Lev Manovich

Voice over text for MISSION TO EARTH (Soft Cinema edition 2004)

1/10

Going through the automatic car wash was her favorite thing in the universe. She did not remember when this passion had started exactly. The brushes attacking the front window of the car like the legs of a giant octopus; the texture of soap bubbles; the relief of giving up her normal car-bound independence in favor of being methodically dragged along the rail of a car wash - she absolutely loved it all.

Throughout the procedure, her face carried the rapt expression of absolute happiness - not the usual adult happiness resulting from some external cause - spending a night with a beautiful stranger, making lots of money and so on - but the happiness of a child, the pleasure of just existing in the world. She remembered experiencing such unprovoked happiness often when she was growing up back home, on ALPHA-1, before she was sent to Earth. On Earth only going through an automatic car wash gave her the same feeling, or at least something close to it.

2/10

She had been sent to Earth twenty years before on a routine research mission that was supposed to last eighteen months. At the end of that time her mission was extended for another twelve months; then another 24 months. She had been sure that something strange was happening back on ALPHA-1, some big political changes, but her commander would not tell her anything specific.

As usual, every Monday, she had transmitted her weekly report to the command center on ALPHA-1. But she had a distinct feeling that nobody was paying attention anymore, that her reports were just being automatically filed among the numerous other records of a slowly disintegrating empire. And yet, like thousands of other institutions, her own Central Institute for Earth Research continued functioning through pure inertia: the researchers came to work every day, statistical analysis of the received data was compiled and filed away, backups were made nightly - nobody asked what it was all for, nobody had the courage to make any decisions (such as for instance the decision to recall Inga back to ALPHA-1 from a mission which had only been supposed to last for eighteen months.)

Should she even think of herself anymore as being on a mission and that one day she might return to ALPHA-1? Or should she just face the facts and accept herself for what she has really became - the equivalent of a normal Earth immigrant who, after spending many years in a new country, feels neither quite here nor there; does not fit anymore in the old country and yet is not fully at ease in the new one. If only such an immigrant knew how many supposed 'natives' didn't feel at home either: because of the color of their skin or, their choice of bed partners, or just because they instinctively felt that the whole routine of being woken up every morning by an alarm clock, and then spending the rest of the day in front a computer screen in some generic office park building, only to retire after forty years, made no sense whatsoever, no matter what kind of logic one tried to use. But unfortunately almost all of the immigrants were blind to the fact that they were not alone in their alienation - which did not help them feel any better.

3/10

True, life on Earth did have some unique pleasures: watching South American soap operas on TV; shopping in a big department store for hours on end, with the shop assistants trying to please her by bringing her new pieces of clothing to her dressing room to try on; walking in a dense summer forest with the sun rays blasting through the branches and almost blinding her; watching the endless variety of cloud formations and sky conditions. (On ALPHA-1 the sky was always a dull gray color, the same every day.)

In the science fiction films she watched on TV late at night the aliens were always portrayed as being technologically superior. The reality was rather different. ALPHA-1 was actually behind the Earth in technology, music, and other matters by about twenty years; and from what she could gather from communications with her commander, this gap still remained. For instance, only a few years ago she was told that she finally could file her daily reports by email. These reports - which nobody was ever going to read - had to be filed weekly. She usually did this immediately after waking up every Monday morning, to get it over with, and after that she was free for the rest of the week.

Sometimes her commander would remind her to email him the latest music tracks popular on Earth. She would attach them to her email reports; she knew that at least this part of her communications was paid attention to. Sometimes he would ask her to email him the tracks of particular groups such as ABBA. She imagined him listening to the same ABBA album for days on end while he was his cubicle: doing something with his terminal, going through the files, staring through the window at the gray buildings and the gray sky outside.

4/10

It was the backwardness of ALPHA-1 science that accounted for the peculiar nature of Inga's mission, and for her weekly reports. At the time when she had been finishing at the Space Academy so-called "direct observation" theory had been all the rage in space exploration circles, including the Central Institute for Earth Research. According to this theory, the gathering of various "objective" parameters to describe another planet - the length of the longest river, weather patterns, the main industries and so on - should be supplemented by information about everyday life gathered by observers placed "on the ground."

