Discovery Channel Magazine India - May 2014

LOCKING HORNS 70
RHINOS FOR SALE

JOEL LAMBERT 84
HUNTING THE HUNTED
CHINESE ART 30
A CASE AGAINST FAKES
MARATHON TROUBLE 22
SAFEGUARD YOUR RUN
CHANNEL MAGAZI NE I NDI A
10
REASONS
WE LOVE
LISTS
AND HOW THEY FORMAT
OUR BRAIN
PG 58
MAY 2014 I `150 Invitation price `100
06
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE I NDI A
TRENDSPOTTING ON
TRAINS ETC.
Having schooled in NY as a
pre-teen in Junior High, I was
exposed to an idea that holds
true even today. I believe that the
rickety old subway trains running
through New York City often hold
the secret to trends of the future.
When I was a kid, it was the Walkman
plugged to everyones ears on the train.
Audio books had just been introduced, and
John Grisham was the rage. When spools of
cassettes gave way to CDs that sometimes
skipped and later got scratched, travellers
were introduced to the iPod that came in
candy colours and promised a revolutionary
change. It was on a subway train that I rst
noticed an e-book reader, the poised lady
ipping through its black and white pages
that pretended to look like paper.
Smartphones, of course, are now life-
changing legendary, immersing teenagers
into their touchscreens with parents
wondering whether the technology is an
education or a distraction.
On page 14 of this issue, youll see a piece
of news thatll take this experience a step
further. E-book readers, the rst article in
the Frontiers section proclaims, will soon
come with ambient lighting: Theyll be able
to understand the subject youre reading
and set the mood.
And why shouldn't they? Dont each of
the gadgets, from the Walkman downwards,
give the user a sense of immersive privacy
and an ability to nd your own space in a
crowd? Wont the newer e-book readers
allow you a way of communicating with
your own thoughts without distraction?
Whether anyone else does or not,
Dumbledore would surely approve.
Also in this issue, youll nd stories that
are equally fascinating with a strong eye
on the future. Our cover story takes you
in-depth into the working of your brain:
How the nerve centre of our existence
compartmentalises information and
remembers detail. Locking Horns outlines
the plight of rhinos, who may be headed
towards extinction by humans hunting
them down for their horns.
An elaborate feature on Chinese Art
takes us into the socialist republic and
introduces us to creativity that thrives
despite political interference. And a
tailpiece on the multi-million dollar forgery
industry gives the Made In China tag a
whole new nancial hue.
Come to think of it, most of the devices
on the NY train are made in China as
well. Makes one wonder: Do trends
boost suppressed economies, or do such
economies enourage trends?
Jamal Shaikh
Editorial Director
CHANNEL MAGAZI NE I NDI A
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4
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Editorial Board
President and Managing Director Arjan Hoekstra
SVP Content Group Kevin Dickie
SVP and GM, South Asia Rahul Johri
VP, Marketing, South Asia Rajiv Bakshi
VP, Communications Charles Yap
VP, Programming Charmaine Kwan
VP, Marketing Magdalene Ng
Editorial (Novus Media Solutions)
Editor Luke Clark
Design Director Richard MacLean
Chief Subeditor Josephine Pang
Staff Writer Daniel Seifert
Photo Editor Haryati Mahmood
Senior Designer Bessy Kim
Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie
Group Chief Executive Ofcer Ashish Bagga
Group Synergy and Creative Ofcer Kalli Purie
Editorial Director Jamal Shaikh
Art Director Piyush Garg
Asst Art Director Rahul Sharma
Designer Kishore Rawat
Impact (Advertising)
Group Business Head Manoj Sharma
Associate Publisher (Impact) Anil Fernandes
Senior General Managers Kaustav Chatterjee
(East), Jitendra Lad (West), Head (North)
Subhashis Roy
General Manager Shailender Nehru (Bangalore),
General Manager Velu Balasubramaniam (Chennai)
Business
Head, CRM/CMS & Senior GM Vikas Malhotra
Chief Manager, Operations GL Ravik Kumar
Marketing Managers Kunal Bag, Anuradha Rana
Production Anuj Jamdegni
News stand Sales
Chief General Manager DVS Rama Rao
General Manager - National Deepak Bhatt
Sr Manager - North Manish Shrivastava
Sr Manager - East Joydeep Roy
General Manager - West Rajesh Menon
General Manager - Operations Rakesh Sharma
DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC
EDITOR'S LETTER
twitter.com/JamalShaikh
instagram.com/JamalShaikh
08
CONTENTS
ISSUE 05/14
DEPARTMENTS
FRONTIERS
REAL READS
14
Wear this vest-like prototype,
and its makers say literature
will truly come to life
TECHNOLOGY
H20 NO
20
Meet the sexy new device
that, if it works as it should, will have
you breathing like Bond
ALTERNATE LIVING
ADVENTURE
22
A case for nuclear silo living
with 45-centimetre concrete walls
and a 47-tonne door
NICE TO KNOW
HITLER'S CHOC
24
How Napoleon and World War II led
to the invention of Nutella, plus
other weird equations
IN CONVERSATION WITH
CLEOPATRA
25
DCM gets irty with a female
pharaoh, as she drinks some perfectly
good pearls
20
24
18
22
THE GRID 15 GET BITTEN BY THIS
TICK, AND YOU MAY NEVER EAT
MEAT AGAIN!
NEWS 16 WE MAY SOON
FINALLY GET OUR HANDS ON A
BIT OF BACK TO THE FUTURE
KIT (AND NO, IT'S NOT A
HOVER-BOARD)
TASTEFUL MUSIC 18 THOSE
WITH SOME TYPES OF
SYNAESTHESIA CAN TASTE
NAMES AND SEE MUSIC. WE'RE
JUST A TEENSY BIT JEALOUS
MARATHON MADNESS 22 GOING
FOR A LONG RUN? DON'T FORGET
YOUR DIAPERS! OH, AND US$347
SO YOU WANT TO BE A 23 CRIME
REPORTING FOR YOU? ONLY
IF YOU'RE TOUGH ENOUGH TO
SMELL HUMAN BRAINS AND ASK
HARD QUESTIONS
THE YEAR THAT WAS 24 AH,
1972. WHEN NINE-YEAR-OLDS
SANG CREEPY SONGS AND
HANDHELD CALCULATORS
WERE LIKE BARBELLS
BIZZARE BEHAVIOUR 26
YOU CAN FORGIVE YOUR
COMPANION FOR ACTING
STRANGELY IN THESE CITIES,
THERE'S SOMETHING IN
THE AIR
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
10
11
MAY 2014
ISSUE 05/14
FEATURES
SEEKERS
ART AND UTOPIA
30
View the world through four Chinese artists'
eyes as we speak to the presenter of a recent
Discovery Channel show. Dr Agnes Hsu talks
utopia, heritage and heat
ART TALK
FRAMING FAKES
42
What a tangled web we weave, when we
delve into the world of art forgery. Heck,
some galleries even knowingly sell fakes, as
one accomplished ex-forger tells us
BIG PICTURE
CANVAS & CRIME
56
Delve into the world of art heists, where two
men with fake moustaches walked of with
millions in masterpieces
COVER STORY
INTO THE TOP FIVE
58
Everyone from a grocery shopper to Stalin,
and even the Greek poet Homer, has used
them. But why do lists have such power over
us? And will the internet ever tire of them?
ENVIRONMENT
RHINO CRIMES
70
Step inside the world of rhino horn, an ugly
place where maimed animals can take days
to die all for a commodity that costs more
than gold, and has no health benets
EXTREME ADVENTURE
HIDE AND SEEK
84
It takes a special forces expert to
successfully evade the world's best trackers.
That's if he can remember his bag
THIS MONTH
WHAT'S ON!
102
Flight over the highest mountain peak in
the world to the world of Superhumans and
how they challenge themselves. All about
Synthetic Biology and a series on 72 Hours
before a crime. All this and Building the
World Cup...on Discovery Channel this May.
42
70 84
58
30
10
11
MAY 2014
10
11
MAY 2014
ISSUE 05/14
FEATURES
SEEKERS
ART AND UTOPIA
30
View the world through four Chinese artists'
eyes as we speak to the presenter of a recent
Discovery Channel show. Dr Agnes Hsu talks
utopia, heritage and heat
ART TALK
FRAMING FAKES
42
What a tangled web we weave, when we
delve into the world of art forgery. Heck,
some galleries even knowingly sell fakes, as
one accomplished ex-forger tells us
BIG PICTURE
CANVAS & CRIME
56
Delve into the world of art heists, where two
men with fake moustaches walked of with
millions in masterpieces
COVER STORY
INTO THE TOP FIVE
58
Everyone from a grocery shopper to Stalin,
and even the Greek poet Homer, has used
them. But why do lists have such power over
us? And will the internet ever tire of them?
ENVIRONMENT
RHINO CRIMES
70
Step inside the world of rhino horn, an ugly
place where maimed animals can take days
to die all for a commodity that costs more
than gold, and has no health benets
EXTREME ADVENTURE
HIDE AND SEEK
84
It takes a special forces expert to
successfully evade the world's best trackers.
That's if he can remember his bag
THIS MONTH
WHAT'S ON!
102
Flight over the highest mountain peak in
the world to the world of Superhumans and
how they challenge themselves. All about
Synthetic Biology and a series on 72 Hours
before a crime. All this and Building the
World Cup...on Discovery Channel this May.
42
70 84
58
30
10
11
MAY 2014
12
13
MAY 2014
P
H
O
T
O
:

B
A
R
C
R
O
F
T

M
E
D
I
A
/

C
L
I
C
K

P
H
O
T
O
S
Pro surfer Garrett
McNamara once said, In
Nazar, Portugal, the ocean
is known as a place of death,
not of riding waves. Looking
at this image, you wouldn't
think he had ever said it
he's the tiny gure in the
centre of the photo.
In 2011, he set the world
record by surng a 78-
foot (23.8-metre) wave at
this same spot in Nazar.
However, the wave in this
image, shot in January 2013,
could have been even larger.
Although the Guinness
World Records has yet to
verify the claim as of the
time of writing, the wave is
thought to have been over
100 feet tall more than 30
metres high.
Frankly though, he
doesnt really need that
extra honour hes already
done something far cooler,
literally. In 2007, McNamara
and another surfer, Kealii
Mamala, made waves when
they became the rst to ride
glacier-generated waves.
They spent 20 hours a day
over a week in the freezing-
cold waters at the foot of
Childs Glacier, in the US
state of Alaska, waiting for
the perfect moment. They
found it when a 75-metre
chunk of ice broke of the
glacier. Speaking years later,
he described the experience
as the closest Ive ever come
to death.
SURFING
THE STORM
WOW
12
13
MAY 2014
P
H
O
T
O
:

B
A
R
C
R
O
F
T

M
E
D
I
A
/

C
L
I
C
K

P
H
O
T
O
S
Pro surfer Garrett
McNamara once said, In
Nazar, Portugal, the ocean
is known as a place of death,
not of riding waves. Looking
at this image, you wouldn't
think he had ever said it
he's the tiny gure in the
centre of the photo.
In 2011, he set the world
record by surng a 78-
foot (23.8-metre) wave at
this same spot in Nazar.
However, the wave in this
image, shot in January 2013,
could have been even larger.
Although the Guinness
World Records has yet to
verify the claim as of the
time of writing, the wave is
thought to have been over
100 feet tall more than 30
metres high.
Frankly though, he
doesnt really need that
extra honour hes already
done something far cooler,
literally. In 2007, McNamara
and another surfer, Kealii
Mamala, made waves when
they became the rst to ride
glacier-generated waves.
They spent 20 hours a day
over a week in the freezing-
cold waters at the foot of
Childs Glacier, in the US
state of Alaska, waiting for
the perfect moment. They
found it when a 75-metre
chunk of ice broke of the
glacier. Speaking years later,
he described the experience
as the closest Ive ever come
to death.
SURFING
THE STORM
WOW
15
MAY 2014
14
ASI A-PACI FI C AMERI CAS EUROPE MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
THE REAL MAGNITO
A Bosnian man named Muhibija
Buljubasic is making headlines
because of his supposedly mag-
netic body. The 56-year-old has
been photographed with cut-
lery, remote controls and even
a Samsung Galaxy S4 mobile
phone stuck to his person. His
explanation for the power? That
he radiates a special energy.
Sceptics, however, say that
so-called human magnets just
have skin that is greasier and
stickier than most.
EPIC GPS FAIL Twenty-ve
years ago, the US launched its
rst GPS satellite. Over the
years, weve become increas-
ingly reliant on the technology,
leading to dozens of epic fail
stories. Our favourite? The
61-year-old Belgian woman
who programmed her device
incorrectly and drove 900 miles
(1,450 kilometres) to Croatia
instead of 90 miles (145 kilo-
metres) to Brussels. She drove
for two days, until suddenly I
appeared in Zagreb, I realised I
wasnt in Belgium anymore.
BLOOD, NOT BOOZE
NekNomination is an online
trend where participants must
quickly down often ridiculous
amounts of alcohol before
nominating an online friend to
best them. Its been responsible
for several deaths. Two Brit-
ish students were inspired by
the trend to create Donate
& Nominate a sister trend
to promote blood donation,
particularly amongst 17- to
24-year-olds. How about blood
donation not Bloody Marys,
boys and girls?
FISH IN A BARREL
Researchers from Oregon
State University and other US
institutes have discovered that
Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus
tshawytscha) navigate to feeding
grounds thousands of kilometres
away using an inherited magnet-
ic map. Sensing Earths magnetic
elds, even young salmon can
make the journey through shift-
ing ocean waters pretty awless-
ly. Researchers found this out by
putting salmon in a barrel, and
moving magnets around them.
PASSING THE TEST
Usually, running multiple
blood tests requires dozens of
samples. But a company based
in the US state of California can
run as many as 30 diagnostic
tests with just a drop of blood.
Named Theranos, it also boasts
prices that are around half the
standard. Founder Elizabeth
Holmes told press while a fertil-
ity blood panel can cost up to
US$2,000, theirs will cost just
US$35. She added Theranos can
get results on average in less
than four hours.
I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
:

C
A
R
L
O

G
I
A
M
B
A
R
R
E
S
I

A
T

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
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N
R
O
O
M
.C
O
M
.A
U

A body compression system. A heartbeat and shiver simulator.
Localised body temperature control. These are just some of
the ways the sensory ction device, a vest-like prototype
developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the
United States, aims to draw you into a story. Linked with a book
called The Girl Who Was Plugged In, it purports to physicalise
the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark
damp cellar in the tale. The augmented book even changes
lighting page by page, depending on the setting and mood. Such
technology has been in the making for a while. Weve had 3D
movies and smell-o-vision for decades, but theyve always
been more of a gimmick. DCM wonders if having the greatest
moments in literature history reduced to ashing LED lights
really conveys what the authors wanted. Its a long shot, but
if the tech actually gets better and more immersive, does that
mean that the quality of writing may sufer, since it wont need
to shine as much? When George R R Martins sixth A Song
of Ice and Fire epic nally comes out, could the opening line
be a lukewarm, It was really cold and stuf? Unlikely, yet
unsettling.
INSIDE THE TAJ
With the assistance of a
15-lens, backpack-mounted
camera, Google plans to ofer
a Street View of the Jewel
of India: the Taj Mahal. The
360-degree image will allow
armchair travellers around
the globe to view portions of
the monument that are closed
to public. The Google Trekker
project is aimed at mapping
some of the worlds most valu-
able monuments and sights,
including the Grand Canyon,
in the United States.
DANCING WITH 3D
What if the visually
impaired could navigate
unassisted in unfamiliar
indoor places? What if you
could search for a product
and see where the exact shelf
is located in a super-store?
This quote is part of the pitch
for Googles Project Tango,
which aims to endow a smart-
phone with the power to make
250,000 measurements of its
environment every second.
Hey presto, a 3D model of the
space around you.
B
L
O
O
D
N
A
V
I
G
A
T
I
O
N
M
A
G
N
E
T
S
PEAS AND PRESSURE
Vegetarians tend to have
lower blood pressure than
non-vegetarians. Research-
ers at the National Cerebral
and Cardiovascular Centre
in Osaka, Japan, reviewed 39
previous studies and found that
in general non-meat eaters had
blood pressure two to seven
units lower than meat-eaters.
Its now hoped that a switch to a
vegetarian diet could help wean
some people of blood pressure
medication, which can have
unpleasant side efects.
SPACE NET Japans space
agency has hatched a plan to
deal with deadly space debris
(like that in Gravity). Their plan
is comically simple, involving
a net, possibly up to 10 kilome-
tres in length. Hanging from an
unmanned spacecraft, the net
is meant to automatically align
itself with and attract debris,
using an electromagnetic eld.
The downside of the plan,
detractors say, is that the net
might mistakenly catch work-
ing satellites. Whoops.
THE GRI D
HOLY MAGNETS, BATMAN
Where do bats come from? Five
tiny jawbones of prehistoric bats
excavated in Egypt may hold the
answer: they likely originated in
the eastern parts of the ancient
supercontinent Gondwana.
The nding comes thanks to
palaeomagnetic dating, which
relies on the analysis of magnetic
metals in rocks. Since Earths
magnetic eld slowly reverses
over time, switching from north
to south, scientists can use the
process to date geological layers.
FIND THAT MATATU
Travelling in Kenyas capital?
Nairobi doesnt have a for-
mal bus system, so people get
around via matatu, privately
owned, often beat-up, grafti-
covered vans. As you would
imagine, the chaotic system
had no ofcial map until now.
Researchers and designers
have recently created an open
data set of the citys 130 transit
routes in all its glory. Its hoped
the map will help users, passen-
gers and the government plan
better routes.
ISSUE 05/14
FRONTIERS
NEWS
WWF
Hero
STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD
GRIPPING READ: YOUR BOOK NOW
CHANGES LIGHTING PAGE BY PAGE
WITH GREAT POWER, COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY, GOES THE FAMOUS LINE IN SPIDER-MAN FILMS.
PERHAPS THATS WHY THE WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE, OR WWF, CHOSE THE CHARACTER TO BE EARTH
HOURS FIRST SUPERHERO AMBASSADOR DURING THE YEARLY LIGHTS-OUT EVENT. ALL WELL AND GOOD,
BUT WILL THEY ALSO TALK TO HIM ABOUT LITTERING NEW YORK CITY WITH THOSE ULTRA-STICKY WEBS?
THATS LIKE SPITTING 300 PIECES OF GUM ON THE STREET, DUDE
15
MAY 2014
14
ASI A-PACI FI C AMERI CAS EUROPE MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
THE REAL MAGNITO
A Bosnian man named Muhibija
Buljubasic is making headlines
because of his supposedly mag-
netic body. The 56-year-old has
been photographed with cut-
lery, remote controls and even
a Samsung Galaxy S4 mobile
phone stuck to his person. His
explanation for the power? That
he radiates a special energy.
Sceptics, however, say that
so-called human magnets just
have skin that is greasier and
stickier than most.
EPIC GPS FAIL Twenty-ve
years ago, the US launched its
rst GPS satellite. Over the
years, weve become increas-
ingly reliant on the technology,
leading to dozens of epic fail
stories. Our favourite? The
61-year-old Belgian woman
who programmed her device
incorrectly and drove 900 miles
(1,450 kilometres) to Croatia
instead of 90 miles (145 kilo-
metres) to Brussels. She drove
for two days, until suddenly I
appeared in Zagreb, I realised I
wasnt in Belgium anymore.
BLOOD, NOT BOOZE
NekNomination is an online
trend where participants must
quickly down often ridiculous
amounts of alcohol before
nominating an online friend to
best them. Its been responsible
for several deaths. Two Brit-
ish students were inspired by
the trend to create Donate
& Nominate a sister trend
to promote blood donation,
particularly amongst 17- to
24-year-olds. How about blood
donation not Bloody Marys,
boys and girls?
FISH IN A BARREL
Researchers from Oregon
State University and other US
institutes have discovered that
Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus
tshawytscha) navigate to feeding
grounds thousands of kilometres
away using an inherited magnet-
ic map. Sensing Earths magnetic
elds, even young salmon can
make the journey through shift-
ing ocean waters pretty awless-
ly. Researchers found this out by
putting salmon in a barrel, and
moving magnets around them.
PASSING THE TEST
Usually, running multiple
blood tests requires dozens of
samples. But a company based
in the US state of California can
run as many as 30 diagnostic
tests with just a drop of blood.
Named Theranos, it also boasts
prices that are around half the
standard. Founder Elizabeth
Holmes told press while a fertil-
ity blood panel can cost up to
US$2,000, theirs will cost just
US$35. She added Theranos can
get results on average in less
than four hours.
I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
:

C
A
R
L
O

G
I
A
M
B
A
R
R
E
S
I

A
T

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
R
O
O
M
.C
O
M
.A
U

A body compression system. A heartbeat and shiver simulator.
Localised body temperature control. These are just some of
the ways the sensory ction device, a vest-like prototype
developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the
United States, aims to draw you into a story. Linked with a book
called The Girl Who Was Plugged In, it purports to physicalise
the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark
damp cellar in the tale. The augmented book even changes
lighting page by page, depending on the setting and mood. Such
technology has been in the making for a while. Weve had 3D
movies and smell-o-vision for decades, but theyve always
been more of a gimmick. DCM wonders if having the greatest
moments in literature history reduced to ashing LED lights
really conveys what the authors wanted. Its a long shot, but
if the tech actually gets better and more immersive, does that
mean that the quality of writing may sufer, since it wont need
to shine as much? When George R R Martins sixth A Song
of Ice and Fire epic nally comes out, could the opening line
be a lukewarm, It was really cold and stuf? Unlikely, yet
unsettling.
INSIDE THE TAJ
With the assistance of a
15-lens, backpack-mounted
camera, Google plans to ofer
a Street View of the Jewel
of India: the Taj Mahal. The
360-degree image will allow
armchair travellers around
the globe to view portions of
the monument that are closed
to public. The Google Trekker
project is aimed at mapping
some of the worlds most valu-
able monuments and sights,
including the Grand Canyon,
in the United States.
DANCING WITH 3D
What if the visually
impaired could navigate
unassisted in unfamiliar
indoor places? What if you
could search for a product
and see where the exact shelf
is located in a super-store?
This quote is part of the pitch
for Googles Project Tango,
which aims to endow a smart-
phone with the power to make
250,000 measurements of its
environment every second.
Hey presto, a 3D model of the
space around you.
B
L
O
O
D
N
A
V
I
G
A
T
I
O
N
M
A
G
N
E
T
S
PEAS AND PRESSURE
Vegetarians tend to have
lower blood pressure than
non-vegetarians. Research-
ers at the National Cerebral
and Cardiovascular Centre
in Osaka, Japan, reviewed 39
previous studies and found that
in general non-meat eaters had
blood pressure two to seven
units lower than meat-eaters.
Its now hoped that a switch to a
vegetarian diet could help wean
some people of blood pressure
medication, which can have
unpleasant side efects.
SPACE NET Japans space
agency has hatched a plan to
deal with deadly space debris
(like that in Gravity). Their plan
is comically simple, involving
a net, possibly up to 10 kilome-
tres in length. Hanging from an
unmanned spacecraft, the net
is meant to automatically align
itself with and attract debris,
using an electromagnetic eld.
The downside of the plan,
detractors say, is that the net
might mistakenly catch work-
ing satellites. Whoops.
THE GRI D
HOLY MAGNETS, BATMAN
Where do bats come from? Five
tiny jawbones of prehistoric bats
excavated in Egypt may hold the
answer: they likely originated in
the eastern parts of the ancient
supercontinent Gondwana.
The nding comes thanks to
palaeomagnetic dating, which
relies on the analysis of magnetic
metals in rocks. Since Earths
magnetic eld slowly reverses
over time, switching from north
to south, scientists can use the
process to date geological layers.
FIND THAT MATATU
Travelling in Kenyas capital?
Nairobi doesnt have a for-
mal bus system, so people get
around via matatu, privately
owned, often beat-up, grafti-
covered vans. As you would
imagine, the chaotic system
had no ofcial map until now.
Researchers and designers
have recently created an open
data set of the citys 130 transit
routes in all its glory. Its hoped
the map will help users, passen-
gers and the government plan
better routes.
ISSUE 05/14
FRONTIERS
NEWS
WWF
Hero
STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD
GRIPPING READ: YOUR BOOK NOW
CHANGES LIGHTING PAGE BY PAGE
WITH GREAT POWER, COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY, GOES THE FAMOUS LINE IN SPIDER-MAN FILMS.
PERHAPS THATS WHY THE WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE, OR WWF, CHOSE THE CHARACTER TO BE EARTH
HOURS FIRST SUPERHERO AMBASSADOR DURING THE YEARLY LIGHTS-OUT EVENT. ALL WELL AND GOOD,
BUT WILL THEY ALSO TALK TO HIM ABOUT LITTERING NEW YORK CITY WITH THOSE ULTRA-STICKY WEBS?
THATS LIKE SPITTING 300 PIECES OF GUM ON THE STREET, DUDE
16
NEWS
PUTTING THE MMMM IN MRE
Oxidation is a terrible thing
or is it? The same process
that makes your bike rust is
also responsible for a new
pens longevity. The 4.EVER
Pininfarina Cambiano might
take you a few tries to spell
correctly, but luckily it
comes with the power to
write forever.
How does this sexy bit
of kit, which bills itself as
an everlasting writing
instrument needing no
ink and no rell, work?
The
secret lies in the tip, made of
a material called ethergraf,
which oxidises the paper. The
tip, meanwhile, erodes so
gradually
its negligible.
All sleek aluminium and
shiny wood, the pen forces
you to look around and
ask:
why are so few of our
possessions designed to last
forever?
Waste not, want not,
we say, as we chew noodles
from a Styrofoam plate with
wooden chopsticks, sitting
on a plastic chair well likely
throw out in ve years.
As of writing, Pininfarina
had yet to announce a price
for the metallic miracle. We
can only assume it would be
a while before your savings
on ink matched the price tag,
but it might be worthwhile
if it forces us to question
the half-life of most of our
purchases. Think of how many
pens youve bought over the
past few decades: for school,
artwork, or household use. On
the other hand, while they can
make the pen last forever, can
they also stop us losing it too?
US$10,000
According to one US survey,
this is the estimated amount
of money an average woman
spends on shaving-related
products over a lifetime.
57 Number
Number of sheets of toilet
paper an average person uses
in a day. One blogger tracked
his use over a year and found
it added up to 4.5 kilometres
worth of paper. Reusable
toilet paper may seem like a
gross concept, but could it be
a workable idea?
480650km
Experts say runners should
replace their shoes every few
hundred kilometres. Hard-
core runners, then, might
buy a new pair every three
or four months. Pretty pricey,
considering good running
shoes can cost at least US$100.
3 months
Dentists say we should throw
out our toothbrushes after
three months. Thats four a
year, 40 per decade, 320 in a
lifetime, assuming we follow
our dentists instructions to a
T. But lets face it, who does?
ETCH YOUR
WORDS IN TIME
PUTTING THE MMMM IN MRE
THE US ARMY RECENTLY DEVELOPED
A PIZZA MRE (MEAL, READY-TO-
EAT) FOR SOLDIERS, WHICH CAN
REMAIN EDIBLE FOR THREE YEARS
3 YEARS
DESPITE THEIR REPUTATION OF
LASTING FOREVER, TWINKIES (A US
BRAND OF CREAM-FILLED CAKES)
LAST LESS THAN TWO MONTHS
45 DAYS
ITALIAN ARMY RATIONS DONT INCLUDE PIZZA.
BUT SOLDIERS DO GET A SMALL SHOT OF A 40
PERCENT ALCOHOLIC DRINK. FRENCH
RATIONS MEANWHILE INCLUDE DEER PT
40%
Forward to the Future
Will Nikes self-tying shoe laces revolutionise
athletics and more?
Are we gonna see power laces in
2015? To that, I say yes! So said
Tinker Hateld, a designer at Nike
and his words should ll any
Back to the Future fan with glee.
In the second lm of the series,
which was released in 1989, a
young Michael J Fox travels to the
year 2015. Scriptwriters of the
time being what they were, they
gured that by next year, we would
be strutting around in boot-like
Nikes with and this is the
really awesome part self-tying
power laces.
However, it took until 2011
for Nike to unveil replicas of
the shoes, a range dubbed
Nike MAG. While the footwear
included a battery to power the
funky LEDs (reportedly for ve
hours between charges) that
adorned the sole and ankle, they
sadly lacked the power laces.
Now, as Hateld recently
declared, power laces could be
just a year away though as
of the time of writing, there had
been no word regarding whether
the laces would be restricted to
just the MAG series, or would be
available for other Nike shoes
as well.
Regardless of that decision,
as Marty McFly might say, This
is heavy.
HE-LLO?
According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, Back to the Future is
the earliest recorded example
of someone using hello
sarcastically. (Hello, hello?
Anybody home? Hey! Think
McFly. Think.)
OCTOBER 21, 1985
Every year, your Facebook wall is
probably spammed
by a meme proclaiming that
today is the date Marty McFly
went back to the future. If you
believed them, were sorry to
burst your bubble, but those are
all wrong. The correct date is
next October.
PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL
In the 1986 State of the
Union address, United States
President Ronald Reagan, who
is mentioned in the rst movie,
ended his speech with: As they
said in the lm Back to the Future:
Where were going, we dont
need roads. I
C
O
N
:

J
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S
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N

A
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X
A
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R
,
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E

N
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N

P
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O
J
E
C
T

A hi tech ink and pen-nib now allow you to
cast your words (as) in stone
18
TECHNOLOGY
SOUTH KOREAN DESIGNER JEABYUN YEON CLAIMS
TO HAVE DESIGNED A CONCEPT THAT DRAWS
BREATHABLE AIR FROM WATER AS YOU SWIM. THE
SEXY-LOOKING MASK, DUBBED TRITON, SUPPOSEDLY
ELIMINATES THE NEED FOR HEAVY TANKS, MAKES
YOU FEEL LIKE JAMES BOND, AND ALLOWS YOU TO
GRIP THE TWIN HANDLEBAR GILLS, AND PRETEND
YOURE ON A MOTORBIKE. ALL GOOD STUFF OR SHOULD WE SAY, TOO GOOD TO
BE TRUE. CRITICS POINT OUT THAT THE CONCEPT IS FLAWED BECAUSE FIRSTLY,
IT RELIES ON TINY MICRO-PROCESSORS RUN BY BATTERIES WITH 30 TIMES
THE CAPACITY OF NORMAL BATTERIES (WHICH DONT EXIST YET). IN ADDITION,
SUPPLYING ENOUGH OXYGEN FOR JUST ONE HUMAN BREATH WOULD REQUIRE
FILTERING NEARLY SIX LITRES OF WATER, OR 90 LITRES A MINUTE. AND WORSE,
BREATHING PURE OXYGEN WOULD EVENTUALLY KILL YOU. STILL, UNDERWATER
MOTORBIKE! VROOM, VR-R-ROOM! BUT IF THE HYPOTHETICAL TRITON IS STILL
TOO BULKY FOR YOU, TRY THE EQUALLY HYPOTHETICAL RESPIROCYTES. THESE
NANOMACHINES ARE DESIGNED TO MIMIC RED BLOOD CELLS BUT HOLD 236
TIMES MORE OXYGEN, ALLOWING A HUMAN TO DIVE FOR HOURS, SPRINT FOR 15
MINUTES ON A SINGLE BREATH, OR SAFELY SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK
TELLING TALES
Air from Water
Last year, it was
revealed that the
mystery novel The
Cuckoos Calling, by
Robert Galbraith,
was in fact written
by someone else. You
might have heard of
her: JK Rowling. A
reporter had received
a tip that Rowling had
used a nom de plume
(pen name), and wanted
conrmation. He got it
thanks to Patrick Juola,
who has developed a
computer program to
analyse the linguistic
signature of any piece
of writing. His platform,
the Java Graphical
Authorship Attribution
Program, plugged in
Rowlings, Galbraiths
and some other writers
samples, and analysed
four features:
Distribution of word
length
100 most common
words
Pairs of words
commonly occurring
together
Groups of four
characters
(including letters,
spaces and
grammatical marks
that regularly appear
in a string. These are
known as four-grams
His results supported
the idea, though didnt
prove, that Rowling was
the author. But when
later presented with
the results, Rowling
admitted that yes, she
was Galbraith. While
the technology isnt
perfect, it is getting
better, and JGAAP is
free to download so
if you are thinking
of penning some
unsigned romantic
poetry online, your
work might be less
anonymous than
you think.
For example, we
plugged this entire
page into an online
textual analyser, and
found that:
On the Gunning-
Fog Index,
which measures
readability, we are
a 6.5 (6 means easy,
20 means hard)
we hope that is a
compliment
Average syllables per
word: 1.75
Top three most
common words:
You, Rowling
and Polaroid
The most common
sentences by:
Suzanne Collins
(The Hunger Games
series)
My name is Katniss
Everdeen.
Stephanie
Meyer
(Twilight
series)
I sighed.
JK Rowling
(Harry Potter series)
Nothing happened.
BIG DATA
WIZARDRY
OTHER DANCE MOVES, OTHER NO-NOS
Quote Unquote
"SHAKING OR
WAVING CAN
ACTUALLY DAMAGE
THE IMAGE"
POLAROID
CORPORATION
"SHAKE IT
LIKE A POLAROID
PICTURE"
'HEY YA!' BY
OUTKAST
THE MASHED POTATO
Frankly terrible for
mashing potatoes
have you tried it?
THE MOONWALK
Did you see the
crew trying it on the
Apollo 11 mission?
RAISE THE ROOF
Impractical at best,
dangerous at worst
during home dcor DIY
How an algorthim detected
Rowlings ghost writing
Would you like to have gills like a fsh and
distill oxygen as you swim?
Its almost as if you shouldnt
take technical advice from pop stars.
Shortly after Outkast released their
hit single Hey Ya!, Polaroid gently
reminded customers that while
you can shake it on the dance oor,
manhandling your Polaroid is a
no-no. While shaking older photos
would dry them, modern Polaroid
lm dries behind a clear plastic
window. The company explained on
its website that the image never
touches air, so shaking or waving
has no effect, and can even be
damaging. Rapid movement
during development can cause
portions of the lm to separate
prematurely, or can cause blobs in
the picture, it noted.
20
PUSHING THE LIMITS
ADVENTURE
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
The glory of nishing a marathon is unmistakable. But it
sometimes comes at an embarrassing price
MONSTER FEET
Some call it the black badge of
courage, but black toenails are
still pretty gross. They are the
result of broken blood vessels
under the nail, which may itself
wither of and contrast nicely
with your shiny new corns,
blisters and callouses. Dont buy
too many open-toed sandals.
TUMMY TROUBLES
Marathoners tend to know a
lot about their digestive sys-
tems, timing their bowel move-
ments by eating spicy food or
drinking espresso. Thats be-
cause running can really stress
your digestive system. Some
even compete in diapers just in
case runners diarrhoea hits.
JOGGERS NIPPLE
Sorry, guys. Not only do you
have nipples for no reason,
they are also more likely to
bleed during a race. When
sweat evaporates on your skin,
it leaves abrasive salt on your
sensitive areas. Combined with
rubbing against your shirt, its
like a sandpaper massage.
COSTLY
The price you pay for these
side efects can be hefty as
well. The New York City Mara-
thon in the US costs US$255
for US entrants, and US$347
for out-of-towners. But the top
prize is hefty too: in 2013, they
awarded US$100,000 each to
the male and female winners.
HALLUCINATIONS
More common with ultra-
marathons. These events
often combine sleeplessness,
extreme temperature changes
and extreme stress. Hence why
weird visions are par for the
course. One ultra-marathon
blogger recalls how Optimus
Prime was a running partner.
16:1
HORSE-HUMAN RACE
An argument between two Welsh
men in 1979 created an event
to answer this. For 24 years, the
answer was a resounding no,
until in 2004 a man named Huw
Lobb beat a horse called Kay Bee
Jay by two minutes. Bookies put
the odds at 16 to one against the
two-legged human racers.
Looking for a home to buy?
Why not try a former nuclear
missile silo! You can live in
one for just US$260,000. The
one in question, located in
Osage City, in the US state of
Kansas, boasts, among other
things: one grass landing strip,
45-centimetre concrete walls,
as well as a 47-tonne
drive-in door.
A company known as 20
th

Century Castles specialises
in missile silo real estate and
as of 2010 had reportedly sold
49 explosively cool properties.
Considering an intercontinental
ballistic missile site could cost
US$20 million to build in 1960,
their purchase price of just a
few hundred thousand dollars
is a bargain. Especially when
such sites can easily come with
10 hectares of space.
On the downside, the upkeep
will also be pretty monumental,
so you should be prepared for
mould, dripping pipes and a
nagging sense that whenever
your alarm clock goes off, the
facility could well be mere
minutes from meltdown. On
the other hand, think of the fun
you will have telling your kids,
You cant ght in here! This is
the War Room!*
*Ten points for those of you
who got that Dr Strangelove
reference
Missiles
Not
Included
P
H
O
T
O
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:

G
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T
T
Y

I
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Nuclear silo housing
options
OPTIM
US
PRIM
E W
AS A RUNNING
PARTNER
23
MAY 2014
22
OCCUPATIONS
ADVENTURE
Great
scoops in
history
1776
THE BELFAST NEWS-
LETTER ACHIEVED
FIRST SCOOP WHEN IT
PUBLISHED THE UNITED
STATES DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE
BEFORE KING GEORGE
III HAD EVEN SEEN IT
1887
NELLY BLY
EXPOSED
HORRIFIC
CONDITIONS
AT A NEW YORK
INSANE ASYLUM,
BY CHECKING
HERSELF IN
1945
EDWARD KENNEDY
BROKE THE
NEWS THAT WORLD
WAR II WAS OVER
AND WAS FIRED
FOR IT, AS THE
SCOOP HAD BEEN
EMBARGOED
1936
THE DAILY MIRROR
NABBED AN
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
WITH HITLER.
THE HEADLINE?
HITLERS LETS BE
FRIENDS PLEA TO
THE WORLD
1972
WITH THE HELP
OF A SHADOWY
INSIDE SOURCE,
WOODWARD AND
CARL BERNSTEIN
BROKE THE
WATERGATE
SCANDAL
3
of Tapallas tips for
getting informa-
tion from anyone
Find out what they need and
want. If its your normal cop
buy him a doughnut. Befriend
him. Appeal to the heart.
Stand your ground. Once they do
start giving you info, and they say
this is off the record, keep your
word. But at the same time, keep
pushing. Dont stop at just what
they give you. Verify the facts.
Build your network of sources.
Stay in touch with them. They
become your friends, you know?
Just because of the sheer amount
of times you call them up and ask
them, whats new?
Bird: A paid
informant who
will y away
and gather
information for
you If it bleeds,
it leads: Stories with gore or
violence are always more likely
to make it to the top of a report
There werent
many female
reporters around
between 1825 to
1829, when John
Quincy Adams was
the sixth President
of the United States. Nor did
they get much respect. So how
did Anne Royall become the rst
female journalist to interview a
US president? She followed him
to the riverbank where Adams
swam every morning, and stole
his clothes. She only agreed to
return them after he had given
her a shivery interview.
TALK THE
TALK
Erika Tapalla knows what hu-
man brains smell like. It was
a really bad road accident.
His body was still under the
truck, she tells DCM. He was
dragged for a good kilometre
or so. Bits of his brain were
on the pavement. And the
smell? It was really shy. And
it quickly became rotten shy,
she recalls.
These are the kind of things
you deal with as a TV reporter
specialising in crime, espe-
cially in Manila, capital of the
Philippines. Asked how many
dead bodies she saw during
her stint on the show Balita
Alas-Singko, Tapalla says
without hesitation, hundreds.
The most harrowing thing,
she explains, was when a
victims family gets notied.
Since reporters are almost
always on the scene rst, it
means youve got to witness
the terror in their eyes. You
see the faces of the kids, who
are hysterical. Thats when
your heart really breaks.
Then you have to lm it.
Thats the reality of TV:
without drama or action,
youre not going to air. Sta-
tions will push you to record
that crying lady, or to ask
the dumbest questions, she
says, Questions like, how
are you feeling now that your
husband is dead?
Why did Tapalla go into
it? For one thing, there was
the travel she ew to the
United States, to Los Ange-
les, to cover the extradition
of a Filipino spy; and to New
York, after the assassination
of Osama bin Laden. You
become a part of history as it
unravels. Thats something
you really cant pay for.
SO YOU WANT TO BE A
CRIME REPORTER?
Its like watching a
birds-eye view of a
black ocean during the
night-time with strobe
lights ickering on
and of coming from
underwater. Thats
how someone with
synaesthesia described
listening to a song
by British indie pop
band The xx (yes, that
is the bands name).
Answering questions
on Reddit, he wrote,
I
listen to a lot of music
simply because I like
how it looks.
The condition, caused
by crossed pathways
in the brain, comes
in over 100 diferent
forms. Less rare than
previously thought, it is
now believed between
two and four percent
of the population have
some form of the sense-
muddling condition.
Our favourite has to be
lexical-gustory synaes-
thesia, where words
evoke strong tastes.
Researchers have
found that its even
possible to predict
the nature of the taste
depending on specic
sounds. Eh and mmm
sounds tend to evoke
mint, while aye noises
often taste of bacon.
This makes us really
want to make friends
with someone called
Myra Sandwich. We are
also intensely curious
to know what lexical
gustory synaesthesia
tastes like.
So you want to
taste music?
Some studies have found
that synaesthesia is
more common in women
than men.
It is commonly thought
that left-handed people
are more likely to have it.
Some people have
developed it as a result of
head trauma (not recom-
mended).
Whoa, what's going on here?! Synaesthesia
allows some people to experience numbers
and letters as varying shapes or colours,
and sounds as tastes
SCIENCE FICTION
SCIENCE

Looney Tunes
I
M
A
G
E
S
:

