finding the bug

how did the problem of producing images hit me? the days before the opening demo were relatively fine, since there was no pressure to document anything in particular. i went to the camp in reddelich, walked around rostock and everything; it must be siad that the latter corresponded less to my expectations than the former. still, no pressure to produce any particular image.

but after the demo and the afternoon of rioting, the problem of being at a g8 doing a media project presents itself more pressingly. there are things to be said -- for example, that the march had indeed been perfectly peaceful, and i saw an enormous black bloc contingent walk past unprotected shop windows without any incident; or that it was the police, using the tactics of small, mobile groups who could march into the crowd gathered at the harbour very quickly and back, who started the whole thing. all of which is true, and must be said. all of which we sort of already know anyway. all of which we sort of already know will be reported in an entirely different way by the mainstream media, who will employ one of those unbelievable neutralising euphemisms -- 'incidents took place', 'riots happened' -- to say it.

but we also sort of knew it was going to happen, or expected it to. the overall picture is of a perfect stalemate, a situation (that of summits) which hasn't moved an inch in years.

so how to match the feeling of very little to tell and the pressure to report it in some way? on the one hand, i wouldn't want to just produce more riot porn or plaintive tales of police brutality; or just repeat stories about the production of alternatives in the here and now and how the camps prefigue a new way of living etc. on the other hand, i wouldn't want to ignore the fact that there is a mass of people who've flocked to rostock, reddelich, wichmannsdorf, and who are here to, one the one hand, re-enact a piece of theatre that has been done a few times now; but, on the other, are sincerely committed to producing something different, which has just consistently failed to happen over the years.

given these considerations, which spread themselves over long-winded sentences of almost teutonic dimensions, what is one to do? how to say something new, how to show something new, in something that looks and sounds old?