Si les Balkans n’existaient pas, il faudrait les inventer*.
tThe so-called “New Media” are mainly the new medium of administration of memory in general. In the length of time “new media” have emerged repeatedly. In general, they are linked with the objectives, the manipulative necessities and the restructuring of facts, that benefit the given winner and consequently ambitious editor of history. The Balkans or in other words - depending on the circumstances-South-Eastern Europe and the issue of administrating memory, the policy of this administration, to be more exact, draws its origin from the global recess of the beginning of the 20th century.
TThis policy was applied eventually also regionally in the new states incorporating fresh forms of political empowerment, which initially attempted to encompass them in order to manage the local crisis’s. The necessity of the creation and the sustainability of this policy of these permanent national crises, owes its existence to a failure. If the Balkans were in historical perspective, the peak of the epic of the Ottoman Empire, then they were respectively the essence of European failure; of the permanent and obvious incompetence (inspired by Hegel) of the plans of central Europe to impose and manipulate a mosaic of states over a pre-existing mosaic of nations.
This procedure could be comic, if it wasn’t at the same time tragic. Because it also simultaneously concealing and discarding device. Balkanization was exactly the procedure of transferring this loss and establishing the stigma elsewhere and on others, from whom from now onward assume the role of the villain in Europe’s court. And in a way this role-along with the mythology following it- is accepted form the countries of South-Eastern Europe who hereinafter believed that they had an obligation, through a strange procedure of self-stigmatization, to reproduce it. The Balkans is a device deriving directly from the imaginary sphere. So, their image was invented and produced far from the basis of rational criteria of the era of the Enlightment, which central Europe treasures jealously for herself, in order to be able self-criticize, but at the same time create myths that accompany the rumors and the reputations that emerge every time there is a top priority necessity to create ghosts. The kind of ghosts necessary to keep the curious away from where they shouldn’t be and of the kind that conceal un-punished crimes, in a similar manner history was illustrated and human simulations are designed in the video games world, also specialized products of rationalized, post-industrial societies based on state of the high technology. The initial material used to create the identity of the Balkans is first of all historistic, a product of scholars and academic workshops. Naturally, as in the case of the East and Orientalism, literature holds an important role for herself. The West is also in need of a buffer between her and the East.
From the times of sovereignty,
when the empires were fighting for territorial control, alternating their action
moves (turn based action),underlining borders and creating nationalisms (while
territorial morphology and distances were important factors in the process of
the game) until the star wars of today, the Balkan nations seem like eager digital
avatars, doomed to re-birth in an arena that some times reminds us of the arena
of Unreal* and other times of textures of Medieval War*. In no other area, did
nations as a whole change borders, languages and religions so many times. A
platform that records this psycho-geography can be easily found in one of the
categories of video games, known as Epic Strategy Games. In this category, the
armies of players fight in real time, although there is actually an important
stage in the game consumed in subjective time in order to organize, prepare
and re-establish the internal situation of each empire. The new conditions of
production of subjectivity (with whatever meaning the term still has today).
For the players, the existence of dark and unknown territories in neighboring
lands are necessary elements to define borders and in general the atmosphere
of fear and threat suitable in war. Especially, as far as curfew and counterfeiting
information is concerned. The possibilities of representation and symbolism
in games -as in the Balkans- using as footage completely different cultures
and religions, in other words unfamiliar manners of perception and administration,
combined with battles fought to death, is the element that gives the dimension
of a national epic to the various Balkan wars and also the establishment of
the name epic strategy in the respective video game category.
T
The peninsula
of the Balkans is overwhelmed by historical facts and traditions, while in it’s
the corresponding natural environment, it offers an enormous in amount and variety
material for constructing heroes, ghosts and jesters. It is almost impossible
to avoid noticing that when Dracula had to acquire a domicile, literature situated
him in the Balkans. Based on a similar notion, the anthropological type of the
“Balkan” was created. His dark ‘’ethography’’ is constructed, according on what
each local propaganda could offer and the inexorable necessities created by
the infinite conflicts, always with imaginary material, of the same nature of
that used during the same period and under the scope of the introduction to
the “sinful and luscious” East, that the European bourgeois used covering their
walls. Thus, a few years later, the dark theatre scene of Europe of World War
I, identifies with its even darker side necessary for playing the role of the
scapegoat. The emphasis put in narration, the script and the construction of
roles, are characteristics of another category of video games, of Role Player
Games, and to be more exact in the sub-category of Dungeons and Dragons. The
quality of representation (graphics) in these games is not usually of a high
standard but this is not particularly necessary anyway. The environment is down
graded in comparison with the importance of the pre-constructed roles. What
are important are the script and its complexity. Especially in the case of the
“Balkan” a script that will promote his “character”, i.e. the famous and favorite
media type of the envious, full of primitiveness, insecurity and violence. And
of course the necessary highlights of medieval varnish.
It is only when they
go abroad for their education, don black coats and a thin veneer of progress,
that they invite criticism. They are not ripe for the blessings of democracy
(such as they are) and much painful experience will be necessary to prepare
them. I do not say they cannot undergo the preparation, but I do not wish to
see them in the process. I prefer to remember them, as I have known them, admirable
survivors of the age of chivalry**.
T
The fall of the wall of Berlin and the ordeal of Yugoslavia in the 90s, adds more levels in the imaginary production of history. The innovations in the propaganda production techniques of image are very well known. A new element in the tradition of European failures is the “accident” of high- tech, that transfers the war to a virtual roof***, with the essence of the ground still active only during the pre-election debates and in general in the aims of the local barons. Games that suit this period are those of a first perspective i.e. shoot’em up games with organized tasks and with the objective of a quick adrenalin rush accompanied by a respective spectacle. From efforts of normalization with which the administration tried to encompass conflicts in modernist times, now we reach the same objectives of incorporation, but this time through the control of difference. A hybrid product of a crossbreeding between a shooting game and a flight simulation take place in a live transmission every day- but not in real time though- over the Aegean Sea. The semiotics of this high tech-and rather dangerous game-can express the procedures that underestimate geography to a simple means of expressing the way that the sovereign of global geometry is establishing.
Ilias Marmaras
*Herman Keyserling-1928
**Herbert Vivian-The Serbian tragedy
***Paul Virilio-La bombe informatique