D
I
S
O
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Y

C
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A
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P
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O
J
E
C
T
Steve McCormack no doubt
thought he was going to die.
It was 2011, and the New
Zealand trucker had slipped
and landed on a broken
high-pressure air valve at
a gas station. The valve
penetrated his left buttock
and relentlessly pumped air
into his body at 100 pounds
per square inch (close to
690,000 pascals) of pressure.
In minutes, his body blew up
to twice its usual size.
Nearby rescuers
managed to shut off the
air supply, but McCormack
was like an overstuffed
sausage ready to pop,
barely able to breathe, and
blind in one eye. It took
an hour for paramedics to
arrive. They went to put a
drip in me, he later told
reporters. They pushed
the needle in and it spat
right out.
Amazingly, the trucker
survived and went back to
his normal size though
it took around three days
for the air to vent out of
him. You cant turn a tap
on and let it out. You just
have to fart it out, or burp
it out, he said. If you saw
it happen in a Looney
Tunes cartoon, you
wouldnt credit it now
were not so sure. Could
other Bugs Bunny-esque
antics work in real life?
Finger in a Gun Barrel.
The Build team of
MythBusters tackled this
one: busted. They tried
stufng the barrel with a
gel hand, wax hand, dirt
and even a steel spike to
make the gun backre.
All the test materials got
blown to smithereens.
Shot Full of Holes. When
a trapper was shot in
the gut in 1822, nobody
expected him to survive
the antiseptic-free
surgeries. But he did,
and was left with a stula
(hole) in his stomach.
The strong stomach acid
disinfected the wound, and
gave awestruck doctors
a chance to witness the
process of digestion for
the rst time ever. The
gutsy victim, meanwhile,
lived to 83.
Arrowhead. An awful
lot of animals have
survived arrows to the
head we found recent
references to a moose,
deer, duck, goose and
cat (whose name, oddly,
was Quiver), to name just
a few. If youre impaled,
an arrow can actually
act as a plug that stems
bleeding. Hence why
one of the top rules of
wildlife medicine is: do
not remove embedded
foreign objects.
Not-so-Deadly?
Analysis of the Iliad found
that the 114 fatal wounds
mentioned in the Greek
saga were caused by
spears (106), swords (17),
arrows (12) and slings (12).
Arrows were the only one
with a mortality rate of less
than 50 percent.
And you thought gas bag was
only a phrase...
COLOUR ME SENSORY
New Age sensory descriptions might be on an aura-
overlap with exciting combinations underway
????
23
MAY 2014
22
OCCUPATIONS
ADVENTURE
Great
scoops in
history
1776
THE BELFAST NEWS-
LETTER ACHIEVED
FIRST SCOOP WHEN IT
PUBLISHED THE UNITED
STATES DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE
BEFORE KING GEORGE
III HAD EVEN SEEN IT
1887
NELLY BLY
EXPOSED
HORRIFIC
CONDITIONS
AT A NEW YORK
INSANE ASYLUM,
BY CHECKING
HERSELF IN
1945
EDWARD KENNEDY
BROKE THE
NEWS THAT WORLD
WAR II WAS OVER
AND WAS FIRED
FOR IT, AS THE
SCOOP HAD BEEN
EMBARGOED
1936
THE DAILY MIRROR
NABBED AN
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
WITH HITLER.
THE HEADLINE?
HITLERS LETS BE
FRIENDS PLEA TO
THE WORLD
1972
WITH THE HELP
OF A SHADOWY
INSIDE SOURCE,
WOODWARD AND
CARL BERNSTEIN
BROKE THE
WATERGATE
SCANDAL
3
of Tapallas tips for
getting informa-
tion from anyone
Find out what they need and
want. If its your normal cop
buy him a doughnut. Befriend
him. Appeal to the heart.
Stand your ground. Once they do
start giving you info, and they say
this is off the record, keep your
word. But at the same time, keep
pushing. Dont stop at just what
they give you. Verify the facts.
Build your network of sources.
Stay in touch with them. They
become your friends, you know?
Just because of the sheer amount
of times you call them up and ask
them, whats new?
Bird: A paid
informant who
will y away
and gather
information for
you If it bleeds,
it leads: Stories with gore or
violence are always more likely
to make it to the top of a report
There werent
many female
reporters around
between 1825 to
1829, when John
Quincy Adams was
the sixth President
of the United States. Nor did
they get much respect. So how
did Anne Royall become the rst
female journalist to interview a
US president? She followed him
to the riverbank where Adams
swam every morning, and stole
his clothes. She only agreed to
return them after he had given
her a shivery interview.
TALK THE
TALK
Erika Tapalla knows what hu-
man brains smell like. It was
a really bad road accident.
His body was still under the
truck, she tells DCM. He was
dragged for a good kilometre
or so. Bits of his brain were
on the pavement. And the
smell? It was really shy. And
it quickly became rotten shy,
she recalls.
These are the kind of things
you deal with as a TV reporter
specialising in crime, espe-
cially in Manila, capital of the
Philippines. Asked how many
dead bodies she saw during
her stint on the show Balita
Alas-Singko, Tapalla says
without hesitation, hundreds.
The most harrowing thing,
she explains, was when a
victims family gets notied.
Since reporters are almost
always on the scene rst, it
means youve got to witness
the terror in their eyes. You
see the faces of the kids, who
are hysterical. Thats when
your heart really breaks.
Then you have to lm it.
Thats the reality of TV:
without drama or action,
youre not going to air. Sta-
tions will push you to record
that crying lady, or to ask
the dumbest questions, she
says, Questions like, how
are you feeling now that your
husband is dead?
Why did Tapalla go into
it? For one thing, there was
the travel she ew to the
United States, to Los Ange-
les, to cover the extradition
of a Filipino spy; and to New
York, after the assassination
of Osama bin Laden. You
become a part of history as it
unravels. Thats something
you really cant pay for.
SO YOU WANT TO BE A
CRIME REPORTER?
Its like watching a
birds-eye view of a
black ocean during the
night-time with strobe
lights ickering on
and of coming from
underwater. Thats
how someone with
synaesthesia described
listening to a song
by British indie pop
band The xx (yes, that
is the bands name).
Answering questions
on Reddit, he wrote,
I
listen to a lot of music
simply because I like
how it looks.
The condition, caused
by crossed pathways
in the brain, comes
in over 100 diferent
forms. Less rare than
previously thought, it is
now believed between
two and four percent
of the population have
some form of the sense-
muddling condition.
Our favourite has to be
lexical-gustory synaes-
thesia, where words
evoke strong tastes.
Researchers have
found that its even
possible to predict
the nature of the taste
depending on specic
sounds. Eh and mmm
sounds tend to evoke
mint, while aye noises
often taste of bacon.
This makes us really
want to make friends
with someone called
Myra Sandwich. We are
also intensely curious
to know what lexical
gustory synaesthesia
tastes like.
So you want to
taste music?
Some studies have found
that synaesthesia is
more common in women
than men.
It is commonly thought
that left-handed people
are more likely to have it.
Some people have
developed it as a result of
head trauma (not recom-
mended).
Whoa, what's going on here?! Synaesthesia
allows some people to experience numbers
and letters as varying shapes or colours,
and sounds as tastes
SCIENCE FICTION
SCIENCE

Looney Tunes
I
M
A
G
E
S
:

D
I
S
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
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C
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,
L
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.
A
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R
I
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S

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D

(
M
Y
T
H
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U
S
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)
;

B
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(
C
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)

I
C
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S
:

N
I
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(
M
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)
;

L
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(
C
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A
R
)

F
R
O
M

T
H
E

N
O
U
N

P
R
O
J
E
C
T
Steve McCormack no doubt
thought he was going to die.
It was 2011, and the New
Zealand trucker had slipped
and landed on a broken
high-pressure air valve at
a gas station. The valve
penetrated his left buttock
and relentlessly pumped air
into his body at 100 pounds
per square inch (close to
690,000 pascals) of pressure.
In minutes, his body blew up
to twice its usual size.
Nearby rescuers
managed to shut off the
air supply, but McCormack
was like an overstuffed
sausage ready to pop,
barely able to breathe, and
blind in one eye. It took
an hour for paramedics to
arrive. They went to put a
drip in me, he later told
reporters. They pushed
the needle in and it spat
right out.
Amazingly, the trucker
survived and went back to
his normal size though
it took around three days
for the air to vent out of
him. You cant turn a tap
on and let it out. You just
have to fart it out, or burp
it out, he said. If you saw
it happen in a Looney
Tunes cartoon, you
wouldnt credit it now
were not so sure. Could
other Bugs Bunny-esque
antics work in real life?
Finger in a Gun Barrel.
The Build team of
MythBusters tackled this
one: busted. They tried
stufng the barrel with a
gel hand, wax hand, dirt
and even a steel spike to
make the gun backre.
All the test materials got
blown to smithereens.
Shot Full of Holes. When
a trapper was shot in
the gut in 1822, nobody
expected him to survive
the antiseptic-free
surgeries. But he did,
and was left with a stula
(hole) in his stomach.
The strong stomach acid
disinfected the wound, and
gave awestruck doctors
a chance to witness the
process of digestion for
the rst time ever. The
gutsy victim, meanwhile,
lived to 83.
Arrowhead. An awful
lot of animals have
survived arrows to the
head we found recent
references to a moose,
deer, duck, goose and
cat (whose name, oddly,
was Quiver), to name just
a few. If youre impaled,
an arrow can actually
act as a plug that stems
bleeding. Hence why
one of the top rules of
wildlife medicine is: do
not remove embedded
foreign objects.
Not-so-Deadly?
Analysis of the Iliad found
that the 114 fatal wounds
mentioned in the Greek
saga were caused by
spears (106), swords (17),
arrows (12) and slings (12).
Arrows were the only one
with a mortality rate of less
than 50 percent.
And you thought gas bag was
only a phrase...
COLOUR ME SENSORY
New Age sensory descriptions might be on an aura-
overlap with exciting combinations underway
25
MAY 2014
24
WEIRD COMBOS
HISTORY
THE YEAR THAT WAS: 1972
Apollo 17 marked the
last time man walked
on the Moon. It has
lain untouched by a
human being for 42
years. The song Long-
Haired Lover From
Liverpool spent ve
weeks at the top of the
UK charts. Creepily, it
is sung by nine-year-old
Jimmy Osmond, the
youngest artist ever to
reach #1 and makes
us want to chew our
own ears of. Dont
listen to it. The rst
handheld calculator,
the chunky HP-35, went
on sale for a whopping
US$395 (US$2,100
in 2012 dollars), and
weighed almost as much
as an adult human
heart. Prozac was
discovered. It remains
the worlds best-selling
antidepressant, some
form of which is taken
by an estimated 10
percent of people in the
US and Europe. The
United States returned
the island of Okinawa,
which it had overseen
since 1945, to Japan.
An audience survey
revealed that Dr Who
was seen as one of the
most violent shows
on UK television. The
Chandka Forest area
in Odisha was hit by
droughts and heatwaves
so severe that herds
of elephants went
mad, tearing through
several villages and
trampling 24 people to
death. Film releases
in this year included
The Godfather, A
Clockwork Orange (in
the US) and Frenzy.
"Rhubarb Rhubarb"
Maybe its just us, but
DCM would rather
nibble on hot buttered
cardboard than a plate
of rhubarb, which we
think is as tasteless as
laughing at a funeral.
Luckily, rhubarb has a
use or at least, the
word does.
In the early days of
lm and radio, directors
would encourage extras
to mutter the word
over and over. The
effect was a pleasing,
crowd-like rumble; a
background bla-bla-
bla. Its less popular
now, but the term
rhubarb rhubarb for
a crowds meaningless
noise remains. It is
also sometimes known
as peas and carrots
(directors seem far too
health-conscious for our
taste) and, in the US,
walla walla.
Weirdly, the word
comes from the ancient
Greek rha barbaron,
literally meaning
foreign rhubarb.
Barbaron was Greek
for foreigner, because
foreigners sounded like
they just mumbled an
unintelligible bar bar bar.
Seems like history came
full circle, really.
When Napoleon was trying
to march through most
of Europe in 1806, he
created a trade blockade
aimed at paralysing British
commerce. The cost of
chocolate soared. Italian
chocolatiers added chopped
hazelnuts to maximise
their supply of chocolate,
creating a nutty paste
called gianduia. History
repeated itself in World War
II. To stave off rationing,
an Italian pastry maker
created hazelnut-y Pasta
Gianduja in 1946 in 1964
it was renamed Nutella.
One night in June,
1972, a security guard
making the rounds at the
Watergate ofce building,
headquarters of the US
Democratic National
Committee, noticed duct
tape on a door lock. The
tape was to keep the door
from latching. He called
the police, who arrested
several burglars planning to
steal documents and install
listening devices. The men
were linked to the White
House, and the scandal
caused Richard Nixon
to resign the only US
president ever to do so.
As the story goes, when
US soldiers, nicknamed
GI (General Infantry) Joes,
liberated Italy in 1943,
they were unused to the
strength of local coffee and
hence diluted espresso with
water. Horried baristas
dubbed the abomination
an Americano. Its also
thought to be where we
get the term cup of joe.
Oxforddictionaries.com
however says Americano
dates to the 1970s, and
is American Spanish for
American (coffee).
US SOLDIERS
+
WATER
=
AMERICANO
COFFEE
DUCT TAPE
+
SECURITY GUARD
=
WATERGATE
SCANDAL
NAPOLEON
+
HITLER
=
INVENTION
OF NUTELLA
I
M
A
G
E
S
:

K
O
B
A
L
/

T
H
E

P
I
C
T
U
R
E

D
E
S
K
/

A
F
P

(
C
L
O
C
K
W
O
R
K

O
R
A
N
G
E
)
;

C
H
R
I
S

E
D
S
E
R

A
T

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
R
O
O
M
.C
O
M
.A
U

(
C
L
E
O
P
A
T
R
A

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
)
VANITY TALK
HISTORY
DCM: Greetings, Cleopatra VII Philopator! It is
a pleasure to meet with one of the most famous
Egyptians in all of history though youre not
really Egyptian, are you?
Cleopatra: Please, call me Cleo. Youre right,
my family was ethnically Greek. We ruled in
Alexandria, and were descended from one of
Alexander the Greats generals.
DCM: How many languages did you speak?
Cleopatra: If you believe the historian Plutarch,
a total of eight. I dabbled with African tongues,
Hebrew, Aramaic, and I was the one of the few
rulers of that era to actually speak Egyptian.
DCM: Plutarch also noted that your beauty
was in itself not altogether incomparable.
Although he added you had an irresistible
charm and your presence, combined with
the persuasiveness of your discourse had
something stimulating about it. There was
a sweetness also in the tones of your voice.
Basically, you were a charmer?
Cleopatra: You tell me, handsome.
DCM: Teehee! I mean, whatever.
Cleopatra: Youre cute when you blush. See,
seduction was how I stayed alive. At the time
I met Julius Caesar, who was then 52, I was a
21-year-old outlaw in my own country, hunted
by my younger brother, who was in power at
the time. I was smuggled into a meeting with
Caesar in a bedroll it was either, I captivate
him immediately, or risk death.
DCM: You had a son by him Caesarion and
when he died, moved on to Marc Antony. You
even founded a drinking society with your new
beau called The Inimitable Livers. Wasnt there
a story about you and a pearl?
Cleopatra: Mmm. Plutarch wrote that I made
a bet with Antony that I could spend 10 million
sesterces on a single meal. And that I dropped
a pearl, the largest in the whole of history in
vinegar, which dissolved it.
DCM: And you gulped the whole thing down?
Well, scientists recently experimented with
vinegar and pearls and found it was possible,
with a crushed pearl and boiled vinegar, to
dissolve one in just 10 minutes. So... would you
say you have a thing for Romans? [Fumbles with
gladiator helmet behind desk]
Cleopatra: Tsk. It went quite a bit deeper than
that, you know. I had children by Antony too,
including beautiful twins: Alexander Helios
(sun) and Cleopatra Selene (moon).
DCM: Which seems like a good time note that
you, Cleopatra, lived nearer in time
to the rst moon landing in 1969 than
you did to the building of the Great Pyramid,
roughly 2560 BC. And yet we know so little
about you.
Cleopatra: Perhaps thats why Im still so
popular, hmm?
"CURSED BE
THE PESTY CAT
THAT URINATED
OVER THIS BOOK
DURING THE
NIGHT"
Quote
Unquote
P
E
A
R
L
S
O
F

W
IS
D
O
M
F
R
O
M
A
Q
U
E
E
N
If you wanted to woo Cleopatra, you
could do worse than recite a few lines
from this ancient Egyptian love song,
proof that words of seduction do not
dim over three thousand years:
l Love of you is mixed deep in my vitals,
l Like water stirred into our for bread,
l Like simples compound in a sweet-tasting drug,
l Like pastry and honey mixed to perfection
Unknown scribe
Circa 1420
Last year we shared a
historians charming shot
of a medieval manuscript,
desecrated by a four-footed
end. A cat had trod its inky
feet onto the pages, leaving
pawprints that have stood
the test of time. Around the
same time a Dutch scribe
was similarly plagued, when
he found his pages had been
urinated on by a full-bladdered
feline. In response, the enraged
scribe drew a surprisingly
unskilful likeness of the cat
and scribbled a curse in Latin:
Confundatur pessimus cattus
qui minxit super librum istum
in nocte. He also penned a
warning that translates to:
And beware well not to leave
open books at night where cats
can come.
From handheld calculators to calming efects of Prozac,
this was the year that drove many up the wall
Inventions
as equations
Wouldnt think commonplace
products to have such profound
associations would you?
IN CONVERSATION WITH...
Cleopatra
25
MAY 2014
24
WEIRD COMBOS
HISTORY
THE YEAR THAT WAS: 1972
Apollo 17 marked the
last time man walked
on the Moon. It has
lain untouched by a
human being for 42
years. The song Long-
Haired Lover From
Liverpool spent ve
weeks at the top of the
UK charts. Creepily, it
is sung by nine-year-old
Jimmy Osmond, the
youngest artist ever to
reach #1 and makes
us want to chew our
own ears of. Dont
listen to it. The rst
handheld calculator,
the chunky HP-35, went
on sale for a whopping
US$395 (US$2,100
in 2012 dollars), and
weighed almost as much
as an adult human
heart. Prozac was
discovered. It remains
the worlds best-selling
antidepressant, some
form of which is taken
by an estimated 10
percent of people in the
US and Europe. The
United States returned
the island of Okinawa,
which it had overseen
since 1945, to Japan.
An audience survey
revealed that Dr Who
was seen as one of the
most violent shows
on UK television. The
Chandka Forest area
in Odisha was hit by
droughts and heatwaves
so severe that herds
of elephants went
mad, tearing through
several villages and
trampling 24 people to
death. Film releases
in this year included
The Godfather, A
Clockwork Orange (in
the US) and Frenzy.
"Rhubarb Rhubarb"
Maybe its just us, but
DCM would rather
nibble on hot buttered
cardboard than a plate
of rhubarb, which we
think is as tasteless as
laughing at a funeral.
Luckily, rhubarb has a
use or at least, the
word does.
In the early days of
lm and radio, directors
would encourage extras
to mutter the word
over and over. The
effect was a pleasing,
crowd-like rumble; a
background bla-bla-
bla. Its less popular
now, but the term
rhubarb rhubarb for
a crowds meaningless
noise remains. It is
also sometimes known
as peas and carrots
(directors seem far too
health-conscious for our
taste) and, in the US,
walla walla.
Weirdly, the word
comes from the ancient
Greek rha barbaron,
literally meaning
foreign rhubarb.
Barbaron was Greek
for foreigner, because
foreigners sounded like
they just mumbled an
unintelligible bar bar bar.
Seems like history came
full circle, really.
When Napoleon was trying
to march through most
of Europe in 1806, he
created a trade blockade
aimed at paralysing British
commerce. The cost of
chocolate soared. Italian
chocolatiers added chopped
hazelnuts to maximise
their supply of chocolate,
creating a nutty paste
called gianduia. History
repeated itself in World War
II. To stave off rationing,
an Italian pastry maker
created hazelnut-y Pasta
Gianduja in 1946 in 1964
it was renamed Nutella.
One night in June,
1972, a security guard
making the rounds at the
Watergate ofce building,
headquarters of the US
Democratic National
Committee, noticed duct
tape on a door lock. The
tape was to keep the door
from latching. He called
the police, who arrested
several burglars planning to
steal documents and install
listening devices. The men
were linked to the White
House, and the scandal
caused Richard Nixon
to resign the only US
president ever to do so.
As the story goes, when
US soldiers, nicknamed
GI (General Infantry) Joes,
liberated Italy in 1943,
they were unused to the
strength of local coffee and
hence diluted espresso with
water. Horried baristas
dubbed the abomination
an Americano. Its also
thought to be where we
get the term cup of joe.
Oxforddictionaries.com
however says Americano
dates to the 1970s, and
is American Spanish for
American (coffee).
US SOLDIERS
+
WATER
=
AMERICANO
COFFEE
DUCT TAPE
+
SECURITY GUARD
=
WATERGATE
SCANDAL
NAPOLEON
+
HITLER
=
INVENTION
OF NUTELLA
I
M
A
G
E
S
:

K
O
B
A
L
/

T
H
E

P
I
C
T
U
R
E

D
E
S
K
/

A
F
P

(
C
L
O
C
K
W
O
R
K

O
R
A
N
G
E
)
;

C
H
R
I
S

E
D
S
E
R

A
T

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
R
O
O
M
.C
O
M
.A
U

(
C
L
E
O
P
A
T
R
A

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
)
VANITY TALK
HISTORY
DCM: Greetings, Cleopatra VII Philopator! It is
a pleasure to meet with one of the most famous
Egyptians in all of history though youre not
really Egyptian, are you?
Cleopatra: Please, call me Cleo. Youre right,
my family was ethnically Greek. We ruled in
Alexandria, and were descended from one of
Alexander the Greats generals.
DCM: How many languages did you speak?
Cleopatra: If you believe the historian Plutarch,
a total of eight. I dabbled with African tongues,
Hebrew, Aramaic, and I was the one of the few
rulers of that era to actually speak Egyptian.
DCM: Plutarch also noted that your beauty
was in itself not altogether incomparable.
Although he added you had an irresistible
charm and your presence, combined with
the persuasiveness of your discourse had
something stimulating about it. There was
a sweetness also in the tones of your voice.
Basically, you were a charmer?
Cleopatra: You tell me, handsome.
DCM: Teehee! I mean, whatever.
Cleopatra: Youre cute when you blush. See,
seduction was how I stayed alive. At the time
I met Julius Caesar, who was then 52, I was a
21-year-old outlaw in my own country, hunted
by my younger brother, who was in power at
the time. I was smuggled into a meeting with
Caesar in a bedroll it was either, I captivate
him immediately, or risk death.
DCM: You had a son by him Caesarion and
when he died, moved on to Marc Antony. You
even founded a drinking society with your new
beau called The Inimitable Livers. Wasnt there
a story about you and a pearl?
Cleopatra: Mmm. Plutarch wrote that I made
a bet with Antony that I could spend 10 million
sesterces on a single meal. And that I dropped
a pearl, the largest in the whole of history in
vinegar, which dissolved it.
DCM: And you gulped the whole thing down?
Well, scientists recently experimented with
vinegar and pearls and found it was possible,
with a crushed pearl and boiled vinegar, to
dissolve one in just 10 minutes. So... would you
say you have a thing for Romans? [Fumbles with
gladiator helmet behind desk]
Cleopatra: Tsk. It went quite a bit deeper than
that, you know. I had children by Antony too,
including beautiful twins: Alexander Helios
(sun) and Cleopatra Selene (moon).
DCM: Which seems like a good time note that
you, Cleopatra, lived nearer in time
to the rst moon landing in 1969 than
you did to the building of the Great Pyramid,
roughly 2560 BC. And yet we know so little
about you.
Cleopatra: Perhaps thats why Im still so
popular, hmm?
"CURSED BE
THE PESTY CAT
THAT URINATED
OVER THIS BOOK
DURING THE
NIGHT"
Quote
Unquote
P
E
A
R
L
S
O
F

W
IS
D
O
M
F
R
O
M
A
Q
U
E
E
N
If you wanted to woo Cleopatra, you
could do worse than recite a few lines
from this ancient Egyptian love song,
proof that words of seduction do not
dim over three thousand years:
l Love of you is mixed deep in my vitals,
l Like water stirred into our for bread,
l Like simples compound in a sweet-tasting drug,
l Like pastry and honey mixed to perfection
Unknown scribe
Circa 1420
Last year we shared a
historians charming shot
of a medieval manuscript,
desecrated by a four-footed
end. A cat had trod its inky
feet onto the pages, leaving
pawprints that have stood
the test of time. Around the
same time a Dutch scribe
was similarly plagued, when
he found his pages had been
urinated on by a full-bladdered
feline. In response, the enraged
scribe drew a surprisingly
unskilful likeness of the cat
and scribbled a curse in Latin:
Confundatur pessimus cattus
qui minxit super librum istum
in nocte. He also penned a
warning that translates to:
And beware well not to leave
open books at night where cats
can come.
From handheld calculators to calming efects of Prozac,
this was the year that drove many up the wall
Inventions
as equations
Wouldnt think commonplace
products to have such profound
associations would you?
IN CONVERSATION WITH...
Cleopatra
26
NEWS
WEIRD COMBOS
OBSESSIONS
HAPPY MEALS
Hedgehog Saviours
In 2006 the company redesigned the McFlurry
container after learning that inquisitive
hedgehogs were getting their heads caught in
the lid, causing them to starve to death.
Sick in the City? Odd travel
behaviour interpreted
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
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Y

C
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A
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O
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U
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I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D

(
B
U
S
T
E
D
!
)

I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
S
:

B
E
N

M
O
U
N
S
E
Y
STOCKHOLM
SYNDROME Wherein
prisoners bond with their
captors. Coined in 1973,
after a botched bank
robbery turned into a
six-day hostage standoff
in Stockholm. After
the Norrmalmstorg
Robbery, many of the
hostages defended the
robbers, and one of the
women even became
close friends with her
captor. An urban legend
has it that they became
married, but this could
be a mistranslation of
Swedish articles which
noted the couple were
engagerat in each other,
which can mean to be
interested, rather than
frlovad, which means
engaged to be married.
Prevalence The FBI
estimates 27 percent of
hostages taken in the
US have some form of
Stockholm syndrome.
PARIS SYNDROME
Coined in 1986, after
psychiatrists noted the
strangely high number
of Japanese tourists
who would visit the
city and sustain acute
culture shock. The
symptoms, which include
dizziness, paranoia,
feelings of persecution,
and hallucinations, are
thought to stem from the
idealised visions many
Japanese have of Paris,
as well as a signicant
language barrier.
Prevalence Speaking
to the Guardian in 2006,
an employee at the
Japanese embassy in
Paris noted that there
are around 20 cases a
year and it has
been happening for
several years.
THREE MORE SYNDROMES
JERUSALEM SYNDROME
(Real) Wherein
visitors are overcome by
the citys religious relics
and begin to think and
behave as if they are a
religious character
FLORENCE SYNDROME
(Real) Wherein visitors
are overcome by the
beauty of Florence.
Similar symptoms to
those experienced in
Paris syndrome
LONDON SYNDROME
(Fake) Wherein visitors
to the city queue politely
whilst complaining about
the weather in what they
believe to be a proper
British accent
As one of the worlds biggest
brands, McDonalds has often been
criticised as being unhealthy or
unethical. But the Golden Arches
have done some good deeds too.
Cheap Calories
Stephen Dubner, an economist and one of the
authors of hit book Freakonomics, recently
called the McDonalds double cheeseburger
the cheapest, most nutritious food in human
history. A New York Post columnist agreed,
asking, Where else but McDonalds can poor
people obtain so many calories per dollar?
Bathroom Oases
Where did Occupy Wall Street protestors go to
the bathroom when they started demonstrating
in 2011? Burger King said they had to make a
purchase if they wanted relief. McDonalds let
people wee for free.
TEA IS BELOVED GLOBALLY, BUT PERHAPS NOWHERE
MORE SO THAN IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. A PRIME
EXAMPLE IS A PHENOMENON KNOWN AS TELEVISION
PICKUP, WHICH AFFECTS THE UK NATIONAL GRIDS
ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION. THE GRIDS OFFICIAL
WEBSITE SUMS IT UP AS THE HUGE SURGE IN
DEMAND FOR ELECTRICITY AS TV VIEWERS GET
OUT OF THEIR SEATS, SWITCH ON LIGHTS AND BOIL
KETTLES FOR A CUPPA. A CUP OF TEA, THAT IS. A
TYPICAL SURGE CAN CALL FOR AN EXTRA 200 TO 800
MEGAWATTS OF ELECTRICAL USAGE, THOUGH THAT'S
A DROP IN THE BUCKET. THE NATIONAL GRID NOTES
THAT THE BIGGEST EVER TV PICKUP WHICH WE
MEASURE AS A KETTLE COUNT WAS FOLLOWING
THE PENALTY SHOOT-OUT AT THE END OF THE 1990
WORLD CUP SEMI-FINAL BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
WEST GERMANY. ACCORDING TO THE GRID, AFTER
THE NAIL-BITING YET PAINFULLY UNSUCCESSFUL
PENALTY SHOOT-OUT, DEMAND SOARED BY 2,800
MEGAWATTS. THAT'S EQUIVALENT TO 1.12 MILLION
KETTLES BREWING A CUPPA, ALL AT ONCE.
Twin passions:
The soccer and tea-break nexus
28
29
MAY 2014
FEATURES
30
42
70
58
PAGE 30 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE
ARTISTS LEAVE CHINESENESS BEHIND
PAGE 42 HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING
FORGERY IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR ART
PAGE 58 WHY WE LOVE LISTS AND HOW
THEY FORMAT OUR THOUGHTS
PAGE 70 HOW TO SAVE THE MOST
COVETED CONTRABANDTHE RHINO!
PAGE 84 MEET THE FORMER NAVY SEAL
WHO TAKES ON EXTREME ESCAPES
84
28
29
MAY 2014
FEATURES
30
42
70
58
PAGE 30 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE
ARTISTS LEAVE CHINESENESS BEHIND
PAGE 42 HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING
FORGERY IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR ART
PAGE 58 WHY WE LOVE LISTS AND HOW
THEY FORMAT OUR THOUGHTS
PAGE 70 HOW TO SAVE THE MOST
COVETED CONTRABANDTHE RHINO!
PAGE 84 MEET THE FORMER NAVY SEAL
WHO TAKES ON EXTREME ESCAPES
84
30
31
MAY 2014
CHINESE ART
THE NEW KID
ON THE BLOCK
ART TALK
PART I
DURING ONE OF THE HOTTEST RECORDED
SUMMERS IN CHINA, A DISCOVERY CHANNEL TEAM
TAPPED INTO THE NEW REVOLUTION HAPPENING
IN CHINESE ART: INTERPRETED IN A FOUR PART
SERIES THROUGH THE EYES OF FOUR LOCAL
MODERN ARTISTS. LUKE CLARK CAUGHT UP WITH
SERIES PRESENTER DR AGNES HSU
ZHANG HUAN AND HIS
2011 SCULPTURE
Q CONFUCIUS NUMBER
2, WHICH IS MADE OF
SILICONE, STEEL, CARBON
FIBRE AND ACRYLIC
P
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O
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30
31
MAY 2014
CHINESE ART
THE NEW KID
ON THE BLOCK
ART TALK
PART I
DURING ONE OF THE HOTTEST RECORDED
SUMMERS IN CHINA, A DISCOVERY CHANNEL TEAM
TAPPED INTO THE NEW REVOLUTION HAPPENING
IN CHINESE ART: INTERPRETED IN A FOUR PART
SERIES THROUGH THE EYES OF FOUR LOCAL
MODERN ARTISTS. LUKE CLARK CAUGHT UP WITH
SERIES PRESENTER DR AGNES HSU
ZHANG HUAN AND HIS
2011 SCULPTURE
Q CONFUCIUS NUMBER
2, WHICH IS MADE OF
SILICONE, STEEL, CARBON
FIBRE AND ACRYLIC
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
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A
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N
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L

C
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A
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I
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N
S
,
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32
33
MAY 2014
raversing the globe to
Taiwan, China, France, the
United States and the United
Kingdom, the four-part
Discovery Channel production
Chineseness proles four
modern artists living in the
eye of this storm. Entering
the world of contemporary
Chinese artists Yang Chihung,
Li Chen, Zhang Huan and Xu
Bing, the show delves beneath
the surface of this recent
phenomenon, and examines
the changing notion of
identity, as expressed by
some of the cultures new
creative leaders.
Born and raised in Taipei,
Taiwan, Dr Agnes Hsu
(pictured far right) is an
archaeologist and art historian
based in New York City, in the
United States, who has advised
UNESCO and the Cultural
Property Advisory Committee,
and published works on
Chinese art and culture. For
her, as the host of the show,
what began as a front-person
role in a documentary series
looking into the worlds of four
artists, eventually became a
labour of love. By the nal
episodes, I felt like I gave
birth, she describes over the
phone from her adopted
In 2011, sales of artworks by
renowned Chinese masters
appeared set to propel China ahead
of the United States as the worlds
biggest art and auction market.
Three years on, some of the initial
shine has faded, as doubts emerge
in the edgling market about the
authenticity of some prominent
artworks. A number of frightened
buyers have even defaulted on
auction payments. Yet, despite
fears of a bubble burst, interest
and attention has remained strong
leaving no doubt that the world
has ofcially woken up to both,
the Chinese art and its talented
creators.
CHINESENESS GIVES
THE AUDIENCE NOT
JUST AN OVERVIEW OF
THE ARTIST'S WORK,
BUT A PEEK INTO
THEIR PROCESS OF
CREATING ART
P
H
O
T
O
S
:
D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

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G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
ART TALK
32
33
MAY 2014
raversing the globe to
Taiwan, China, France, the
United States and the United
Kingdom, the four-part
Discovery Channel production
Chineseness proles four
modern artists living in the
eye of this storm. Entering
the world of contemporary
Chinese artists Yang Chihung,
Li Chen, Zhang Huan and Xu
Bing, the show delves beneath
the surface of this recent
phenomenon, and examines
the changing notion of
identity, as expressed by
some of the cultures new
creative leaders.
Born and raised in Taipei,
Taiwan, Dr Agnes Hsu
(pictured far right) is an
archaeologist and art historian
based in New York City, in the
United States, who has advised
UNESCO and the Cultural
Property Advisory Committee,
and published works on
Chinese art and culture. For
her, as the host of the show,
what began as a front-person
role in a documentary series
looking into the worlds of four
artists, eventually became a
labour of love. By the nal
episodes, I felt like I gave
birth, she describes over the
phone from her adopted
In 2011, sales of artworks by
renowned Chinese masters
appeared set to propel China ahead
of the United States as the worlds
biggest art and auction market.
Three years on, some of the initial
shine has faded, as doubts emerge
in the edgling market about the
authenticity of some prominent
artworks. A number of frightened
buyers have even defaulted on
auction payments. Yet, despite
fears of a bubble burst, interest
and attention has remained strong
leaving no doubt that the world
has ofcially woken up to both,
the Chinese art and its talented
creators.
CHINESENESS GIVES
THE AUDIENCE NOT
JUST AN OVERVIEW OF
THE ARTIST'S WORK,
BUT A PEEK INTO
THEIR PROCESS OF
CREATING ART
P
H
O
T
O
S
:
D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
ART TALK
34
35
MAY 2014
home of New York City. So
Im happy to talk about my
child. In turn, DCM promised
to take extra care of Hsus
creative ofspring, as we set of
into the maelstrom of struggle,
commerce and soaring
temperatures that combined
to become the new series.
Thanks for joining us,
Agnes. Having explored
the lives and inner worlds
of these four artists, what
would you say shone
through the most for you
from the way each of them
spoke about their art, and
interpreted their world?
Let me tell you rst, the
series was lmed in the hottest
summer in Asia, and so it was
extremely difcult to achieve,
with the heat we experienced.
But when I nally saw it, it felt
like a beautiful child and Im
sure the Discovery team felt
the same way too.
Every single one of these
four artists expressed to us
what they feel beauty is. And
not beauty in a Chinese sense,
or beauty from a gender-
driven perspective. Despite its
articial ugliness, the artists
all see this innate purity to
the world. After spending a
week with each one of them,
YANG CHIHUNG
Endowed with the ambition to become a Western-
style painter early in his life, Taiwan-born artist Yang
Chihung gained his footing in the competitive New
York art scene in the 1980s. However, a sprouted
seed brought from home inspired a new style and
triggered the Chinese soul inside of him. From
Taiwan to New York, from Venice to Shanghai, the
trajectory of Yangs abstract expressionism resonates
with that of the rising Chinese contemporary art
scene. His is a journey to the West and back.
EPISODE GUIDE
ZHANG HUAN
In the past decade, the world has witnessed
Chinas spectacular economic growth. But subtle
changes beneath the surface are also taking place,
and contemporary artist Zhang Huan represents
the undercurrent. This episode explores how he
uses art to convey the countrys journey towards
modernisation, and as a tool to liberate the human
soul. From his world-famous performance art, to
astonishing sculptures and paintings that incorporate
incense ash, Zhangs works transcend borders and
are no longer just viewed as art. His unconventional
approach incorporates ancient Chinese traditions
and beliefs such as Confucianism, with the purpose
of reconnecting people to their heritage, to bridge a
spiritual and cultural void that he believes has emerged
with the countrys dramatic evolution into a 21
st
-century
economic powerhouse.
YANG CHIHUNG'S WORKS
ARE AN ENGAGING
MIX OF EASTERN AND
WESTERN INFLUENCES
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
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Y

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I
O
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,
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C
.
A
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L

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G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
THE
ARTISTS ARE
SURROUNDED
BY SO MANY
PEOPLE
INCLUDING
SYCOPHANTS
AND THOSE
WHO WILL
STIR UP
CONTROVERSIES,
JUST TO MAKE
THE ART SELL
HIGHER AND
HIGHER AT THE
NEXT AUCTION.
EACH EPISODE OF CHINESENESS LOOKS AT THE
STORY OF ONE PROMINENT ARTIST. HERES A
SUMMARY OF EACH SHOW
ART TALK
34
35
MAY 2014
home of New York City. So
Im happy to talk about my
child. In turn, DCM promised
to take extra care of Hsus
creative ofspring, as we set of
into the maelstrom of struggle,
commerce and soaring
temperatures that combined
to become the new series.
Thanks for joining us,
Agnes. Having explored
the lives and inner worlds
of these four artists, what
would you say shone
through the most for you
from the way each of them
spoke about their art, and
interpreted their world?
Let me tell you rst, the
series was lmed in the hottest
summer in Asia, and so it was
extremely difcult to achieve,
with the heat we experienced.
But when I nally saw it, it felt
like a beautiful child and Im
sure the Discovery team felt
the same way too.
Every single one of these
four artists expressed to us
what they feel beauty is. And
not beauty in a Chinese sense,
or beauty from a gender-
driven perspective. Despite its
articial ugliness, the artists
all see this innate purity to
the world. After spending a
week with each one of them,
YANG CHIHUNG
Endowed with the ambition to become a Western-
style painter early in his life, Taiwan-born artist Yang
Chihung gained his footing in the competitive New
York art scene in the 1980s. However, a sprouted
seed brought from home inspired a new style and
triggered the Chinese soul inside of him. From
Taiwan to New York, from Venice to Shanghai, the
trajectory of Yangs abstract expressionism resonates
with that of the rising Chinese contemporary art
scene. His is a journey to the West and back.
EPISODE GUIDE
ZHANG HUAN
In the past decade, the world has witnessed
Chinas spectacular economic growth. But subtle
changes beneath the surface are also taking place,
and contemporary artist Zhang Huan represents
the undercurrent. This episode explores how he
uses art to convey the countrys journey towards
modernisation, and as a tool to liberate the human
soul. From his world-famous performance art, to
astonishing sculptures and paintings that incorporate
incense ash, Zhangs works transcend borders and
are no longer just viewed as art. His unconventional
approach incorporates ancient Chinese traditions
and beliefs such as Confucianism, with the purpose
of reconnecting people to their heritage, to bridge a
spiritual and cultural void that he believes has emerged
with the countrys dramatic evolution into a 21
st
-century
economic powerhouse.
YANG CHIHUNG'S WORKS
ARE AN ENGAGING
MIX OF EASTERN AND
WESTERN INFLUENCES
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
THE
ARTISTS ARE
SURROUNDED
BY SO MANY
PEOPLE
INCLUDING
SYCOPHANTS
AND THOSE
WHO WILL
STIR UP
CONTROVERSIES,
JUST TO MAKE
THE ART SELL
HIGHER AND
HIGHER AT THE
NEXT AUCTION.
EACH EPISODE OF CHINESENESS LOOKS AT THE
STORY OF ONE PROMINENT ARTIST. HERES A
SUMMARY OF EACH SHOW
ART TALK
36
37
MAY 2014
P
H
O
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O
:

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I
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A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
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C
.
A
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L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
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S
E
R
V
E
D
ZHANG HUAN'S 2008
SCULPTURE, GIANT NO.1, IS
MASSIVE, MEASURING 4.2
METRES WIDE, NINE METRES
IN LENGTH, AND STRETCHING
4.2 METRES HIGH
then going through the editing
process of doing voice-overs
and seeing the edited versions
many times over, what I think
we all realised, was that these
artists see this vision of utopia
which gives all of us a sense
of hope.

