THE WALRAFF  METHODS



"Excuse me, can I look like you?" In under cover work it's important to have 'no look'. Colonel has taken up the Günther Walraff method.
Walraff is the German journalist who assumed a variety of identities with the aim of penetrating particular subcultures and writing about them "from the inside". So Colonel dresses Walraff-fashion, as the man with no look - a strategy for getting into conversation with people, inviting them to improvise encounters.       
Qua active immigrant Colonel undertakes to establish which minority-cultural group is most integration-minded. Obviously, the street is the place to start. "May I borrow your jacket and hat? Where do you come from? Do I look like you now?" The questions and the role-play are a gambit aimed at opening a conversation about cultural difference and community.
One Pakistani dismisses integration as a problem - he has no real contact with Danes anyway. Two smartly dressed ladies are drawn into the conversation. "Where do you think we come from?" Smiling, one of them explains: "Vietnamese are the best at becoming integrated. You don't see them. They are quick to find a job, a place to live, and look after themselves." You're only really here, then, when you aren't seen.
But Colonel has captured it all in pictures. He calls out to strangers on the opposite side of the street, getting them to cross it to take a Polaroid snapshot of him disguised as his newly acquired friend.
The disguises render him absent qua individual and present qua the stranger whose identity he's taken on. He doesn't look like himself, but nor does he look like the others - more like an image of 'cultural exchange' writ large, and exposed to the televisual gaze. The pure gold delivered by the episodes is the observations of people in the street. One person says: "It will be easy for you to integrate because you are European. It's a little harder for him because he's Somalian. You've got a pretty white image. Denmark is a good country. It's here you get the best welfare."

Inside text for Colonel book "avoir l'air " .A nifca publication 2002
by Line Rosenvinge

       
" from Nepal " Polaroid 15x15 cm         " from Somalia " Polaroid 15x15 cm          " from Pakistan  " Polaroid 15x15 cm







copyright Thierry Geoffroy /Colonel
1@colonel.dk  

















                                                                                                       
EXCTRACT FROM WORK ON TV :
"THE ACTIVE IMMIGRANT "


link to "avoir  l ' air"

back to www.colonel.dk