Inga had become one of these observers. Her mission was simply, to use Earth's lingo, to "hang out", traversing different places and reporting what she saw. Maybe it would have made sense to do this for a month or two; but not for twenty years! Indeed, a few years after Inga arrived on Earth, the "direct observation" theory had begun to fall out of fashion until eventually it was discredited completely. But since the whole machinery was already put in place - commanders filing reports in command centers, specially constructed hardware and software whose design had earned Doctorates for a few dozen people, and finally Inga and others who had already started the job of daily observation on Earth - it was just left to run.

Ten years after her arrival on Earth a special commission had looked into the "direct observation" program. But instead of doing the logical thing - that is, stopping the missions and recalling Inga and the others, it had recommended that the missions continue - just in case "direct observation" theory might one day be rehabilitated.

5/10

Immigrants from different lands are drawn to each other, united by their common misunderstanding of their new country. Once in a bar late at night, Inga was getting slowly drunk in the company of a middle-aged man. He was not very attractive by any objective account - and yet his foreign accent and his story (he was an artist who had arrived a few years before from one of the disintegrating satellites of the former Soviet empire) had made him more desirable to Inga than any Hollywood star.

Their union lasted much longer than either of them could predict. Inga's new partner had no desire to assimilate into his new country. He was quite satisfied with holding this or that manual job as long as it did not occupy his mind and left him with enough energy to work on his paintings and drawings. He worked on them in the kitchen of his studio apartment (in this again perfectly replicating the life he had left behind) with the methodical concentration of a watch repairman. There were no highs of inspiration, nor lows of being stuck. When one drawing was finished, he simply put it in a file standing against the kitchen wall and started working on another, systematically covering the surface with minute detail, moving from one corner of the drawing towards the opposite corner. When he reached this opposite corner, the drawing was finished. Nothing had to be erased or added.

For a while Inga found their union quite satisfying. She played the role of artist's girlfriend with even more enthusiasm than he played his role of a painter. She would make him small sandwiches and cups of tea while he was working on his art in the kitchen. Eventually she left. She missed him; sometimes she would drive past his building on a Sunday only to confirm that nothing had changed, and would find as before that he was sitting in his kitchen working on a drawing. One day she saw that there was somebody else in the apartment, a new muse making small sandwiches and cups of tea; and after that she stopped driving past his house and instead concentrated fully on her more reliable passion - looking for new car washes to drive through.

6/10

Should her ex-boyfriend, and countless others along with him, be condemned for not wanting to "move on", gradually unlearning his old ways and catching on to the new ones? Who is to make this judgment? Would such assimilation truly benefit him, or his new country, or his old one, or the history of art? Maybe his is in fact the right way to conduct oneself? Whereas all those other immigrants who wake up every morning to an alarm clock and spend the rest of the day in an office in some office park building somewhere are living in the world of illusion - the illusion that they can truly remake themselves.

And what about Inga herself? If one day she were to be recalled to ALPHA-1, if one day somebody there had the guts to make a decision and finally terminate her mission, would she actually go back? Or was she now, after twenty years, tied up to Earth by hundreds of small threads of habit - none of the individual threads strong enough by itself, and yet together all of them yielding an overwhelming force which would not let her leave. Was even the thought that one day she would actually have this choice a pure illusion she cultivated by force?

7/10

The same image from her childhood would often come back to her. Growing up in a tiny place: just a dozen families living in big tents. On the map it was referred to as a city, but only because there was nothing around it for hundreds of kilometers, no rivers, lakes, or mountains, just desert, and the mapmakers had been too embarrassed to leave such a large part of the map blank.

She and the other children, all seven children of this city, would spend hours playing around the only landmark: a big advertising billboard whose somewhat faded image, even after many years, was still brighter than anything else in their city. The billboard had been erected by some company in the expectation that one day the city would really grow and become full of consumers for their products. Meanwhile, the billboard provided the children with a 'set' for all kinds of games, the favorite being 'space explorers on a mission to Earth'. The roles were rotated and so once in a while Inga got to play the brave ALPHA-1 explorer who, on landing, had to defend her life and her ship against the humans. All the children would happily roll in dirt fighting behind the billboard which, depending on the needs of the game, would serve as the space center on ALPHA-1, the spaceship itself, or the command center of the human attackers.