After all that efort, that
must have been very special.
It was denitely poignant.
We were lming in extreme
conditions when we were
in one of the artists studios,
it was literally 46 degrees
Celsius inside; he has an
actual furnace in there.
Yet while it was very painful
at times, it also helped us
to really understand their
struggles.
Being an artist is not all
about the receptions, the
gallery openings and the
fame they enjoy. Each one of
our four artists has a story of
struggle. But for each one of
them, speaking about their
work also gave them courage,
to continue on their path.
Of course, they recognise
that their utopian world may
not actually exist, but still,
they just wont give it up. And
its that which makes you
realise how important these
stories are. Theyre not just
stories about artists, theyre
stories about mankind.
There seems to now be
far more of a playfulness
and sense of daring to
Chinese art. Whether it's the
inuence of performance art,
the brightness of the hues
and the experimentation
with materials and mediums,
this new generation of
Chinese artists seems to have
lost some of the austerity
and introspection of the past.
Is this an exciting time for
contemporary Chinese art?
Its absolutely exciting, but
it is a double-edged sword. It is
also a dangerous time, because
the industry is commercialised
to the ultimate degree, and
now the world is taking notice.
The artists are surrounded by
so many people including
sycophants and those who will
stir up controversies, just to
make the art sell higher and
higher at the next auction.
As I was lming, I felt like
I was in the eye of a storm.
There I was, knowing what
was happening and Im
watching it, trying to tell
the story of the storm. I felt
a bit like a meteorologist in
the middle of it all, where
everything seems peaceful
and glorious and exciting,
and theres this adrenaline
pumping. Its on one hand the
most terrifying thing, and on
the other hand, ultimately a
natural and beautiful thing to
watch like an avalanche or a
hurricane. Tragic, yet nature
at its nest.
So on one hand, yes, were
in the middle of a storm
of all these styles, all these
interpretations all this
evolution, within a revolution.
On the other hand, I hope
that we dont lose our way, and
that we dont lose sight of the
essence of humanity,
and allow commercialism to
take over.
Recent times in the art
world have obviously been
greatly inuenced by both
commerce and politics. In
your opinion, how much are
evolution, the wanting to
push forward I think were
just like these artists, were all
hoping for that utopia.
I mean, compared to 20
years ago, were pretty much
in a utopia. And imagine those
people who lived through the
Cultural Revolution, or those
who were oppressed in Taiwan
at the time too. In comparison
to that, despite problems that
still exist, we are pretty much
in a utopia now.
Simply not being hungry
can in itself be a utopia.
Exactly. One of the questions
I asked every artist was what
utopia meant to them. But
youd be surprised, not a single
one of them answered, Not
being hungry. [Laughs] And
yet, they all had experienced
hunger as an artist, thats
part of what you experience.
So yes, weve come very far,
though theres still a great
distance to go.

The show feels very
timely, as you say. When
you look at the changes that
this identity this sense of
"Chineseness" has gone
through in the past century,
it has been a truly wild ride.
Is that something that comes
through in the show? And is
there a sense also of arrival?
What is so interesting about
these artists is that theyre all
very condent. And I think
it is that condence that
distinguishes them from other
artists. Theyre successful
because they are condent.
And it is that condence
that also answers your
question about identity. I dont
think they are confused. One
of the rst questions I asked
each artist was, do you see
yourself as a Chinese artist?
And every single one of them
told me, they see themselves
as an artist. In my opinion,
their identity is not Chinese,
per se. Their true identity is as
a universal artist and from
EACH ONE OF
THEM TOLD ME
THAT THEY SEE
THEMSELVES
AS ARTISTS. I
THINK THEIR
IDENTITY IS NOT
CHINESE PER
SE. THEIR TRUE
IDENTITY IS AS
AN UNIVERSAL
ARTIST.
ART TALK
36
37
MAY 2014
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
ZHANG HUAN'S 2008
SCULPTURE, GIANT NO.1, IS
MASSIVE, MEASURING 4.2
METRES WIDE, NINE METRES
IN LENGTH, AND STRETCHING
4.2 METRES HIGH
then going through the editing
process of doing voice-overs
and seeing the edited versions
many times over, what I think
we all realised, was that these
artists see this vision of utopia
which gives all of us a sense
of hope.

After all that efort, that
must have been very special.
It was denitely poignant.
We were lming in extreme
conditions when we were
in one of the artists studios,
it was literally 46 degrees
Celsius inside; he has an
actual furnace in there.
Yet while it was very painful
at times, it also helped us
to really understand their
struggles.
Being an artist is not all
about the receptions, the
gallery openings and the
fame they enjoy. Each one of
our four artists has a story of
struggle. But for each one of
them, speaking about their
work also gave them courage,
to continue on their path.
Of course, they recognise
that their utopian world may
not actually exist, but still,
they just wont give it up. And
its that which makes you
realise how important these
stories are. Theyre not just
stories about artists, theyre
stories about mankind.
There seems to now be
far more of a playfulness
and sense of daring to
Chinese art. Whether it's the
inuence of performance art,
the brightness of the hues
and the experimentation
with materials and mediums,
this new generation of
Chinese artists seems to have
lost some of the austerity
and introspection of the past.
Is this an exciting time for
contemporary Chinese art?
Its absolutely exciting, but
it is a double-edged sword. It is
also a dangerous time, because
the industry is commercialised
to the ultimate degree, and
now the world is taking notice.
The artists are surrounded by
so many people including
sycophants and those who will
stir up controversies, just to
make the art sell higher and
higher at the next auction.
As I was lming, I felt like
I was in the eye of a storm.
There I was, knowing what
was happening and Im
watching it, trying to tell
the story of the storm. I felt
a bit like a meteorologist in
the middle of it all, where
everything seems peaceful
and glorious and exciting,
and theres this adrenaline
pumping. Its on one hand the
most terrifying thing, and on
the other hand, ultimately a
natural and beautiful thing to
watch like an avalanche or a
hurricane. Tragic, yet nature
at its nest.
So on one hand, yes, were
in the middle of a storm
of all these styles, all these
interpretations all this
evolution, within a revolution.
On the other hand, I hope
that we dont lose our way, and
that we dont lose sight of the
essence of humanity,
and allow commercialism to
take over.
Recent times in the art
world have obviously been
greatly inuenced by both
commerce and politics. In
your opinion, how much are
evolution, the wanting to
push forward I think were
just like these artists, were all
hoping for that utopia.
I mean, compared to 20
years ago, were pretty much
in a utopia. And imagine those
people who lived through the
Cultural Revolution, or those
who were oppressed in Taiwan
at the time too. In comparison
to that, despite problems that
still exist, we are pretty much
in a utopia now.
Simply not being hungry
can in itself be a utopia.
Exactly. One of the questions
I asked every artist was what
utopia meant to them. But
youd be surprised, not a single
one of them answered, Not
being hungry. [Laughs] And
yet, they all had experienced
hunger as an artist, thats
part of what you experience.
So yes, weve come very far,
though theres still a great
distance to go.

The show feels very
timely, as you say. When
you look at the changes that
this identity this sense of
"Chineseness" has gone
through in the past century,
it has been a truly wild ride.
Is that something that comes
through in the show? And is
there a sense also of arrival?
What is so interesting about
these artists is that theyre all
very condent. And I think
it is that condence that
distinguishes them from other
artists. Theyre successful
because they are condent.
And it is that condence
that also answers your
question about identity. I dont
think they are confused. One
of the rst questions I asked
each artist was, do you see
yourself as a Chinese artist?
And every single one of them
told me, they see themselves
as an artist. In my opinion,
their identity is not Chinese,
per se. Their true identity is as
a universal artist and from
EACH ONE OF
THEM TOLD ME
THAT THEY SEE
THEMSELVES
AS ARTISTS. I
THINK THEIR
IDENTITY IS NOT
CHINESE PER
SE. THEIR TRUE
IDENTITY IS AS
AN UNIVERSAL
ARTIST.
ART TALK
38
39
MAY 2014
these forces a theme within
the art of these four artists
or a distraction from more
important themes? Thats a
hard question for me, because
Im a viewer of the art. Do I
think politics and commerce
play an important role in these
artists commercial success?
Yes. They are dened by the
rest of the world as Chinese
Artists, and Chinese art will
sell right now. However,
do I think these themes
dene their art, from their
perspective? No.
In the series, we touch a
little bit on their upbringing,
in the context of their creative
power. Obviously each artist
has his own story. You have
Yang Chihung, who really is
the rst bona de artist of
Chinese heritage to venture
to and live in Soho, New York
[in the United States], to
become a contemporary artist.
Not a contemporary Chinese
artist, but a contemporary
artist, painting in a completely
Western style. Sure, that is
political. Sure, he wanted to
have commercial success
but I dont think all of it was
driven by that.
The series also features
Zhang Huan and Xu Bing,
who both lived through
tumultuous times in China.
One is from a very poor
EAST MEETS
WEST
For most of the month of
September last year, 12 massive
sculptures produced by Li Chen
(pictured) decorated the famed Place
Vendme public square in Paris, France.
Characteristic of much of his artwork, the
sculptures featured traditional Chinese
ink lacquering, paired with delicate
touches of gold and silver leaf. Prior to
this exhibition, Li's work had never before
been displayed in France instead, his
artworks had been presented several
times in parts of Taiwan and China,
twice in Singapore, and once
each in Venice, Italy and the
US cities of New York
and Seattle.
village, and the other is from
Beijing, and whose father
was persecuted. Did politics
play an impetuous in shaping
who they are? Absolutely.
But is it expressed in their art,
does it dene who they are as
artists? I dont think so. Thats
my take, having spent time
with them.

Im fascinated by the
number of locations you
dealt with for this shoot,
covering the lives of two
artists born in Taiwan, and
two born in China. Given
quite recent history, it
must be remarkable now
to be able to go in and out
of each destination so
efortlessly. [Laughs] Well,
it was interesting for me. My
father is Shanghainese, my
mother is from Beijing, but I
was born and raised in Taipei,
Taiwan. Then I moved to the
United States and studied in
England and the US, and have
taught around the world. I do
think, as we always say in the
idiom, the world is getting
smaller and smaller. It was
rather astounding for me too,
because we lmed it all within
a very short period of time,
and I was travelling in and out
of Taiwan, and in and out of
China, in diferent locations.
And I had not been back to
Taiwan for 26 years.

My goodness. What was
that like for you? I was
astounded. In the Taiwan that
I had left as a child, people
couldnt comfortably talk
about politics. Then when I go
back to Taiwan now, because
I speak Mandarin, people are
amazed that I was born and
raised in Taiwan. Yet when I
go to China, they cant believe
Im from Taiwan as Im
perfectly comfortable being a
Chinese in China.
The commonality that
all Chinese share, I think, is
that we all take pride in what
has happened recently. The
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
DID POLITICS
PLAY AN
IMPETUOUS IN
SHAPING WHO
THEY ARE?
ABSOLUTELY.
BUT IS IT
EXPRESSED
IN THEIR ART,
DOES IT DEFINE
WHO THEY ARE
AS ARTISTS? I
DONT THINK SO.
ART TALK
38
39
MAY 2014
these forces a theme within
the art of these four artists
or a distraction from more
important themes? Thats a
hard question for me, because
Im a viewer of the art. Do I
think politics and commerce
play an important role in these
artists commercial success?
Yes. They are dened by the
rest of the world as Chinese
Artists, and Chinese art will
sell right now. However,
do I think these themes
dene their art, from their
perspective? No.
In the series, we touch a
little bit on their upbringing,
in the context of their creative
power. Obviously each artist
has his own story. You have
Yang Chihung, who really is
the rst bona de artist of
Chinese heritage to venture
to and live in Soho, New York
[in the United States], to
become a contemporary artist.
Not a contemporary Chinese
artist, but a contemporary
artist, painting in a completely
Western style. Sure, that is
political. Sure, he wanted to
have commercial success
but I dont think all of it was
driven by that.
The series also features
Zhang Huan and Xu Bing,
who both lived through
tumultuous times in China.
One is from a very poor
EAST MEETS
WEST
For most of the month of
September last year, 12 massive
sculptures produced by Li Chen
(pictured) decorated the famed Place
Vendme public square in Paris, France.
Characteristic of much of his artwork, the
sculptures featured traditional Chinese
ink lacquering, paired with delicate
touches of gold and silver leaf. Prior to
this exhibition, Li's work had never before
been displayed in France instead, his
artworks had been presented several
times in parts of Taiwan and China,
twice in Singapore, and once
each in Venice, Italy and the
US cities of New York
and Seattle.
village, and the other is from
Beijing, and whose father
was persecuted. Did politics
play an impetuous in shaping
who they are? Absolutely.
But is it expressed in their art,
does it dene who they are as
artists? I dont think so. Thats
my take, having spent time
with them.

Im fascinated by the
number of locations you
dealt with for this shoot,
covering the lives of two
artists born in Taiwan, and
two born in China. Given
quite recent history, it
must be remarkable now
to be able to go in and out
of each destination so
efortlessly. [Laughs] Well,
it was interesting for me. My
father is Shanghainese, my
mother is from Beijing, but I
was born and raised in Taipei,
Taiwan. Then I moved to the
United States and studied in
England and the US, and have
taught around the world. I do
think, as we always say in the
idiom, the world is getting
smaller and smaller. It was
rather astounding for me too,
because we lmed it all within
a very short period of time,
and I was travelling in and out
of Taiwan, and in and out of
China, in diferent locations.
And I had not been back to
Taiwan for 26 years.

My goodness. What was
that like for you? I was
astounded. In the Taiwan that
I had left as a child, people
couldnt comfortably talk
about politics. Then when I go
back to Taiwan now, because
I speak Mandarin, people are
amazed that I was born and
raised in Taiwan. Yet when I
go to China, they cant believe
Im from Taiwan as Im
perfectly comfortable being a
Chinese in China.
The commonality that
all Chinese share, I think, is
that we all take pride in what
has happened recently. The
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
DID POLITICS
PLAY AN
IMPETUOUS IN
SHAPING WHO
THEY ARE?
ABSOLUTELY.
BUT IS IT
EXPRESSED
IN THEIR ART,
DOES IT DEFINE
WHO THEY ARE
AS ARTISTS? I
DONT THINK SO.
ART TALK
40
41
MAY 2014
LI CHEN
In 1992, Li Chens statue Water-Moon Avalokitesvara,
which features a Buddha sitting on a oating moon,
changed the course of Chinese Buddhist sculpture.
Taking cues from Eastern religion and philosophy,
Li created a rich body of work in a uniquely Chinese
vocabulary, which has appealed to a wider audience.
Over 20 years after his ground breaking piece, Li Chen
exhibits his new works in Paris, the hotbed of Western
art. Will his work transcend cultural boundaries while
staying true to his Chinese heritage?
XU BING
The burgeoning success of Chinas economy has
trickled through the country in the form of tremendous
transformation within a span of just a few decades. The
rise of gleaming skyscrapers side by side with symbols
of ancient China mirrors the face lifts its culture has
been undergoing since Mao Zedongs revolution.
Born during the era of Chinas early socialist reforms,
Chinese artist Xu Bing embodies several of Maos
ideologies in his body of works. He strives to make
art accessible to the people, by playfully and artfully
upturning the Chinese script and aesthetics. Explore
the evolution of Chinas culture through this modern
artist, who has deconstructed Chinese culture without
losing the essence of its ancient wisdom.
EPISODE GUIDE
that starting point, they get
the source of condence to be
who they are. Which, in turn,
allows them to be Chinese.
So I think its actually the
reverse. Each of them starts
out as a universal artist,
which gives them the talent,
the condence, and the belief
in who they are. And this
relentless, fearless,
sometimes poverty-stricken
spirit is what gives them an
increased sense of condence
and identity.
I think this is a show about
spirit, about the zeitgeist of
our time. Not just as dened
by China, or by Chinese people
but a component of the
zeitgeist of the 21
st
century.
For you personally,
how has the notion of
Chineseness changed over
time? Particularly given your
family history and where
you live and work? That is
probably the hardest
question so far! Well, when I
rst came to the US, my rst
impression was: how come
they dont look like me? As
opposed to, why dont I look
like them? [Laughs] And in
some ways, Im probably a very
selsh person because I had
the complete cultural shock,
but I really thought, why dont
they look like me, why dont
they speak my language?
In some ways, that was very
Chinese-centric. Ive since
learned several languages,
including three dead
languages from the past, being
an archaeologist. So I literally
translate between the dead
and the living! [Laughs]
My personal journey, what
gave me condence, was my
scholarship. I stopped seeing
boundaries. The more that
I learned, the more that I P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
THE ART OF
WORDS
Xu Bing (pictured) is famous
for doing spectacular things
with calligraphy. Of particular
interest to English-speakers might
be his Square Word Calligraphy series,
which centres around English words
written to resemble Chinese characters.
He has also published a volume titled Book
from the Ground in 2012. In it, he recounts
a day in the life of a young man living in a
big city. Think this sounds a bit boring?
You may change your mind when you
realise he wrote the whole story
without actually putting down a
word. The entire tale is told
in icons or pictograms.
realised, well Im not even a
dot in this world, or in history.
Then as a teacher, I now bear
the additional responsibility
to transmit what I know so
that it will not die out. And so
that my students, and my own
children when I have them,
will have the ability to make
judgements for themselves.
My job is to pass that on, but
not to judge it for them.
I approached the series
with that same condence.
Im not an artist, but Im a
musician. And I think what
gave me the condence was
almost a lack of identity. I
dont subscribe to one group
or another when I lmed
this, all I wanted to do was lm
this from their perspective,
and for the viewer to come
away with his or her own take.
My interviewees, when you
ask them what they are, they
will say, Im just an artist. So
my own answer is, Im just an
archaeologist.
So in a sense, you're
a conduit for something
bigger? I am! We all are. We
are all just these dots and all
together, the dots make up the
universe. Thats how I feel.
I DONT
SUBSCRIBE TO
ANY GROUP
WHEN I FILMED
THIS, I WANTED
TO FILM IT
FROM THEIR
PERSPECTIVE,
AND LEAVE
IT FOR THE
VIEWER TO
HAVE HIS OR
HER OWN TAKE.
ART TALK
40
41
MAY 2014
LI CHEN
In 1992, Li Chens statue Water-Moon Avalokitesvara,
which features a Buddha sitting on a oating moon,
changed the course of Chinese Buddhist sculpture.
Taking cues from Eastern religion and philosophy,
Li created a rich body of work in a uniquely Chinese
vocabulary, which has appealed to a wider audience.
Over 20 years after his ground breaking piece, Li Chen
exhibits his new works in Paris, the hotbed of Western
art. Will his work transcend cultural boundaries while
staying true to his Chinese heritage?
XU BING
The burgeoning success of Chinas economy has
trickled through the country in the form of tremendous
transformation within a span of just a few decades. The
rise of gleaming skyscrapers side by side with symbols
of ancient China mirrors the face lifts its culture has
been undergoing since Mao Zedongs revolution.
Born during the era of Chinas early socialist reforms,
Chinese artist Xu Bing embodies several of Maos
ideologies in his body of works. He strives to make
art accessible to the people, by playfully and artfully
upturning the Chinese script and aesthetics. Explore
the evolution of Chinas culture through this modern
artist, who has deconstructed Chinese culture without
losing the essence of its ancient wisdom.
EPISODE GUIDE
that starting point, they get
the source of condence to be
who they are. Which, in turn,
allows them to be Chinese.
So I think its actually the
reverse. Each of them starts
out as a universal artist,
which gives them the talent,
the condence, and the belief
in who they are. And this
relentless, fearless,
sometimes poverty-stricken
spirit is what gives them an
increased sense of condence
and identity.
I think this is a show about
spirit, about the zeitgeist of
our time. Not just as dened
by China, or by Chinese people
but a component of the
zeitgeist of the 21
st
century.
For you personally,
how has the notion of
Chineseness changed over
time? Particularly given your
family history and where
you live and work? That is
probably the hardest
question so far! Well, when I
rst came to the US, my rst
impression was: how come
they dont look like me? As
opposed to, why dont I look
like them? [Laughs] And in
some ways, Im probably a very
selsh person because I had
the complete cultural shock,
but I really thought, why dont
they look like me, why dont
they speak my language?
In some ways, that was very
Chinese-centric. Ive since
learned several languages,
including three dead
languages from the past, being
an archaeologist. So I literally
translate between the dead
and the living! [Laughs]
My personal journey, what
gave me condence, was my
scholarship. I stopped seeing
boundaries. The more that
I learned, the more that I P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
THE ART OF
WORDS
Xu Bing (pictured) is famous
for doing spectacular things
with calligraphy. Of particular
interest to English-speakers might
be his Square Word Calligraphy series,
which centres around English words
written to resemble Chinese characters.
He has also published a volume titled Book
from the Ground in 2012. In it, he recounts
a day in the life of a young man living in a
big city. Think this sounds a bit boring?
You may change your mind when you
realise he wrote the whole story
without actually putting down a
word. The entire tale is told
in icons or pictograms.
realised, well Im not even a
dot in this world, or in history.
Then as a teacher, I now bear
the additional responsibility
to transmit what I know so
that it will not die out. And so
that my students, and my own
children when I have them,
will have the ability to make
judgements for themselves.
My job is to pass that on, but
not to judge it for them.
I approached the series
with that same condence.
Im not an artist, but Im a
musician. And I think what
gave me the condence was
almost a lack of identity. I
dont subscribe to one group
or another when I lmed
this, all I wanted to do was lm
this from their perspective,
and for the viewer to come
away with his or her own take.
My interviewees, when you
ask them what they are, they
will say, Im just an artist. So
my own answer is, Im just an
archaeologist.
So in a sense, you're
a conduit for something
bigger? I am! We all are. We
are all just these dots and all
together, the dots make up the
universe. Thats how I feel.
I DONT
SUBSCRIBE TO
ANY GROUP
WHEN I FILMED
THIS, I WANTED
TO FILM IT
FROM THEIR
PERSPECTIVE,
AND LEAVE
IT FOR THE
VIEWER TO
HAVE HIS OR
HER OWN TAKE.
ART TALK
COVER STORY
CRIMES
AGAINST
CREATIVITY
RECORD-HIGH PRICES
AND SOPHISTICATED
TOOLS TO REPLICATE
THE FINEST WORKS,
PUSHES THE ART WORLD
INTO A FIERCE WAVE OF
FAKES AND ROBBERIES.
THIEVES, FORGERS
AND DETECTIVES ALIKE
ARE USING SCIENTIFIC
TECHNIQUES AS PART OF
THEIR ARSENAL, AS THEY
BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY
IN THIS MULTIMILLION-
DOLLAR CRIME MARKET.
CAIN NUNNS WRITES
42
43
MAY 2014
P
H
O
T
O
:

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S
ART TALK
PART II
COVER STORY
CRIMES
AGAINST
CREATIVITY
RECORD-HIGH PRICES
AND SOPHISTICATED
TOOLS TO REPLICATE
THE FINEST WORKS,
PUSHES THE ART WORLD
INTO A FIERCE WAVE OF
FAKES AND ROBBERIES.
THIEVES, FORGERS
AND DETECTIVES ALIKE
ARE USING SCIENTIFIC
TECHNIQUES AS PART OF
THEIR ARSENAL, AS THEY
BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY
IN THIS MULTIMILLION-
DOLLAR CRIME MARKET.
CAIN NUNNS WRITES
42
43
MAY 2014
P
H
O
T
O
:

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S
ART TALK
PART II
44
45
MAY 2014
ALBERTO GIACOBETTI'S TROIS
HOMES QUI MARCHENT I,
WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE
WORTH 6.2 MILLION TO 8
MILLION (US$10 MILLION TO
US$13.3 MILLION), WENT ON
SALE IN FEBRUARY 2014 AT
CHRISTIE'S AUCTION HOUSE
oday, Driessen, 58, sits
stranded in paradise. His
estimated US$4.12 million
share of the US$10.99 million
haul that his gang supposedly
raked in for forgeries as the
lost work of Pablo Picassos
mate has long since gone. So
too has his family. All that
is left is a small caf on the
sun-kissed Thai island of Koh
Samui a palm- and ve-star
resort-laced playground of
the kingdoms east coast that
helped The Land of Smiles
welcome close to 27 million
tourists through the turnstiles
last year.
I received a notice to
appear. If I go back to Holland,
they might return me to
Germany, he tells Discovery
Channel Magazine. I like the
sun a lot more than the cold
though I know that much.
Driessens former colleagues
have already been locked up.
My wife and son left me here,
because I couldnt aford to
look after them. Ive been here
by myself.
Driessen has made the
island his home for the last
eight years, because he had to.
German authorities still want
to arrest the portly Dutchman
with the lock of silver hair.
People paid me not to attend
trial, he claims. They made
millions, that's why they
didn't want me there. They
asked me to make this and
that. Then we were supposed
to split the money. They sent
me to Thailand and paid all
of my bills, he notes. But of
course, they ended up getting
convicted.
The Germans believe
Driessen forged about 1,000
sculptures. The Arnhem
native and high school
dropout puts that gure at
closer to 1,300. Driessen
says that he spent over three
decades forging paintings and
sculptures. But none were as
economically and artistically
rewarding as the long, languid
gures that posthumously
made Giacometti the worlds
most expensive sculptor. I
loved making Giacomettis,.
While Giacometti, whose
famous face adorns the Swiss
100-franc banknote, and
whose L'Homme Qui Marche
I sold at Sotheby's in 2011
for US$104.3 million, was a
feverish worker, he was also
notorious for not keeping
track of how many pieces he
had actually created.
It was this opacity that
made it easier for Driessen to
fool the art world for years, by
not just reproducing the work,
but creating new pieces in his
style and stamping them with
the same foundries that the
Swiss master had used before
his death in 1966.
By his own account,
Driessen, whose website
(www.driessenart.com)
now touts original art
reproductions signed
by himself, started out by
mimicking expressionists such
as Wassily Kandinsky, Emil
Nolde and August Macke. By
the late 1980s, he was casting
sculptures of the greats.
The market for sculptures is
murkier than for paintings,
partially due to the fact that
castings often remain after an
artists death, and given that
the foundries charged with
handling castings often made
copies of their own.
Driessen says the fakery
then spreads along the value
chain. Galleries knowingly
sell fakes, he asserts. That
is a 100 percent yes. Its all
driven by money, and money
only. The art world is rotten.
I would say at least 300 to
400 forgeries of mine were
sold to them and Im sure
there are a few in museums.
In fact, he believes there are
still hundreds of his own
works in circulation. I made
1,300 Giacomettis, but only
800 were destroyed, he
says. So there are still 500
unaccounted for.
A BLIND EYE
Claims have surfaced recently
alleging that art dealers and
NAUGHTY
PRESIDENT
Amedeo Modigliani is one
of the most faked artists around,
thanks to the popularity and prici-
ness of his work. So who better to
forge his artwork and knowingly verify
fake Modigliani pieces, than the presi-
dent of the Modigliani Institute? In 2013,
Christian Parisot was arrested for provid-
ing false certificates of authenticity, to the
tune of US$8.6 million worth of coun-
terfeit works. Modiglianis are relatively
difficult to authenticate, due to the
artists chaotic life, lack of an
organised catalogue and his
penchant for paying bills
with paintings.
In the 80s, Robert Driessen used to live the high life.
He rented and lived in a decadent 11-room villa in
eastern Netherlands, and drove a BMW 7 series car.
It was a good life for an artist funded by his decades-
long run as one of the worlds most successful
art forgers, producing paintings and sculptures
particularly of late Swiss heavyweight Alberto
Giacometti that fooled museums, collectors,
galleries and every major auction house in the world.
P
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44
45
MAY 2014
ALBERTO GIACOBETTI'S TROIS
HOMES QUI MARCHENT I,
WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE
WORTH 6.2 MILLION TO 8
MILLION (US$10 MILLION TO
US$13.3 MILLION), WENT ON
SALE IN FEBRUARY 2014 AT
CHRISTIE'S AUCTION HOUSE
oday, Driessen, 58, sits
stranded in paradise. His
estimated US$4.12 million
share of the US$10.99 million
haul that his gang supposedly
raked in for forgeries as the
lost work of Pablo Picassos
mate has long since gone. So
too has his family. All that
is left is a small caf on the
sun-kissed Thai island of Koh
Samui a palm- and ve-star
resort-laced playground of
the kingdoms east coast that
helped The Land of Smiles
welcome close to 27 million
tourists through the turnstiles
last year.
I received a notice to
appear. If I go back to Holland,
they might return me to
Germany, he tells Discovery
Channel Magazine. I like the
sun a lot more than the cold
though I know that much.
Driessens former colleagues
have already been locked up.
My wife and son left me here,
because I couldnt aford to
look after them. Ive been here
by myself.
Driessen has made the
island his home for the last
eight years, because he had to.
German authorities still want
to arrest the portly Dutchman
with the lock of silver hair.
People paid me not to attend
trial, he claims. They made
millions, that's why they
didn't want me there. They
asked me to make this and
that. Then we were supposed
to split the money. They sent
me to Thailand and paid all
of my bills, he notes. But of
course, they ended up getting
convicted.
The Germans believe
Driessen forged about 1,000
sculptures. The Arnhem
native and high school
dropout puts that gure at
closer to 1,300. Driessen
says that he spent over three
decades forging paintings and
sculptures. But none were as
economically and artistically
rewarding as the long, languid
gures that posthumously
made Giacometti the worlds
most expensive sculptor. I
loved making Giacomettis,.
While Giacometti, whose
famous face adorns the Swiss
100-franc banknote, and
whose L'Homme Qui Marche
I sold at Sotheby's in 2011
for US$104.3 million, was a
feverish worker, he was also
notorious for not keeping
track of how many pieces he
had actually created.
It was this opacity that
made it easier for Driessen to
fool the art world for years, by
not just reproducing the work,
but creating new pieces in his
style and stamping them with
the same foundries that the
Swiss master had used before
his death in 1966.
By his own account,
Driessen, whose website
(www.driessenart.com)
now touts original art
reproductions signed
by himself, started out by
mimicking expressionists such
as Wassily Kandinsky, Emil
Nolde and August Macke. By
the late 1980s, he was casting
sculptures of the greats.
The market for sculptures is
murkier than for paintings,
partially due to the fact that
castings often remain after an
artists death, and given that
the foundries charged with
handling castings often made
copies of their own.
Driessen says the fakery
then spreads along the value
chain. Galleries knowingly
sell fakes, he asserts. That
is a 100 percent yes. Its all
driven by money, and money
only. The art world is rotten.
I would say at least 300 to
400 forgeries of mine were
sold to them and Im sure
there are a few in museums.
In fact, he believes there are
still hundreds of his own
works in circulation. I made
1,300 Giacomettis, but only
800 were destroyed, he
says. So there are still 500
unaccounted for.
A BLIND EYE
Claims have surfaced recently
alleging that art dealers and
NAUGHTY
PRESIDENT
Amedeo Modigliani is one
of the most faked artists around,
thanks to the popularity and prici-
ness of his work. So who better to
forge his artwork and knowingly verify
fake Modigliani pieces, than the presi-
dent of the Modigliani Institute? In 2013,
Christian Parisot was arrested for provid-
ing false certificates of authenticity, to the
tune of US$8.6 million worth of coun-
terfeit works. Modiglianis are relatively
difficult to authenticate, due to the
artists chaotic life, lack of an
organised catalogue and his
penchant for paying bills
with paintings.
In the 80s, Robert Driessen used to live the high life.
He rented and lived in a decadent 11-room villa in
eastern Netherlands, and drove a BMW 7 series car.
It was a good life for an artist funded by his decades-
long run as one of the worlds most successful
art forgers, producing paintings and sculptures
particularly of late Swiss heavyweight Alberto
Giacometti that fooled museums, collectors,
galleries and every major auction house in the world.
P
H
O
T
O
:

C
O
R
B
I
S
ART TALK
46
47
MAY 2014
auction houses have been
overly eager by accepting
forgeries as genuine, and in
turn selling them quickly
to turn a prot. Reportedly,
if a dealer nds that the
work is a forgery, he may
quietly withdraw the piece
and return it to its previous
owner giving the forger
an opportunity to sell it
elsewhere.
However, forgeries are not
the only art crimes on the
block. Todays art market is
more lucrative than at any
time in history. Forgeries,
along with fraud, theft and
the looting of archaeological
artifacts, keep the cash
registers ringing for various
organised crime groups.
One investigator tells DCM
that the value of the illegal
art trade has in recent times
reached immense proportions.
The US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) estimates
art crimes run in the region
of US$6 billion per year, says
Robert Wittman, a former FBI
agent who was instrumental
in the creation of FBIs rapid
deployment Art Crime Team
in 2004. About 40 percent
of the art market now goes
through China, another 40
percent through the US. Some
estimates say that up to 70
percent of the Chinese art
market is made up of fakes. Its
all hot money, and criminals
follow the market.
As Wittman sees it, the
art market often serves as
a training ground for other
types of illegality. Art crime
is a gateway crime. You
shouldn't look at these as just
committing another theft.
I guarantee that these guys
are doing [crimes involving]
drugs, stolen cars and guns.
He says authorities are
constantly playing catch
up with criminals, due to
the low priority that most
law enforcement agencies
place on art crimes. Even the
FBI only established its Art
Crime Team, responsible for
addressing art and cultural
property crime, a decade ago.
According to the FBI
website, the Art Crime Team
has to date recovered more
than 2,650 items, valued at
over US$150 million. The
haul has so far included famed
works such as Francisco de
Goyas 1778 painting,
Children With a Cart. In
Chinese villages, they make
the same stuf as they did
500 years ago. The only real
diference is in the zeros. Its
very difcult to detect, says
Wittman, the author of the
book Priceless: How I Went
Undercover to Rescue the
Worlds Stolen Treasures.
UNDERCOVER MOBSTER
During his 20-year career,
Wittman reportedly helped
recover more than US$300
million worth of stolen art
and cultural property
including a stint posing as
an art professor working for
the Russian mob, in a sting
operation in Madrid, to
recover Francisco de Goyas
work, The Swing.
With the art market
currently in the midst of
its biggest nancial bubble
in history, art insiders say
that such triumphs may
represent just the tip of a
global criminal iceberg. Since
World War II, most art thefts
and operations around the
looting of antiquities have
involved organised crime
groups, ranging from large
international syndicates
such as Cosa Nostra and the
Unione Corse, to small, local
organised gangs.
Michelangelo Merisi o
Amerighi da Caravaggio was
a Roman baroque master
who drank, brawled and later
murdered his way into exile
GALLERIES
KNOWINGLY
SELL FAKES,
THAT IS A 100
PERCENT YES.
ITS ALL DRIVEN
BY MONEY,
AND MONEY
ONLY. THE
ART WORLD IS
ROTTEN AND I
WOULD SAY AT
LEAST 300 TO
400 FORGERIES
OF MINE WERE
SOLD TO THEM.
RECLAIMING
PAINTINGS
A few years ago, a collection
of over 1,400 Nazi-confiscated
artworks was found in Munich, Ger-
many which is good, right? However,
towards the end of last year, there was
an outcry over how the case was being
handled. First, experts questioned why it
took so long for the discovery of the collec-
tion to be announced. The paintings were
supposedly found early in 2012, but the
find only went public in 2013. Second,
German prosecutors decided not to
publish a full inventory, which one US
lawyer said was a huge disser-
vice to families seeking to
reclaim their paintings.
CONFISCATED
PAINTINGS STORED
IN THE BASEMENT OF
GERMANY'S FEDERAL
CRIMINAL POLICE
OFFICE IN WIESBADEN
M
A
I
N

P
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O
:

C
O
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I
S
ITS HARDLY JUST
FAKE ART THAT GETS
PASSED OFF AS REAL.
DIARIES, MONEY AND
PLAYS HAVE ALL
FOOLED MANY AN
EXPERT
TUT TUT
WOULD YOU PAY US$670,000 FOR A STATUE OF A WOMAN THAT DOESNT EVEN HAVE
ARMS OR A HEAD? IN 2003, THE BOLTON MUSEUM IN THE UNITED KINGDOM DID
JUST THAT. CHRISTIES AUCTION HOUSE VERIFIED IT AS A GENUINE, 3,300-YEAR-OLD
PIECE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART. THE STATUE, DUBBED THE AMARNA PRINCESS,
DEPICTED THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF KING TUTANKHAMEN. THE ONLY PROBLEM
YOU CAN SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING IS THAT IT WAS THE WORK OF A FORGER?
ALL THE WORLDS A FAKE
HAVE YOU HEARD OF VORTIGERN AND ROWENA,
THE SHAKESPEARE PLAY? IN 1796, A MAN NAMED
WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND CLAIMED TO HAVE FOUND
THE BARDS LOST PLAY, WHICH WAS VERIFIED
BY COLLEGE OF HERALDS SECRETARY FRANCIS
WEBB. HE ALLEGEDLY SAID IT WAS EITHER FROM
SHAKESPEARES PEN, OR FROM HEAVEN. THE
PLAY HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY IRELAND HIMSELF.
OW, MY HAND!
DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, HOW DID
THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT
WHICH HAD SPLIT FROM THE UNION
STOP ITS NEW AND FRAGILE CURRENCY
FROM BEING FORGED? GOVERNMENT
OFFICIALS HAND-SIGNED EVERY SINGLE BILL.
(NATURALLY, CROOKS QUICKLY LEARNED TO
FAKE SIGNATURES, TOO).
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
ART TALK
46
47
MAY 2014
auction houses have been
overly eager by accepting
forgeries as genuine, and in
turn selling them quickly
to turn a prot. Reportedly,
if a dealer nds that the
work is a forgery, he may
quietly withdraw the piece
and return it to its previous
owner giving the forger
an opportunity to sell it
elsewhere.
However, forgeries are not
the only art crimes on the
block. Todays art market is
more lucrative than at any
time in history. Forgeries,
along with fraud, theft and
the looting of archaeological
artifacts, keep the cash
registers ringing for various
organised crime groups.
One investigator tells DCM
that the value of the illegal
art trade has in recent times
reached immense proportions.
The US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) estimates
art crimes run in the region
of US$6 billion per year, says
Robert Wittman, a former FBI
agent who was instrumental
in the creation of FBIs rapid
deployment Art Crime Team
in 2004. About 40 percent
of the art market now goes
through China, another 40
percent through the US. Some
estimates say that up to 70
percent of the Chinese art
market is made up of fakes. Its
all hot money, and criminals
follow the market.
As Wittman sees it, the
art market often serves as
a training ground for other
types of illegality. Art crime
is a gateway crime. You
shouldn't look at these as just
committing another theft.
I guarantee that these guys
are doing [crimes involving]
drugs, stolen cars and guns.
He says authorities are
constantly playing catch
up with criminals, due to
the low priority that most
law enforcement agencies
place on art crimes. Even the
FBI only established its Art
Crime Team, responsible for
addressing art and cultural
property crime, a decade ago.
According to the FBI
website, the Art Crime Team
has to date recovered more
than 2,650 items, valued at
over US$150 million. The
haul has so far included famed
works such as Francisco de
Goyas 1778 painting,
Children With a Cart. In
Chinese villages, they make
the same stuf as they did
500 years ago. The only real
diference is in the zeros. Its
very difcult to detect, says
Wittman, the author of the
book Priceless: How I Went
Undercover to Rescue the
Worlds Stolen Treasures.
UNDERCOVER MOBSTER
During his 20-year career,
Wittman reportedly helped
recover more than US$300
million worth of stolen art
and cultural property
including a stint posing as
an art professor working for
the Russian mob, in a sting
operation in Madrid, to
recover Francisco de Goyas
work, The Swing.
With the art market
currently in the midst of
its biggest nancial bubble
in history, art insiders say
that such triumphs may
represent just the tip of a
global criminal iceberg. Since
World War II, most art thefts
and operations around the
looting of antiquities have
involved organised crime
groups, ranging from large
international syndicates
such as Cosa Nostra and the
Unione Corse, to small, local
organised gangs.
Michelangelo Merisi o
Amerighi da Caravaggio was
a Roman baroque master
who drank, brawled and later
murdered his way into exile
GALLERIES
KNOWINGLY
SELL FAKES,
THAT IS A 100
PERCENT YES.
ITS ALL DRIVEN
BY MONEY,
AND MONEY
ONLY. THE
ART WORLD IS
ROTTEN AND I
WOULD SAY AT
LEAST 300 TO
400 FORGERIES
OF MINE WERE
SOLD TO THEM.
RECLAIMING
PAINTINGS
A few years ago, a collection
of over 1,400 Nazi-confiscated
artworks was found in Munich, Ger-
many which is good, right? However,
towards the end of last year, there was
an outcry over how the case was being
handled. First, experts questioned why it
took so long for the discovery of the collec-
tion to be announced. The paintings were
supposedly found early in 2012, but the
find only went public in 2013. Second,
German prosecutors decided not to
publish a full inventory, which one US
lawyer said was a huge disser-
vice to families seeking to
reclaim their paintings.
CONFISCATED
PAINTINGS STORED
IN THE BASEMENT OF
GERMANY'S FEDERAL
CRIMINAL POLICE
OFFICE IN WIESBADEN
M
A
I
N

P
H
O
T
O
:

