A foot rises slowly and pauses in the air over a step for a brief moment before sinking down to find the next step. As people descend a staircase in slow motion, a human figure lying on the stairs comes into view. Their movements appear ghostly and, despite their slowness, jumpy and agitated. Around their descending movements is an aura of distorted pixels, as if triggering a process of clotting, detaching them from the larger framework of the image. With the sight of the seemingly lifeless body, one wonders why none of the passers-by have interrupted their movements, which anyway appear labored, to pause and attend to the body lying on the floor.
I am on the campus of Santa Monica College. In exactly 20 minutes, a full-scale disaster response drill will take place here as part of the Great Shake Out Day. On this day — Oct. 20, 2022 — at exactly 10:20 a.m., an earthquake will be staged at many locations in Los Angeles and elsewhere throughout the U.S. to practice what to do in an emergency. “Drop, Cover & Hold On” is written in big cartoon letters on the truck that pulls up in front of me and turns out to be the earthquake simulator. The drill is being conducted in anticipation of a real earthquake with a magnitude of 9 — a “Big One”— which would be so catastrophic that official emergency systems would fail, and communications and infrastructure would temporarily collapse. This is because Los Angeles is located on the San Andreas Fault, one of the most tectonically active regions on Earth. A man climbs into the truck, which has been furnished like a living room, and stands in the middle of the room with a look of expectation. Seconds later, the entire room begins to shake. Pink stuffed animals and a backpack with “Ready America” printed on it fall from the shelves. The man drops to his knees and takes shelter under a table, clinging to his legs.
The entrance to a house is decorated with flowers. The stillness of the image is almost peaceful were it not for the body of an elderly woman lying on the floor, sprawled out across a blanket. The very detail of the blanket rules out the possibility of some sudden fall. Either she must have decided on the spot herself, or someone else slipped the blanket under her after the fact. Both seem very implausible. Why would someone lie down like a dog on the landing of a house to sleep? Why in an emergency would anyone bother to slip a blanket under the person lying down rather than drape it over her, which would require moving the body?
Several emergency equipment representatives have set up booths on campus and are displaying their products. The vendors call themselves Quake Kare, Quake Hold! or Ready America and sell products ranging from emergency foods and first aid equipment to selfdefense paraphernalia and weapons. The individually shrinkwrapped items bring to mind action figures. I wonder if these childrens’ toys would stand up to the demands of a real quake. Special kits tailored to various disaster scenarios give the impression that they were instead produced for the simulation. An unkempt-looking man, towing a suitcase behind him as if he had been delivered here by some accident, approaches the booth out of nowhere and immediately asks me if I know the “Ring of Fire.” He is referring to the volcanic ring stretching around the Pacific Ocean, where seismic and volcanic activity are very closely connected, and which is part of the geological formation that is the reason for the greater risk of earthquakes in California. As if he wasn’t even counting on an answer, the man starts making fun of the equipment, saying that the only thing that would protect him in the event of a catastrophe would be his faith in God, who would watch over him.
On the lawn of a residential area, people in green vests fall slowly to their knees in synch. They bend forward and fold their hands over their heads. One of them unfolds a white folding chair above him, as if to protect his body from falling objects. What could possibly harm him out here in the wide open? Is he afraid of the sky itself crashing down on him? Between the people crouching on the ground stands a single man in uniform. This and some papers in his hand give him authority. Does it come from that pose of his or from some higher power outside the scene?
Paramedics, police officers, and first responders have already taken their positions and are waiting for the staged disaster to begin. I keep reading and hearing “Drop Cover & Hold On”— this is the catchphrase of the U.S. Earthquake Country Alliance, which is not only repeated like a mantra, but is also printed on flyers, T-shirts, and mugs to remind people what to do in the event of a sudden earthquake. It feels a bit strange that this phrase is repeated so excessively. As if the earthquake could trigger a kind of amnesia making people forget even the simplest instructions about what to do and how to move. I proceed to the centrally located reception desk in the lobby and exchange a few words with the young man sitting there looking at his smartphone. Moments later, a voice emanates from loudspeakers in some undeterminable location: “This is a test, this is a test!” (Siren sounds) “Earthquake, earthquake! Expect shaking! Drop, cover, and hold on! Protect yourself now! This is a test!” The young man doesn’t move from his chair and looks around confused. He then tells his colleague that it’s just the telephone system and that he thinks it is only a test and that there will be another real announcement soon for the real drill to begin. It was only 10:19, not yet 10:20. He looks back at his smartphone. I explain to him that my watch now says 10:20. He is clearly irritated. Then he makes a brief apology and says he has to take cover now. He and his colleague then disappear under the counter. The entire lobby is suddenly still, like that moment on New Year’s Eve when the fuse burns out and the firework hasn’t gone off.