Well, here she is on Earth, she's been here for many years now, and nobody ever comes to attack her. In fact, nobody cares about her, neither here on Earth nor back on ALPHA-1. Once, in a supermarket, Inga came across some canned foods produced by the same company that had erected the billboard in the city of her childhood. Apparently, this company reached even Earth. Inga bought a couple of cans and brought them home with anticipation. They did not taste any better or worse than any other comparable food. Inga switched on the TV without sound. She was slowly eating the peas and the cucumbers straight from the can, one by one. The next morning her stomach was a little upset but that was all.

8/10

One Monday, when she woke up as usual and opened her laptop to send her weekly report, an email from ALPHA-1 was waiting for her. The first paragraph informed her in a rather dry and official tone that her mission was over and that next Sunday a ship will be waiting in a designated location to pick her up and take her back to ALPHA-1. The second paragraph told her that, due to the recent reorganization and merger, a number of Space Research Institutes were now joined within a single Consortium of Research Centres for Planetary Research. As a part of this merger her Central Institute for Earth Research was now eliminated. As the email explained, a special president-appointed commission had reviewed all the data collected from Earth to date and concluded that a continuation of Earth research could not be justified on scientific or any other grounds:

"The period of rapid and unprecedented intellectual development which began with the Enlightenment has finally came to a close. The rich opposition of ideas and ideologies which characterized the twentieth century has ended. Human civilization is now entering the new so-called globalization stage that is characterized by the triumph of materialistic ideals and the progressive flattening of cultural differences between different areas. Consequently, we cannot justify spending our limited resources on any further observation of the Earth."

Finally, the third and the shortest paragraph thanked Inga for carrying out her mission; the data collected by her had proved an invaluable contribution to Earth's research, etc., etc. No mention was made of the fact that her mission which was supposed to last only eighteen months had gone on for twenty years. No explanation or apology was given. The email was signed by somebody whose name told her nothing.

9/10

Inga spent all of the following week driving herself mad. To stay or to return? She changed her mind every ten minutes. On Sunday, still not knowing what she would actually do in the end, she made her way to the pick up point. The location did not make it any easier for Inga to decide. The spaceship was waiting for her in a forest clearing. The young commander of the ship lay outside on the grass smoking and waiting for Inga who asked him to give her another few minutes.

10/10

The summer forest was at its absolute best - blueberries showing up everywhere waiting to be picked, tall grass with colorful butterflies flying here and there, the moist ground which gave slightly to the feet. Yet the familiar gray color of the metal surface of the waiting spaceship, exactly the same as the ship which had brought her here twenty years ago, just as dirty and rusted, lured her as well. When she focused on the ship, the other Inga, the one who had never left ALPHA-1, took over, and the Inga who had spent twenty years on Earth almost faded. When she took her eyes of the ship to look at the forest, the two parts of her reversed.

Looking at both of these layers, Inga realized for the first time that each was equally vivid, equally alive. One belonged to Earth, the other belonged to ALPHA-1. Whatever choice she made now, one of the layers would remain un-nourished, un-fulfilled - an invisible shadow always disturbing her peace. There was no way to switch off either this or that layer. Inga finally understood the impossible situation of an immigrant and the wisdom of her ex-boyfriend the painter, who simply refused to assimilate.

And yet here she was and she had to make a choice, a very practical one, and she had to do it in the next few minutes. Inga took a few steps towards the space ship to see if proximity would help, but it did not make any difference. She touched the rusted metal surface of the ship; it was warm from the sun. A small ant crawled slowly across the side of her hand. Inga placed her hand flat on the ship to see what the ant would do. The ant came very close and then stopped. Like Inga it apparently had trouble making it up its mind. Suddenly, the ant took off from Inga's hand, made a few rapid circles and then quickly soared going up and up before it completely disappeared into the blue sky.