C
O
R
B
I
S
ITS HARDLY JUST
FAKE ART THAT GETS
PASSED OFF AS REAL.
DIARIES, MONEY AND
PLAYS HAVE ALL
FOOLED MANY AN
EXPERT
TUT TUT
WOULD YOU PAY US$670,000 FOR A STATUE OF A WOMAN THAT DOESNT EVEN HAVE
ARMS OR A HEAD? IN 2003, THE BOLTON MUSEUM IN THE UNITED KINGDOM DID
JUST THAT. CHRISTIES AUCTION HOUSE VERIFIED IT AS A GENUINE, 3,300-YEAR-OLD
PIECE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART. THE STATUE, DUBBED THE AMARNA PRINCESS,
DEPICTED THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF KING TUTANKHAMEN. THE ONLY PROBLEM
YOU CAN SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING IS THAT IT WAS THE WORK OF A FORGER?
ALL THE WORLDS A FAKE
HAVE YOU HEARD OF VORTIGERN AND ROWENA,
THE SHAKESPEARE PLAY? IN 1796, A MAN NAMED
WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND CLAIMED TO HAVE FOUND
THE BARDS LOST PLAY, WHICH WAS VERIFIED
BY COLLEGE OF HERALDS SECRETARY FRANCIS
WEBB. HE ALLEGEDLY SAID IT WAS EITHER FROM
SHAKESPEARES PEN, OR FROM HEAVEN. THE
PLAY HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY IRELAND HIMSELF.
OW, MY HAND!
DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, HOW DID
THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT
WHICH HAD SPLIT FROM THE UNION
STOP ITS NEW AND FRAGILE CURRENCY
FROM BEING FORGED? GOVERNMENT
OFFICIALS HAND-SIGNED EVERY SINGLE BILL.
(NATURALLY, CROOKS QUICKLY LEARNED TO
FAKE SIGNATURES, TOO).
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
ART TALK
48
49
MAY 2014
ADOLFS BIG LIE
IN PUBLISHING TERMS, IT WAS A TRUE BOMBSHELL:
ADOLF HITLERS DIARIES HAD BEEN FOUND. IT WAS
1983, AND THE DOCUMENTS HAD PURPORTEDLY BEEN
HIDDEN FOR YEARS AFTER BEING RECOVERED FROM A
PLANE CRASH IN 1945. THE DIARIES PASSED MUSTER
EVEN UNDER SCRUTINY FROM THREE HANDWRITING
EXPERTS, BUT WERE SOON REVEALED TO BE FAKES
WRITTEN WITH 1980S-ERA INK.
TO BE OR NOT TO BENITO
THIRTY VOLUMES OF MANUSCRIPTS
CANNOT BE THE WORK OF A FORGER.
YOU CAN FALSIFY A FEW LINES OR
EVEN PAGES, BUT NOT A SERIES OF
DIARIES. SO SAID AN EXPERT WHO
AUTHENTICATED THE DIARIES OF
BENITO MUSSOLINI IN 1957. THEY
LATER TURNED OUT TO BE FAKE.
THE $IMPSONS
PERHAPS THE FORGERS GOT THEIR IDEA
FROM THE SIMPSONS EPISODE THE
TROUBLE WITH TRILLIONS, WHEREIN
MISTER BURNS STEALS A TRILLION-
DOLLAR BILL FROM THE UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT. BURNS IS EVENTUALLY
ARRESTED FOR GRAND, GRAND, GRAND,
GRAND LARCENY.
GOT 998 PROBLEMS
AND FORGERY IS ONE. LAST YEAR,
INDONESIAN POLICE SEIZED A STASH
OF FOREIGN CURRENCY VALUED AT
NEARLY US$1 BILLION. THE ONLY
PROBLEM? THE FORGERS STASH
CONSISTED PRIMARILY OF AMERICAN
MILLION-DOLLAR BILLS 998 OF
THEM, TO BE PRECISE.
in Naples. He also painted
Nativity with St Francis and
St Lawrence, the completion
of which was estimated at
1609 and valued at roughly
US$20 million. The painting
was stolen from the Oratory of
San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily
in 1969. Still unrecovered, the
Maa has been blamed for
its theft, with several former
maosi-turned-informants
testifying at separate times
that the mob had stolen and
damaged the masterpiece,
though the accounts vary.
Lynda Albertson, the
chief executive ofcer of the
Association for Research into
Crimes against Art (ARCA),
says that the laypersons
typical, sometimes even
sympathetic, view of
ctional art thieves may be
well of the mark.
A network of thieves
working for unscrupulous
billionaires who are contem-
plating a made-to-order
theft of a Picasso for that
pride of place spot above the
divan in the library? I would
have to say, leave that for the
Hollywood movies. Thieves
come in all shapes and sizes,
Lynda says.
She cites one example of
the web of organised crime
that art theft can be entangled
within. In 1990, Gabriel
Metsus Woman Reading a
Letter valued at 8 million
(over US$13 million), which
had been stolen in Dublin,
Ireland, later turned up in
Istanbul in Turkey as barter
for a shipment of heroin, she
says. It was stolen by Martin
Cahill, a serious Irish gangster
with ties to the IRA (Irish
Republican Army), who was
later murdered in a drive-by
shooting. In this case you see
strong evidence of organised
crime elements.
Yet like conventional
occupations, these criminals
come in all stripes, she
stresses. If you lined
most thieves side by side
you wouldnt see strong
similarities other than
perhaps the dollar-bill signs
each of them thought the
fenced item would bring.
MURKY WATERS
Some experts say that putting
a dollar amount on the value
of the forged art market is very
difcult, because in a bullish
market in particular, the
prices of authentic artworks
vary and uctuate wildly.
LOOKING
UNDERNEATH
What is going on here? Was the artist
going through a Batman phase, in-
spired by the villainous Two-Face? Or
did he just get lazy and nod off halfway
through? Neither. This was the work
of Francisco de Goya, one of Spains
most renowned painters. Or should
we say, it was the purported work of
Goya. The portrait of Maria Isabella
de Bourbon, a daughter of the ruling
Spanish monarch, was bequeathed to
the Fogg Art Museum in 1943. It looked
real enough, with the paint bearing the
crackle marks of age, but some ex-
perts felt something was off with this
18
th
-century work. In 1954, X-ray im-
ages were taken of the painting which
revealed an earlier portrait of a dif-
ferent woman beneath. Further tests
also showed that the surface paint was
a modern version that did not exist
in Goyas time, and had been applied,
so as to not obscure the craquelure
(ne cracking of paint over time). After
rigorous analysis, the conservators
left the work in its (literally) two-faced
state, as testament to the sophisti-
cated obscurities of forgery.
SINCE WORLD
WAR II,
MOST ART
THEFTS AND
OPERATIONS
AROUND THE
LOOTING OF
ANTIQUITIES
HAVE
INVOLVED
ORGANISED
CRIME GROUPS.
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
ART TALK
FEMME AU COSTUME TURC DANS
UN FANTEUIL, PAINTED BY PABLO
PICASSO IN 1955. WHEN IT WENT ON
AUCTION AT CHRISTIE'S IN FEBRUARY
THIS YEAR, IT WAS THE FIRST TIME IN
OVER 50 YEARS THAT IT WAS PUT UP
FOR SALE. THE PIECE SOLD FOR 16.9
MILLION, WHICH TRANSLATES TO
OVER US$28 MILLION
M
A
I
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P
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O
:

C
O
R
B
I
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48
49
MAY 2014
ADOLFS BIG LIE
IN PUBLISHING TERMS, IT WAS A TRUE BOMBSHELL:
ADOLF HITLERS DIARIES HAD BEEN FOUND. IT WAS
1983, AND THE DOCUMENTS HAD PURPORTEDLY BEEN
HIDDEN FOR YEARS AFTER BEING RECOVERED FROM A
PLANE CRASH IN 1945. THE DIARIES PASSED MUSTER
EVEN UNDER SCRUTINY FROM THREE HANDWRITING
EXPERTS, BUT WERE SOON REVEALED TO BE FAKES
WRITTEN WITH 1980S-ERA INK.
TO BE OR NOT TO BENITO
THIRTY VOLUMES OF MANUSCRIPTS
CANNOT BE THE WORK OF A FORGER.
YOU CAN FALSIFY A FEW LINES OR
EVEN PAGES, BUT NOT A SERIES OF
DIARIES. SO SAID AN EXPERT WHO
AUTHENTICATED THE DIARIES OF
BENITO MUSSOLINI IN 1957. THEY
LATER TURNED OUT TO BE FAKE.
THE $IMPSONS
PERHAPS THE FORGERS GOT THEIR IDEA
FROM THE SIMPSONS EPISODE THE
TROUBLE WITH TRILLIONS, WHEREIN
MISTER BURNS STEALS A TRILLION-
DOLLAR BILL FROM THE UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT. BURNS IS EVENTUALLY
ARRESTED FOR GRAND, GRAND, GRAND,
GRAND LARCENY.
GOT 998 PROBLEMS
AND FORGERY IS ONE. LAST YEAR,
INDONESIAN POLICE SEIZED A STASH
OF FOREIGN CURRENCY VALUED AT
NEARLY US$1 BILLION. THE ONLY
PROBLEM? THE FORGERS STASH
CONSISTED PRIMARILY OF AMERICAN
MILLION-DOLLAR BILLS 998 OF
THEM, TO BE PRECISE.
in Naples. He also painted
Nativity with St Francis and
St Lawrence, the completion
of which was estimated at
1609 and valued at roughly
US$20 million. The painting
was stolen from the Oratory of
San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily
in 1969. Still unrecovered, the
Maa has been blamed for
its theft, with several former
maosi-turned-informants
testifying at separate times
that the mob had stolen and
damaged the masterpiece,
though the accounts vary.
Lynda Albertson, the
chief executive ofcer of the
Association for Research into
Crimes against Art (ARCA),
says that the laypersons
typical, sometimes even
sympathetic, view of
ctional art thieves may be
well of the mark.
A network of thieves
working for unscrupulous
billionaires who are contem-
plating a made-to-order
theft of a Picasso for that
pride of place spot above the
divan in the library? I would
have to say, leave that for the
Hollywood movies. Thieves
come in all shapes and sizes,
Lynda says.
She cites one example of
the web of organised crime
that art theft can be entangled
within. In 1990, Gabriel
Metsus Woman Reading a
Letter valued at 8 million
(over US$13 million), which
had been stolen in Dublin,
Ireland, later turned up in
Istanbul in Turkey as barter
for a shipment of heroin, she
says. It was stolen by Martin
Cahill, a serious Irish gangster
with ties to the IRA (Irish
Republican Army), who was
later murdered in a drive-by
shooting. In this case you see
strong evidence of organised
crime elements.
Yet like conventional
occupations, these criminals
come in all stripes, she
stresses. If you lined
most thieves side by side
you wouldnt see strong
similarities other than
perhaps the dollar-bill signs
each of them thought the
fenced item would bring.
MURKY WATERS
Some experts say that putting
a dollar amount on the value
of the forged art market is very
difcult, because in a bullish
market in particular, the
prices of authentic artworks
vary and uctuate wildly.
LOOKING
UNDERNEATH
What is going on here? Was the artist
going through a Batman phase, in-
spired by the villainous Two-Face? Or
did he just get lazy and nod off halfway
through? Neither. This was the work
of Francisco de Goya, one of Spains
most renowned painters. Or should
we say, it was the purported work of
Goya. The portrait of Maria Isabella
de Bourbon, a daughter of the ruling
Spanish monarch, was bequeathed to
the Fogg Art Museum in 1943. It looked
real enough, with the paint bearing the
crackle marks of age, but some ex-
perts felt something was off with this
18
th
-century work. In 1954, X-ray im-
ages were taken of the painting which
revealed an earlier portrait of a dif-
ferent woman beneath. Further tests
also showed that the surface paint was
a modern version that did not exist
in Goyas time, and had been applied,
so as to not obscure the craquelure
(ne cracking of paint over time). After
rigorous analysis, the conservators
left the work in its (literally) two-faced
state, as testament to the sophisti-
cated obscurities of forgery.
SINCE WORLD
WAR II,
MOST ART
THEFTS AND
OPERATIONS
AROUND THE
LOOTING OF
ANTIQUITIES
HAVE
INVOLVED
ORGANISED
CRIME GROUPS.
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
ART TALK
FEMME AU COSTUME TURC DANS
UN FANTEUIL, PAINTED BY PABLO
PICASSO IN 1955. WHEN IT WENT ON
AUCTION AT CHRISTIE'S IN FEBRUARY
THIS YEAR, IT WAS THE FIRST TIME IN
OVER 50 YEARS THAT IT WAS PUT UP
FOR SALE. THE PIECE SOLD FOR 16.9
MILLION, WHICH TRANSLATES TO
OVER US$28 MILLION
M
A
I
N

P
H
O
T
O
:

C
O
R
B
I
S
50
51
MAY 2014
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
for certain, and any
guess is merely a guess, not
even an educated one. Some
estimate that as little as 1.5
percent of all stolen art is
recovered and the thieves
successfully prosecuted.
What is certain is that art
crime is very severe, largely
because since the 1940s, the
majority of art crime involves
organised criminal groups
and occasionally terrorist
groups, who reap the benets,
says Charney. He points to
reports of Taliban looting in
Afghanistan as evidence of how
high up the chain of criminality
in art crimes can go.
DETECTION SCIENCE
Combating an increasingly
sophisticated group of
forgers means the science for
detecting fakes and forgeries
has greatly improved over the
years with modern dating
and analysis making the
identication of forged
pieces easier.
Morellian techniques,
developed in the late 19
th

century by physician and art
collector Giovanni Morelli,
are used to help sort the work
of artists by their unique
idiosyncrasies and stylistic
details, which tend to remain
consistent throughout the
artists careers. By picking out
recurring details in an artists
work, analysts can identify
and map out a formula, which
can then be used to identify or
track the artist, similar to the
way a detective might match
ngerprints, or a graphologist
might analyse handwriting
samples. The same process can
be applied to sculptures too,
and might include checking for
the use of tools or techniques
not available when the artist
was alive.
At times, forgers have
utilised methods that difered
from the original artists,
such as uncharacteristic
brushwork, perspective, or
the use of colours or pigments
that didnt exist during the
painters time. Some forgers
will use chemicals to age
pieces, or even employ
materials that date back to
when the work was created
while others resort to
drilling holes to mimic worm
marks. While attempting to
authenticate artwork, experts
also try to determine the
pieces provenance if the
HOUSE OF CARDS
ORSON WELLES LAST MAJOR FILM, F FOR
FAKE, REVOLVED AROUND THE WORLD
OF ART FORGER ELMYR DE HORY AND HIS
BIOGRAPHER CLIFFORD IRVING. IRONICALLY,
IT WAS LATER FOUND THAT IRVING HAD
CREATED HIS OWN FORGERY FAKING THE
DIARIES OF ECCENTRIC BUSINESS MAGNATE
HOWARD HUGHES.
MUSEUM OF FAKES
A MUSEUM DEDICATED TO FAKERY IN
BANGKOK, THAILAND UNDERSCORES THE
HUGE MARKET FOR FAKES. THE MUSEUM
OF COUNTERFEIT GOODS DISPLAYS,
AMONGST OTHER THINGS, FAKE MOBILE
PHONE COVERS, VIAGRA, CIGARETTES,
PERFUMES, WATCHES AND, WORRYINGLY,
EVEN BRAKE PADS.
EXPERT VS FAKER
ORSON WELLES (PLAYING HIMSELF): "ITS
PRETTY BUT IS IT ART? HOW IS IT VALUED?
THE VALUE DEPENDS ON OPINION, OPINION
DEPENDS ON THE EXPERT, A FAKER LIKE ELMYR
MAKES FOOL OF THE EXPERTS SO WHOS THE
EXPERT? WHOS THE FAKER?"
DE HORY: "IF THEY ARE HANGED LONG ENOUGH
IN THE MUSEUM THEY BECOME REAL".
Generally, there is little
empirical data on this subject,
so getting facts and gures
are hard, says Toby Bull, a
senior inspector in the Hong
Kong Police Force and an art
crime expert.
Interpol used to publish
a gure, as did a few others,
he adds. But they don't
now, as tying in a dollar
value to art crime, especially
when it crosses over and is
interrelated to other
crimes, is virtually impossible
to calculate.
Even the estimated number
of forged pieces is in question.
According to Bull and Dr Noah
Charney, founder of ARCA,
one Italian study estimated
that 10 percent of the world's
museum collections are either
forged or misattributed, while
media reports often quote
Western law enforcement
agencies warning that the
total amount of forgeries in
the marketplace could be as
high as 50 percent. Thomas
Hoving, who was director of
the esteemed Metropolitan
Museum of Art in the United
States for 10 years, estimated
that forged art comprises up to
40 percent of the entire global
art market.
People say US$6 billion per
year, but no one knows, says
Charney. Reliable sources, like
the US Department of Justice,
have called art crime the third
highest-grossing criminal trade
worldwide every year, behind
only the drug and arms trade,
he says. But we do not know
PAINTING IN
PRISON
Geert Jan Jansen (pictured)
is what you might call a master
of forgery. His ability to fake the
brushstrokes of famous artists started
innocently enough: he was trying to em-
ulate their techniques to better his own.
But when a career as an art dealer failed
to blossom into success, he went back to
his skill, borrowing the style and name of
famous painters. Until his arrest in 1994,
he spent decades producing around 40
paintings a year. Speaking to author
Frank Wynne, Jansen said, As soon
as I got [to prison], the board of
governors asked me to dash
off a couple of
Picassos.
CLOCKWORK FORGERY
RENOWNED WATCH BRAND ROLEX PUMPS OUT OVER 700,000 TIMEPIECES A YEAR.
SUCH POPULARITY HAS MADE IT A PRIME TARGET FOR FORGERS. ACCORDING TO
ONE HOROLOGIST, THERE ARE THREE EASY WAYS TO SPOT A FAKE ROLEX. FIRSTLY,
THEIR SECOND HAND MOVEMENT OFTEN STUTTERS. SECONDLY, THEIR WEIGHT IS
NOT AS HEFTY, AS FAKES TEND TO BE MADE WITH CHEAPER MATERIALS. THIRDLY,
A TRUE ROLEX WILL COME WITH A CYCLOPS LENS THAT MAGNIFIES THE DATE
FAKES OFTEN SKIP THIS STEP. AND IF YOURE LUCKY, A FORGERY WILL SLIP UP
AND BRAND ITSELF A RULEX.
FORGERS USE
CHEMICALS TO
AGE PIECES,
MATERIALS
THAT DATE
TO WHEN THE
WORK WAS
CREATED
SOME ALSO
RESORT TO
DRILLING
HOLES TO
MIMIC WORM
MARKS.
ART TALK
P
H
O
T
O
:

A
F
P
50
51
MAY 2014
COUNTERFEIT WAYS
for certain, and any
guess is merely a guess, not
even an educated one. Some
estimate that as little as 1.5
percent of all stolen art is
recovered and the thieves
successfully prosecuted.
What is certain is that art
crime is very severe, largely
because since the 1940s, the
majority of art crime involves
organised criminal groups
and occasionally terrorist
groups, who reap the benets,
says Charney. He points to
reports of Taliban looting in
Afghanistan as evidence of how
high up the chain of criminality
in art crimes can go.
DETECTION SCIENCE
Combating an increasingly
sophisticated group of
forgers means the science for
detecting fakes and forgeries
has greatly improved over the
years with modern dating
and analysis making the
identication of forged
pieces easier.
Morellian techniques,
developed in the late 19
th

century by physician and art
collector Giovanni Morelli,
are used to help sort the work
of artists by their unique
idiosyncrasies and stylistic
details, which tend to remain
consistent throughout the
artists careers. By picking out
recurring details in an artists
work, analysts can identify
and map out a formula, which
can then be used to identify or
track the artist, similar to the
way a detective might match
ngerprints, or a graphologist
might analyse handwriting
samples. The same process can
be applied to sculptures too,
and might include checking for
the use of tools or techniques
not available when the artist
was alive.
At times, forgers have
utilised methods that difered
from the original artists,
such as uncharacteristic
brushwork, perspective, or
the use of colours or pigments
that didnt exist during the
painters time. Some forgers
will use chemicals to age
pieces, or even employ
materials that date back to
when the work was created
while others resort to
drilling holes to mimic worm
marks. While attempting to
authenticate artwork, experts
also try to determine the
pieces provenance if the
HOUSE OF CARDS
ORSON WELLES LAST MAJOR FILM, F FOR
FAKE, REVOLVED AROUND THE WORLD
OF ART FORGER ELMYR DE HORY AND HIS
BIOGRAPHER CLIFFORD IRVING. IRONICALLY,
IT WAS LATER FOUND THAT IRVING HAD
CREATED HIS OWN FORGERY FAKING THE
DIARIES OF ECCENTRIC BUSINESS MAGNATE
HOWARD HUGHES.
MUSEUM OF FAKES
A MUSEUM DEDICATED TO FAKERY IN
BANGKOK, THAILAND UNDERSCORES THE
HUGE MARKET FOR FAKES. THE MUSEUM
OF COUNTERFEIT GOODS DISPLAYS,
AMONGST OTHER THINGS, FAKE MOBILE
PHONE COVERS, VIAGRA, CIGARETTES,
PERFUMES, WATCHES AND, WORRYINGLY,
EVEN BRAKE PADS.
EXPERT VS FAKER
ORSON WELLES (PLAYING HIMSELF): "ITS
PRETTY BUT IS IT ART? HOW IS IT VALUED?
THE VALUE DEPENDS ON OPINION, OPINION
DEPENDS ON THE EXPERT, A FAKER LIKE ELMYR
MAKES FOOL OF THE EXPERTS SO WHOS THE
EXPERT? WHOS THE FAKER?"
DE HORY: "IF THEY ARE HANGED LONG ENOUGH
IN THE MUSEUM THEY BECOME REAL".
Generally, there is little
empirical data on this subject,
so getting facts and gures
are hard, says Toby Bull, a
senior inspector in the Hong
Kong Police Force and an art
crime expert.
Interpol used to publish
a gure, as did a few others,
he adds. But they don't
now, as tying in a dollar
value to art crime, especially
when it crosses over and is
interrelated to other
crimes, is virtually impossible
to calculate.
Even the estimated number
of forged pieces is in question.
According to Bull and Dr Noah
Charney, founder of ARCA,
one Italian study estimated
that 10 percent of the world's
museum collections are either
forged or misattributed, while
media reports often quote
Western law enforcement
agencies warning that the
total amount of forgeries in
the marketplace could be as
high as 50 percent. Thomas
Hoving, who was director of
the esteemed Metropolitan
Museum of Art in the United
States for 10 years, estimated
that forged art comprises up to
40 percent of the entire global
art market.
People say US$6 billion per
year, but no one knows, says
Charney. Reliable sources, like
the US Department of Justice,
have called art crime the third
highest-grossing criminal trade
worldwide every year, behind
only the drug and arms trade,
he says. But we do not know
PAINTING IN
PRISON
Geert Jan Jansen (pictured)
is what you might call a master
of forgery. His ability to fake the
brushstrokes of famous artists started
innocently enough: he was trying to em-
ulate their techniques to better his own.
But when a career as an art dealer failed
to blossom into success, he went back to
his skill, borrowing the style and name of
famous painters. Until his arrest in 1994,
he spent decades producing around 40
paintings a year. Speaking to author
Frank Wynne, Jansen said, As soon
as I got [to prison], the board of
governors asked me to dash
off a couple of
Picassos.
CLOCKWORK FORGERY
RENOWNED WATCH BRAND ROLEX PUMPS OUT OVER 700,000 TIMEPIECES A YEAR.
SUCH POPULARITY HAS MADE IT A PRIME TARGET FOR FORGERS. ACCORDING TO
ONE HOROLOGIST, THERE ARE THREE EASY WAYS TO SPOT A FAKE ROLEX. FIRSTLY,
THEIR SECOND HAND MOVEMENT OFTEN STUTTERS. SECONDLY, THEIR WEIGHT IS
NOT AS HEFTY, AS FAKES TEND TO BE MADE WITH CHEAPER MATERIALS. THIRDLY,
A TRUE ROLEX WILL COME WITH A CYCLOPS LENS THAT MAGNIFIES THE DATE
FAKES OFTEN SKIP THIS STEP. AND IF YOURE LUCKY, A FORGERY WILL SLIP UP
AND BRAND ITSELF A RULEX.
FORGERS USE
CHEMICALS TO
AGE PIECES,
MATERIALS
THAT DATE
TO WHEN THE
WORK WAS
CREATED
SOME ALSO
RESORT TO
DRILLING
HOLES TO
MIMIC WORM
MARKS.
ART TALK
P
H
O
T
O
:

A
F
P
52
53
MAY 2014
With just a snapshot, a square
centimetre in size, a snazzy
camera-like object called
FING-ART-PRINT could
spell doom for art thieves,
smugglers and forgers. The
"ngerprint" in question
is captured by recording
the artworks roughness
or topography (in the case
of paintings, the unique 3D
effect of paint on canvas) and
a colour sample.
In a paper presented at
the International Conference
on Strategies for Saving
Indoor Metallic Collections
in 2007, the authors, led by
conservation scientist Dr
Bill Wei, co-inventor of the
technology, detailed the
advantages of their system.
Museum objects, they noted,
are typically identied
with a cataloguing system.
Objects are photographed
and tagged with a sticker,
barcode or marker. But, they
say, besides the fact that
stickers and markers have
FINGERPRINT FOR ART
the analysis of digital images
of paintings, is a technique
described in a 2004 paper,
which breaks pictures down
into a collection of basic
images called subbands. The
Science News article reporting
the research explained, Just
as a musical tone consists of
a low fundamental frequency
with higher-frequency
overtones, an image's low-
frequency subbands show the
broad strokes, while higher-
frequency subbands depict
details. As one of the study
authors said at the time, A
master might have smooth,
consistent strokes, say, while
an imitator is jerky. And
since an artist tends to have a
unique style throughout his
or her career, the subband
analysis would set the forged
work apart.
Unfortunately, even with
such investigative tools at
hand, experts do not always
agree on the authenticity of an
item. To complicate matters,
some artists have knowingly
accepted copies as their own
work or signed of on them
attered by the attention or
admiration of the copy.
ROGUES GALLERY
Forgery has had a long history.
Over 2,000 years ago, Roman
artisans made copies of
Greek sculptures. However,
its thought that back then,
individual artists were barely
known, let alone lionised,
and art was created to serve
as a historical timepiece, a
religious icon, or purely for its
aesthetic value.
It wasnt until the
Renaissance period, which
ushered in waves of wealth
across Europe and drove an
insatiable demand for ne art,
that these works became a
commercial commodity. As a
result, the identity of the artist
in turn gained a benchmark
value in art transactions.
Dr Alexander Nagel, a
professor of Renaissance art
at the Institute of Fine Arts
in New York, in the United
States, has argued that the
notion of forgery as we
understand it never really
existed before a Western
art market was established
around 1,500 BC. He noted
that before that time, a
facsimile could usually ll
in for an original work, if it
transmitted the same content
and tone.
While most forgers are
considered lesser artists
standing on the shoulders of
the greats, sometimes even
the greats themselves were
found with their hands in
the cookie jar. For instance,
an often-repeated anecdote
states that at the end of the
15
th
century, Michelangelo
di Lodovico Buonarroti
Simoni (you will know him
as Michelangelo) made a
sleeping Cupid gure, treated
it with acidic earth to age it,
then sold it to an art dealer.
Thierry Lenain, art
historian at the Institut
Franais in London, England,
and author of the 2011 book
JANSEN
WAS SO
SUCCESSFUL
IN REPLICATING
THE STYLES
AND COLOURS
OF THE
MASTERS, THAT
EVEN THE
FOREMOST
CRITICS
REGARDED THE
WORKS AS NOT
ONLY GENUINE
BUT AS SOME
OF THE FINEST
EXAMPLES
THEY HAD
EVER SEEN.
item has not left a paper
trail, it is more likely to be a
forgery. Of course, paperwork
too can be forged.
X-ray technology can
now help sleuths reveal
earlier work hidden beneath
forgeries, a clear signal that
the forger used old canvasses
in order to try and mimic
the desired time period. In
other cases, X-rays can also be
used to look inside an object
to determine if it has been
altered or repaired.
At the laboratories of the
Los Angeles-based Getty
Conservation Institute, in the
United States, which works
to preserve global cultural
heritage, examiners use
handheld X-ray uorescence
devices to identify pigments
and other materials by
revealing their elemental
composition. However, the
institute notes in a report that
there are limitations to X-ray
uorescence: only elements
heavier than potassium can
be identied by this method.
As it states, the device was
designed to be able to carry
out X-ray difraction as well,
to detect the molecular or
mineralogical composition of
pigments. These technologies
are then used together, to
help uncover forgeries.
There are other methods
that allow researchers to weed
out the good, the bad, and the
well-forged. For example,
ultraviolet uorescence and
infrared analysis can spotlight
repairs or old paint on
canvasses, while carbon dating
can date an object that is up to
10,000 years old.
Other innovations
have proven invaluable in
establishing the authenticity
of sculptures. One technique,
called stable isotope analysis,
determines where marble
used in a sculpture was
quarried; while another,
thermoluminescence, helps to
date pottery artefacts.
Wavelet decomposition, or
the disadvantage of reacting
with objects, they have the
additional disadvantage
that they can be removed
and/or forged.
While the technology
to measure an artworks
topography or "roughness" is
not new, it is the application
in the new device that is
exciting. Due to the systems
compactness, its user-
friendly nature, and how
speedily it works, the authors
note, FING-ART-PRINT is
thus expected to have an
enormous impact on the
identication and protection
of moveable cultural
heritage.
And what about forging
the ngerprint of FING-
ART-PRINT itself? They're
way ahead of you. "It would
be virtually impossible to
forge the ngerprint on a
micrometre scale (the size of
a pigment particle), assuming
that a forger even knew where
the ngerprint was taken." M
A
I
N

P
H
O
T
O
:

"
M
A
N
S
P
O
R
T
R
E
T
"

B
Y

D
A
V
I
D

V
A
N

D
E
R

P
L
A
E
S
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

M
U
S
E
U
M

B
O
I
J
M
A
N
S

V
A
N

B
E
U
N
I
N
G
E
N
,
R
O
T
T
E
R
D
A
M
,
T
H
E

N
E
T
H
E
R
L
A
N
D
S
THE FING-ART-PRINT PROJECT (SEE
SIDEBAR BOTTOM) HAS PRODUCED A
TECHNOLOGY THAT IS QUICK AND EASY
TO USE. THE BOXY-LOOKING APPARATUS
SHOWN ABOVE TAKES AN EXTREMELY
HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGE OF A SMALL
SEGMENT OF THE ARTWORK AND
PRODUCES A "FINGERPRINT" (SHOWN
OPPOSITE) OF THE PIECE THAT IS
VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO COPY
ART TALK
52
53
MAY 2014
With just a snapshot, a square
centimetre in size, a snazzy
camera-like object called
FING-ART-PRINT could
spell doom for art thieves,
smugglers and forgers. The
"ngerprint" in question
is captured by recording
the artworks roughness
or topography (in the case
of paintings, the unique 3D
effect of paint on canvas) and
a colour sample.
In a paper presented at
the International Conference
on Strategies for Saving
Indoor Metallic Collections
in 2007, the authors, led by
conservation scientist Dr
Bill Wei, co-inventor of the
technology, detailed the
advantages of their system.
Museum objects, they noted,
are typically identied
with a cataloguing system.
Objects are photographed
and tagged with a sticker,
barcode or marker. But, they
say, besides the fact that
stickers and markers have
FINGERPRINT FOR ART
the analysis of digital images
of paintings, is a technique
described in a 2004 paper,
which breaks pictures down
into a collection of basic
images called subbands. The
Science News article reporting
the research explained, Just
as a musical tone consists of
a low fundamental frequency
with higher-frequency
overtones, an image's low-
frequency subbands show the
broad strokes, while higher-
frequency subbands depict
details. As one of the study
authors said at the time, A
master might have smooth,
consistent strokes, say, while
an imitator is jerky. And
since an artist tends to have a
unique style throughout his
or her career, the subband
analysis would set the forged
work apart.
Unfortunately, even with
such investigative tools at
hand, experts do not always
agree on the authenticity of an
item. To complicate matters,
some artists have knowingly
accepted copies as their own
work or signed of on them
attered by the attention or
admiration of the copy.
ROGUES GALLERY
Forgery has had a long history.
Over 2,000 years ago, Roman
artisans made copies of
Greek sculptures. However,
its thought that back then,
individual artists were barely
known, let alone lionised,
and art was created to serve
as a historical timepiece, a
religious icon, or purely for its
aesthetic value.
It wasnt until the
Renaissance period, which
ushered in waves of wealth
across Europe and drove an
insatiable demand for ne art,
that these works became a
commercial commodity. As a
result, the identity of the artist
in turn gained a benchmark
value in art transactions.
Dr Alexander Nagel, a
professor of Renaissance art
at the Institute of Fine Arts
in New York, in the United
States, has argued that the
notion of forgery as we
understand it never really
existed before a Western
art market was established
around 1,500 BC. He noted
that before that time, a
facsimile could usually ll
in for an original work, if it
transmitted the same content
and tone.
While most forgers are
considered lesser artists
standing on the shoulders of
the greats, sometimes even
the greats themselves were
found with their hands in
the cookie jar. For instance,
an often-repeated anecdote
states that at the end of the
15
th
century, Michelangelo
di Lodovico Buonarroti
Simoni (you will know him
as Michelangelo) made a
sleeping Cupid gure, treated
it with acidic earth to age it,
then sold it to an art dealer.
Thierry Lenain, art
historian at the Institut
Franais in London, England,
and author of the 2011 book
JANSEN
WAS SO
SUCCESSFUL
IN REPLICATING
THE STYLES
AND COLOURS
OF THE
MASTERS, THAT
EVEN THE
FOREMOST
CRITICS
REGARDED THE
WORKS AS NOT
ONLY GENUINE
BUT AS SOME
OF THE FINEST
EXAMPLES
THEY HAD
EVER SEEN.
item has not left a paper
trail, it is more likely to be a
forgery. Of course, paperwork
too can be forged.
X-ray technology can
now help sleuths reveal
earlier work hidden beneath
forgeries, a clear signal that
the forger used old canvasses
in order to try and mimic
the desired time period. In
other cases, X-rays can also be
used to look inside an object
to determine if it has been
altered or repaired.
At the laboratories of the
Los Angeles-based Getty
Conservation Institute, in the
United States, which works
to preserve global cultural
heritage, examiners use
handheld X-ray uorescence
devices to identify pigments
and other materials by
revealing their elemental
composition. However, the
institute notes in a report that
there are limitations to X-ray
uorescence: only elements
heavier than potassium can
be identied by this method.
As it states, the device was
designed to be able to carry
out X-ray difraction as well,
to detect the molecular or
mineralogical composition of
pigments. These technologies
are then used together, to
help uncover forgeries.
There are other methods
that allow researchers to weed
out the good, the bad, and the
well-forged. For example,
ultraviolet uorescence and
infrared analysis can spotlight
repairs or old paint on
canvasses, while carbon dating
can date an object that is up to
10,000 years old.
Other innovations
have proven invaluable in
establishing the authenticity
of sculptures. One technique,
called stable isotope analysis,
determines where marble
used in a sculpture was
quarried; while another,
thermoluminescence, helps to
date pottery artefacts.
Wavelet decomposition, or
the disadvantage of reacting
with objects, they have the
additional disadvantage
that they can be removed
and/or forged.
While the technology
to measure an artworks
topography or "roughness" is
not new, it is the application
in the new device that is
exciting. Due to the systems
compactness, its user-
friendly nature, and how
speedily it works, the authors
note, FING-ART-PRINT is
thus expected to have an
enormous impact on the
identication and protection
of moveable cultural
heritage.
And what about forging
the ngerprint of FING-
ART-PRINT itself? They're
way ahead of you. "It would
be virtually impossible to
forge the ngerprint on a
micrometre scale (the size of
a pigment particle), assuming
that a forger even knew where
the ngerprint was taken." M
A
I
N

P
H
O
T
O
:

"
M
A
N
S
P
O
R
T
R
E
T
"

B
Y

D
A
V
I
D

V
A
N

D
E
R

P
L
A
E
S
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

M
U
S
E
U
M

B
O
I
J
M
A
N
S

V
A
N

B
E
U
N
I
N
G
E
N
,
R
O
T
T
E
R
D
A
M
,
T
H
E

N
E
T
H
E
R
L
A
N
D
S
THE FING-ART-PRINT PROJECT (SEE
SIDEBAR BOTTOM) HAS PRODUCED A
TECHNOLOGY THAT IS QUICK AND EASY
TO USE. THE BOXY-LOOKING APPARATUS
SHOWN ABOVE TAKES AN EXTREMELY
HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGE OF A SMALL
SEGMENT OF THE ARTWORK AND
PRODUCES A "FINGERPRINT" (SHOWN
OPPOSITE) OF THE PIECE THAT IS
VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO COPY
ART TALK
54
55
MAY 2014
memoir, Caveat Emptor: The
Secret Life of an American
Art Forger, chronicling the
creation and sale of thousands
of knock-ofs of masters
such as James Buttersworth,
Martin Johnson Heade and
Charles Bird King to famous
auction houses. In his book,
Perenyi estimated that
hundreds of his fakes remain
in circulation, saying that
spotting one in a catalogue
is like bumping into an
old friend. He admitted to
enjoying the cloak-and-dagger
aspect of art forgery. I miss
the addictive thrill of fooling
the experts, he wrote. It was
great sport for me.
More recently in the US
state of New York, Chinese
immigrant Pei-Shen Qian
found himself at the centre of
an US$80 million art forgery
scandal involving dealer
Glara Rosales, who pleaded
guilty to selling more than
60 fake paintings made by
Qian, most of them through
the prestigious Knoedler
& Company gallery. Qian's
imitations of paintings by
Jackson Pollock, Willem de
Kooning and other abstract
expressionists helped bring
about the collapse of the once-
trusted gallery.
While artists have long
fallen prey to forgers,
criminals have also set their
sights on more contemporary
targets. In January this year,
a Paris high court opened
a case brought by grafti
artist John Perello, known
as JonOne, in which a little-
known dealer had sold about
two dozen paintings that have
been falsely attributed to the
50-year-old artist. Charney,
who also teaches the history
of art crime in the ARCAs
Postgraduate Certicate
Programme in Art Crime and
Cultural Heritage Protection,
says forgeries today are
very much on-trend with
public demand. Forgeries
of grafti art, like Banksy
spray paintings, are fairly
new, he notes. A Banksy
can sell for US$100,000 but it
can be made, identically and
with the same materials, for
about US$10. My colleague
at Scotland Yard did an
experiment to this end and
found it to be true, he says.
Another trend, in Asia this
time, is elegant bribery
(or yahui), which in China
describes the buying of
favours from ofcials
through gifts of art, and is
often used there as a way
to launder money. ARCA
believes that, along with
fake art, the use of art for
collateral to secure loans and
investments is also likely to
rise dramatically.
Meanwhile, back in
Driessens small caf in
Thailand, the former forger
contemplates his new life.
Ive started my website
selling my own copies. Its
not going terribly well at the
moment, he says, admitting
that running on his own
reputation is proving more
challenging than riding on the
back of someone elses. There
has been some reaction from
people, he says. But still,
its nowhere near as easy as
signing Giacomettis name.
Just north of Hong Kong lies
Dafen Village. You may not
have heard of it, but theres
a good chance its work is
on your wall, or the wall of
someone you know. Up until a
few years ago, some 5,000 to
8,000 Chinese artists churned
out reproductions of artistic
masterpieces at a blistering
rate accounting for 60
percent of the worlds oil
paintings.
Rembrandts, Warhols,
Monets: you name it, you can
get a famed work reproduced
for about US$40. Many
painters churn out small
canvasses at a rate of 10 per
day. The economic downturn
has hit Dafen, however. At the
same time, Chinas booming
middle class is now better
able to afford "real" artwork
and doesn't frequent Dafen
as much. As such, many
workshops have slashed the
numbers of their workhorse
painters.
But last year, self-
proclaimed "anti-designer"
Zhenhan Hao forged
something real from the
artists who churn out fakes.
Working with about 40 of the
artisans, he commissioned
new works of art in the style
of a renowned artist from
the artisan themselves. One
expert Van Gogh imitator,
Mister Zhao, rendered a
representation of his bedroom
with all the vim and colour of
the Dutch legend.
STREETS LINED
WITH MONET
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

R
E
U
T
E
R
S

(
M
A
I
N
)
;