Until this moment, there had been another young man sitting on the stairs at the back of the foyer, staring at his cell phone. Reluctantly, he puts it in his pocket and lies down slowly right where he is. For a few minutes, nothing happens. A little while later, a group of students and staff come down from the floor above. Calmly and seemingly bored, they pass the body lying on the stairs, continue down the stairwell and leave the building. Again, nothing happens for some time. Then, at last, a rescue team arrives, made up of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics. They have a stretcher with them and walk straight to the stairs, climb the steps without paying any attention to the person lying there, and disappear into the upper floor. Finally, a third group of people, with colorful helmets on their heads, overcome their ignorance and speak with the lifeless-looking body but get no response. One of the ones with a helmet is assigned to watch over the body. The ignorance of the passers-by amplifies the helplessness of the person lying on the stairs to the extreme. And the uncertainty and irritation of the now impassive rescuer lends the scene an additional and unexpected sense of helplessness. After what feels like an eternity, a rescue team finally reaches the stairs and alleviates the situation by dressing the unconscious man’s head, lifting him onto a stretcher, and carrying him away.
My gaze drifts around the room at random, lingering on a flyer spread out on the reception counter. I read, “You are the help until help arrives.” The phrase might first sound like a plea to offer first aid. It is a reminder that professional aid is not always there when it is needed and an appeal to the layman to provide a lifesaving bridge until emergency help arrives by demonstrating a modicum of knowledge and training. On closer examination, however, the phrase illustrates the underlying logic of social and technical systems. For as long as they function as usual, they follow certain predefined rules and regulations. Every element of such a system serves a certain functional aim or has an intended use. A chair is used for sitting. A T-shirt is used as a garment, and a paramedic rescues people in distress. In this sense, “You are the help until help arrives” opens up a utopian space between the two functional states of a system, momentarily disrupting the logic and progress of our routine reality by turning substitution and the provisional into the actual and the real. What can only ever be rehearsed as a fictitious scenario, as a play, as part of a routine disaster drill, becomes a life defining reality during the real disaster — and only then. People who in real life are actors in disaster scenarios become real rescuers in the unreality of the disaster. When disaster interrupts the ordinary course of events, those aspects of the system that would otherwise be integrated into the system’s processes are left to their own devices. On the one hand, this anarchic state leads to disorientation and chaos, while on the other hand, it is also a moment of self-realization, creativity, and improvisation. The immediacy of the catastrophe requires and fosters independent decision-making beyond familiar channels. It seems that necessity not only makes people inventive, but also reveals their true faces for a brief moment, which are otherwise hidden under the masks of social roles. This unmediated truth is at the same time something very lonely because it leaves each person to their own devices. As I leave the campus of Santa Monica College, I once again strike up a conversation with one of the participants and ask in jest, albeit with curiosity, whether he would describe himself as a prepper. He replies with a distinction that I will find myself reflecting on for some time to come: “You know, there is a difference between a prepper and a person who prepares. A prepper is someone who prepares for a worstcase scenario and then hopes that it happens. A person who prepares is someone who prepares for a worstcase scenario and then doesn’t want it to happen.”
There is something altruistic about preparing for an emergency and catastrophe while not wishing for it to happen so that someone can benefit from this preparedness. In that case, an exercise is no longer a means to an end, but instead an end in itself. Perhaps it is in this form of practice where real freedom lies.
The following image stills are part of the video work You are the help until help arrives. The footage/sequences were captured during the Great Shake Out Day 2022 at Santa Monica College. Similar to the way a disaster interrupts ongoing processes, the sequences in the video work You are the help until help arrives have been slowed down so much that ruptures in the flow of the film become visible and the context of the film fragments into a series of individual images. The resulting breaks were then smoothed over using the interpolations of an algorithm. This method uses the differences between adjacent frames to generate new images that are then used to fill the gaps created by the slower playback. Much like mock disaster scenarios, these images are generated on the basis of assumptions, probabilities, and guesswork. What actually happens in the gap between two images is just as impossible to calculate with certainty as it is to precisely predict how a catastrophe will unfold. Nevertheless, both gaps can be filled with an unlimited variety of possible scenarios and designs. Faults and rupture thus manifest themselves not only as abyss and danger, but also as a realm of possibility and thus as a precondition for creative processes and free, self-determined action.