade justice activism because of its documentation (there’s so much!) and its impacts (so huge, unexpected and sad).

NB – this page currently focuses on the letter and will be updated to add details about the film.

Page reference: Harry Marriot, Alex Partington, William Finley, Milly Bowen, Sarah Murray & Jenny Sharp (2014) ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia). followthethings.com/i-found-this-in-a-box-of-halloween-decorations.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Posted on December 2, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Curse Of The Black Gold: 50 Years Of Oil In The Niger Delta

followthethings.com
Home & Auto

TELL THE TRUTH

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START WITH A PARADOX

JOIN WITH OTHERS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

“Curse Of The Black Gold: 50 Years Of Oil In The Niger Delta“
A coffee-table book featuring the photos of Ed Kashi, edited by Michael Watts for Powerhouse.
Video promotion embedded above. Preview long & borrow here. Search online to buy here.

Photojournalist Ed Kashi visits the oilfields of the Niger Delta to document the consequences of 50 years of oil extraction on people and environment. His photographs are published in a book edited by geographer Michael Watts containing essays by prominent Nigerian journalists and human rights activists, and Watts himself. It looks and feels like a coffee table book: hardback, large glossy photos, and text. It’s a thing of beauty, but its subject matter is very far from beautiful. Why is it that The Niger Delta is such a ‘hell-hole’ of poverty, conflict and environmental destruction when it could be as wealthy as Kuwait? Kashi travels through this dangerous area with armed rebel groups and takes photos of workers wearing uniforms with familiar oil company logos. Kashi wants to open the public’s eyes about this scramble for oil in Nigeria. He wants them to feel the emotions that he felt when looking these oil workers in the eye. He creates the book, a short promo film to post in YouTube, and gives talks about it. With the murder of local activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, this place and this industry is all over the news. But seeing this up close, in page after page of large and lush colour photographs can – he believes – change people’s minds. But what happens when people do? Are the photos so shocking that they prompt people into action, or into despair? And who bears the responsibility for the unfolding chaos and exploitation in the Niger Delta – the oil companies, the local and national politicians in Nigeria, the foreign governments who support both, oil consumers? Yes. All of them. And Kashi’s photographs – along with Watts’ essays – help to fuel debates about these issues amongst readers in university classes and beyond. There’s something uniquely provocative about coffee-table book trade justice activism.

Page reference: Alice Goodbrook, Jack Middleton, Luke Pickard, Jessica Plumb, Emma Rowe & Megan Wheatley (2011) Pipe Trouble. followthethings.com/curse-of-the-black-gold.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 21 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Life Of A Bullet

followthethings.com
Security

MOVIE OPENING CREDITS

CGI ANIMATION

CROSS CULTURES

FOLLOW THE THING

SOURCED IN EASTERN EUROPE

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

“Life Of A Bullet“
Opening credits to the movie ‘Lord Of War’ directed by Andrew Niccol with visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel.
Opening credits embedded above. Search online to watch them here. Stream the full movie here.

Imagine you could literally follow a thing, from the thing’s own point of view – like a video game – from its sites of production to its sites of consumption and maybe beyond. The opening credits of a Hollywood movie starring Nicholas Cage do just this. Set to Buffalo Springfield’s 1960s counterculture song ‘For what it’s worth (stop, hey what’s that sound)’, Lord of War begins by following the life of a bullet from a piece of sheet metal in a Ukrainian arms factory to a bullet flying out of an AK-47 assault rifle in streets of a Sierra Leone gunfight. Along the way it’s handled by lots of different people connected through its supply chain. At the end of its life, it serves its purpose by entering the forehead of a child soldier. This is when the song abruptly stops and the screen goes black. It’s catchy, bleak and brutal. But a bullet cannot be followed like this IRL. You need some research, an imagination and some heavy duty CGI expertise: like visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel’s. At followthethings.com this example has achieved a cult status. It’s like a foundation stone in the follow the thing genre. We keep coming back to it. Not only is this 3 minutes of GGI animation the best part of the movie (many commenters agree with us on that). It’s also the most brutally clear ‘follow the thing’ example we’ve found. Plus, it’s provoked the wildest discussions we have found about anything featured ion our site. Some discussion is are about the evils of the arms trade, and its undertones of colonialism and racial capitalism. But there are so many other perspectives. Some seem to have experience of shoot-em-up POV video games, others seem to have experience with real guns and ammunition, while still others seem to have an apparently deep knowledge of CGI animation, and more besides. Read the comments we’ve arranged below to see what we mean. If you’re a budding trade justice activist and you want to provoke enthusiastic discussion with your work, maybe this is the example to dig into. But, if you want that discussion to be focused on trade (in)justice, maybe it’s not. The movie, and the iconic opening scene that we’re talking about here, do get caught up in an international campaign to regulate the arms trade alongside another example we’ve researched (check here). But that doesn’t seem to have been the intention at the start.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2019) Life Of A Bullet. followthethings.com/pipetrouble.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 50 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Teleshopping AK-47

followthethings.com
Security

2006

KALASHNIKOV

AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLE

USED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

SHOW FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAKE IT FUNNY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

“Teleshopping AK-47“
A spoof teleshopping channel promotion directed by Dougal Wilson and post-produced by MPC for Mother, commissioned by Amnesty International.
Full video embedded above. Search online for versions with other titles here.

Amnesty International is trying to get 1 million people involved in their campaign to tighten loopholes in international arms trade legislation. To demonstrate how easy it is to buy weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, how cheap they are, and how they end up being used in armed conflicts (often involving child soldiers), they commission some culture jamming. Its a short video that imagines that these weapons can be sold by cheery presenters on TV shopping channel’s chintzy pastel-coloured set, just like ice-cream makers and his ‘n’ hers dressing gowns. They’re perfect for child soldiers, the presenters say, like those in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They give one to a child to demonstrate on set, who cheerfully shoots a mannequin to pieces. Amnesty commission this darkly comedic, camp and chilling 135 second film to show in cinemas, alongside the real ads. They publish it on YouTube. Later, it’s included as an extra on the DVD of Nicholas Cage’s Hollywood arms trade blockbuster Lord of War [see our page on its Life of a bullet opening credits here]. Amnesty can’t advertise on UK TV because they’re a political organisation. And the use of pastiche / parody / humour is a novel approach in human rights campaigning in 2006. But Amnesty really go for it. On top of the cinema ad, there’s a viral email campaign, spoof arms shopping catalogues are delivered through people’s doors, and pop-up high street weapons shops open around the UK with live shooting demonstrations. Commenters are shocked by this disgusting, deeply sinister but informative campaign. One says these weapons are beautiful and every American should have one. Another pretends to agree, saying that guns don’t kill people, people do and, if guns were taken away, people could just as easily kill eachother with knives or rubber ducks. Some say humour is inappropriate for such a serious topic. Others say the ad and the catalogue is so light, so beautifully done, so plausible, that it’s perfect for generating conversations about the international arms trade and its (lack of) regulation.

Page reference: Daisy Livingston (2024) Teleshopping AK-47. followthethings.com/teleshopping-ak-47.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 30 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Made in Dagenham

followthethings.com
Home & Auto

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

HUMANISE WORKERS

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

TELL A STORY