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S

A PAINTER WORKS ON A
COPY OF A PAINTING BY
MODERN CHINESE PAINTER
YUE MINJUN AT DAFEN
VILLAGE, CHINA
LEFT: DUTCHMAN HANS VAN
MEEGEREN AT HIS TRIAL FOR
FORGING PAINTINGS. HE IS
BELIEVED TO BE THE BEST
FORGER OF ALL TIME
Art Forgery: The History
of the Modern Obsession,
says that the Italian master
frequently forged artworks,
replacing the pieces with the
originals that he was charged
with restoring.
Fast-forwarding to
contemporary forgers, Han
van Meegeren is widely
considered to be the greatest
of all time. It is popularly held
that from the 1920s onwards,
after his own work was
rebufed by critics and buyers,
an embittered Van Meegeren
decided to set out to prove
his critics wrong, by creating
credible forgeries of leading
ne artists, including Frans
Hals, Gerard ter Borch and
Johannes Vermeer.
To say that Van Meegeren
fooled his critics would be a
bludgeoning understatement.
He was so successful in
replicating the styles and
colours of the greats, that
several of the worlds foremost
critics not only regarded the
works as genuine but as
some of the nest examples
they had ever seen. Experts
say that he used historical
canvasses and ingeniously
formulated his own pigments,
eventually fooling collectors
into purchasing up to
US$30 million worth of fake
Vermeers which were sold
to everyone from Nazi leader
Hermann Gring, to the
Dutch government, which
during World War II was keen
on stopping artworks by the
countrys masters falling into
the hands of the Nazis.
In a bizarre twist, Van
Meegeren pieces eventually
found a lucrative market of
their own, which also
attracted forgers. One of
these was his son, Jacques
van Meegeren, who wrote
fraudulent certicates
verifying the authenticity of
his fathers work.
In 2012, Ken Perenyi the
self-described best American
art forger published his
PERENYI
ADMITTED
TO ENJOYING
THE CLOAK-
AND-DAGGER
ASPECT OF
ART FORGERY.
I MISS THE
ADDICTIVE
THRILL OF
FOOLING THE
EXPERTS, HE
WROTE. IT WAS
GREAT SPORT
FOR ME.
ART TALK
54
55
MAY 2014
memoir, Caveat Emptor: The
Secret Life of an American
Art Forger, chronicling the
creation and sale of thousands
of knock-ofs of masters
such as James Buttersworth,
Martin Johnson Heade and
Charles Bird King to famous
auction houses. In his book,
Perenyi estimated that
hundreds of his fakes remain
in circulation, saying that
spotting one in a catalogue
is like bumping into an
old friend. He admitted to
enjoying the cloak-and-dagger
aspect of art forgery. I miss
the addictive thrill of fooling
the experts, he wrote. It was
great sport for me.
More recently in the US
state of New York, Chinese
immigrant Pei-Shen Qian
found himself at the centre of
an US$80 million art forgery
scandal involving dealer
Glara Rosales, who pleaded
guilty to selling more than
60 fake paintings made by
Qian, most of them through
the prestigious Knoedler
& Company gallery. Qian's
imitations of paintings by
Jackson Pollock, Willem de
Kooning and other abstract
expressionists helped bring
about the collapse of the once-
trusted gallery.
While artists have long
fallen prey to forgers,
criminals have also set their
sights on more contemporary
targets. In January this year,
a Paris high court opened
a case brought by grafti
artist John Perello, known
as JonOne, in which a little-
known dealer had sold about
two dozen paintings that have
been falsely attributed to the
50-year-old artist. Charney,
who also teaches the history
of art crime in the ARCAs
Postgraduate Certicate
Programme in Art Crime and
Cultural Heritage Protection,
says forgeries today are
very much on-trend with
public demand. Forgeries
of grafti art, like Banksy
spray paintings, are fairly
new, he notes. A Banksy
can sell for US$100,000 but it
can be made, identically and
with the same materials, for
about US$10. My colleague
at Scotland Yard did an
experiment to this end and
found it to be true, he says.
Another trend, in Asia this
time, is elegant bribery
(or yahui), which in China
describes the buying of
favours from ofcials
through gifts of art, and is
often used there as a way
to launder money. ARCA
believes that, along with
fake art, the use of art for
collateral to secure loans and
investments is also likely to
rise dramatically.
Meanwhile, back in
Driessens small caf in
Thailand, the former forger
contemplates his new life.
Ive started my website
selling my own copies. Its
not going terribly well at the
moment, he says, admitting
that running on his own
reputation is proving more
challenging than riding on the
back of someone elses. There
has been some reaction from
people, he says. But still,
its nowhere near as easy as
signing Giacomettis name.
Just north of Hong Kong lies
Dafen Village. You may not
have heard of it, but theres
a good chance its work is
on your wall, or the wall of
someone you know. Up until a
few years ago, some 5,000 to
8,000 Chinese artists churned
out reproductions of artistic
masterpieces at a blistering
rate accounting for 60
percent of the worlds oil
paintings.
Rembrandts, Warhols,
Monets: you name it, you can
get a famed work reproduced
for about US$40. Many
painters churn out small
canvasses at a rate of 10 per
day. The economic downturn
has hit Dafen, however. At the
same time, Chinas booming
middle class is now better
able to afford "real" artwork
and doesn't frequent Dafen
as much. As such, many
workshops have slashed the
numbers of their workhorse
painters.
But last year, self-
proclaimed "anti-designer"
Zhenhan Hao forged
something real from the
artists who churn out fakes.
Working with about 40 of the
artisans, he commissioned
new works of art in the style
of a renowned artist from
the artisan themselves. One
expert Van Gogh imitator,
Mister Zhao, rendered a
representation of his bedroom
with all the vim and colour of
the Dutch legend.
STREETS LINED
WITH MONET
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

R
E
U
T
E
R
S

(
M
A
I
N
)
;

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S

A PAINTER WORKS ON A
COPY OF A PAINTING BY
MODERN CHINESE PAINTER
YUE MINJUN AT DAFEN
VILLAGE, CHINA
LEFT: DUTCHMAN HANS VAN
MEEGEREN AT HIS TRIAL FOR
FORGING PAINTINGS. HE IS
BELIEVED TO BE THE BEST
FORGER OF ALL TIME
Art Forgery: The History
of the Modern Obsession,
says that the Italian master
frequently forged artworks,
replacing the pieces with the
originals that he was charged
with restoring.
Fast-forwarding to
contemporary forgers, Han
van Meegeren is widely
considered to be the greatest
of all time. It is popularly held
that from the 1920s onwards,
after his own work was
rebufed by critics and buyers,
an embittered Van Meegeren
decided to set out to prove
his critics wrong, by creating
credible forgeries of leading
ne artists, including Frans
Hals, Gerard ter Borch and
Johannes Vermeer.
To say that Van Meegeren
fooled his critics would be a
bludgeoning understatement.
He was so successful in
replicating the styles and
colours of the greats, that
several of the worlds foremost
critics not only regarded the
works as genuine but as
some of the nest examples
they had ever seen. Experts
say that he used historical
canvasses and ingeniously
formulated his own pigments,
eventually fooling collectors
into purchasing up to
US$30 million worth of fake
Vermeers which were sold
to everyone from Nazi leader
Hermann Gring, to the
Dutch government, which
during World War II was keen
on stopping artworks by the
countrys masters falling into
the hands of the Nazis.
In a bizarre twist, Van
Meegeren pieces eventually
found a lucrative market of
their own, which also
attracted forgers. One of
these was his son, Jacques
van Meegeren, who wrote
fraudulent certicates
verifying the authenticity of
his fathers work.
In 2012, Ken Perenyi the
self-described best American
art forger published his
PERENYI
ADMITTED
TO ENJOYING
THE CLOAK-
AND-DAGGER
ASPECT OF
ART FORGERY.
I MISS THE
ADDICTIVE
THRILL OF
FOOLING THE
EXPERTS, HE
WROTE. IT WAS
GREAT SPORT
FOR ME.
ART TALK
56
57
MAY 2014
57
MAY 2014
7x
In 1955, a plaster statue of
Buddha was dropped as it
was being moved, revealing
18-carat gold underneath. It
is the largest solid gold statue
in the world, now valued at
some US$250 million. Its
thought the Golden Buddha
was covered in plaster in
the 1700s to hide it from
invading armies.
The international yearly trade
in looted, stolen or smuggled
art was estimated at US$4.5
billion to US$6 billion in 2008.
In 2005, thieves stole a huge,
hippo-sized bronze sculpture
(3.6 metres in length, 1.8 metres
in height, and 1.8 metres wide),
Henry Moores Reclining Fig-
ure, worth nearly US$5 million.
Police theorise they then cut it
up and had it melted down to
just US$2,300 worth of scrap
metal, which was shipped to
China to be used for
electrical parts.
US$6,000,000,000
Brussels is home to a beloved
small statue of a small urinat-
ing boy. The Manneken Pis,
rst erected in 1388, has been
stolen seven times (the cur-
rent version dates from 1965).
Its thought to be symbolic of
a boy who urinated on some
explosives when Brussels was
under siege.
2 THIEVES
In 1990, two thieves masquerading as police ofcers
complete with fake moustaches stole US$500 million worth
of artwork from Bostons Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Although the largest property crime in US history, the
paintings remain unfound.
Because of their high prole,
stolen artworks can be hugely
difcult to sell, and are often
bought at just 10 percent of
their estimated legitimate
market value.
TONNES
13 PAINTINGS
The half a billion-dollar value is even more impressive
considering the thieves stole just 13 pieces of artwork. As
of 2013, the FBI was still ofering a US$5 million reward for
information leading directly to the retrieval of the paintings.
7
10%
1911
In 1911, the Mona Lisa was sto-
len from the Louvre in Paris,
France. Pablo Picasso was one
of the main suspects. Thou-
sands of people came to the
Louvre anyway, just to gawk
at the empty spot where the
painting was supposed to sit.
1913
Mona Lisa was returned and
a suspect arrested. As one au-
thor of the crime story puts it,
Mona Lisa left the Louvre
a work of art. She returned
an icon.
During World War II, the
Nazis stole 20 percent of
Europes great artworks.
20%
Steal a masterpiece and youll probably end up
with far less of a haul than you thought, alas.
Youll make far more money informing on the
greatest heist in American history
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK McCORMICK
PICASSOS
AND
PICKPOCKETS
5.5
There are actually several
versions of Edvard Munchs
famous The Scream. One
was stolen in 1994 from the
National Museum in Oslo.
The thieves, later caught, left
behind a postcard of three
men bawling with laughter. On
it they had scribbled, Thanks
for the poor security.
CHEEKY WORDS
2 TONNES
FICTION
VERSUS
REALITY
1ST BOND FILM
In 1961, a portrait of the
Duke of Wellington by Fran-
cisco de Goya was stolen
from the National Gallery in
London. Dr No (1962) poked
fun by having the painting
turn up in the villain's lair.
110KG
It was later discovered that
the painting had been stolen
by Kempton Bunton, a 110-ki-
logram retired truck driver
who had clambered through
a museum window. When he
confessed in 1965, he was 61
years old. He said his aim had
been to ransom the painting
for 140,000 (US $390,000)
"to buy television licenses for
old and poor people".
"I had the best time
of my life in jail [in
Madrid]. I had the
guarantee I was
coming out in a year
and I bought a cell
phone from one of
the boys in there. It
was like that movie
Goodfellas. I had my
own kitchen, my own
shower, and every day
I could bribe one of
the guards to go
to the market it was
fantastic".
Dutchman Michel van
Rijn, called the "world's
most successful art
smuggler", on how even
going to jail could be
glamorous.
Neuschwanstein Castle, which sits near the German-
Austrian border, served as Walt Disneys inspiration for
Sleeping Beautys castle. It was also part of Hitlers proposed
Fhrermuseum, the largest art repository in the world,
holding millions of masterpieces looted by the Nazis.
Inuential castle
PART III
ART TALK
56
57
MAY 2014
57
MAY 2014
7x
In 1955, a plaster statue of
Buddha was dropped as it
was being moved, revealing
18-carat gold underneath. It
is the largest solid gold statue
in the world, now valued at
some US$250 million. Its
thought the Golden Buddha
was covered in plaster in
the 1700s to hide it from
invading armies.
The international yearly trade
in looted, stolen or smuggled
art was estimated at US$4.5
billion to US$6 billion in 2008.
In 2005, thieves stole a huge,
hippo-sized bronze sculpture
(3.6 metres in length, 1.8 metres
in height, and 1.8 metres wide),
Henry Moores Reclining Fig-
ure, worth nearly US$5 million.
Police theorise they then cut it
up and had it melted down to
just US$2,300 worth of scrap
metal, which was shipped to
China to be used for
electrical parts.
US$6,000,000,000
Brussels is home to a beloved
small statue of a small urinat-
ing boy. The Manneken Pis,
rst erected in 1388, has been
stolen seven times (the cur-
rent version dates from 1965).
Its thought to be symbolic of
a boy who urinated on some
explosives when Brussels was
under siege.
2 THIEVES
In 1990, two thieves masquerading as police ofcers
complete with fake moustaches stole US$500 million worth
of artwork from Bostons Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Although the largest property crime in US history, the
paintings remain unfound.
Because of their high prole,
stolen artworks can be hugely
difcult to sell, and are often
bought at just 10 percent of
their estimated legitimate
market value.
TONNES
13 PAINTINGS
The half a billion-dollar value is even more impressive
considering the thieves stole just 13 pieces of artwork. As
of 2013, the FBI was still ofering a US$5 million reward for
information leading directly to the retrieval of the paintings.
7
10%
1911
In 1911, the Mona Lisa was sto-
len from the Louvre in Paris,
France. Pablo Picasso was one
of the main suspects. Thou-
sands of people came to the
Louvre anyway, just to gawk
at the empty spot where the
painting was supposed to sit.
1913
Mona Lisa was returned and
a suspect arrested. As one au-
thor of the crime story puts it,
Mona Lisa left the Louvre
a work of art. She returned
an icon.
During World War II, the
Nazis stole 20 percent of
Europes great artworks.
20%
Steal a masterpiece and youll probably end up
with far less of a haul than you thought, alas.
Youll make far more money informing on the
greatest heist in American history
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK McCORMICK
PICASSOS
AND
PICKPOCKETS
5.5
There are actually several
versions of Edvard Munchs
famous The Scream. One
was stolen in 1994 from the
National Museum in Oslo.
The thieves, later caught, left
behind a postcard of three
men bawling with laughter. On
it they had scribbled, Thanks
for the poor security.
CHEEKY WORDS
2 TONNES
FICTION
VERSUS
REALITY
1ST BOND FILM
In 1961, a portrait of the
Duke of Wellington by Fran-
cisco de Goya was stolen
from the National Gallery in
London. Dr No (1962) poked
fun by having the painting
turn up in the villain's lair.
110KG
It was later discovered that
the painting had been stolen
by Kempton Bunton, a 110-ki-
logram retired truck driver
who had clambered through
a museum window. When he
confessed in 1965, he was 61
years old. He said his aim had
been to ransom the painting
for 140,000 (US $390,000)
"to buy television licenses for
old and poor people".
"I had the best time
of my life in jail [in
Madrid]. I had the
guarantee I was
coming out in a year
and I bought a cell
phone from one of
the boys in there. It
was like that movie
Goodfellas. I had my
own kitchen, my own
shower, and every day
I could bribe one of
the guards to go
to the market it was
fantastic".
Dutchman Michel van
Rijn, called the "world's
most successful art
smuggler", on how even
going to jail could be
glamorous.
Neuschwanstein Castle, which sits near the German-
Austrian border, served as Walt Disneys inspiration for
Sleeping Beautys castle. It was also part of Hitlers proposed
Fhrermuseum, the largest art repository in the world,
holding millions of masterpieces looted by the Nazis.
Inuential castle
PART III
ART TALK
58
59
MAY 2014
They dene our day ahead, rank our music, businesses and social
strata. In the online world they pop up everywhere we turn. Why
are we so enthralled with lists? What do we know about how they
impact our minds? And in a world lled with such beautiful forms of
expression, why are we hell-bent on reducing everything down to a
top-ve? Daniel Seifert investigates
LIFE AS A LIST
58
59
MAY 2014
They dene our day ahead, rank our music, businesses and social
strata. In the online world they pop up everywhere we turn. Why
are we so enthralled with lists? What do we know about how they
impact our minds? And in a world lled with such beautiful forms of
expression, why are we hell-bent on reducing everything down to a
top-ve? Daniel Seifert investigates
LIFE AS A LIST
60
61
MAY 2014
ublished in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly
Efective People went on to became a
classic of its kind, selling more than 25
million copies in 38 languages. Former
United States president Bill Clinton
reportedly liked the book so much that
he invited Covey to help him integrate
7 Habits into his own presidential to-do
list. The people at TIME magazine too
loved Coveys list so much so that they
added him to two of their own, naming
him one of the 25 Most Inuential
Americans in 1996, and his book among
The 25 Most Inuential Business
Management Books in 2011.
As such, its fair to say that Covey
not only spawned legions of copycat
management books but he was also
responsible for way too many lists.
BRAIN CANDY
It is a given these days that super-
busy people seem to make a lot of
lists. Fortunately, some of them also
IN THE LATE 80S, STEPHEN R COVEY SET OUT TO MAP THE
EMOTIONAL WORLD OF HIGH ACHIEVERS. HE FOCUSSED
ON THEIR BEHAVIOUR PATTERNS WHICH SEEMED TO
CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANTLY TO THEIR SUCCESS. YET
BEFORE HE COULD PROCEED FURTHER, COVEY FACED A
CRITICAL DECISION: WHAT SHOULD HE CALL THE BOOK?
IN THE END, THE ANSWER WAS CRYSTAL CLEAR
HE SIMPLY MADE A LIST.
have a sense of humour about it. Im
controlling, and I want everything
orderly, and I need lists, admitted
actress Sandra Bullock to press. My
mind goes a mile a minute. Im difcult
on every single level.
Aside from perhaps staying well away
from cafeine, what advice might science
have for list-obsessives such as Bullock?
At a fundamental level, why do we seem
to love lists so much? One reason seems
to be that lists appear to help us fast-
track our path to understanding.
Put simply, when we see something,
the human brain immediately seeks to
explain and understand it. According to
Dr Tania Lombrozo, of the University
of California, Berkeleys department of
psychology, in the United States, this
deduction process appears to be one that
is hardwired within us. Generating and
evaluating explanations is spontaneous,
ubiquitous and fundamental to our sense
of understanding, she wrote in a paper.
Lists, it seems, are the equivalent of fast
food in the food market of understanding.
As Maria Konnikova writes in The New
Yorker, when we are reading, our brains
seem to nd something thrilling about
reading a list. The article-as-numbered-
list has several features that make it
inherently captivating, she writes.
Konnikova, author of the 2013 book
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock
Holmes, explains that lists are in essence
pre-packaged to make them brain-
friendly. The headline catches our eye
in a stream of content; it positions its
subject within a pre-existing category
and classication system, she writes. It
spatially organises the information; and
it promises a story thats nite, whose
length has been quantied upfront. The
result, Konnikova notes, is what we as
readers might consider easy reading.
The mental heavy lifting of
conceptualisation, categorisation, and
analysis is completed well in advance of
actual consumption a bit like sipping
green juice instead of munching on
a bundle of kale, she explains. And
theres little that our brains crave more
than efortlessly acquired data.
Lists appear to help do the work
that our brain would normally do itself
which may provide a clue as to why
we nd them so appealing, despite our
better judgment. As well explore, it may
also be why they are rapidly becoming so
overused. But rst, lets have a peek at a
few lists we love.
BOMBS AND BALANCE
It was 1940. Across the nation, the
Battle of Britain was mapping out
the future of the country, as Spitres
and Messerschmitts howled in the
skies. All this aerial annihilation was a
nuisance though for the members of the
Richmond Golf Club, just a few miles
from London. Especially given that a
bomb had recently had the audacity to
destroy one of the clubs buildings.
Yet rather than let the scoundrels in
the sky ruin their noble sport completely,
the club simply had a good British cup of
tea, and drew up a list of temporary rules,
the rst three of which are shown here.
1. Players are asked to collect bomb and
shrapnel splinters to save these causing
damage to the mowing machines.
2. In competitions, during gunre, or while
bombs are falling, players may take
cover without penalty for ceasing play.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
R
E
A
M
S
T
I
M
E
LIFE AS A LIST
60
61
MAY 2014
ublished in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly
Efective People went on to became a
classic of its kind, selling more than 25
million copies in 38 languages. Former
United States president Bill Clinton
reportedly liked the book so much that
he invited Covey to help him integrate
7 Habits into his own presidential to-do
list. The people at TIME magazine too
loved Coveys list so much so that they
added him to two of their own, naming
him one of the 25 Most Inuential
Americans in 1996, and his book among
The 25 Most Inuential Business
Management Books in 2011.
As such, its fair to say that Covey
not only spawned legions of copycat
management books but he was also
responsible for way too many lists.
BRAIN CANDY
It is a given these days that super-
busy people seem to make a lot of
lists. Fortunately, some of them also
IN THE LATE 80S, STEPHEN R COVEY SET OUT TO MAP THE
EMOTIONAL WORLD OF HIGH ACHIEVERS. HE FOCUSSED
ON THEIR BEHAVIOUR PATTERNS WHICH SEEMED TO
CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANTLY TO THEIR SUCCESS. YET
BEFORE HE COULD PROCEED FURTHER, COVEY FACED A
CRITICAL DECISION: WHAT SHOULD HE CALL THE BOOK?
IN THE END, THE ANSWER WAS CRYSTAL CLEAR
HE SIMPLY MADE A LIST.
have a sense of humour about it. Im
controlling, and I want everything
orderly, and I need lists, admitted
actress Sandra Bullock to press. My
mind goes a mile a minute. Im difcult
on every single level.
Aside from perhaps staying well away
from cafeine, what advice might science
have for list-obsessives such as Bullock?
At a fundamental level, why do we seem
to love lists so much? One reason seems
to be that lists appear to help us fast-
track our path to understanding.
Put simply, when we see something,
the human brain immediately seeks to
explain and understand it. According to
Dr Tania Lombrozo, of the University
of California, Berkeleys department of
psychology, in the United States, this
deduction process appears to be one that
is hardwired within us. Generating and
evaluating explanations is spontaneous,
ubiquitous and fundamental to our sense
of understanding, she wrote in a paper.
Lists, it seems, are the equivalent of fast
food in the food market of understanding.
As Maria Konnikova writes in The New
Yorker, when we are reading, our brains
seem to nd something thrilling about
reading a list. The article-as-numbered-
list has several features that make it
inherently captivating, she writes.
Konnikova, author of the 2013 book
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock
Holmes, explains that lists are in essence
pre-packaged to make them brain-
friendly. The headline catches our eye
in a stream of content; it positions its
subject within a pre-existing category
and classication system, she writes. It
spatially organises the information; and
it promises a story thats nite, whose
length has been quantied upfront. The
result, Konnikova notes, is what we as
readers might consider easy reading.
The mental heavy lifting of
conceptualisation, categorisation, and
analysis is completed well in advance of
actual consumption a bit like sipping
green juice instead of munching on
a bundle of kale, she explains. And
theres little that our brains crave more
than efortlessly acquired data.
Lists appear to help do the work
that our brain would normally do itself
which may provide a clue as to why
we nd them so appealing, despite our
better judgment. As well explore, it may
also be why they are rapidly becoming so
overused. But rst, lets have a peek at a
few lists we love.
BOMBS AND BALANCE
It was 1940. Across the nation, the
Battle of Britain was mapping out
the future of the country, as Spitres
and Messerschmitts howled in the
skies. All this aerial annihilation was a
nuisance though for the members of the
Richmond Golf Club, just a few miles
from London. Especially given that a
bomb had recently had the audacity to
destroy one of the clubs buildings.
Yet rather than let the scoundrels in
the sky ruin their noble sport completely,
the club simply had a good British cup of
tea, and drew up a list of temporary rules,
the rst three of which are shown here.
1. Players are asked to collect bomb and
shrapnel splinters to save these causing
damage to the mowing machines.
2. In competitions, during gunre, or while
bombs are falling, players may take
cover without penalty for ceasing play.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
R
E
A
M
S
T
I
M
E
LIFE AS A LIST
62
63
MAY 2014
3. The positions of known delayed-
action bombs are marked by red
ags placed at reasonably, but not
guaranteed, safe distance therefrom.
They saved the best for last. Item seven
of the rules reads, A player whose stroke
is afected by the simultaneous explosion
of a bomb, may play another ball from the
same place. Penalty one stroke.
Now theres a good list and a classic
example of lists restoring order from
chaos, as the golfers were quite literally
instructed to keep calm and caddy on.
However, in other cases, popular lists
have restricted our understanding of
common knowledge.
How many senses do you have?
Thats easy, you say, counting of on
your ngers: sight, smell, sound, taste
and touch. Hence, the ve senses. Only
that mental list we create because of the
phrase, is wrong. To narrow it down to
such a tiny inventory is in fact an insult
to our workhorse bodies.
Our fetish for top-ves means we
often forget about thermoception (sense
of temperature), proprioception (sense
of where our body parts are in relation
to other body parts), nociception (sense
of pain), and equilibrioception (sense
of balance and gravity). And thats just
a few weve missed. So when you think
all youre doing is stopping to smell the
roses, your body is in fact also doing a
dozen other things in the background.
The sight-smell-sound model that
we still adopt today dates all the way
Clark admits the main draw of these
lists is their role as a psychological trigger.
From a copywriting standpoint, were
taught to write ultra-specic headlines,
because people respond to them in
greater numbers, he tells DCM. Given we
are constantly bombarded with content,
lists momentarily bring order. In a
fast-paced, attention-poor environment
such as your inbox, you make very quick
decisions about what you can aford not to
pay attention to.
Do lists sneak through our defences
then? A headline with the specicity that
comes with a list is just much harder to
resist, Clark says. We feel that we can
gauge how much attention were going to
have to invest, after the click.
Here are three more reasons
that lists rule our world. Theyre
easy to process. They provide an
inherent sense of excitement and
anticipation. And they give you the
chance to hotly agree or disagree.
Think of the last time you scanned
Buzzfeeds 10 Best Books of the Year
and shrieked, They forgot The Hunger
Games? The heathens!
Still, the popularity of such top-ves,
and fact that they can be knocked out in
about 10 minutes (The list headline is the
lazy writers dream, Clark says) means
that the format has also been accused
of dumbing us down. Might they soon
face their demise? I remember the rst
time I was asked that question, in 2006,
he recalls. My response remains the
same. Theyve worked for well over 100
years, and I doubt human nature changes
anytime soon.
POETRY IN NUMBERS
What Clark and his crazy content
cohort play upon is the fact that we as
humans already innately put everything
we see in metaphorical boxes. Put simply,
our brains are busy little list-makers
too. Its hard for us not to categorise
something the moment we see it,
writes Konnikova.
And perhaps for good reason. She writes
that this thirst for categorisation and
hence, organisation is a process thats
been found to aid recall. It may also explain
why the format of a list seems to t us like a
glove. Because we can process information
more easily when its in a list than when
its clustered and undiferentiated, like
in standard paragraphs, a list feels more
intuitive, she notes.
HOW MANY SENSES
DO YOU HAVE?
THATS EASY, YOU
SAY, SIGHT, SMELL,
SOUND, TASTE AND
TOUCH. ONLY THAT
THE MENTAL LIST WE
CREATE BECAUSE
OF THIS PHRASE,
IS WRONG. TO
NARROW IT DOWN
TO SUCH A TINY
INVENTORY IS IN
FACT AN INSULT TO
OUR WORKHORSE
BODIES.
EYE-CATCHING
LISTS
The Top 10 list remains a
mainstay and has been historical-
ly, from Moses to Letterman. Weve
started having fun with the convention
at Copyblogger by using 11 instead of 10
(our lists go all the way up to 11, a la This is
Spinal Tap). Otherwise, odd numbers work
better than even for some reason, which
is why you see a lot of three-, five-, and
seven-item lists. And finally, theres the
ridiculous list, which can be 75, 101, or
just some seemingly random number,
such as 37.
Brian Clark (pictured left),
founder of Copyblogger,
on making attention-
grabbing lists
BASED ON HIS
EXPERIENCE,
COPYBLOGGERS BRIAN
CLARK SAYS THAT
WHEN IT COMES TO
MAKING LISTS, CERTAIN
NUMBERS SEEM TO
DRAW MORE ATTENTION
FROM AN AUDIENCE
THAN OTHERS
back to Aristotle, who insisted that there
could not be more than ve senses. It
has remained unchanged for millennia,
and we still teach this narrow-minded
view to kindergarteners today. Its shame
perhaps, not least because watching
a toddler try to say equilibrioception
would instantly go on our list of Five
Cutest Things Ever.
TOP FIVE OF EVERYTHING
This is what the internet is made up of, in
descending order: LOL, Cats, nudity and
lists. Or at least, thats what it feels like.
Type in Top 5 into Google and youll
get, at the time of writing, 5,820,000,000
results. Yes, 5.82 billion. Why is it that
we cant surf the net nowadays without
seeing 10 Nail Varnishes that Will
Change your Life, 20 of Historys Worst
Dictators or Three Toddlers with the
Best Equilibrioception?
We sent questions to Brian Clark,
former attorney and founder of
Copyblogger to nd out. It is telling
that the behemoth content marketing
site bills itself in list-format, proudly
extolling the lists its on: Advertising Age
ranks Copyblogger as a top marketing
blog in its Power150 list. The Guardian
named Copyblogger one of the worlds 50
most powerful blogs. And so on.
LIFE AS A LIST
62
63
MAY 2014
3. The positions of known delayed-
action bombs are marked by red
ags placed at reasonably, but not
guaranteed, safe distance therefrom.
They saved the best for last. Item seven
of the rules reads, A player whose stroke
is afected by the simultaneous explosion
of a bomb, may play another ball from the
same place. Penalty one stroke.
Now theres a good list and a classic
example of lists restoring order from
chaos, as the golfers were quite literally
instructed to keep calm and caddy on.
However, in other cases, popular lists
have restricted our understanding of
common knowledge.
How many senses do you have?
Thats easy, you say, counting of on
your ngers: sight, smell, sound, taste
and touch. Hence, the ve senses. Only
that mental list we create because of the
phrase, is wrong. To narrow it down to
such a tiny inventory is in fact an insult
to our workhorse bodies.
Our fetish for top-ves means we
often forget about thermoception (sense
of temperature), proprioception (sense
of where our body parts are in relation
to other body parts), nociception (sense
of pain), and equilibrioception (sense
of balance and gravity). And thats just
a few weve missed. So when you think
all youre doing is stopping to smell the
roses, your body is in fact also doing a
dozen other things in the background.
The sight-smell-sound model that
we still adopt today dates all the way
Clark admits the main draw of these
lists is their role as a psychological trigger.
From a copywriting standpoint, were
taught to write ultra-specic headlines,
because people respond to them in
greater numbers, he tells DCM. Given we
are constantly bombarded with content,
lists momentarily bring order. In a
fast-paced, attention-poor environment
such as your inbox, you make very quick
decisions about what you can aford not to
pay attention to.
Do lists sneak through our defences
then? A headline with the specicity that
comes with a list is just much harder to
resist, Clark says. We feel that we can
gauge how much attention were going to
have to invest, after the click.
Here are three more reasons
that lists rule our world. Theyre
easy to process. They provide an
inherent sense of excitement and
anticipation. And they give you the
chance to hotly agree or disagree.
Think of the last time you scanned
Buzzfeeds 10 Best Books of the Year
and shrieked, They forgot The Hunger
Games? The heathens!
Still, the popularity of such top-ves,
and fact that they can be knocked out in
about 10 minutes (The list headline is the
lazy writers dream, Clark says) means
that the format has also been accused
of dumbing us down. Might they soon
face their demise? I remember the rst
time I was asked that question, in 2006,
he recalls. My response remains the
same. Theyve worked for well over 100
years, and I doubt human nature changes
anytime soon.
POETRY IN NUMBERS
What Clark and his crazy content
cohort play upon is the fact that we as
humans already innately put everything
we see in metaphorical boxes. Put simply,
our brains are busy little list-makers
too. Its hard for us not to categorise
something the moment we see it,
writes Konnikova.
And perhaps for good reason. She writes
that this thirst for categorisation and
hence, organisation is a process thats
been found to aid recall. It may also explain
why the format of a list seems to t us like a
glove. Because we can process information
more easily when its in a list than when
its clustered and undiferentiated, like
in standard paragraphs, a list feels more
intuitive, she notes.
HOW MANY SENSES
DO YOU HAVE?
THATS EASY, YOU
SAY, SIGHT, SMELL,
SOUND, TASTE AND
TOUCH. ONLY THAT
THE MENTAL LIST WE
CREATE BECAUSE
OF THIS PHRASE,
IS WRONG. TO
NARROW IT DOWN
TO SUCH A TINY
INVENTORY IS IN
FACT AN INSULT TO
OUR WORKHORSE
BODIES.
EYE-CATCHING
LISTS
The Top 10 list remains a
mainstay and has been historical-
ly, from Moses to Letterman. Weve
started having fun with the convention
at Copyblogger by using 11 instead of 10
(our lists go all the way up to 11, a la This is
Spinal Tap). Otherwise, odd numbers work
better than even for some reason, which
is why you see a lot of three-, five-, and
seven-item lists. And finally, theres the
ridiculous list, which can be 75, 101, or
just some seemingly random number,
such as 37.
Brian Clark (pictured left),
founder of Copyblogger,
on making attention-
grabbing lists
BASED ON HIS
EXPERIENCE,
COPYBLOGGERS BRIAN
CLARK SAYS THAT
WHEN IT COMES TO
MAKING LISTS, CERTAIN
NUMBERS SEEM TO
DRAW MORE ATTENTION
FROM AN AUDIENCE
THAN OTHERS
back to Aristotle, who insisted that there
could not be more than ve senses. It
has remained unchanged for millennia,
and we still teach this narrow-minded
view to kindergarteners today. Its shame
perhaps, not least because watching
a toddler try to say equilibrioception
would instantly go on our list of Five
Cutest Things Ever.
TOP FIVE OF EVERYTHING
This is what the internet is made up of, in
descending order: LOL, Cats, nudity and
lists. Or at least, thats what it feels like.
Type in Top 5 into Google and youll
get, at the time of writing, 5,820,000,000
results. Yes, 5.82 billion. Why is it that
we cant surf the net nowadays without
seeing 10 Nail Varnishes that Will
Change your Life, 20 of Historys Worst
Dictators or Three Toddlers with the
Best Equilibrioception?
We sent questions to Brian Clark,
former attorney and founder of
Copyblogger to nd out. It is telling
that the behemoth content marketing
site bills itself in list-format, proudly
extolling the lists its on: Advertising Age
ranks Copyblogger as a top marketing
blog in its Power150 list. The Guardian
named Copyblogger one of the worlds 50
most powerful blogs. And so on.
LIFE AS A LIST
64
65
MAY 2014
A
1. AWFUL
B
2. BALDY 3. BASHFUL
4. BIGGO-EGO 5. BURPY
D
6. DAFFY 7. DEAFY 8. DIPPY
9. DIRTY 10. DIZZY 11. DOLEFUL
12. DOPEY 13. DUMPY
F
14. FLABBY
G
15. GABBY 16. GRUMPY
H
17. HICKEY 18. HOPPY
19. HOTSY 20. HUNGRY
J
21. JAUNTY 22. JUMPY
L
23. LAZY
N
24. NEURTSY 25. NIFTY
P
26. PUFFY
S
27. SAPPY 28. SCRAPPY
29. SHIFTY 30. SHORTY
31. SILLY 32. SLEEPY
33. SNAPPY 34. SNEEZY
35. SNEEZY-WHEEZY 36. SNIFFY
37. SNOOPY 38. SOULFUL
39. STRUTTY 40. STUFFY 41. SWIFT
T
42. TEARFUL 43. THRIFTY
W
44. WEEPY 45. WHEEZY
46. WISTFUL 47. WOEFUL
WALT DISNEYS IDEAS LIST
WHAT TO NAME THE SEVEN CUDDLY
CHARACTERS IN SNOW WHITE AND
THE SEVEN DWARVES? DISNEYS
WRITING TEAM COMPILED A LIST
OF 47 POSSIBILITIES. WHAT WOULD
NEURTSY EVEN LOOK LIKE?
more poignant by the fact that only the
pyramids still stand today.
How much would we know about
the Greeks at all if it werent for their
obsessive list-making? Much of the
list frenzy seems to have started in 776
BC, when a naked, sweaty cook named
Koroibos of Elis crossed the nish line
of a race covered in olive oil. Koroibos
race was to echo throughout history:
he was the rst recorded name in the
Olympionikai, or Olympic victors list. In
their 2006 paper, The Olympic Victor
List of Eusebius, historians Dr Paul
Christesen and Dr Zara Martirosova-
Torlone explained that the lists
enduring popularity at that time was
due to the fact that, by the fourth
century BC, numbered Olympiads and
the names of Olympian victors became a
standard means of identifying individual
years. They thus became an early
means of standardising and referencing
time by various Greek nations, who
kept diferent calendars across the
Mediterranean.
Olympic victor lists were hugely
important to modern historians, too.
Their chronographic signicance
means they are critical to our
understanding of the chronological
underpinnings of Greek history, the
authors write. Without the victors,
our understanding of culture might be
signicantly more jumbled.
DARK LISTS
Even today, there is an undeniable
gravitas to certain lists. Think of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the
US capital of Washington DC. From
Specialist fourth-class Gerald Lloyd
Aadland to Specialist fourth-class James
Louis Zyph, there are 58,195 names
etched onto its black stone just the
names of the dead. In its simplicity lies
its power.
Other lists have proven to be
lifesavers. Steven Spielbergs cinematic
masterpiece Schindlers List was based
on the real-life good samaritan Oskar
Schindler, a Nazi industrialist who used
Jewish labour in his factories. Inclusion
on his typewritten list of workers meant
more food, better conditions and a
shot at survival. Not for nothing is one
of the most powerful lines of the lm
uttered by a hoarse Sir Ben Kingsley:
The list is life. All around its margins
lies the gulf.
WOULD IT BE EASIER TO
CREATE A LIST WITH WORDS?
CERTAINLY THAT WOULD
MAKE A GROCERY LIST
EASIER TO UNDERSTAND.
DCM HAS PREVIOUSLY
FEATURED MICHELANGELOS
GROCERY LIST, WHICH HAD
SKETCHES MATCHING THE
ITEMS HE HAD LISTED. THIS
MIGHT HAVE ALLOWED EVEN
ILLITERATE PEOPLE TO
READ HIS GROCERY LIST
Indeed, mankinds longing for a good
list apparently goes back a long way.
When Homer was writing the Iliad, his epic
15,600-line poem about the Trojan War,
he detailed the astonishing breadth of the
Greek eet with the 300-line Catalogue of
Ships naming the captains of the vessels,
where they were from, and the heroes they
carried. The list literally became poetry:
the Iliad was delivered as spoken word,
its performers memorising dozens of
ethnicities, captains and their troops.
For Greeks, the immense roll call was a
stirring tribute, where even the smallest
players were acknowledged. Homer
began the Catalogue of Ships by invoking
the nine Muses of Olympus to share
their memory of the details: The mass of
troops I could never tally, never name,
he wrote. Not even if I had 10 tongues
and 10 mouths.
We could even accuse the ancient
Greeks of being the fathers of the
internet-style best-of list. The Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World? Its
hardly a recent concept, dreamed up by
a cunning travel agent. It was invented
by the Greeks as a kind of Cond Nast
Hot List of its time. Although the top
seven wonders varied from Greek to
Greek, the main contenders were the
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the walls
of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the
Colossus of Rhodes, the Egyptian
pyramids and the tomb of King
Mausolus at Halicarnassus a list made
WE AS HUMANS
INNATELY PUT
EVERYTHING IN
METAPHORICAL
BOXES. OUR BRAINS
ARE BUSY LITTLE
LIST-MAKERS. ITS
HARD FOR US NOT
TO CATEGORISE
SOMETHING THE
MOMENT WE SEE IT,
THIS THIRST FOR
CATEGORISATION IS
A PROCESS THATS
BEEN FOUND TO AID
RECALL.
LIFE AS A LIST
64
65
MAY 2014
A
1. AWFUL
B
2. BALDY 3. BASHFUL
4. BIGGO-EGO 5. BURPY
D
6. DAFFY 7. DEAFY 8. DIPPY
9. DIRTY 10. DIZZY 11. DOLEFUL
12. DOPEY 13. DUMPY
F
14. FLABBY
G
15. GABBY 16. GRUMPY
H
17. HICKEY 18. HOPPY
19. HOTSY 20. HUNGRY
J
21. JAUNTY 22. JUMPY
L
23. LAZY
N
24. NEURTSY 25. NIFTY
P
26. PUFFY
S
27. SAPPY 28. SCRAPPY
29. SHIFTY 30. SHORTY
31. SILLY 32. SLEEPY
33. SNAPPY 34. SNEEZY
35. SNEEZY-WHEEZY 36. SNIFFY
37. SNOOPY 38. SOULFUL
39. STRUTTY 40. STUFFY 41. SWIFT
T
42. TEARFUL 43. THRIFTY
W
44. WEEPY 45. WHEEZY
46. WISTFUL 47. WOEFUL
WALT DISNEYS IDEAS LIST
WHAT TO NAME THE SEVEN CUDDLY
CHARACTERS IN SNOW WHITE AND
THE SEVEN DWARVES? DISNEYS
WRITING TEAM COMPILED A LIST
OF 47 POSSIBILITIES. WHAT WOULD
NEURTSY EVEN LOOK LIKE?
more poignant by the fact that only the
pyramids still stand today.
How much would we know about
the Greeks at all if it werent for their
obsessive list-making? Much of the
list frenzy seems to have started in 776
BC, when a naked, sweaty cook named
Koroibos of Elis crossed the nish line
of a race covered in olive oil. Koroibos
race was to echo throughout history:
he was the rst recorded name in the
Olympionikai, or Olympic victors list. In
their 2006 paper, The Olympic Victor
List of Eusebius, historians Dr Paul
Christesen and Dr Zara Martirosova-
Torlone explained that the lists
enduring popularity at that time was
due to the fact that, by the fourth
century BC, numbered Olympiads and
the names of Olympian victors became a
standard means of identifying individual
years. They thus became an early
means of standardising and referencing
time by various Greek nations, who
kept diferent calendars across the
Mediterranean.
Olympic victor lists were hugely
important to modern historians, too.
Their chronographic signicance
means they are critical to our
understanding of the chronological
underpinnings of Greek history, the
authors write. Without the victors,
our understanding of culture might be
signicantly more jumbled.
DARK LISTS
Even today, there is an undeniable
gravitas to certain lists. Think of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the
US capital of Washington DC. From
Specialist fourth-class Gerald Lloyd
Aadland to Specialist fourth-class James
Louis Zyph, there are 58,195 names
etched onto its black stone just the
names of the dead. In its simplicity lies
its power.
Other lists have proven to be
lifesavers. Steven Spielbergs cinematic
masterpiece Schindlers List was based
on the real-life good samaritan Oskar
Schindler, a Nazi industrialist who used
Jewish labour in his factories. Inclusion
on his typewritten list of workers meant
more food, better conditions and a
shot at survival. Not for nothing is one
of the most powerful lines of the lm
uttered by a hoarse Sir Ben Kingsley:
The list is life. All around its margins
lies the gulf.
WOULD IT BE EASIER TO
CREATE A LIST WITH WORDS?
CERTAINLY THAT WOULD
MAKE A GROCERY LIST
EASIER TO UNDERSTAND.
DCM HAS PREVIOUSLY
FEATURED MICHELANGELOS
GROCERY LIST, WHICH HAD
SKETCHES MATCHING THE
ITEMS HE HAD LISTED. THIS
MIGHT HAVE ALLOWED EVEN
ILLITERATE PEOPLE TO
READ HIS GROCERY LIST
Indeed, mankinds longing for a good
list apparently goes back a long way.
When Homer was writing the Iliad, his epic
15,600-line poem about the Trojan War,
he detailed the astonishing breadth of the
Greek eet with the 300-line Catalogue of
Ships naming the captains of the vessels,
where they were from, and the heroes they
carried. The list literally became poetry:
the Iliad was delivered as spoken word,
its performers memorising dozens of
ethnicities, captains and their troops.
For Greeks, the immense roll call was a
stirring tribute, where even the smallest
players were acknowledged. Homer
began the Catalogue of Ships by invoking
the nine Muses of Olympus to share
their memory of the details: The mass of
troops I could never tally, never name,
he wrote. Not even if I had 10 tongues
and 10 mouths.
We could even accuse the ancient
Greeks of being the fathers of the
internet-style best-of list. The Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World? Its
hardly a recent concept, dreamed up by
a cunning travel agent. It was invented
by the Greeks as a kind of Cond Nast
Hot List of its time. Although the top
seven wonders varied from Greek to
Greek, the main contenders were the
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the walls
of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the
Colossus of Rhodes, the Egyptian
pyramids and the tomb of King
Mausolus at Halicarnassus a list made
WE AS HUMANS
INNATELY PUT
EVERYTHING IN
METAPHORICAL
BOXES. OUR BRAINS
ARE BUSY LITTLE
LIST-MAKERS. ITS
HARD FOR US NOT
TO CATEGORISE
SOMETHING THE
MOMENT WE SEE IT,
THIS THIRST FOR
CATEGORISATION IS
A PROCESS THATS
BEEN FOUND TO AID
RECALL.
LIFE AS A LIST
66
67
MAY 2014
DCM CAUGHT UP WITH AMIE
STEPANOVICH, SENIOR POLICY
COUNCIL AT ACCESS NOW, A HUMAN
RIGHTS ORGANISATION DEFENDING
DIGITAL RIGHTS. SHE TELLS THAT
BASED ON A RANDOM LIST OF
KEYWORDS YOU USED ONLINE, YOUR
LIFE COULD CHANGE.
Are keyword surveillance lists good? Bad?
Or perhaps misguided? People have to
know what criteria you are using to add
them to a list. When you tag a bunch of
keywords, youre going to get a bunch of
false negatives. The algorithm through
which these are selected shouldnt be
discretionary when you are talking about
depriving people of basic rights.
This is one of the issues we are see-
ing with the no-y list, where different
agencies can recommend that people get
added which takes away their right to
not only y in United States airspace but
also over US airspace.
Scary stuff! The other thing is there
has to be the possibility of redress. If
someone has been added to a no-y list
incorrectly and deprived of rights, they
have to be able to go through a process
that is easy to gure out and efcient, to
have them removed from the watch list.
They have set up a programme called
DHS TRIP [the Department of Home-
land Security Traveler Redress Inquiry
Programme], but it requires you to plug
in even more information. Its not clear if
youll be taken off the list, but it does put
you square in the governments eyes for
additional surveillance and inquiry. So
in the process of trying to say you have
been unfairly targeted, you become more
targeted. A lot of people have been added
to the terror suspect list just because
they have the same name as a suspect.
You see a lot of targeting of minorities,
who already feel like theyre targeted in
the US for many other reasons. Their
only digression could be having the same
name as somebody else. To get off the list
takes even more time, and in some cases
people cant devote that amount of energy
and harassment that comes with it..
NAUGHTY OR NICE?
THATS THE KEYWORD
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S

(
A
M
I
E

S
T
E
P
A
N
O
V
I
C
H
)
;

A
F
P

(
V
I
E
T
N
A
M

W
A
R

M
E
M
O
R
I
A
L
)
Elsewhere we see more chilling lists.
A register of 46 Soviet military ofcials
dated January 29, 1942, provides a stark
example of what would later be called
the Purge of the Red Army. Written
in blue pencil over the names was ve
words. Shoot all named in the list.
It is signed by Joseph Stalin. With his
trademark scrawl, the dictators pencil
erased thousands of other names, and
lives, from existence.
Drill. Cops. Dirty bomb. Facility.
Cloud. Plague. Grid. Delays. Decapitated.
North Korea. Worm. These are just some
of the hundreds of keywords the US
government, and other governments,
lists as suspicious. Use enough of them
in a certain order in an email, a Google
search or a tweet, and advanced software
may add you to a watch list.
Or possibly worse. In 2012, British
tourist Leigh Van Bryan sent this
tweet to a friend: Free this week for
a quick gossip/prep before I go and
destroy America? x. After landing in
Los Angeles, he was held for intense
questioning and deported, despite telling
his interrogators that by destroy he
simply meant he was going to party
rather hard. Another of his tweets read:
3 weeks today, were totally in LA
pissing people of on Hollywood Blvd
and diggin Marilyn Monroe up! His
travel partner Emily Bunting was also
questioned about the second tweet. I
almost burst out laughing when they
asked me if I was going to be Leighs
lookout while he dug up Marilyn
Monroe, she told The Daily Mail.
Somewhat ironically, the line was a
quote from the American comedy TV
show Family Guy.
LESS IS MORE
Not only do lists seem to come in a
format that our brains like, they also
help to limit that pesky need to choose.
In 2011, psychologists Dr Claude
Messner and Dr Michaela Wnke tested
the paradox of choice, whereby the
more information and options we
have, the worse we seem to feel. Their
report in the Journal of Consumer
Psychology observed, Consumers are
less satised with a product chosen from
an extended assortment than from a
limited one. The researchers continued,
Presumably, information overload
causes decreased satisfaction and
reducing information overload would
increase satisfaction. And since a top-
ve limits our choices, this could lead to
increased satisfaction.
For many, lists are a key not only to
ordering and interpreting information,
but to retention of data as well. The fact
that we tend to write lists vertically helps
our learning process too, allowing our eyes
to glide smoothly down a page, thus aiding
spatial thinking. This is likely also why we
make grocery lists: youll nd that even
if you write down the information then
leave the list at home, youre more likely to
remember the items, since your brain can
better recall the location of the words on
the page.
Neuroscientist, German Memory
Championships winner and Guinness
World Record holder Boris Nikolai
Konrad has explained how lists can
even help you memorise lists. Speaking
to Psychology Today, he noted, The
foundation of most articial mnemonics is
the use of visual imagery and to associate
them with pre-learned cues. The most
famous of these is the method of loci,
where items to remember are associated
with physical locations. The idea is to
prepare a list of locations, for example
in ones home, Konrad said. When
memorising data, for example a list of
words, one will mentally walk along them
and make visual associations between the
to-be-learned word and the location.
The locations, he added, are a tool
in themselves. If I memorise digits
or playing cards, I rst have to encode
them into an image. Therefore I also
have a list of images prepared. Memory
athletes, as they dub themselves, often
DRILL. COPS. DIRTY
BOMB. FACILITY.
CLOUD. PLAGUE.
GRID. DELAYS.
DECAPITATED.
NORTH KOREA.
WORM. THESE ARE
JUST SOME OF THE
HUNDREDS OF
KEYWORDS THE
US GOVERNMENT,
AND OTHER
GOVERNMENTS,
LISTS AS SUSPICIOUS.
LIFE AS A LIST
66
67
MAY 2014
DCM CAUGHT UP WITH AMIE
STEPANOVICH, SENIOR POLICY
COUNCIL AT ACCESS NOW, A HUMAN
RIGHTS ORGANISATION DEFENDING
DIGITAL RIGHTS. SHE TELLS THAT
BASED ON A RANDOM LIST OF
KEYWORDS YOU USED ONLINE, YOUR
LIFE COULD CHANGE.
Are keyword surveillance lists good? Bad?
Or perhaps misguided? People have to
know what criteria you are using to add
them to a list. When you tag a bunch of
keywords, youre going to get a bunch of
false negatives. The algorithm through
which these are selected shouldnt be
discretionary when you are talking about
depriving people of basic rights.
This is one of the issues we are see-
ing with the no-y list, where different
agencies can recommend that people get
added which takes away their right to
not only y in United States airspace but
also over US airspace.
Scary stuff! The other thing is there
has to be the possibility of redress. If
someone has been added to a no-y list
incorrectly and deprived of rights, they
have to be able to go through a process
that is easy to gure out and efcient, to
have them removed from the watch list.
They have set up a programme called
DHS TRIP [the Department of Home-
land Security Traveler Redress Inquiry
Programme], but it requires you to plug
in even more information. Its not clear if
youll be taken off the list, but it does put
you square in the governments eyes for
additional surveillance and inquiry. So
in the process of trying to say you have
been unfairly targeted, you become more
targeted. A lot of people have been added
to the terror suspect list just because
they have the same name as a suspect.
You see a lot of targeting of minorities,
who already feel like theyre targeted in
the US for many other reasons. Their
only digression could be having the same
name as somebody else. To get off the list
takes even more time, and in some cases
people cant devote that amount of energy
and harassment that comes with it..
NAUGHTY OR NICE?
THATS THE KEYWORD
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S

(
A
M
I
E

S
T
E
P
A
N
O
V
I
C
H
)
;

A
F
P

(
V
I
E
T
N
A
M

W
A
R

M
E
M
O
R
I
A
L
)
Elsewhere we see more chilling lists.
A register of 46 Soviet military ofcials
dated January 29, 1942, provides a stark
example of what would later be called
the Purge of the Red Army. Written
in blue pencil over the names was ve
words. Shoot all named in the list.
It is signed by Joseph Stalin. With his
trademark scrawl, the dictators pencil
erased thousands of other names, and
lives, from existence.
Drill. Cops. Dirty bomb. Facility.
Cloud. Plague. Grid. Delays. Decapitated.
North Korea. Worm. These are just some
of the hundreds of keywords the US
government, and other governments,
lists as suspicious. Use enough of them
in a certain order in an email, a Google
search or a tweet, and advanced software
may add you to a watch list.
Or possibly worse. In 2012, British
tourist Leigh Van Bryan sent this
tweet to a friend: Free this week for
a quick gossip/prep before I go and
destroy America? x. After landing in
Los Angeles, he was held for intense
questioning and deported, despite telling
his interrogators that by destroy he
simply meant he was going to party
rather hard. Another of his tweets read:
3 weeks today, were totally in LA
pissing people of on Hollywood Blvd
and diggin Marilyn Monroe up! His
travel partner Emily Bunting was also
questioned about the second tweet. I
almost burst out laughing when they
asked me if I was going to be Leighs
lookout while he dug up Marilyn
Monroe, she told The Daily Mail.
Somewhat ironically, the line was a
quote from the American comedy TV
show Family Guy.
LESS IS MORE
Not only do lists seem to come in a
format that our brains like, they also
help to limit that pesky need to choose.
In 2011, psychologists Dr Claude
Messner and Dr Michaela Wnke tested
the paradox of choice, whereby the
more information and options we
have, the worse we seem to feel. Their
report in the Journal of Consumer
Psychology observed, Consumers are
less satised with a product chosen from
an extended assortment than from a
limited one. The researchers continued,
Presumably, information overload
causes decreased satisfaction and
reducing information overload would
increase satisfaction. And since a top-
ve limits our choices, this could lead to
increased satisfaction.
For many, lists are a key not only to
ordering and interpreting information,
but to retention of data as well. The fact
that we tend to write lists vertically helps
our learning process too, allowing our eyes
to glide smoothly down a page, thus aiding
spatial thinking. This is likely also why we
make grocery lists: youll nd that even
if you write down the information then
leave the list at home, youre more likely to
remember the items, since your brain can
better recall the location of the words on
the page.
Neuroscientist, German Memory
Championships winner and Guinness
World Record holder Boris Nikolai
Konrad has explained how lists can
even help you memorise lists. Speaking
to Psychology Today, he noted, The
foundation of most articial mnemonics is
the use of visual imagery and to associate
them with pre-learned cues. The most
famous of these is the method of loci,
where items to remember are associated
with physical locations. The idea is to
prepare a list of locations, for example
in ones home, Konrad said. When
memorising data, for example a list of
words, one will mentally walk along them
and make visual associations between the
to-be-learned word and the location.
The locations, he added, are a tool
in themselves. If I memorise digits
or playing cards, I rst have to encode
them into an image. Therefore I also
have a list of images prepared. Memory
athletes, as they dub themselves, often
DRILL. COPS. DIRTY
BOMB. FACILITY.
CLOUD. PLAGUE.
GRID. DELAYS.
DECAPITATED.
NORTH KOREA.
WORM. THESE ARE
JUST SOME OF THE
HUNDREDS OF
KEYWORDS THE
US GOVERNMENT,
AND OTHER
GOVERNMENTS,
LISTS AS SUSPICIOUS.
LIFE AS A LIST
68
69
MAY 2014
ONE OF THE FOUNDING
FATHERS OF THE UNITED
STATES, BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN IS FAMOUS FOR
THE LIST OF 13 VIRTUES
THAT HE LIVED HIS LIFE BY
BUT ALSO FOR THE LIST
HE COMPILED OF PHRASES
TO DESCRIBE SOMEONE
WHO IS DRUNK, APTLY
DUBBED THE DRINKERS
DICTIONARY
have a list of specic images tied to
each digit, which may range between
zero and 999. Explaining how it works,
he said research suggests our brain can
store more information if its stored in a
certain way. Apparently the mnemonics
enable us to directly encode information
into long-term memory. Using visual
imagery, one can inuence which
memory system encodes particular
information, he said.
Thanks to social media in particular,
even if youre not looking for them, lists
are now everywhere. Every time we
search on Google, the results reveal a list.
Dozens of times a day, Google ranks
what it thinks is most useful to us,
inuencing our options on everything
from which insurance to use, to what
restaurant to avoid.
There is a kind of inverse momentum
to that ranking too, an understanding
that the most important stuf is at the top.
Which is why search engine optimisation
consultants make their money teaching
you what buzzwords to include in your
content, edging you closer to the top of
the search list.
However, there is also a sense of
diminishing returns when a list gets
too unmanageable. In their book
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest
Human Strength John Tierney and Roy
F Baumeister discuss an episode where
a psychologist speaking to a group of
the Pentagons most powerful generals
asked them to summarise their strategic
approach in just 25 words. All failed,
except one female general, who wrote:
First I make a list of priorities: one,
two, three, and so on. Then I cross out
everything from three down. In just
21 words, the perfect tactical to-do list.
Which brings us to the saviour and
scourge of many of us: the to-do list.
Psychologists and productivity gurus tell
us that a mighty list can be tackled by
phrasing action points better. Research
suggests the brain likes easily understood,
specic tasks nding them much less
overwhelming than generalities.
Theres also a reason many people
prefer to write lists with pen and paper:
for the savage pleasure of crossing that
task out with a scribbled ourish. DCM is
sure you know exactly what we mean.
This sense of achievement and
certainty can do wonders, which is why
therapists often counsel patients with
depression to do a simple exercise.
List ve things at the end of each day
for which they are grateful. It could
be as simple as good weather or my
sister brought me pizza. But the act of
recounting or writing positive things
has shown to have a dramatic efect on
mental well-being.
Lists can give us a highly personal peek
into the minds of some of the greatest
thinkers of history, in ways that no letters
or speeches ever could. Albert Einstein,
for example, doesnt come of as such a
sweetheart in a list of dictatorial
demands he sent to his wife. These
include: You will obey the following
points in your relations with me: 1) You
will not expect any intimacy from me,
nor will you reproach me in any way. 2)
You will stop talking to me if I request it.
3) You will leave my bedroom or study
immediately without protest if I request
it. We can only hope he was more
charming in person.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the
Founding Fathers of the United States,
comes of as a lot more fun thanks
to some of his lists. Theres his List
of 13 Virtues, number one being
Temperance: eat not to Dullness, drink
not to elevation.
Paradoxically, he also has a list of over
200 synonyms for being drunk, which he
proudly announced were gatherd wholly
from the modern tavern-conversation of
tipplers. Some highlights included he
is addled, hes casting up his accounts,
hes biggy, drunk as a wheel-barrow
and his head is full of bees.
ON THE LIST
Lists are also often used to denote
status: ranging from the door list at your
favourite dance club, which helps you
skip past the queue, through to higher
honours, like The A-list, the Forbes 500, or
the 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs to Watch.
Indeed, a special thing seems to happen
once you get your name enshrined on a
much-coveted ranking. As Copybloggers
Clark explains, Once youre deemed to be
on such a list, you are viewed diferently
mostly for the better. Its just the way
humans are wired.
Book sales are a stark example. Stick
something on the New York Times
bestseller list and it will likely remain
there for a while, purely because people
see the list and think they ought to
read it. For example, it took the Harry
Potter books 10 years to come unstuck
from the list. As Michael Korda noted in
Making the List: A Cultural History of the
American Bestseller, 19001999, boasting
about sales very quickly became a way of
boosting sales.
The rst bestseller list is thought to
have appeared in 1895 in a magazine
dubbed The Bookman. At the top was
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush by Ian
Maclaren. Sadly today, this picture of
rural Scottish life languishes at number
5,263,535 in Amazons Best Sellers Rank.
Theres a story many scientists,
including Stephen Hawking, like to
tell. Hawking wrote in A Brief History
of Time, A well-known scientist (some
say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave
a public lecture on astronomy. He
described how the earth orbits around
the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits
around the centre of a vast collection of
stars called our galaxy. At the end of the
lecture, he wrote, an old lady raised a
point. What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a at plate supported
on the back of a giant tortoise. The
scientist gave a superior smile before
replying, What is the tortoise standing
on? Youre very clever, young man,
very clever, said the old lady. But its
tortoises all the way down.
The story seems appropriate, given
that there is an entry on Wikipedia called
List of lists of lists. Some might say it
takes a special kind of mind to create
that page, yet as the introduction points
out, Some articles that consist of a list
of things are themselves about lists of
things. In other words, as wed put it: its
lists all the way down.
MOST
WANTED LIST
One list very few people
would want to be on, the FBIs
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives,
made its debut on March 14, 1950.
The move by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, in the United States, came
after a 1949 news story on the toughest
guys to catch. The FBI director at
the time, J Edgar Hoover, decided an
official list would capture the publics
imagination and hopefully assist
in arrests.
As of 2011, 465 of those on the
list had been apprehended, 153
of them following tip-offs
from the public.
PSYCHOLOGISTS
TESTED THE
PARADOX OF
CHOICE, WHEREBY
THE MORE
INFORMATION AND
OPTIONS WE HAVE,
THE WORSE WE
SEEM TO FEEL.
REDUCING
INFORMATION
OVERLOAD
WOULD INCREASE
SATISFACTION.
LIFE AS A LIST
68
69
MAY 2014
ONE OF THE FOUNDING
FATHERS OF THE UNITED
STATES, BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN IS FAMOUS FOR
THE LIST OF 13 VIRTUES
THAT HE LIVED HIS LIFE BY
BUT ALSO FOR THE LIST
HE COMPILED OF PHRASES
TO DESCRIBE SOMEONE
WHO IS DRUNK, APTLY
DUBBED THE DRINKERS
DICTIONARY
have a list of specic images tied to
each digit, which may range between
zero and 999. Explaining how it works,
he said research suggests our brain can
store more information if its stored in a
certain way. Apparently the mnemonics
enable us to directly encode information
into long-term memory. Using visual
imagery, one can inuence which
memory system encodes particular
information, he said.
Thanks to social media in particular,
even if youre not looking for them, lists
are now everywhere. Every time we
search on Google, the results reveal a list.
Dozens of times a day, Google ranks
what it thinks is most useful to us,
inuencing our options on everything
from which insurance to use, to what
restaurant to avoid.
There is a kind of inverse momentum
to that ranking too, an understanding
that the most important stuf is at the top.
Which is why search engine optimisation
consultants make their money teaching
you what buzzwords to include in your
content, edging you closer to the top of
the search list.
However, there is also a sense of
diminishing returns when a list gets
too unmanageable. In their book
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest
Human Strength John Tierney and Roy
F Baumeister discuss an episode where
a psychologist speaking to a group of
the Pentagons most powerful generals
asked them to summarise their strategic
approach in just 25 words. All failed,
except one female general, who wrote:
First I make a list of priorities: one,
two, three, and so on. Then I cross out
everything from three down. In just
21 words, the perfect tactical to-do list.
Which brings us to the saviour and
scourge of many of us: the to-do list.
Psychologists and productivity gurus tell
us that a mighty list can be tackled by
phrasing action points better. Research
suggests the brain likes easily understood,
specic tasks nding them much less
overwhelming than generalities.
Theres also a reason many people
prefer to write lists with pen and paper:
for the savage pleasure of crossing that
task out with a scribbled ourish. DCM is
sure you know exactly what we mean.
This sense of achievement and
certainty can do wonders, which is why
therapists often counsel patients with
depression to do a simple exercise.
List ve things at the end of each day
for which they are grateful. It could
be as simple as good weather or my
sister brought me pizza. But the act of
recounting or writing positive things
has shown to have a dramatic efect on
mental well-being.
Lists can give us a highly personal peek
into the minds of some of the greatest
thinkers of history, in ways that no letters
or speeches ever could. Albert Einstein,
for example, doesnt come of as such a
sweetheart in a list of dictatorial
demands he sent to his wife. These
include: You will obey the following
points in your relations with me: 1) You
will not expect any intimacy from me,
nor will you reproach me in any way. 2)
You will stop talking to me if I request it.
3) You will leave my bedroom or study
immediately without protest if I request
it. We can only hope he was more
charming in person.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the
Founding Fathers of the United States,
comes of as a lot more fun thanks
to some of his lists. Theres his List
of 13 Virtues, number one being
Temperance: eat not to Dullness, drink
not to elevation.
Paradoxically, he also has a list of over
200 synonyms for being drunk, which he
proudly announced were gatherd wholly
from the modern tavern-conversation of
tipplers. Some highlights included he
is addled, hes casting up his accounts,
hes biggy, drunk as a wheel-barrow
and his head is full of bees.
ON THE LIST
Lists are also often used to denote
status: ranging from the door list at your
favourite dance club, which helps you
skip past the queue, through to higher
honours, like The A-list, the Forbes 500, or
the 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs to Watch.
Indeed, a special thing seems to happen
once you get your name enshrined on a
much-coveted ranking. As Copybloggers
Clark explains, Once youre deemed to be
on such a list, you are viewed diferently
mostly for the better. Its just the way
humans are wired.
Book sales are a stark example. Stick
something on the New York Times
bestseller list and it will likely remain
there for a while, purely because people
see the list and think they ought to
read it. For example, it took the Harry
Potter books 10 years to come unstuck
from the list. As Michael Korda noted in
Making the List: A Cultural History of the
American Bestseller, 19001999, boasting
about sales very quickly became a way of
boosting sales.
The rst bestseller list is thought to
have appeared in 1895 in a magazine
dubbed The Bookman. At the top was
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush by Ian
Maclaren. Sadly today, this picture of
rural Scottish life languishes at number
5,263,535 in Amazons Best Sellers Rank.
Theres a story many scientists,
including Stephen Hawking, like to
tell. Hawking wrote in A Brief History
of Time, A well-known scientist (some
say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave
a public lecture on astronomy. He
described how the earth orbits around
the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits
around the centre of a vast collection of
stars called our galaxy. At the end of the
lecture, he wrote, an old lady raised a
point. What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a at plate supported
on the back of a giant tortoise. The
scientist gave a superior smile before
replying, What is the tortoise standing
on? Youre very clever, young man,
very clever, said the old lady. But its
tortoises all the way down.
The story seems appropriate, given
that there is an entry on Wikipedia called
List of lists of lists. Some might say it
takes a special kind of mind to create
that page, yet as the introduction points
out, Some articles that consist of a list
of things are themselves about lists of
things. In other words, as wed put it: its
lists all the way down.
MOST
WANTED LIST
One list very few people
would want to be on, the FBIs
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives,
made its debut on March 14, 1950.
The move by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, in the United States, came
after a 1949 news story on the toughest
guys to catch. The FBI director at
the time, J Edgar Hoover, decided an
official list would capture the publics
imagination and hopefully assist
in arrests.
As of 2011, 465 of those on the
list had been apprehended, 153
of them following tip-offs
from the public.
PSYCHOLOGISTS
TESTED THE
PARADOX OF
CHOICE, WHEREBY
THE MORE
INFORMATION AND
OPTIONS WE HAVE,
THE WORSE WE
SEEM TO FEEL.
REDUCING
INFORMATION
OVERLOAD
WOULD INCREASE
SATISFACTION.
LIFE AS A LIST
70
71
MAY 2014
THE BLACK RHINOCEROS
(DICEROS BICORNIS) IS A
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
SPECIES. THEY TYPICALLY
HAVE TWO HORNS, AND
MORE RARELY, A THIRD,
SMALLER ONE
LOCKING
HORNS
POACHING FOR TRADITIONAL
CHINESE MEDICINE
ASK THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU WHAT HE OR
SHE THINKS RHINO HORN MIGHT BE USED FOR
IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM).
CHANCES ARE, THEYLL TELL YOU IT IS USED AS
AN APHRODISIAC. IT IS NOT. IN CERTAIN ASIAN
COUNTRIES, GROUND RHINO HORN IS USED TO
CURE ALMOST EVERYTHING BUT IMPOTENCE.
CHINESE RHINOCEROS HORN
LIBATION CUP
A RARE, MASTERFULLY CARVED CHI-
NESE RHINOCEROS HORN LIBATION
CUP FROM THE 17TH OR 18TH CEN-
TURY, FOUR INCHES TALL AND FITTED
TO A RETICULATED TEAKWOOD BASE,
SOLD FOR $318,600 AT A SALE OF ASIAN
ANTIQUES BY ELITE DECORATIVE ARTS.
HOW RHINO HORNS END UP
IN ASIAN JEWELRY SHOPS
AN ADEQUATE PARALLEL FOR THE
OTHER WRIST-A RHINO HORN BANGLE
WORTH THE SAME AS A ROLEX WRIST
WATCH (ABOUT U$15,000) WOULD
MAKE FOR A GOOD CONVERSATION
PIECE, NOT YET ON THE MUST HAVE
LIST OF MOST OF YOUR FRIENDS.
"DO YOU HAVE XINIUJIAO?"
XIANGYA IS THE CHINESE TERM FOR IVORY,
XINGJIAO FOR RHINO HORN. CHINA IS
RESPONSIBLE FOR AN ESTIMATED 70% OF THE
WORLD TRADE IN IVORY. INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE
TRADE MONITORING ORGANISATION INDICATES
THAT NEARLY 80% OF THE REPORTED SEIZURES
OF RHINO HORNS IN ASIA BETWEEN 2009 AND
LATE LAST YEAR HAPPENED IN CHINA.
PRODUCTS TO SAY LEGALISE OR NOT TO LEGALISE?
SMUGGLED LIKE A NARCOTIC, VALUED HIGHER THAN
COCAINE AND GOLD, RHINO HORN HAS BECOME THE
MOST COVETED CONTRABAND IN TODAY'S WORLD.
LAST YEAR, ONE BLACK OR WHITE RHINO WAS
POACHED EVERY EIGHT HOURS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
AS ITS BY-PRODUCTS MAKE THEIR WAY INTO ELITIST
ASIAN HOMES THE HORN THREATENS THE SURVIVAL
OF THE SPECIES. DANIEL ALLEN REPORTS
DWINDLING
RHINOS
70
71
MAY 2014
THE BLACK RHINOCEROS
(DICEROS BICORNIS) IS A
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
SPECIES. THEY TYPICALLY
HAVE TWO HORNS, AND
MORE RARELY, A THIRD,
SMALLER ONE
LOCKING
HORNS
POACHING FOR TRADITIONAL
CHINESE MEDICINE
ASK THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU WHAT HE OR
SHE THINKS RHINO HORN MIGHT BE USED FOR
IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM).
CHANCES ARE, THEYLL TELL YOU IT IS USED AS
AN APHRODISIAC. IT IS NOT. IN CERTAIN ASIAN
COUNTRIES, GROUND RHINO HORN IS USED TO
CURE ALMOST EVERYTHING BUT IMPOTENCE.
CHINESE RHINOCEROS HORN
LIBATION CUP
A RARE, MASTERFULLY CARVED CHI-
NESE RHINOCEROS HORN LIBATION
CUP FROM THE 17TH OR 18TH CEN-
TURY, FOUR INCHES TALL AND FITTED
TO A RETICULATED TEAKWOOD BASE,
SOLD FOR $318,600 AT A SALE OF ASIAN
ANTIQUES BY ELITE DECORATIVE ARTS.
HOW RHINO HORNS END UP
IN ASIAN JEWELRY SHOPS
AN ADEQUATE PARALLEL FOR THE
OTHER WRIST-A RHINO HORN BANGLE
WORTH THE SAME AS A ROLEX WRIST
WATCH (ABOUT U$15,000) WOULD
MAKE FOR A GOOD CONVERSATION
PIECE, NOT YET ON THE MUST HAVE
LIST OF MOST OF YOUR FRIENDS.
"DO YOU HAVE XINIUJIAO?"
XIANGYA IS THE CHINESE TERM FOR IVORY,
XINGJIAO FOR RHINO HORN. CHINA IS
RESPONSIBLE FOR AN ESTIMATED 70% OF THE
WORLD TRADE IN IVORY. INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE
TRADE MONITORING ORGANISATION INDICATES
THAT NEARLY 80% OF THE REPORTED SEIZURES
OF RHINO HORNS IN ASIA BETWEEN 2009 AND
LATE LAST YEAR HAPPENED IN CHINA.
PRODUCTS TO SAY LEGALISE OR NOT TO LEGALISE?
SMUGGLED LIKE A NARCOTIC, VALUED HIGHER THAN
COCAINE AND GOLD, RHINO HORN HAS BECOME THE
MOST COVETED CONTRABAND IN TODAY'S WORLD.
LAST YEAR, ONE BLACK OR WHITE RHINO WAS
POACHED EVERY EIGHT HOURS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
AS ITS BY-PRODUCTS MAKE THEIR WAY INTO ELITIST
ASIAN HOMES THE HORN THREATENS THE SURVIVAL
OF THE SPECIES. DANIEL ALLEN REPORTS
DWINDLING
RHINOS
72
73
MAY 2014
n ex-military man, David
Powrie is not often moved
to displays of emotion. Yet
the sight of an unborn foetus
beside a dead female rhino
was too much to bear. With
its horn crudely hacked of,
the pregnant animal had
probably taken days to die,
barely able to breathe as it
wandered through the
South African bush in
excruciating agony.
When we came across the
carcass, I had to look away for
a few seconds, says Powrie,
operations manager at the
Sabi Sand Game Reserve,
which adjoins South Africa's
Kruger National Park. The
pain these poached animals
have to endure is truly
sickening. I was incredibly
angry and terribly sad. The
horric memory of that rhino
lying there still gives me
goosebumps.
Today, South Africa is
the last stronghold of the
black and white rhinos. Both
species were brought back
from the brink of extinction
here in the 1960s, to a current
combined population of
around 20,000. Most of these
are larger white rhinos, which
can weigh more than two
metric tonnes.
The rhino has no real
predator in the bush besides
man, and man is now taking
his toll on these almost
invincible herbivores. Last
year 1,004 South African
rhinos were poached, a huge
increase from 668 the year
before. The killing shows no
sign of abating, with 37 rhinos
already poached in the rst
two weeks of 2014. If the
trend continues, the rhino
could very quickly disappear
from the country's wild
spaces completely.
We are soon going to
reach the tipping point for
rhinos, Dr Naomi Doak of
wildlife trade monitoring
network TRAFFIC said to
the Daily Mail. By the end
of 2014, we're starting to
be in the negative, in terms
of deaths and poaching
outstripping births. Then
the population will start to
decline very quickly.
POACHER PROFILE
Rhino poaching is practiced
by two categories: subsistence
and commercial poachers.
The former, who usually
come from hand-to-mouth
communities located near
game reserves, hunt animals
for food and for use in local
traditional medicine. Before
2008, when rhinos were
hunted on a far smaller scale,
poaching was at this level.
Today the large majority
of rhino poaching carried
out in southern Africa is
commercial. It is mostly
practiced in a far more
sophisticated and systematic
manner than subsistence
poaching, though there have
still been cases where rhinos
are caught in snares and
killed with spears.
Commercial poaching
groups typically comprise
two to six individuals. With
such high nancial rewards
at stake, recruitment of
personnel is not a problem.
Many poachers now carry
handguns and automatic
weapons to defend
themselves, and the use of
silenced and heavy-calibre
weapons has also become
more widespread.
Depending on the size
of the group, how long its
members intend to stay in a
particular reserve, and how
many rhinos they hope to
kill, poachers carry varied
weapons, besides a bladed
tool such as an axe, panga
(machete) or sharp knife
to cut of the rhino horn.
Removed horns are usually
placed in sacks, and may
sometimes be buried for
later collection.
Most poachers are
patient, explains Elise
Dafue, founder of an anti-
rhino poaching website.
They usually have the
tactical advantage, and know
when to strike, and how
to strike. They have their
own system of counter-
intelligence and access to
funding for bribes and a
network of informants.
She continues, These guys
inltrate local communities
and ask for information on
the whereabouts of rhinos
in an area. They stake out
rhino farms and waterholes,
and plan at least two getaway
routes. Very often they
have excellent bushcraft,
tracking and military skills.
In short, she notes, they are
formidable adversaries.
In some cases, poachers
WHAT
MAKES A HORN?
Unlike many other animal
horns, rhino horns have a distinc-
tive curve and sharply pointed tip. In
2006, researchers at Ohio University
conducted CT scans (a type of X-ray) of
rhino horns, and found that the unusual
shape was due to dense mineral deposits
of calcium and melanin in the middle. The
rest of the horn is known to be mostly
composed of keratin. The lead author
noted, The horns most closely re-
semble the structure of horses hoofs,
turtle beaks and cockatoo bills. In
humans, calcium, melanin and
keratin are key components
in our hair, skin and
nails.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
DWINDLING
RHINOS
72
73
MAY 2014
n ex-military man, David
Powrie is not often moved
to displays of emotion. Yet
the sight of an unborn foetus
beside a dead female rhino
was too much to bear. With
its horn crudely hacked of,
the pregnant animal had
probably taken days to die,
barely able to breathe as it
wandered through the
South African bush in
excruciating agony.
When we came across the
carcass, I had to look away for
a few seconds, says Powrie,
operations manager at the
Sabi Sand Game Reserve,
which adjoins South Africa's
Kruger National Park. The
pain these poached animals
have to endure is truly
sickening. I was incredibly
angry and terribly sad. The
horric memory of that rhino
lying there still gives me
goosebumps.
Today, South Africa is
the last stronghold of the
black and white rhinos. Both
species were brought back
from the brink of extinction
here in the 1960s, to a current
combined population of
around 20,000. Most of these
are larger white rhinos, which
can weigh more than two
metric tonnes.
The rhino has no real
predator in the bush besides
man, and man is now taking
his toll on these almost
invincible herbivores. Last
year 1,004 South African
rhinos were poached, a huge
increase from 668 the year
before. The killing shows no
sign of abating, with 37 rhinos
already poached in the rst
two weeks of 2014. If the
trend continues, the rhino
could very quickly disappear
from the country's wild
spaces completely.
We are soon going to
reach the tipping point for
rhinos, Dr Naomi Doak of
wildlife trade monitoring
network TRAFFIC said to
the Daily Mail. By the end
of 2014, we're starting to
be in the negative, in terms
of deaths and poaching
outstripping births. Then
the population will start to
decline very quickly.
POACHER PROFILE
Rhino poaching is practiced
by two categories: subsistence
and commercial poachers.
The former, who usually
come from hand-to-mouth
communities located near
game reserves, hunt animals
for food and for use in local
traditional medicine. Before
2008, when rhinos were
hunted on a far smaller scale,
poaching was at this level.
Today the large majority
of rhino poaching carried
out in southern Africa is
commercial. It is mostly
practiced in a far more
sophisticated and systematic
manner than subsistence
poaching, though there have
still been cases where rhinos
are caught in snares and
killed with spears.
Commercial poaching
groups typically comprise
two to six individuals. With
such high nancial rewards
at stake, recruitment of
personnel is not a problem.
Many poachers now carry
handguns and automatic
weapons to defend
themselves, and the use of
silenced and heavy-calibre
weapons has also become
more widespread.
Depending on the size
of the group, how long its
members intend to stay in a
particular reserve, and how
many rhinos they hope to
kill, poachers carry varied
weapons, besides a bladed
tool such as an axe, panga
(machete) or sharp knife
to cut of the rhino horn.
Removed horns are usually
placed in sacks, and may
sometimes be buried for
later collection.
Most poachers are
patient, explains Elise
Dafue, founder of an anti-
rhino poaching website.
They usually have the
tactical advantage, and know
when to strike, and how
to strike. They have their
own system of counter-
intelligence and access to
funding for bribes and a
network of informants.
She continues, These guys
inltrate local communities
and ask for information on
the whereabouts of rhinos
in an area. They stake out
rhino farms and waterholes,
and plan at least two getaway
routes. Very often they
have excellent bushcraft,
tracking and military skills.
In short, she notes, they are
formidable adversaries.
In some cases, poachers
WHAT
MAKES A HORN?
Unlike many other animal
horns, rhino horns have a distinc-
tive curve and sharply pointed tip. In
2006, researchers at Ohio University
conducted CT scans (a type of X-ray) of
rhino horns, and found that the unusual
shape was due to dense mineral deposits
of calcium and melanin in the middle. The
rest of the horn is known to be mostly
composed of keratin. The lead author
noted, The horns most closely re-
semble the structure of horses hoofs,
turtle beaks and cockatoo bills. In
humans, calcium, melanin and
keratin are key components
in our hair, skin and
nails.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
DWINDLING
RHINOS
74
75
MAY 2014
will leave behind a
signature. Superstition is
rife: many poachers believe
that cutting the rhinos eye
damages the window to its
soul, thereby helping them to
evade capture. Tails are often
removed and used by local
shamans to sprinkle muthi
(traditional medicine) on the
poachers' bodies and their
getaway vehicles.
BORDER ISSUES
Most of the rhinos killed in
South Africa are poached in
Kruger National Park (KNP),
one of the largest and most
famous game reserves in
Africa. Sprawling over almost
19,500 square kilometres,
Kruger is home to around
9,000 white rhinos and
300 black rhinos and is
almost impossible to patrol
thoroughly.
KNP shares a
350-kilometre long border
with Mozambique. It is
thought that over three-
quarters of poachers
operating inside the park are
Mozambican insurgents who
cross this border on foot. In
fact, in the month of March
2013 alone, there were 72
known cross-border armed
incursions into KNP from
Mozambique.
Even if camera traps, aerial
reconnaissance missions and
foot patrols lead to poachers
being detected, park rangers
are unable to pursue them
once they have crossed
back into Mozambique.
Conversely, if poachers are
apprehended before they kill
a rhino, there is very little
basis for prosecution.
Many of the Mozambican
villages situated close to the
KNP boundary are incredibly
poor. Poachers can earn as
much as 10 years salary on
a single incursion, so the
nancial incentives to enter
the park are compelling.
By earning a desperately
needed pay cheque, poachers
are often hailed as heroes
by their families and local
communities.
As South Africa steps up
its eforts to intercept rhino
horns leaving from domestic
gateways, the fears now are
that trade routes will simply
shift across the border. With
Mozambique an increasingly
active conduit for ivory
and timber, there is little to
suggest that the Mozambican
government has the means
to efectively halt any illegal
trade in natural resources.
This is the problem when
you have one contiguous
wildlife reserve managed by
two countries, says Powrie.
If one country can't or won't
enforce strict anti-poaching
measures then there will
always be a dangerous
dynamic at work.
He notes, One of the
major challenges now is to
encourage Mozambique to
step up its anti-poaching
operations and to really crack
down on wildlife-related
crimes. The rhino is already
extinct in Mozambique. It is
really not hard to see where
we are heading if things
continue unchecked.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY
Just north of Hoan Kiem
Lake, Hanoi's Old Quarter is a
historic hotbed of commerce.
Visitors to the Vietnamese
capital come here to witness
craftsmen at work, browse
silk souvenirs, and sample
the local snack food. Light
years from the acacia-studded
plains of South Africa, most
remain unaware that these
motorbike-laden streets are
so linked to the fate of the
white and black rhinos.
According to a report by
TRAFFIC, between 1990
and 2005, rhino poaching in
South Africa averaged just 14
animals a year. Since 2005
however, the situation has
rapidly escalated, largely
driven by a surge in demand
from Vietnam. Rising living
standards and increasing
amounts of disposable
income mean the Southeast
Asian country is now one of
the worlds largest markets
for illegal South African
rhino horn.
Made from keratin, which
is also a key component in
human hair and nails, there
is no scientic evidence that
rhino horn has any medicinal
properties whatsoever.
However, when powdered
and drunk with water, many
Vietnamese still believe it
can cure everything from
hangovers to cancer. It has
also become something of
a status symbol, promoted
as the alcoholic drink of
millionaires when mixed
with wine.
Trade in rhino horn has
been illegal in Vietnam since
2006. Under Vietnamese
law, anyone convicted of
smuggling banned goods
valued at VND1 billion
(around US$50,000) or
more is punishable by
WHEN
POWDERED
AND DRUNK
WITH WATER,
VIETNAMESE
BELIEVE IT
CAN CURE
EVERYTHING
FROM
HANGOVERS
TO CANCER. IT
HAS BECOME
SOMETHING
OF A STATUS
SYMBOL,
PROMOTED
AS THE
ALCOHOLIC
DRINK OF
MILLIONAIRES
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
CRUEL
COMPLICATIONS
Even if a poacher doesnt
aim to kill, rhinos can suffer
complications that arise from their
injuries often leading to painful,
drawn-out deaths. As veterinary pa-
thologist Fred Reyers, from the School of
Life Sciences, University of Lincoln in the
United Kingdom, explains, the rhinos often
have serious shrapnel injuries which tend
to become infected and, if left lying on
one side for several hours, are disposed
to muscles on the lower side dying
off because the sheer mass of the
animal prevents blood flow.
Infection can in turn cause
damage to the rhinos
vital organs.
DWINDLING
RHINOS
TOP THIS POACHED RHINO
BULL HAD TO BE EUTHANISED
AFTER SPENDING SEVERAL
DAYS WANDERING IN THE BUSH
IN AGONY
BOTTOM LEFT A RANGER
PRACTISES ADOPTING A
CAMOUFLAGED POSITION IN
THE SABI SAND GAME RESERVE
BOTTOM RIGHT RANGERS
PATROL THE FENCED AROUND
SABI SAND.
74
75
MAY 2014
will leave behind a
signature. Superstition is
rife: many poachers believe
that cutting the rhinos eye
damages the window to its
soul, thereby helping them to
evade capture. Tails are often
removed and used by local
shamans to sprinkle muthi
(traditional medicine) on the
poachers' bodies and their
getaway vehicles.
BORDER ISSUES
Most of the rhinos killed in
South Africa are poached in
Kruger National Park (KNP),
one of the largest and most
famous game reserves in
Africa. Sprawling over almost
19,500 square kilometres,
Kruger is home to around
9,000 white rhinos and
300 black rhinos and is
almost impossible to patrol
thoroughly.
KNP shares a
350-kilometre long border
with Mozambique. It is
thought that over three-
quarters of poachers
operating inside the park are
Mozambican insurgents who
cross this border on foot. In
fact, in the month of March
2013 alone, there were 72
known cross-border armed
incursions into KNP from
Mozambique.
Even if camera traps, aerial
reconnaissance missions and
foot patrols lead to poachers
being detected, park rangers
are unable to pursue them
once they have crossed
back into Mozambique.
Conversely, if poachers are
apprehended before they kill
a rhino, there is very little
basis for prosecution.
Many of the Mozambican
villages situated close to the
KNP boundary are incredibly
poor. Poachers can earn as
much as 10 years salary on
a single incursion, so the
nancial incentives to enter
the park are compelling.
By earning a desperately
needed pay cheque, poachers
are often hailed as heroes
by their families and local
communities.
As South Africa steps up
its eforts to intercept rhino
horns leaving from domestic
gateways, the fears now are
that trade routes will simply
shift across the border. With
Mozambique an increasingly
active conduit for ivory
and timber, there is little to
suggest that the Mozambican
government has the means
to efectively halt any illegal
trade in natural resources.
This is the problem when
you have one contiguous
wildlife reserve managed by
two countries, says Powrie.
If one country can't or won't
enforce strict anti-poaching
measures then there will
always be a dangerous
dynamic at work.
He notes, One of the
major challenges now is to
encourage Mozambique to
step up its anti-poaching
operations and to really crack
down on wildlife-related
crimes. The rhino is already
extinct in Mozambique. It is
really not hard to see where
we are heading if things
continue unchecked.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY
Just north of Hoan Kiem
Lake, Hanoi's Old Quarter is a
historic hotbed of commerce.
Visitors to the Vietnamese
capital come here to witness
craftsmen at work, browse
silk souvenirs, and sample
the local snack food. Light
years from the acacia-studded
plains of South Africa, most
remain unaware that these
motorbike-laden streets are
so linked to the fate of the
white and black rhinos.
According to a report by
TRAFFIC, between 1990
and 2005, rhino poaching in
South Africa averaged just 14
animals a year. Since 2005
however, the situation has
rapidly escalated, largely
driven by a surge in demand
from Vietnam. Rising living
standards and increasing
amounts of disposable
income mean the Southeast
Asian country is now one of
the worlds largest markets
for illegal South African
rhino horn.
Made from keratin, which
is also a key component in
human hair and nails, there
is no scientic evidence that
rhino horn has any medicinal
properties whatsoever.
However, when powdered
and drunk with water, many
Vietnamese still believe it
can cure everything from
hangovers to cancer. It has
also become something of
a status symbol, promoted
as the alcoholic drink of
millionaires when mixed
with wine.
Trade in rhino horn has
been illegal in Vietnam since
2006. Under Vietnamese
law, anyone convicted of
smuggling banned goods
valued at VND1 billion
(around US$50,000) or
more is punishable by
WHEN
POWDERED
AND DRUNK
WITH WATER,
VIETNAMESE
BELIEVE IT
CAN CURE
EVERYTHING
FROM
HANGOVERS
TO CANCER. IT
HAS BECOME
SOMETHING
OF A STATUS
SYMBOL,
PROMOTED
AS THE
ALCOHOLIC
DRINK OF
MILLIONAIRES
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
CRUEL
COMPLICATIONS
Even if a poacher doesnt
aim to kill, rhinos can suffer
complications that arise from their
injuries often leading to painful,
drawn-out deaths. As veterinary pa-
thologist Fred Reyers, from the School of
Life Sciences, University of Lincoln in the
United Kingdom, explains, the rhinos often
have serious shrapnel injuries which tend
to become infected and, if left lying on
one side for several hours, are disposed
to muscles on the lower side dying
off because the sheer mass of the
animal prevents blood flow.
Infection can in turn cause
damage to the rhinos
vital organs.
DWINDLING
RHINOS
TOP THIS POACHED RHINO
BULL HAD TO BE EUTHANISED
AFTER SPENDING SEVERAL
DAYS WANDERING IN THE BUSH
IN AGONY
BOTTOM LEFT A RANGER
PRACTISES ADOPTING A
CAMOUFLAGED POSITION IN
THE SABI SAND GAME RESERVE
BOTTOM RIGHT RANGERS
PATROL THE FENCED AROUND
SABI SAND.
76
77
MAY 2014
AN AERIAL VIEW OF
THE OKAVANGO DELTA
IN BOTSWANA. IT NOW
OFFERS SANCTUARY TO
A GROWING NUMBER OF
SOUTH AFRICAN RHINOS
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
DWINDLING
RHINOS
76
77
MAY 2014
AN AERIAL VIEW OF
THE OKAVANGO DELTA
IN BOTSWANA. IT NOW
OFFERS SANCTUARY TO
A GROWING NUMBER OF
SOUTH AFRICAN RHINOS
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
DWINDLING
RHINOS
78
79
MAY 2014
TOP A TRANQUILISED WHITE RHINO,
PRIOR TO TRANSLOCATION
TO THE OKAVANGO DELTA
BELOW SOME PROPOSE REMOVING
THE HORNS FROM RHINOS IN
RESERVES TO PREVENT POACHING,
BUT IT'S EXPENSIVE: ONE ESTIMATE
PUTS THE COST OF DEHORNING
EVERY RHINO IN KNP ONCE AT US$5.8
MILLION TO US$8.8 MILLION
rhino farming to injecting
horns with poison to prevent
human consumption is now
on the table. We need to
employ all the tools at our
disposal, says Rob More,
CEO of the Lion Sands Game
Reserve, which is located
inside Sabi Sand.
Recently a mixture of dye
and poison was injected into
the horns of more than 100
rhinos inside Sabi Sand. By
rendering horns unt for
human consumption, the
reserve hopes that poachers
will stop targeting their
animals, though it is too
soon to tell how efective this
measure will be, and whether
or not it will simply shift the
focus onto other nearby
rhino populations.
NEW PASTURES
With the suns embers fading
from the Botswana sky, the
daily nocturnal chorus starts
up at Mombo Camp, deep in
the Okavango Delta. Guests
sipping Amarula liqueur
around the campre are
treated to their very own
wildlife show, as hippos grunt
in nearby waterways and a
male lion growls throatily in
the distance.
Run by Wilderness Safaris,
one of the largest safari
companies in southern Africa,
Mombo ofers some of the
most luxurious game viewing
on the continent. But more
than just plump pillows and
sundowners in the bush, the
camp has also played witness
to another rhino conservation
measure: translocation,
basically moving rhinos to a
safer area.
In 2001, Wilderness
Safaris, together with
Botswanas Department of
Wildlife (DWNP), initiated
the Botswana Rhino
Reintroduction Programme.
The rst group of four
white rhinos arrived at
Mombo from South Africa
in November 2001, with a
further 22 white and black
rhinos arriving through
an exchange programme
between South Africa
and Botswana.
The ultimate accolade
has come from the rhinos
themselves, says Mpho
Malongwa, who today
oversees the project for
Wilderness, working
alongside the DWNP. In
August 2004 the rst white
rhino calf was born in the
wild in Mombo, 16 months
after its mother was released
in 2001. Since then, a steady
birth rate has proven the
programme's success.
The Okavango Delta
has proven to be such a
productive rhino habitat,
that six further animals
were translocated there last
year from South Africa's
Phinda Private Game
Reserve. Facilitated by
travel company &Beyond,
together with Rhino Force,
a private company that
makes bracelets for sale to
raise awareness and funds
for rhino conservation, the
success of the move may
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
life imprisonment. But
enforcement is generally
lax and public awareness
campaigns have so far had
little impact. In Hanois
Old Quarter, medicine shop
owners openly quote varying
prices for horn, which can
change hands for as much as
US$100,000 a kilogram.
Of course we have to try
to educate the Vietnamese
and the Chinese about how
the rhino horn trade is
destroying the species, says
Les Carlisle, conservation
manager of travel company
&Beyond. Do I think it will
work? No, of course it won't.
We're talking about changing
deeply ingrained beliefs and
habits. It's like trying to stop
people taking drugs.
SMUGGLING SYNDICATES
These days, South African
rhino horn is transported
to Asia via a secretive,
circuitous and increasingly
sophisticated trade network.
While details of the shadowy
syndicates behind the
trade are still emerging, the
intricate level of organisation
is already very clear.
The transport and trade
of rhino horn is a multi-
stage afair, with Chinese
and Vietnamese typically
operating as middlemen
that connect the African
and Asian markets. After
poaching has occurred, rhino
horn is usually handed over
to an African middleman,
typically a South African
national, who then interfaces
with Asian buyers at the next
level. As you'd expect, these
Asian middlemen tend to be
well-connected, and can get
the horns to market in Asia.
Rhino horns are usually
exported whole, though
they are occasionally cut
into smaller pieces to lower
the risk of detection. An
increasing amount of rhino
horn sold in Vietnam is
now fake, with bufalo horn
the main substitute, so
Vietnamese buyers prefer
to purchase whole horns to
ensure authenticity.
JOINING BATTLE
Adjoining KNP, the far
smaller Sabi Sand private
game reserve is home to
a number of luxury safari
lodges, and is one of the best
places in South Africa to see
the so-called Big Five (lion,
leopard, rhino, Cape bufalo
and elephant). Although
rhinos have also been lost
here, the reserves size means
anti-poaching measures are
more easily enforceable.
Today a growing contingent
of rangers is tackling
poachers with an arsenal that
includes automatic weapons,
tracker dogs and smartphone
technology.It has become a
full-on war, says Sabi Sands
Powrie, I think a lot of people
were caught unawares when
the poaching escalated, but
the response is gathering
momentum. At Sabi Sand
were spending more and
more money on security. But
if we don't ght back then
these majestic animals will
just disappear.
Anti-poaching measures
are not just about rangers
with guns. Everything from
A MIXTURE
OF DYE AND
POISON WAS
INJECTED INTO
THE HORNS
OF MORE
THAN 100
RHINOS. BY
RENDERING
HORNS UNFIT
FOR HUMAN
CONSUMPTION,
THE RESERVE
HOPES THAT
POACHERS
WILL STOP
TARGETING
THE ANIMALS.
DWINDLING
RHINOS
78
79
MAY 2014
TOP A TRANQUILISED WHITE RHINO,
PRIOR TO TRANSLOCATION
TO THE OKAVANGO DELTA
BELOW SOME PROPOSE REMOVING
THE HORNS FROM RHINOS IN
RESERVES TO PREVENT POACHING,
BUT IT'S EXPENSIVE: ONE ESTIMATE
PUTS THE COST OF DEHORNING
EVERY RHINO IN KNP ONCE AT US$5.8
MILLION TO US$8.8 MILLION
rhino farming to injecting
horns with poison to prevent
human consumption is now
on the table. We need to
employ all the tools at our
disposal, says Rob More,
CEO of the Lion Sands Game
Reserve, which is located
inside Sabi Sand.
Recently a mixture of dye
and poison was injected into
the horns of more than 100
rhinos inside Sabi Sand. By
rendering horns unt for
human consumption, the
reserve hopes that poachers
will stop targeting their
animals, though it is too
soon to tell how efective this
measure will be, and whether
or not it will simply shift the
focus onto other nearby
rhino populations.
NEW PASTURES
With the suns embers fading
from the Botswana sky, the
daily nocturnal chorus starts
up at Mombo Camp, deep in
the Okavango Delta. Guests
sipping Amarula liqueur
around the campre are
treated to their very own
wildlife show, as hippos grunt
in nearby waterways and a
male lion growls throatily in
the distance.
Run by Wilderness Safaris,
one of the largest safari
companies in southern Africa,
Mombo ofers some of the
most luxurious game viewing
on the continent. But more
than just plump pillows and
sundowners in the bush, the
camp has also played witness
to another rhino conservation
measure: translocation,
basically moving rhinos to a
safer area.
In 2001, Wilderness
Safaris, together with
Botswanas Department of
Wildlife (DWNP), initiated
the Botswana Rhino
Reintroduction Programme.
The rst group of four
white rhinos arrived at
Mombo from South Africa
in November 2001, with a
further 22 white and black
rhinos arriving through
an exchange programme
between South Africa
and Botswana.
The ultimate accolade
has come from the rhinos
themselves, says Mpho
Malongwa, who today
oversees the project for
Wilderness, working
alongside the DWNP. In
August 2004 the rst white
rhino calf was born in the
wild in Mombo, 16 months
after its mother was released
in 2001. Since then, a steady
birth rate has proven the
programme's success.
The Okavango Delta
has proven to be such a
productive rhino habitat,
that six further animals
were translocated there last
year from South Africa's
Phinda Private Game
Reserve. Facilitated by
travel company &Beyond,
together with Rhino Force,
a private company that
makes bracelets for sale to
raise awareness and funds
for rhino conservation, the
success of the move may
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
A
N
I
E
L

A
L
L
E
N
life imprisonment. But
enforcement is generally
lax and public awareness
campaigns have so far had
little impact. In Hanois
Old Quarter, medicine shop
owners openly quote varying
prices for horn, which can
change hands for as much as
US$100,000 a kilogram.
Of course we have to try
to educate the Vietnamese
and the Chinese about how
the rhino horn trade is
destroying the species, says
Les Carlisle, conservation
manager of travel company
&Beyond. Do I think it will
work? No, of course it won't.
We're talking about changing
deeply ingrained beliefs and
habits. It's like trying to stop
people taking drugs.
SMUGGLING SYNDICATES
These days, South African
rhino horn is transported
to Asia via a secretive,
circuitous and increasingly
sophisticated trade network.
While details of the shadowy
syndicates behind the
trade are still emerging, the
intricate level of organisation
is already very clear.
The transport and trade
of rhino horn is a multi-
stage afair, with Chinese
and Vietnamese typically
operating as middlemen
that connect the African
and Asian markets. After
poaching has occurred, rhino
horn is usually handed over
to an African middleman,
typically a South African
national, who then interfaces
with Asian buyers at the next
level. As you'd expect, these
Asian middlemen tend to be
well-connected, and can get
the horns to market in Asia.
Rhino horns are usually
exported whole, though
they are occasionally cut
into smaller pieces to lower
the risk of detection. An
increasing amount of rhino
horn sold in Vietnam is
now fake, with bufalo horn
the main substitute, so
Vietnamese buyers prefer
to purchase whole horns to
ensure authenticity.
JOINING BATTLE
Adjoining KNP, the far
smaller Sabi Sand private
game reserve is home to
a number of luxury safari
lodges, and is one of the best
places in South Africa to see
the so-called Big Five (lion,
leopard, rhino, Cape bufalo
and elephant). Although
rhinos have also been lost
here, the reserves size means
anti-poaching measures are
more easily enforceable.
Today a growing contingent
of rangers is tackling
poachers with an arsenal that
includes automatic weapons,
tracker dogs and smartphone
technology.It has become a
full-on war, says Sabi Sands
Powrie, I think a lot of people
were caught unawares when
the poaching escalated, but
the response is gathering
momentum. At Sabi Sand
were spending more and
more money on security. But
if we don't ght back then
these majestic animals will
just disappear.
Anti-poaching measures
are not just about rangers
with guns. Everything from
A MIXTURE
OF DYE AND
POISON WAS
INJECTED INTO
THE HORNS
OF MORE
THAN 100
RHINOS. BY
RENDERING
HORNS UNFIT
FOR HUMAN
CONSUMPTION,
THE RESERVE
HOPES THAT
POACHERS
WILL STOP
TARGETING
THE ANIMALS.
DWINDLING
RHINOS
80
see a further 100 animals
translocated this year.
With its excellent security
system, Botswana is a safe
haven for the relocated
rhino, explains &Beyonds
Carlisle. Translocations
are fundamental to securing
the ongoing survival of these
animals. With so many rhino
concentrated in South Africa,
this was the ideal opportunity
for us to move some of our
eggs out of one basket.
RHINO FARMING?
Extreme conditions often
demand extreme responses.
Perhaps the most contentious
rhino conservation measure
that is currently in discussion
is the move to legalise
the trade in rhino horn.
Advocates argue that ooding
the market with horn will
slash the price, lessening
the nancial incentive
for poaching. With huge
quantities of horn stockpiled,
many reserves could plough
the money generated by sales
back into conservation.
The legalisation
debate is emotive and very
A RHINO TRANSLOCATION
TEAM FROM &BEYOND
PREPARES A WHITE
RHINO FOR SHIPMENT
TO BOTSWANA. ITS FINAL
DESTINATION IS THE
OKAVANGO DELTA
USE HERBS,
NOT HORNS
Studies investigating the
medical properties of rhino horn
have found no scientific basis for
their supposed health benefits.
Published in a 2006 report, researchers
in the UK tested several herbs that could
be used as a botanical replacements for
rhino horn in traditional Chinese medi-
cine and proposed nine specific spe-
cies that practitioners could use instead
of rhino horn in traditional remedies.
These substitutes demonstrated at
least some antibacterial or anti-
inflammatory properties
more than rhino horn
did in their study.
P
H
O
T
O
:

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S

(
A
M
I
E

S
T
E
P
A
N
O
V
I
C
H
)
;

A
F
P

(
V
I
E
T
N
A
M

W
A
R

M
E
M
O
R
I
A
L
)
82
divisive, explains Carlisle.
Essentially, those people
who own or manage rhino
populations, and are at the
front line of the horn war,
support legalisation. Those
conservationists who don't
risk their lives daily trying to
save rhinos, are anti-trade.
The rhino situation is
completely unique. Everyone
draws comparisons with the
trade in ivory, but it's not
the same, he adds. If you
remove an elephant's tusks,
it dies. Every piece of ivory
represents a dead elephant.
If you remove the horn from
a rhino, it grows back. Rhinos
are relatively easy to keep in
captivity, and farmed rhinos
can provide fresh supplies
of horn every 18 months.
Managed properly, rhino
horn is a totally renewable
natural resource.
At the moment a rhino is
worth more dead than alive,
notes Powrie. Of course it
would be better to see all
rhinos in the wild with their
horns intact but we need to
do something to change this
equation. Until we do, rhinos
will keep dying.
The window to put into
action some form of legalised
trade may not be open for
long. If poaching rates
increase further, and rhino
populations start to sufer a
serious and sustained decline,
the pool of animals required
for breeding will not be large
or diverse enough for farming
to be an option. And of
course, the fewer rhinos that
remain, the higher the price
of illegal horn becomes, and
the greater the pressure on
remaining animals.
The sad and simple fact
is that the market for horn
exists, and we cannot simply
count on rangers, helicopters,
educational campaigns and
pleas to save our rhinos,
says the Lion Sands Game
Reserve's Rob More. These
tactics have not worked for
tigers or elephants. On their
own, they are unlikely to be
enough for the rhino either.
THE MOST
CONTENTIOUS
CONSERVATION
MEASURE
CURRENTLY IN
DISCUSSION
IS THE MOVE
TO LEGALISE
THE TRADE IN
RHINO HORN.
ADVOCATES
ARGUE THAT
FLOODING THE
MARKET WITH
HORN WILL
SLASH THE
PRICE.
93%
of the world's white rhino
population is based in South
Africa. A similar percentage of
the black rhino population is
also found here
THREE
Rhinos were, on average,
killed every day in 2013
World rhino population at the
beginning of the 20th century:
500,000
World rhino population today:
29,000
Average weight of an adult
rhino horn:
1 3 KG
Street value of one kilo of
rhino horn:
~US$100,000
Alleged nancial reward
for a Mozambican poacher on
the ground:
10 YEARS'
SALARY (IN
ONE NIGHT)
According to 2010 estimates, A
live female rhino fetches
~US$45,000
while a male costs
US$30,000
TO US$40,000
Estimated Cost To Hire A Pri-
vate, Anti-Poaching Ranger (As
Of 2010):
US$3,000
PER MONTH
RHINOS BY
NUMBERS
RHINOCEROS
HORN CARVINGS,
ONCE BELONGING
TO ARCHDUKE
FERDINAND II, AT
SCHLOSS AMBRAS
IN INNSBRUCK,
AUSTRIA.
P
H
O
T
O
:

C
O
R
B
I
S
84
85
MAY 2014
MANHUNT
JOEL LAMBERT IS A FORMER NAVY SEAL WHO ALSO
TRAINED THE US SPECIAL FORCES. IN DISCOVERY
CHANNELS MANHUNT WITH JOEL LAMBERT THIS ESCAPE
AND EVASION EXPERT HAS TO FIGHT THE REAL LIFE
ELITE ARMIES OF THE WORLD. IN AN ULTIMATE UNIQUE
GAME OF CATCH-ME-IF-YOU-CAN JOEL, WITH MINIMAL
SURVIVAL SUPPLIES, IS PITTED AGAINST THE HIGHLY
EQUIPPED MULTI-PRONGED TRACKING TEAMS AS
THEIR SOLE TARGET.
LAMBERT TALKS TO LUKE CLARK ABOUT THE
EXCRUCIATING EXPERIENCE OF MAKING IT
THROUGH, AND OF TAKING ALONG A
CAMERA CREW ON THESE
ESCAPE MISSIONS.
EXTREME
SURVIVAL
84
85
MAY 2014
MANHUNT
JOEL LAMBERT IS A FORMER NAVY SEAL WHO ALSO
TRAINED THE US SPECIAL FORCES. IN DISCOVERY
CHANNELS MANHUNT WITH JOEL LAMBERT THIS ESCAPE
AND EVASION EXPERT HAS TO FIGHT THE REAL LIFE
ELITE ARMIES OF THE WORLD. IN AN ULTIMATE UNIQUE
GAME OF CATCH-ME-IF-YOU-CAN JOEL, WITH MINIMAL
SURVIVAL SUPPLIES, IS PITTED AGAINST THE HIGHLY
EQUIPPED MULTI-PRONGED TRACKING TEAMS AS
THEIR SOLE TARGET.
LAMBERT TALKS TO LUKE CLARK ABOUT THE
EXCRUCIATING EXPERIENCE OF MAKING IT
THROUGH, AND OF TAKING ALONG A
CAMERA CREW ON THESE
ESCAPE MISSIONS.
EXTREME
SURVIVAL
86
87
MAY 2014
ello Joel, how are you
doing? Where on earth
are we speaking to you
from? I'm very good! I
am in Los Angeles, in the
United States; I have my dog
snoring on the bed next to
me and I'm kicking back in a
reading chair, savouring all
the downtime I have until I
get back to the jungle and get
brutalised again!
I can imagine. So rst
up, how does anybody get
prepared for something
like this? Obviously you've
got a background in the
special forces. But even
so, this must have been a
tough test for you.
It totally was, and I knew it
was going to be. You know,
I got asked that question
a lot, people asking, How
are you going to prepare for
that? And I say, I'm already
prepared.
My life has been the
preparation for this. Which
doesn't mean that I'm already
exactly ready right then. It
means I know how to get
ready, and I know what I
need to do. The tools that I
need, are already within me.
But, you know, once you're
out theres no way to stay
in the kind of operational
state that you are in as a
SEAL. So there was that
challenge. And there's also
the physical challenge: I was
40 when I started this series.
I'm no longer 27 years old
and smashing through walls
anymore. But I'm a lot wiser
and a lot smarter than I used
to be. So at least I aged well.
What I really needed to
do was to prepare my mind
and my body, because I didn't
want either one of them to
be a weak link. I didn't want
my body to break because
my mind was stronger, and I
didn't there to be any mental
issues going into this. Both of
them held, largely because of
my background.
Did you prepare
diferently, to face each
unit? Yes. The preparation
I really had to do was to
research the units I was going
up against: their assets and
what they were going to use,
the kind of targets they are
usually going up against.
What are their weaknesses,
strengths and capabilities?
What's the level of technology
they use? What were they
going to use against me do
they have thermal imaging,
do they have helicopters or
drones? Their air assets? Are
they trackers, soldiers, or
policemen? Depending on the
answers to all these questions,
each diferent unit will think
and act diferently. So I had
to know as much as I could
about each force that I was
going up against. I wanted to
get inside these guys heads as
much as possible.
And then the other side
of the coin, was just as
important_ where am I
going? What's the change
in elevation; whens the
sunrise and sunset? Is there
any moonrise? Will there
be clouds, or precipitation?
What's the ground like; is it
wet or dry there? Am I going
to have a problem nding
water or will there be water
all over the place? How
difcult would it be to nd
food? What are the medicinal
and edible and the toxic
plants? What's the dangerous
fauna which snakes are
dangerous and venomous?
And because I'm going
into these guys backyards,
they have not only a home
turf advantage, but they also
know this terrain that I'm not
used to, and maybe haven't
operated in. It's giving
away a lot I researched
all that stuf about the area
to the extent of how much
air I would have, how much
moonlight there was going to
be. My clothing...! Obviously
I'm not bringing much along
one of my biggest strengths
is that I want to travel really
fast, and really light. So I
really want to bring things
with multiple usage.
It was an exhaustive
exercise. But once I'm in
MANHUNT
As an ex-US Navy SEAL, Joel
Lambert trained in escape
and evasion among the most
skilled of inltrators his new
adversaries have faced. And
just as well because in each
country, he is being hunted
down by the best tracking
force in town, on their home
turf. In an exclusive interview,
he reveals that though the guns
weren't loaded, the dangers
were very real and the stakes,
as high as ever.
JOEL LAMBERT HAS HIS WORK
CUT OUT FOR HIM, HAVING
TO EVADE SOME OF THE BEST
SEARCH-AND-CAPTURE
OPERATIVES IN THE WORLD
WHILE HAVING TO KEEP HIS FILM
CREW FROM ACCIDENTALLY
GIVING THE GAME AWAY P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
86
87
MAY 2014
ello Joel, how are you
doing? Where on earth
are we speaking to you
from? I'm very good! I
am in Los Angeles, in the
United States; I have my dog
snoring on the bed next to
me and I'm kicking back in a
reading chair, savouring all
the downtime I have until I
get back to the jungle and get
brutalised again!
I can imagine. So rst
up, how does anybody get
prepared for something
like this? Obviously you've
got a background in the
special forces. But even
so, this must have been a
tough test for you.
It totally was, and I knew it
was going to be. You know,
I got asked that question
a lot, people asking, How
are you going to prepare for
that? And I say, I'm already
prepared.
My life has been the
preparation for this. Which
doesn't mean that I'm already
exactly ready right then. It
means I know how to get
ready, and I know what I
need to do. The tools that I
need, are already within me.
But, you know, once you're
out theres no way to stay
in the kind of operational
state that you are in as a
SEAL. So there was that
challenge. And there's also
the physical challenge: I was
40 when I started this series.
I'm no longer 27 years old
and smashing through walls
anymore. But I'm a lot wiser
and a lot smarter than I used
to be. So at least I aged well.
What I really needed to
do was to prepare my mind
and my body, because I didn't
want either one of them to
be a weak link. I didn't want
my body to break because
my mind was stronger, and I
didn't there to be any mental
issues going into this. Both of
them held, largely because of
my background.
Did you prepare
diferently, to face each
unit? Yes. The preparation
I really had to do was to
research the units I was going
up against: their assets and
what they were going to use,
the kind of targets they are
usually going up against.
What are their weaknesses,
strengths and capabilities?
What's the level of technology
they use? What were they
going to use against me do
they have thermal imaging,
do they have helicopters or
drones? Their air assets? Are
they trackers, soldiers, or
policemen? Depending on the
answers to all these questions,
each diferent unit will think
and act diferently. So I had
to know as much as I could
about each force that I was
going up against. I wanted to
get inside these guys heads as
much as possible.
And then the other side
of the coin, was just as
important_ where am I
going? What's the change
in elevation; whens the
sunrise and sunset? Is there
any moonrise? Will there
be clouds, or precipitation?
What's the ground like; is it
wet or dry there? Am I going
to have a problem nding
water or will there be water
all over the place? How
difcult would it be to nd
food? What are the medicinal
and edible and the toxic
plants? What's the dangerous
fauna which snakes are
dangerous and venomous?
And because I'm going
into these guys backyards,
they have not only a home
turf advantage, but they also
know this terrain that I'm not
used to, and maybe haven't
operated in. It's giving
away a lot I researched
all that stuf about the area
to the extent of how much
air I would have, how much
moonlight there was going to
be. My clothing...! Obviously
I'm not bringing much along
one of my biggest strengths
is that I want to travel really
fast, and really light. So I
really want to bring things
with multiple usage.
It was an exhaustive
exercise. But once I'm in
MANHUNT
As an ex-US Navy SEAL, Joel
Lambert trained in escape
and evasion among the most
skilled of inltrators his new
adversaries have faced. And
just as well because in each
country, he is being hunted
down by the best tracking
force in town, on their home
turf. In an exclusive interview,
he reveals that though the guns
weren't loaded, the dangers
were very real and the stakes,
as high as ever.
JOEL LAMBERT HAS HIS WORK
CUT OUT FOR HIM, HAVING
TO EVADE SOME OF THE BEST
SEARCH-AND-CAPTURE
OPERATIVES IN THE WORLD
WHILE HAVING TO KEEP HIS FILM
CREW FROM ACCIDENTALLY
GIVING THE GAME AWAY P
H
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88
89
MAY 2014
the eld and doing it, it all
just turns on and the senses
sharpen. Once Im there, I'm
good to go. And then, you just
act as a hunter. But all the
stuf before that, is what you
need the right mind to do. It
helps you.
From your own
background, and from
having done this show,
what would you say is
unique about special forces
soldiers, their operations
and their training? The
thing that you need to get
to the special operations
forces is not the technology
or the weaponry. It's not
the fact that we don't stand
guard duty, or that we get
to do our own thing and can
grow moustaches, beards or
long hair, and nonchalantly
walk around with our hands
in our pockets. That stuf is
kind of anti-military about
special operations forces. If
you meet special operations,
on one hand they'll be very
military; that's who we are.
On the other hand, they'll
be very anti-military, in
terms of not having all those
military, stick-up-the-behind,
salute the ofcer kind of
elements. Because it's about
unconventional warfare,
these are unconventional
soldiers. You get to push back
against all that, hence you do
develop a disdain for it.
If you look at every
genuine special operations
unit, the guys without
exception have gone through
'approval', which is a very
precise and intense process,
to select them. And that's
just to select them it's
to weed out the guys that
aren't cut out for it. Usually
it's only between 10 to 20
percent of the guys that show
up, and want to be special
operations soldiers, that
make it through to become
one. So what makes special
operations forces special, are
the individuals in there.
Bear Grylls described
exactly that; the ratio
of around two out of 10
getting through, and of the
almost Fight Club style of
training you go through.
In the end, there is the
knowledge that youre
ready for anything. Was
your training the same?
Yes, and I also have a unique
perspective on it, because in
the nal couple of years of
my time in the military, I also
went back as an instructor
which gave me a diferent
perspective. So I've seen
both sides of the fence, and I
understand it now as a mature
warrior someone whose
body has been in combat,
then coming back and passing
it on. I've seen it for what it is.
Of course, going through
some of it is just calculated
brutality. But the brutality
we're inicting, on these
kids is for them. All of
the humiliation, all of the
brutality, all of the legitimate
injuries and in some
cases even death that
are inicted on the guys we

ON FILMING
THE SHOW
Davies says filming such a
large-scale event was quite an
undertaking. But I mean, thats
the nature of the show, thats what
we set out to do. The access was really
remarkable, and thats a credit to the
producers, and also I think to Joel. Hes
a very credible character, with a distin-
guished field history. I think they realised
that he was going to give them a good
run for their money. This wasnt a
little gimmicky thing he was go-
ing to really go for it. So I think
they genuinely felt that it
would test them.
JOEL VERSUS CAMERA OPERATORS Its absolutely
true, there were some real battles. Theres one very
funny bit in the Making Of episode, where Joels
shouting at the cameraman, whos saying, Its a
television show! and Joel goes, Its not! Then he
suddenly catches himself, and realises, ah, it is a
television show. Theres another really brilliant bit,
where theyre getting lost in lion country in South
Africa, and Joels obviously told the cameraman to shut
up and stop moving. And instead, Ryan gets in front of
Joel to try and get another shot. Its just this hilarious
bit, where Joels going, When I tell you to stop, I am
not saying reposition the camera. I am saying stop!
They really liked each other at the end, it was a very
bonding thing but its incredibly hard work.
BLOOD SPORT We did have a lot of injuries. I dont
want to make it sound like we were reckless, but we
had some very strange things happen. Nobody can
account for the fact that, standing on a boat, youre
going to get hit by a ying sh thats got a huge barb
on it, in the face. I would have thought the chances
of that happening were pretty darn slim. I think the
security guy had even checked on whether these sh
y, and of course the sh decided to y at different
times. So it was really weird. And we had a lot of
the crew going down with heat exhaustion too. No
matter how much you prepared for it, it was just way,
way hotter than everyone was imagining. But they
are an amazing crew theyre all extremely nice
people. I dont know if any of them will want to work
with me again, though! [laughs]
THE FOURTH WALL We really struggled with
whether we should allow the crew members to be
in the scenes. Its called breaking the fourth wall
when you put the crew in, and we struggled with it
a bit. We at rst decided that we wouldnt do it, but
then, while we didnt overload the show with the
crew, we acknowledged their existence in a couple
of places. There are a few spots where you can hear
them interacting, or you see Ryans legs, and you
realise that they are there too. It was a real skeleton
crew; there was just had one cameraman, and
sometimes a producer.
AMAZING LOCATIONS We had a production team
who were really good at doing the research. Woody,
our producer a former SAS soldier, was integral
in terms of giving us background information. But
its surprising too how much you can nd out: for
instance, the Polish border patrol have an amazing
website. Then Joel would analyse the maps he
was very into understanding the geography and
topography. He was very thorough, and did a lot of
preparation in advance.
FROM THE SCENE OF
A MANHUNT
DISCOVERY CHANNEL EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
SARAH DAVIES GIVES US MORE OF THE
LOW-DOWN ON THE CRAZY WORLD OF
INTERNATIONAL CAT-AND-MOUSE THAT WENT
INTO CREATING THE SHOW
P
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O
T
O
S
:

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Y

C
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C
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M
U
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I
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A
T
I
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N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
MANHUNT
I RESEARCHED
ALL ABOUT
THE AREA, TO
KNOW HOW
MUCH AIR I
WOULD HAVE,
HOW MUCH
MOONLIGHT
THERE WAS
GOING TO BE
AND WHICH
ARE THE
EDIBLE AND
TOXIC PLANTS;
INCLUDING
WHAT WOULD
I NEED TO
DRESS LIKE?
88
89
MAY 2014
the eld and doing it, it all
just turns on and the senses
sharpen. Once Im there, I'm
good to go. And then, you just
act as a hunter. But all the
stuf before that, is what you
need the right mind to do. It
helps you.
From your own
background, and from
having done this show,
what would you say is
unique about special forces
soldiers, their operations
and their training? The
thing that you need to get
to the special operations
forces is not the technology
or the weaponry. It's not
the fact that we don't stand
guard duty, or that we get
to do our own thing and can
grow moustaches, beards or
long hair, and nonchalantly
walk around with our hands
in our pockets. That stuf is
kind of anti-military about
special operations forces. If
you meet special operations,
on one hand they'll be very
military; that's who we are.
On the other hand, they'll
be very anti-military, in
terms of not having all those
military, stick-up-the-behind,
salute the ofcer kind of
elements. Because it's about
unconventional warfare,
these are unconventional
soldiers. You get to push back
against all that, hence you do
develop a disdain for it.
If you look at every
genuine special operations
unit, the guys without
exception have gone through
'approval', which is a very
precise and intense process,
to select them. And that's
just to select them it's
to weed out the guys that
aren't cut out for it. Usually
it's only between 10 to 20
percent of the guys that show
up, and want to be special
operations soldiers, that
make it through to become
one. So what makes special
operations forces special, are
the individuals in there.
Bear Grylls described
exactly that; the ratio
of around two out of 10
getting through, and of the
almost Fight Club style of
training you go through.
In the end, there is the
knowledge that youre
ready for anything. Was
your training the same?
Yes, and I also have a unique
perspective on it, because in
the nal couple of years of
my time in the military, I also
went back as an instructor
which gave me a diferent
perspective. So I've seen
both sides of the fence, and I
understand it now as a mature
warrior someone whose
body has been in combat,
then coming back and passing
it on. I've seen it for what it is.
Of course, going through
some of it is just calculated
brutality. But the brutality
we're inicting, on these
kids is for them. All of
the humiliation, all of the
brutality, all of the legitimate
injuries and in some
cases even death that
are inicted on the guys we

ON FILMING
THE SHOW
Davies says filming such a
large-scale event was quite an
undertaking. But I mean, thats
the nature of the show, thats what
we set out to do. The access was really
remarkable, and thats a credit to the
producers, and also I think to Joel. Hes
a very credible character, with a distin-
guished field history. I think they realised
that he was going to give them a good
run for their money. This wasnt a
little gimmicky thing he was go-
ing to really go for it. So I think
they genuinely felt that it
would test them.
JOEL VERSUS CAMERA OPERATORS Its absolutely
true, there were some real battles. Theres one very
funny bit in the Making Of episode, where Joels
shouting at the cameraman, whos saying, Its a
television show! and Joel goes, Its not! Then he
suddenly catches himself, and realises, ah, it is a
television show. Theres another really brilliant bit,
where theyre getting lost in lion country in South
Africa, and Joels obviously told the cameraman to shut
up and stop moving. And instead, Ryan gets in front of
Joel to try and get another shot. Its just this hilarious
bit, where Joels going, When I tell you to stop, I am
not saying reposition the camera. I am saying stop!
They really liked each other at the end, it was a very
bonding thing but its incredibly hard work.
BLOOD SPORT We did have a lot of injuries. I dont
want to make it sound like we were reckless, but we
had some very strange things happen. Nobody can
account for the fact that, standing on a boat, youre
going to get hit by a ying sh thats got a huge barb
on it, in the face. I would have thought the chances
of that happening were pretty darn slim. I think the
security guy had even checked on whether these sh
y, and of course the sh decided to y at different
times. So it was really weird. And we had a lot of
the crew going down with heat exhaustion too. No
matter how much you prepared for it, it was just way,
way hotter than everyone was imagining. But they
are an amazing crew theyre all extremely nice
people. I dont know if any of them will want to work
with me again, though! [laughs]
THE FOURTH WALL We really struggled with
whether we should allow the crew members to be
in the scenes. Its called breaking the fourth wall
when you put the crew in, and we struggled with it
a bit. We at rst decided that we wouldnt do it, but
then, while we didnt overload the show with the
crew, we acknowledged their existence in a couple
of places. There are a few spots where you can hear
them interacting, or you see Ryans legs, and you
realise that they are there too. It was a real skeleton
crew; there was just had one cameraman, and
sometimes a producer.
AMAZING LOCATIONS We had a production team
who were really good at doing the research. Woody,
our producer a former SAS soldier, was integral
in terms of giving us background information. But
its surprising too how much you can nd out: for
instance, the Polish border patrol have an amazing
website. Then Joel would analyse the maps he
was very into understanding the geography and
topography. He was very thorough, and did a lot of
preparation in advance.
FROM THE SCENE OF
A MANHUNT
DISCOVERY CHANNEL EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
SARAH DAVIES GIVES US MORE OF THE
LOW-DOWN ON THE CRAZY WORLD OF
INTERNATIONAL CAT-AND-MOUSE THAT WENT
INTO CREATING THE SHOW
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
MANHUNT
I RESEARCHED
ALL ABOUT
THE AREA, TO
KNOW HOW
MUCH AIR I
WOULD HAVE,
HOW MUCH
MOONLIGHT
THERE WAS
GOING TO BE
AND WHICH
ARE THE
EDIBLE AND
TOXIC PLANTS;
INCLUDING
WHAT WOULD
I NEED TO
DRESS LIKE?
90
91
MAY 2014
recruit, it's for them. We are
nding guys who have what
it takes in them, and through
the process of the selection,
unearthing it and polishing it
up. And then when they come
out, whatever it is that was
latent inside them has been
brought out.
It's like this archetype,
the warrior journey, that's
hardwired into humanity. It's
so rarely that this is brought
to fruition, and really grown
to its fullness, except in these
warrior cultures, such as the
one Bear Grylls experienced
in the [UKs] SAS, or the
regiments of the Gurkhas,
for instance. Its inside these
warrior societies, like the
Thai guard men. There's
some guard men that would
come over and train with us
they were these little tiny
guys, but oh man, they are
hard. It's fantastic. And you
know, you go through this
life as a loner, then discover
a brotherhood you never
knew existed. For me, thats
the most enlightening and
valuable thing that I have ever
experienced.
I had a friend of a friend
who worked at an electronics
store who said, Well you
just haven't had a child yet.
Wait until you have a child.
Well, maybe so, but you know
what? I'm a frogman, I'm a
SEAL and that is something
so deep that I don't even
think having a child could
come close to the depth of
brotherhood. The pride and
humility that comes with
standing among the kind of
men that I'm privileged to
stand among is something
else. Im sure having a child
is fantastic, but I dont think
it ever could come close to
living life at that level of
intensity and razors edge.
You also had to prep
a lm crew to match it
with you, and these guys
clearly arent ex-Navy
SEALs. Its one thing for
you to beat these tracking
forces alone, but to not
get caught and still ensure
its good TV, must be
extraordinarily hard.
Behind the scenes, how
did you ensure they were
match-ready too? Dude, it
was such a collision of worlds
at rst! But as I was learning
about the show, I was seeing
that what the producers and
the creators at Discovery
Channel wanted to do was not
to take military things, and
adapt them to a TV format
which is what every other
military show does. They
wanted what is efectively an
FMP, or full mission prole.
So a full military exercise,
with everything shown. You
know, we were not killing
anybody, we were not actually
launching missiles, but we
were doing everything up
until that point and playing
it out as it unfolded. Which is
whats going on in this series.
And so thats exciting: theyre
just launching these cameras
along with us.
That being said, how
are these camera guys and
these producers going to
be propelled into this new
world? And how am I going to
take my tactical stuf and then
relate it to a camera? Because
from the outset, I didnt
necessarily understand that.
And the camera guys asking
me, Tell me how youre doing
this. At rst, Im like, Shut
up man! Just do it, do it!
So the rst episode was
a lot of that. You know, Im
hungry and exhausted, and
the camera guys saying,
Hey Joel, can you show us
this? I kind of had to adjust,
and think about how I could
still do what I was doing,
and maintain the majority
of my tactical operational
discipline.
Yeah, I guess that could
easily be the diference
between being found or not
found. I mean, operational
discipline sufers in order
to relate to the camera.
But I needed to have it not
necessarily afect my overall
mission too much. Thats
been the challenge, I think.
For the camera operator,
its about one, keeping up,
and two, not compromising
me. Which happens all the
time. And Ive been through
several of them. One of them
quit, another ended up with
a muscle detached from the
bone. That was horrible.
They are reality cameramen,
theyre used to being in the
middle of a real situation
and not being there. But in
this situation, they are there
their footprints, the noise
they make, the blue t-shirt
they wear into the eld, are all
there. So its been difcult for
me, without breaking their
spirit or impeding them from
doing their job, to try to bring
a camera operator into this,
without compromising me.
And did it come ever
come close to that? There
was one instance in the
Philippines. Those guys are
amazing trackers, and I was
walking through this eld
area, where its pretty muddy
and our footprints would be
showing. So Im being very
careful and walking on these
hillocks of grass, stepping so
delicately. Then I look over to
my right, and the cameraman
is tromping through the mud,
lming my footprints. And I
just said, Do you not get it? Do
you not understand what were
doing here? And it is very
difcult to try to grasp that.
DURING THE EPISODES,
VIEWERS GET TO WATCH
LAMBERT PUT IN EVERY
EFFORT TO ESCAPE HIS
PURSUERS WHILE
ALSO GAINING A
FASCINATING GLIMPSE
INTO HOW TRACKERS
AND HUNTERS WORK
MANHUNT
EVERY SENSE
IN YOUR BODY
COMES ALIVE,
TO A GREATER
DEGREE THAN
YOURE USED
TO. YOUR
VISION, YOUR
HEARING,
BECOME
SHARPER.
YOU START
QUIVERING.
ITS HARD TO
DESCRIBE,
BUT YOU
JUST BECOME
PLUGGED IN TO
EVERYTHING
AROUND YOU.
90
91
MAY 2014
recruit, it's for them. We are
nding guys who have what
it takes in them, and through
the process of the selection,
unearthing it and polishing it
up. And then when they come
out, whatever it is that was
latent inside them has been
brought out.
It's like this archetype,
the warrior journey, that's
hardwired into humanity. It's
so rarely that this is brought
to fruition, and really grown
to its fullness, except in these
warrior cultures, such as the
one Bear Grylls experienced
in the [UKs] SAS, or the
regiments of the Gurkhas,
for instance. Its inside these
warrior societies, like the
Thai guard men. There's
some guard men that would
come over and train with us
they were these little tiny
guys, but oh man, they are
hard. It's fantastic. And you
know, you go through this
life as a loner, then discover
a brotherhood you never
knew existed. For me, thats
the most enlightening and
valuable thing that I have ever
experienced.
I had a friend of a friend
who worked at an electronics
store who said, Well you
just haven't had a child yet.
Wait until you have a child.
Well, maybe so, but you know
what? I'm a frogman, I'm a
SEAL and that is something
so deep that I don't even
think having a child could
come close to the depth of
brotherhood. The pride and
humility that comes with
standing among the kind of
men that I'm privileged to
stand among is something
else. Im sure having a child
is fantastic, but I dont think
it ever could come close to
living life at that level of
intensity and razors edge.
You also had to prep
a lm crew to match it
with you, and these guys
clearly arent ex-Navy
SEALs. Its one thing for
you to beat these tracking
forces alone, but to not
get caught and still ensure
its good TV, must be
extraordinarily hard.
Behind the scenes, how
did you ensure they were
match-ready too? Dude, it
was such a collision of worlds
at rst! But as I was learning
about the show, I was seeing
that what the producers and
the creators at Discovery
Channel wanted to do was not
to take military things, and
adapt them to a TV format
which is what every other
military show does. They
wanted what is efectively an
FMP, or full mission prole.
So a full military exercise,
with everything shown. You
know, we were not killing
anybody, we were not actually
launching missiles, but we
were doing everything up
until that point and playing
it out as it unfolded. Which is
whats going on in this series.
And so thats exciting: theyre
just launching these cameras
along with us.
That being said, how
are these camera guys and
these producers going to
be propelled into this new
world? And how am I going to
take my tactical stuf and then
relate it to a camera? Because
from the outset, I didnt
necessarily understand that.
And the camera guys asking
me, Tell me how youre doing
this. At rst, Im like, Shut
up man! Just do it, do it!
So the rst episode was
a lot of that. You know, Im
hungry and exhausted, and
the camera guys saying,
Hey Joel, can you show us
this? I kind of had to adjust,
and think about how I could
still do what I was doing,
and maintain the majority
of my tactical operational
discipline.
Yeah, I guess that could
easily be the diference
between being found or not
found. I mean, operational
discipline sufers in order
to relate to the camera.
But I needed to have it not
necessarily afect my overall
mission too much. Thats
been the challenge, I think.
For the camera operator,
its about one, keeping up,
and two, not compromising
me. Which happens all the
time. And Ive been through
several of them. One of them
quit, another ended up with
a muscle detached from the
bone. That was horrible.
They are reality cameramen,
theyre used to being in the
middle of a real situation
and not being there. But in
this situation, they are there
their footprints, the noise
they make, the blue t-shirt
they wear into the eld, are all
there. So its been difcult for
me, without breaking their
spirit or impeding them from
doing their job, to try to bring
a camera operator into this,
without compromising me.
And did it come ever
come close to that? There
was one instance in the
Philippines. Those guys are
amazing trackers, and I was
walking through this eld
area, where its pretty muddy
and our footprints would be
showing. So Im being very
careful and walking on these
hillocks of grass, stepping so
delicately. Then I look over to
my right, and the cameraman
is tromping through the mud,
lming my footprints. And I
just said, Do you not get it? Do
you not understand what were
doing here? And it is very
difcult to try to grasp that.
DURING THE EPISODES,
VIEWERS GET TO WATCH
LAMBERT PUT IN EVERY
EFFORT TO ESCAPE HIS
PURSUERS WHILE
ALSO GAINING A
FASCINATING GLIMPSE
INTO HOW TRACKERS
AND HUNTERS WORK
MANHUNT
EVERY SENSE
IN YOUR BODY
COMES ALIVE,
TO A GREATER
DEGREE THAN
YOURE USED
TO. YOUR
VISION, YOUR
HEARING,
BECOME
SHARPER.
YOU START
QUIVERING.
ITS HARD TO
DESCRIBE,
BUT YOU
JUST BECOME
PLUGGED IN TO
EVERYTHING
AROUND YOU.
92
93
MAY 2014
It was clearly a crazy
assignment for them,
whether they were
following you, or
the guys tracking you.
Yeah. We had one guy who
was almost killed. He had an
emergency evacuation, and
was given emergency
surgery where they cut the
other side of his neck and
pushed through two inches
of spine out the other side.
Thats in the behind-the-
scenes episode.
The producers and camera
operators who were with
the hunters in Panama,
they stumbled into some
Africanised honey bees
(also known as killer bees).
We had three guys lost in
the jungle, and two guys
going into anaphylactic
shock and having to be given
epinephrine. Vomiting all
night long. It was really brutal
to say the least.
In most of the places Id
go after the hunt, I would
wake up in the morning
and roll out of bed and
thered still be these spots of
blood on the bed. We dealt
with dengue fever, mercer
staph (Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus)
infections, heat exhaustion.
One producer was down with
heat exhaustion and had to go
to the hospital for 24 hours
and get like four or ve bags
of IV uid. So it was very real,
you know.
Im sure that compared
to some of the experiences
in your career, thats
something youre prepared
for. Yes, youre absolutely
right. But those crew guys,
this is new to them.
I dont want to give
away any spoilers for
our readers, in terms
of the outcomes. But
what would you say were
the diferences for you
between the diferent
episodes, and between
the diferent forces
you encountered? Well,
some of the special forces,
their skill levels were well
above average, but then the
technology levels would
be above average too. For
instance in the Philippines,
they were using I mean,
they had trucks; that was
basically what they had, they
had vehicles. But other than
that, they were just soldiers
on the ground. And they were
fantastic they were clearly
great soldiers and great
trackers. And in other places,
there were massive amounts
of technology.
Some places, the terrain
would be brutal, just horrible.
Other places, it would be
really easy terrain, like in
South Africa, where it was
wide open. But there are
lions, hippos, elephants and
leopards. You know, stuf that
can kill you around every
corner. So every single place
was diferent.
And every single situation
that I was being put in,
theyre impossible odds. I
mean, Im one dude with no
technology being hunted
by people for whom this is
what they do, in their own
ADVERSARY RESOURCES We gave him background
research and he had his own, on what assets these
guys had. Did they have choppers, or planes, or
drones? He seemed pretty amazed when the drones
came out when we were in Arizona. I think he was
shocked, actually. I dont think he was anticipating
that whereas of course, we were delighted.
Also, we tried to nd units with slightly different
landscapes, so that they would do things in a slightly
different way. The Filipinos didnt really have any
assets, aside from a few jeeps, they just really rely on
their own skills thats the only thing you can really
do in the jungle. Whereas of course in the US, they
had a lot.
URBAN CHASE I think the hardest one to lm
actually was the South Korean one, because they
had cameras everywhere. It starts off as urban
environment, but then they picked him up really
quickly on their CCTV cameras; theres thousands all
around the island. They started blocking all the roads
out: he was going to try and go round the island, from
town to town. They worked that out, and they set up
roadblocks so he in the end, did have to go into the
countryside a little bit and come out the other end.
That one was hard for him.
TOUGHEST TEST I think the one that he hated was
in the Philippines. While he was really excited about
going he sponsors a child there and they met up
when he was there, but he was slightly phased by the
terrain. He doesnt like jungle; he made it very clear
that jungle is the worst environment for him.
GUNS I was asked a lot about why we let the soldiers
carry weapons. The reason was that it actually would
have disabled them if we hadnt it would have
thrown them off-balance, almost. We thought it was
important that they werent disadvantaged in any
way. But obviously, they didnt have live rounds. It
would have been a bit too dramatic if theyd actually
shot him. Towards the end of some of the episodes,
you can see that its not a game to the soldiers any
more, either they really think this is somebody they
should capture. They just got into the zone, it was
very highly-charged.
HYPER AWARE Joel said all his senses become
much more aware during each hunt. He was denitely
going into super sensory awareness. He was very
aware of noises and people and movement; which
added to the tension of it all. A lot of the time, he
was telling the crew to shut up they thought they
were being incredibly quiet, but their one crunch was
freaking him out. He also said, as a SEAL, he has this
switch that he icks on. When you go into mission
mode, you see your life through the lter of the
mission. He denitely went into that mode: thats why
he had screaming matches sometimes with the crew,
who had to snap him out of it a little bit. It was a lot
for him to deal with.
BEHIND THE SCENES AND ON
THE PRECIPICE
SOME OF THE PHILIPPINE
ARMY SCOUT RANGERS
HOT ON LAMBERT'S TRAIL.
LAMBERT'S TASK WAS
MADE EVEN HARDER BY
THE FACT THAT JUNGLE
TERRAIN ISN'T HIS FORTE
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
MANHUNT
YOU GO
THROUGH
LIFE AS A
LONER, THEN
DISCOVER THIS
BROTHERHOOD
YOU NEVER
KNEW EXISTED.
FOR ME, THATS
THE MOST
ENLIGHTENING
AND VALUABLE
THING THAT
I HAVE EVER
EXPERIENCED
92
93
MAY 2014
It was clearly a crazy
assignment for them,
whether they were
following you, or
the guys tracking you.
Yeah. We had one guy who
was almost killed. He had an
emergency evacuation, and
was given emergency
surgery where they cut the
other side of his neck and
pushed through two inches
of spine out the other side.
Thats in the behind-the-
scenes episode.
The producers and camera
operators who were with
the hunters in Panama,
they stumbled into some
Africanised honey bees
(also known as killer bees).
We had three guys lost in
the jungle, and two guys
going into anaphylactic
shock and having to be given
epinephrine. Vomiting all
night long. It was really brutal
to say the least.
In most of the places Id
go after the hunt, I would
wake up in the morning
and roll out of bed and
thered still be these spots of
blood on the bed. We dealt
with dengue fever, mercer
staph (Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus)
infections, heat exhaustion.
One producer was down with
heat exhaustion and had to go
to the hospital for 24 hours
and get like four or ve bags
of IV uid. So it was very real,
you know.
Im sure that compared
to some of the experiences
in your career, thats
something youre prepared
for. Yes, youre absolutely
right. But those crew guys,
this is new to them.
I dont want to give
away any spoilers for
our readers, in terms
of the outcomes. But
what would you say were
the diferences for you
between the diferent
episodes, and between
the diferent forces
you encountered? Well,
some of the special forces,
their skill levels were well
above average, but then the
technology levels would
be above average too. For
instance in the Philippines,
they were using I mean,
they had trucks; that was
basically what they had, they
had vehicles. But other than
that, they were just soldiers
on the ground. And they were
fantastic they were clearly
great soldiers and great
trackers. And in other places,
there were massive amounts
of technology.
Some places, the terrain
would be brutal, just horrible.
Other places, it would be
really easy terrain, like in
South Africa, where it was
wide open. But there are
lions, hippos, elephants and
leopards. You know, stuf that
can kill you around every
corner. So every single place
was diferent.
And every single situation
that I was being put in,
theyre impossible odds. I
mean, Im one dude with no
technology being hunted
by people for whom this is
what they do, in their own
ADVERSARY RESOURCES We gave him background
research and he had his own, on what assets these
guys had. Did they have choppers, or planes, or
drones? He seemed pretty amazed when the drones
came out when we were in Arizona. I think he was
shocked, actually. I dont think he was anticipating
that whereas of course, we were delighted.
Also, we tried to nd units with slightly different
landscapes, so that they would do things in a slightly
different way. The Filipinos didnt really have any
assets, aside from a few jeeps, they just really rely on
their own skills thats the only thing you can really
do in the jungle. Whereas of course in the US, they
had a lot.
URBAN CHASE I think the hardest one to lm
actually was the South Korean one, because they
had cameras everywhere. It starts off as urban
environment, but then they picked him up really
quickly on their CCTV cameras; theres thousands all
around the island. They started blocking all the roads
out: he was going to try and go round the island, from
town to town. They worked that out, and they set up
roadblocks so he in the end, did have to go into the
countryside a little bit and come out the other end.
That one was hard for him.
TOUGHEST TEST I think the one that he hated was
in the Philippines. While he was really excited about
going he sponsors a child there and they met up
when he was there, but he was slightly phased by the
terrain. He doesnt like jungle; he made it very clear
that jungle is the worst environment for him.
GUNS I was asked a lot about why we let the soldiers
carry weapons. The reason was that it actually would
have disabled them if we hadnt it would have
thrown them off-balance, almost. We thought it was
important that they werent disadvantaged in any
way. But obviously, they didnt have live rounds. It
would have been a bit too dramatic if theyd actually
shot him. Towards the end of some of the episodes,
you can see that its not a game to the soldiers any
more, either they really think this is somebody they
should capture. They just got into the zone, it was
very highly-charged.
HYPER AWARE Joel said all his senses become
much more aware during each hunt. He was denitely
going into super sensory awareness. He was very
aware of noises and people and movement; which
added to the tension of it all. A lot of the time, he
was telling the crew to shut up they thought they
were being incredibly quiet, but their one crunch was
freaking him out. He also said, as a SEAL, he has this
switch that he icks on. When you go into mission
mode, you see your life through the lter of the
mission. He denitely went into that mode: thats why
he had screaming matches sometimes with the crew,
who had to snap him out of it a little bit. It was a lot
for him to deal with.
BEHIND THE SCENES AND ON
THE PRECIPICE
SOME OF THE PHILIPPINE
ARMY SCOUT RANGERS
HOT ON LAMBERT'S TRAIL.
LAMBERT'S TASK WAS
MADE EVEN HARDER BY
THE FACT THAT JUNGLE
TERRAIN ISN'T HIS FORTE
P
H
O
T
O
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
MANHUNT
YOU GO
THROUGH
LIFE AS A
LONER, THEN
DISCOVER THIS
BROTHERHOOD
YOU NEVER
KNEW EXISTED.
FOR ME, THATS
THE MOST
ENLIGHTENING
AND VALUABLE
THING THAT
I HAVE EVER
EXPERIENCED
94
95
MAY 2014
MANHUNT WITH JOEL LAMBERT
EPISODE BY EPISODE, HUNT BY HUNT
PRE-SHOW BEFORE THE CHASE
Kicking off the series is an inside look behind-the-
scenes at Manhunt with Joel Lambert, Discovery
Channel's all-new action and survival series and
the dangerous conditions battled during production.
Joel Lambert, an ex-US Navy SEAL, takes on some
of the worlds most specialised military and law
enforcement tracking units, as he puts them to the
test, and challenges them to try to physically capture
him over a period of up to 48 hours. Shot in some
of the world's most remote and exotic locations,
viewers meet each of the hunter forces and hear
about the difculties Lambert experienced in trying
to escape and evade each one. The making of the
series proves to be as challenging as the hunts, as
severe injuries and near-death accidents plague the
crew while they try to capture this ultimate game of
cat-and-mouse.
SOUTH AFRICA
SAFARI SURVIVAL
Lambert is hunted
across a private game
reserve in South
Africa as he faces
off against one of
the most specialised
forces yet the
International Anti-
Poaching Foundation (IAPF). With the reserve full of
deadly animals such as lions, leopards, elephants
and rhinos, he must be hyper-aware of both the
hunter force behind him and the dangerous game
ahead. Made up of ex-military personnel and former
poachers, the IAPFs keen tracking skills allow them
to spot even the faintest hint of Lambert, without
the aid of high-tech assets. But when the IAPF nds
a pride of lions on the prowl, the hunt changes to a
life-and-death rescue mission, to nd him before
he becomes a lions lunch.
POLAND RACE TO
THE BRIDGE
Lambert has just
36 hours to escape
and evade Polands
elite border guard,
the Straz Graniczna.
Over a distance of
25 kilometres, the
border guard deploys all their assets, including
thermal camera helicopters, all-terrain vehicles (ATV),
motorcycles, tracking dogs and world-class eld
units, in an attempt to intercept Lambert, before he
reaches his extraction point. As the Straz Graniczna
mobilises dozens of troops, Lambert is forced to
utilise all of his deception tactics not to mention,
make his way down a 20-metre cliff, and risk a daring
truck ride, to attempt to save himself in this battle of
Polish pride versus Lambert's rigorous training.
MANHUNT
backyard, with at the very
least, vehicles that can outrun
me. And in some cases, you
know, helicopters and thermal
imaging. And even closed
circuit TV systems, and that
kind of stuf. So, it was very,
very difcult to do.
So whats going through
your head at these times,
while youre on the run?
Whats that experience
itself like? Most of us will
never experience days like
those. Every sense in your
body comes alive, to a slightly
greater degree than youre used
to. Your vision, your hearing,
become sharper. Everything
just becomes you start
quivering, you know? Youre
just resonating with everything
thats going on. Its hard to
describe, but you just become
plugged in to everything
around you. You become that
human animal again.
I was going to say, that
sounds like a wild animal
kind of instinct. Its exactly
what happens. To a degree,
your instincts wake up. Because
while its always there, were
so removed from that kind of
life. To wake it up and thats
part of what you learn to do in
the military forces, in combat,
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
IM ONE
WITH NO
TECHNOLOGY,
BEING HUNTED
BY PEOPLE FOR
WHOM THIS IS
WHAT THEY DO,
IN THEIR OWN
BACKYARD,
EQUIPPED
WITH AT THE
VERY LEAST,
VEHICLES
THAT CAN
OUTRUN ME
94
95
MAY 2014
PRE-SHOW BEFORE THE CHASE
Kicking off the series is an inside look behind-the-
scenes at Manhunt with Joel Lambert, Discovery
Channel's all-new action and survival series and
the dangerous conditions battled during production.
Joel Lambert, an ex-US Navy SEAL, takes on some
of the worlds most specialised military and law
enforcement tracking units, as he puts them to the
test, and challenges them to try to physically capture
him over a period of up to 48 hours. Shot in some
of the world's most remote and exotic locations,
viewers meet each of the hunter forces and hear
about the difculties Lambert experienced in trying
to escape and evade each one. The making of the
series proves to be as challenging as the hunts, as
severe injuries and near-death accidents plague the
crew while they try to capture this ultimate game of
cat-and-mouse.
SOUTH AFRICA
SAFARI SURVIVAL
Lambert is hunted
across a private game
reserve in South
Africa as he faces
off against one of
the most specialised
forces yet the
International Anti-
Poaching Foundation (IAPF). With the reserve full of
deadly animals such as lions, leopards, elephants
and rhinos, he must be hyper-aware of both the
hunter force behind him and the dangerous game
ahead. Made up of ex-military personnel and former
poachers, the IAPFs keen tracking skills allow them
to spot even the faintest hint of Lambert, without
the aid of high-tech assets. But when the IAPF nds
a pride of lions on the prowl, the hunt changes to a
life-and-death rescue mission, to nd him before
he becomes a lions lunch.
POLAND RACE TO
THE BRIDGE
Lambert has just
36 hours to escape
and evade Polands
elite border guard,
the Straz Graniczna.
Over a distance of
25 kilometres, the
border guard deploys all their assets, including
thermal camera helicopters, all-terrain vehicles (ATV),
motorcycles, tracking dogs and world-class eld
units, in an attempt to intercept Lambert, before he
reaches his extraction point. As the Straz Graniczna
mobilises dozens of troops, Lambert is forced to
utilise all of his deception tactics not to mention,
make his way down a 20-metre cliff, and risk a daring
truck ride, to attempt to save himself in this battle of
Polish pride versus Lambert's rigorous training.
MANHUNT
backyard, with at the very
least, vehicles that can outrun
me. And in some cases, you
know, helicopters and thermal
imaging. And even closed
circuit TV systems, and that
kind of stuf. So, it was very,
very difcult to do.
So whats going through
your head at these times,
while youre on the run?
Whats that experience
itself like? Most of us will
never experience days like
those. Every sense in your
body comes alive, to a slightly
greater degree than youre used
to. Your vision, your hearing,
become sharper. Everything
just becomes you start
quivering, you know? Youre
just resonating with everything
thats going on. Its hard to
describe, but you just become
plugged in to everything
around you. You become that
human animal again.
I was going to say, that
sounds like a wild animal
kind of instinct. Its exactly
what happens. To a degree,
your instincts wake up. Because
while its always there, were
so removed from that kind of
life. To wake it up and thats
part of what you learn to do in
the military forces, in combat,
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
IM ONE
WITH NO
TECHNOLOGY,
BEING HUNTED
BY PEOPLE FOR
WHOM THIS IS
WHAT THEY DO,
IN THEIR OWN
BACKYARD,
EQUIPPED
WITH AT THE
VERY LEAST,
VEHICLES
THAT CAN
OUTRUN ME
96
97
MAY 2014
PANAMA SWIM TO SURVIVE
Panama's elite anti-drug trafcking unit
SENAFRONT has just 36 hours to track, hunt
and capture Lambert in the jungles of San Jos
Island, situated close to 100 kilometres off the
coast. Lambert battles for freedom through thick
rainforest, rocky shorelines, and some surprising
wildlife, while SENAFRONT unleashes its full
arsenal, using ATV patrols, boat units, and ground
trackers to pressure Lambert from all sides. But
when he decides to use the terrain to conceal his
trail, SENAFRONT turns the tables by using one of
his signature moves against him.
ARIZONA TESTING
THE EAGLE
Lambert faces off
against the US Army's
Phantom Recon unit
a battle-tested
group of trackers,
supremely skilled
in hunting down
the most elusive of
targets. Their turf in southern Arizona is the harsh
75,000 acres surrounding Fort Huachuca military
base, an area home to mountain lions and bears
and a much-favoured route of illegal immigrants
and heavily armed drug smugglers trying to gain
passage into the country. And if Phantom Recon
is not intimidating enough, Lambert is also being
monitored by sophisticated unmanned aerial drones,
whose cameras have locked in on his every move.
Pitted against both top-notch trackers and the latest
aerial spyware, will his skills and endurance be
enough to get him to a successful extraction before
the enemy closes in?
THE PHILIPPINES ESCAPE THE JUNGLE
Lambert faces off against the Philippine Army
Scout Rangers, with just 48 hours to escape the
dense jungle. Over a distance of 25 kilometres,
and with two trucks as their only assets, the Scout
Rangers prove they are among the worlds best at
jungle tracking, as they utilise their unique skill
set to stay hot on Lambert's trail. But the harsh
heat and humidity of the Philippine jungle and an
unfortunately timed typhoon push Lambert, the
hunter unit and crew to the brink.
SOUTH KOREA HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Lambert takes on the South Korean National Police
(KNP) SWAT unit in a challenge he has never faced
before: urban evasion. On the heavily populated
tourist island of Jeju, Lambert must alter his tactics
to escape the KNPs web of over 5,000 closed-circuit
television cameras, in addition to their boat, air and
mobile assets. Nothing is off-limits as he tries to
avoid physical capture through the back alleys of the
city. He even leads KNP out into the wilderness on a
path of deception and near-misses.
BAG IN THE CAB
Davies: Joel also managed
to leave his bag in the taxi. Did
he tell you that? DCM: No! [laughs]
Davies: Yeah, brilliant. He had a back-
pack with a few bits and bobs in it
and he left it in the taxi. He was using a
car to get away. That really scuppered
him, actually. He got very flustered when
they came to the checkpoint. He had only
been on the run for about two hours.
So he definitely lost it. But he came up
with a brilliant solution hes very
resourceful. You often see him do
really strange stuff, that Ive
never seen anyone do
before.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
H
A
N
N
E
L

C
O
M
M
U
N
I
C
A
T
I
O
N
S
,
L
L
C
.
A
L
L

R
I
G
H
T
S

R
E
S
E
R
V
E
D
.
MANHUNT
is to make your instincts
come back. And these are not
necessarily nice instincts, they
may be amoral in some cases.
But theyre not immoral.
And they are what's
keeping you alive. Yeah,
exactly. Its not really
something to be judged: it is
what it is, its who we are at a
fundamental level. And I do
nd it an amazing place to be.
Your background was
obviously very much
focused on your patch, and
the people you train with,
and all of the territories
youre going into. But this
must have been something
special in terms of learning
from so many diferent
foreign forces' cultures,
in so many diferent
environments. Did you come
away with a universal sense
about these quite unusual
individuals, and perhaps
what's similar about them
all? Yes, and thats one of the
things that I really enjoyed
about the show. Almost every
day, there was so much respect
between myself and the hunter
forces. They were so good, and
did such a great job, and there
was such mutual appreciation
and respect, that afterwards it
was great to have a drink and
eat with them, and to hang out
to just kind of connect outside
of the battleeld. They were
fantastic, I loved hanging out
with them. All of them worked
with amazing dedication.
The highlight in each of
these groups is what they can
achieve, and their passion for
what they do in their units. It
was awesome.
How much in each case
were you able to discuss
the special forces' regular
work? Because these are of
course under quite a veil of
security and secrecy. Well,
you know, I learned what I
could that which would help
me out, but I didnt get a
chance to interact with them
very much. Very rarely would
I come across them before the
hunt, and then after the hunt,
sometimes we had a chance to
go out and hang out a little bit.
The guys in the Philippines
were fantastic.
96
97
MAY 2014
PANAMA SWIM TO SURVIVE
Panama's elite anti-drug trafcking unit
SENAFRONT has just 36 hours to track, hunt
and capture Lambert in the jungles of San Jos
Island, situated close to 100 kilometres off the
coast. Lambert battles for freedom through thick
rainforest, rocky shorelines, and some surprising
wildlife, while SENAFRONT unleashes its full
arsenal, using ATV patrols, boat units, and ground
trackers to pressure Lambert from all sides. But
when he decides to use the terrain to conceal his
trail, SENAFRONT turns the tables by using one of
his signature moves against him.
ARIZONA TESTING
THE EAGLE
Lambert faces off
against the US Army's
Phantom Recon unit
a battle-tested
group of trackers,
supremely skilled
in hunting down
the most elusive of
targets. Their turf in southern Arizona is the harsh
75,000 acres surrounding Fort Huachuca military
base, an area home to mountain lions and bears
and a much-favoured route of illegal immigrants
and heavily armed drug smugglers trying to gain
passage into the country. And if Phantom Recon
is not intimidating enough, Lambert is also being
monitored by sophisticated unmanned aerial drones,
whose cameras have locked in on his every move.
Pitted against both top-notch trackers and the latest
aerial spyware, will his skills and endurance be
enough to get him to a successful extraction before
the enemy closes in?
THE PHILIPPINES ESCAPE THE JUNGLE
Lambert faces off against the Philippine Army
Scout Rangers, with just 48 hours to escape the
dense jungle. Over a distance of 25 kilometres,
and with two trucks as their only assets, the Scout
Rangers prove they are among the worlds best at
jungle tracking, as they utilise their unique skill
set to stay hot on Lambert's trail. But the harsh
heat and humidity of the Philippine jungle and an
unfortunately timed typhoon push Lambert, the
hunter unit and crew to the brink.
SOUTH KOREA HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Lambert takes on the South Korean National Police
(KNP) SWAT unit in a challenge he has never faced
before: urban evasion. On the heavily populated
tourist island of Jeju, Lambert must alter his tactics
to escape the KNPs web of over 5,000 closed-circuit
television cameras, in addition to their boat, air and
mobile assets. Nothing is off-limits as he tries to
avoid physical capture through the back alleys of the
city. He even leads KNP out into the wilderness on a
path of deception and near-misses.
BAG IN THE CAB
Davies: Joel also managed
to leave his bag in the taxi. Did
he tell you that? DCM: No! [laughs]
Davies: Yeah, brilliant. He had a back-
pack with a few bits and bobs in it
and he left it in the taxi. He was using a
car to get away. That really scuppered
him, actually. He got very flustered when
they came to the checkpoint. He had only
been on the run for about two hours.
So he definitely lost it. But he came up
with a brilliant solution hes very
resourceful. You often see him do
really strange stuff, that Ive
never seen anyone do
before.
P
H
O
T
O
S
:

D
I
S
C
O
V
E
R
Y

C
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MANHUNT
is to make your instincts
come back. And these are not
necessarily nice instincts, they
may be amoral in some cases.
But theyre not immoral.
And they are what's
keeping you alive. Yeah,
exactly. Its not really
something to be judged: it is
what it is, its who we are at a
fundamental level. And I do
nd it an amazing place to be.
Your background was
obviously very much
focused on your patch, and
the people you train with,
and all of the territories
youre going into. But this
must have been something
special in terms of learning
from so many diferent
foreign forces' cultures,
in so many diferent
environments. Did you come
away with a universal sense
about these quite unusual
individuals, and perhaps
what's similar about them
all? Yes, and thats one of the
things that I really enjoyed
about the show. Almost every
day, there was so much respect
between myself and the hunter
forces. They were so good, and
did such a great job, and there
was such mutual appreciation
and respect, that afterwards it
was great to have a drink and
eat with them, and to hang out
to just kind of connect outside
of the battleeld. They were
fantastic, I loved hanging out
with them. All of them worked
with amazing dedication.
The highlight in each of
these groups is what they can
achieve, and their passion for
what they do in their units. It
was awesome.
How much in each case
were you able to discuss
the special forces' regular
work? Because these are of
course under quite a veil of
security and secrecy. Well,
you know, I learned what I
could that which would help
me out, but I didnt get a
chance to interact with them
very much. Very rarely would
I come across them before the
hunt, and then after the hunt,
sometimes we had a chance to
go out and hang out a little bit.
The guys in the Philippines
were fantastic.
98
They came straight from
combat; they came out of
the jungle to do this show.
They nished this training
exercise, and then went right
back into combat. They were
going right back into the eld to
do their jobs my hats of
to those guys.
What was the most
surprising bit for you in
terms of the experience?
There will always be
something that stumps you.
In special operations, you are
conditioned so thoroughly
to expect the unexpected. So
theres really not anything
that I ran into in the actual
hunt that surprised me. Even
when something was really
kind of jacked up, as youll see
in the series, I kind of handled
it. Then the producers might
say, Why arent you reacting
more? This should be a major
surprise! Because its not a
major surprise when the
unexpected happens, you
adapt, improvise and overcome.
You deal with it, and move on.
The things that surprised me
were how old Id gotten, how
much slower I am how much
more recovery time I needed
after doing these operations.
Other than of course working
with the camera and trying
to not be caught, not letting
them compromise me, while
at the same time getting what
we needed to get. With one
cameraman in particular, there
were a few times that we got
into big ghts. I would say,
The most important thing is
not getting caught! Hed reply,
No, the most important thing
is making a TV show! Thats
what it was like.
The two out of 10 people
that make it into these
forces: what would you say is
the diference between those
two and the other eight?
The US military and various
other militaries have
commissioned study after
study trying to isolate what it
is so they can screen better.
It is something thats not been
identied yet, and I dont know
exactly what it is either. But
I tell you, it certainly comes
in diferent packages. When I
joined, there were guys that
I kind of thought looked
WITH ONE
CAMERAMAN,
THERE WERE
A FEW TIMES
WE GOT INTO
FIGHTS. I WOULD
SAY, THE MOST
IMPORTANT
THING IS NOT
GETTING
CAUGHT!
HED REPLY,
THE MOST
IMPORTANT
THING IS
MAKING A TV
SHOW!
P
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WHETHER THROUGH THE WILDS
OF THE JUNGLE OR GRASSLAND,
OR IN THE VERY HEART OF A
TOURIST CITY, LAMBERT TAKES
HIS HUNTERS ON A MERRY
CHASE AND BRINGS HIS
VIEWERS ALONG FOR THE RIDE
100
like those video game
characters, you know?
Rippling biceps, chiselled
jaw with stubble. The type
you imagine in a barbarian
horde. And there was another
guy with a little bit of a pot
belly. And in the rst week,
barbarian boy had quit and
the dude with the pot belly
was in the back of the class,
almost failing everything
but getting up, then getting
his ass handed to him every
time. And he just took it and
took it. And over the course of
the training, you look at that
dude, and you think, Thats
the guy I want with me in
combat because no matter
what happens, that guy will
not stop, will not quit and he
will not let us down.
Bear Grylls I think
described that X-factor
quality as heart. It is, and
in the end hes right. But I tell
you what, as you are doing it,
you will identify guys at the
beginning that you think have
heart, and guys you think
dont have it. And you will be
completely wrong.
What was each hunt
experience like for you
afterwards? Were you a
complete mess? Every time
Id do the hunt, I would need
a long recovery time. The
rst couple of hunts were
separated by like, two weeks.
Later on, they would stack
up and become more back-
to-back, partly for nancial
reasons. In some cases, Id say,
No way, I cant do that yet.
When I nish a hunt, Ive
been going sometimes up
to 56 hours, and on no food,
very little water and pure
adrenaline and the adrenals
are pumping overtime. So by
the time I nish, Ill go and do
pickup shots and that stuf.
And I am completely spent.
Theres blood in my bed, then
I just start showering. And
when I'm at home, its about
ve days before I will feel
functional. Five days of sleep,
10 to 12 hours a night, and
then a three- or four-hour
nap in the day.
I will be eating and eating
too, wandering the house
kind of in a zombie state for
a couple of days. Sometimes,
I couldnt really even make a
st. Youd wake up early in the
morning and your hand cant
even squeeze, you know what
I mean?
Then after about ve days
I would feel okay, able to do
all that I would do routinely.
Id go out and I could have
a normal day, but I still was
really weak. Id go to the gym
to work out, and I would try
to do a workout, but I would
just be sitting. Id be ne, but I
just had no explosiveness, no
power. It makes me sad saying
this, but after 10 days to two
weeks, I would feel okay. Id
feel like I was 95 percent
ready to do it again. After the
season was done though, I
started training really hard,
and my coordination, my
balance and my strength were
just all jacked up for probably
two and a half months. I
nally got everything back
but it took a lot out of me.
WHEN I FINISH
A HUNT, IVE
BEEN GOING
SOMETIMES
UP TO 56
HOURS, ON NO
FOOD, VERY
LITTLE WATER
AND PURE
ADRENALINE
AND THE
ADRENALS
ARE PUMPING
OVERTIME.
LAMBERT AND HIS PURSUERS TAKE TO
THE CITY FOR A CHANGE IN SOUTH KOREA.
WHILE YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT SURPRISED BY
THE FACT THAT THERE ARE SURVEILLANCE
CAMERAS EVERYWHERE ON JEJU ISLAND,
HOW WOULD YOU GO ABOUT HIDING FROM
THOSE ALL-SEEING EYES?
P
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.
102
103
MAY 2014
WHAT'S ON
THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL
Everest
Jump Live
Discovery Channel brings an
incredible human feat ever
captured on television straight
from the peak of the worlds
highest mountain, Mount Everest.
The world renowned wing-suit
jumper Joby Ogwyn attempts
the rst ight of the summit of
the mountain. Discovery will air
EVEREST JUMP LIVE in 224
countries and territories across
the world.
COMING IN MAY
WHAT'S ON
102
103
MAY 2014
WHAT'S ON
THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL
Everest
Jump Live
Discovery Channel brings an
incredible human feat ever
captured on television straight
from the peak of the worlds
highest mountain, Mount Everest.
The world renowned wing-suit
jumper Joby Ogwyn attempts
the rst ight of the summit of
the mountain. Discovery will air
EVEREST JUMP LIVE in 224
countries and territories across
the world.
COMING IN MAY
WHAT'S ON
104
105
MAY 2014
WHAT'S ON
Superhumans
Challenge
Could superheroes actually exist?
Prepare to be amazed, astounded
and astonished as presenter Tim
Fitzhigham goes on a mission to seek
out humans with impossible powers
so he can go head to head with
them! In each episode Tim meets one
real life superhuman and in order to
prove, or disprove, their extraordinary
abilities, he challenges them to three
unbelievable Supertests.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 10 PM,
STARTING 1 APRIL
Futurescape
With James
Woods
FUTURESCAPE WITH JAMES
WOODS looks at one idea or
discovery that will blow your mind
and critically alter life as we know
it. Synthetic Biology. Predictive
Analytics. Habitable Planets.
Nanotechnology. It all sounds like
science ction. It's not. James
will ask the big questions, ignite
debate and reveal a stunning
image of the future.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY 9 PM,
STARTING 12 MAY
WHAT'S ON
72 Hours
Every detective knows that the rst
72 hours after a crime are crucial to
solving it. What is less well known
is that the victim's last 72 hours
often hold the key to the criminal's
identity. Through a cinematic blend
of dramatic re-enactments, 72
HOURS takes the viewer through
the painstaking investigative
process until the case is solved and
the criminal convicted. In the end,
justice is always served.
STARTING 12 MAY
Building The World Cup
BUILDING THE WORLD CUP goes behind-the-scenes of one of
Brazils biggest engineering projects: the creation of three state-of-
the-art football stadiums capable of hosting international soccer at
the highest level. With the 2014 World Cup looming and the eyes of
the world on Brazil, can the country deliver on time and on budget?
AIRS EVERY SATURDAY 8 PM, STARTING 24 MAY
104
105
MAY 2014
WHAT'S ON
Superhumans
Challenge
Could superheroes actually exist?
Prepare to be amazed, astounded
and astonished as presenter Tim
Fitzhigham goes on a mission to seek
out humans with impossible powers
so he can go head to head with
them! In each episode Tim meets one
real life superhuman and in order to
prove, or disprove, their extraordinary
abilities, he challenges them to three
unbelievable Supertests.
STARTING 1 APRIL
Futurescape
With James
Woods
FUTURESCAPE WITH JAMES
WOODS looks at one idea or
discovery that will blow your mind
and critically alter life as we know
it. Synthetic Biology. Predictive
Analytics. Habitable Planets.
Nanotechnology. It all sounds like
science ction. It's not. James
will ask the big questions, ignite
debate and reveal a stunning
image of the future.
AIRS EVERY MONDAY 9 PM,
STARTING 12 MAY
WHAT'S ON
72 Hours
Every detective knows that the rst
72 hours after a crime are crucial to
solving it. What is less well known
is that the victim's last 72 hours
often hold the key to the criminal's
identity. Through a cinematic blend
of dramatic re-enactments, 72
HOURS takes the viewer through
the painstaking investigative
process until the case is solved and
the criminal convicted. In the end,
justice is always served.
STARTING 12 MAY
Building The World Cup
BUILDING THE WORLD CUP goes behind-the-scenes of one of
Brazils biggest engineering projects: the creation of three state-of-
the-art football stadiums capable of hosting international soccer at
the highest level. With the 2014 World Cup looming and the eyes of
the world on Brazil, can the country deliver on time and on budget?
AIRS EVERY SATURDAY 8 PM, STARTING 24 MAY

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