Good afternoon Robert. This is a group that seemed kind of deep and a lot of people but injuries are starting to take its full. What's the good thing about this group right now with the guys that are available or potentially available this week. Yeah. I would say I know I know the Titans last year have been through been through this kind of last year with a lot of guys going down and the guys getting called up and really I would say it's the mindset that Coach Brebel brings to this team. You see how guys prepare this year he always tells us you know prepare like you're going to start you never know what's going to happen. And that's all the way down to our practice squad guys and so guys are just you know it's kind of next man up is everybody you know preparing to be a starter and situations like this. We've been working with a lot of our practice squad guys draw training camp throughout this whole year for moments like this that are familiar with the style of play that we bring and I would say it's just next man up and be prepared like you're going to start. Hey Robert appreciate your time. I guess four games in the season me what are some of the things you think are trending in the right direction what are some other areas maybe for the offense you think you guys have got to get better at if you can get to where you want to be. Yeah, I would say, I mean, it's kind of the same things that kind of everyone's been saying these four weeks is second half. Be better in the second half. But when you really look at what we've been doing on offense. Scoring on our first possessions. Being able to do that consistently every game, being able to score in the red zone when we're down there not just field goals, touchdowns. So really it's like we're doing the right things it's just we just have to be consistent with it in the second half obviously we're fast. I would say we're a fast starting team is more so just keeping that tempo up throughout the whole game and I would say just finishing finishing in the end zone we get down there and get down there a lot more. Yeah Robert as far as your involvement in everything it seems like that's increasing what would you say is behind that over the last couple games that has gotten you you know more involved. Just rhythm, I would say the kind of he'll be able to trust me out there being able to find that spot in the zone, beat man coverage. Really it's just him getting comfortable with me finding finding me with throwing the ball, TV calling the plays, and obviously just me being out there. Being getting in rhythm again, being able to play fast and I think it just just having those opportunities with the quarterback and the play call and to work hand in hand. Corey. Hey Robert I know Derek's message to you guys after the game was about staying hungry, but how much of a sense of relief is there for you guys after starting oh and to to get back into two and to and being in a prime spot in the division. I would say it didn't it doesn't really matter the two games that we won obviously you want to you want to keep keep the trend going forward we flipped the narrative from the first two weeks. But really just being able to keep keep the trend going keep keep winning it's all about the the next game. The first quarter of the season the first four doesn't matter. It's a long season. We got to win this one at Washington that's the most important one lined up and really once you get that ball rolling and keep them in them have the guys playing playing fast playing confident and having fun I think that's what we really see the scene, getting rhythm and becoming unstoppable. Hey Robert. Yes. Yeah I know you talked about the second situation there a little bit earlier, and also what you've done well in the first half does the first does the fact that you guys have done so well in the first half, make the second half and a little bit more puzzling to you and I guess same sort of question how do you keep it from kind of getting in your heads a little bit, you know with upcoming games.  In some of the situations I feel like it's in the fellow teams are good teams are competitive. Obviously we're jumping on teams or whether it's the first drive or the first half.   I will say a lot of times we have been stepping on our own foot whether it's protection run blocking catching the ball can convert on third downs I think all those situations, we just have to be better in the second half. Toronto. Yeah, one more Robert, how do you feel you guys have done you know on that on the perimeter there taking advantage of the one on one matchups and just the whole situation of defense is being so overly focused on Derek Henry. I'm going to capitalize when when the when the when the play is called, whether it's a play action or a quick game, being open target whether it's downfield quick quick in the flat finding zones. I would say the guys been playing pretty well when Cal Phyllis was up available trailing Nick Westbrook being able to contribute on some key third downs for us. I think we've been able to see Hollister at times, our tight ends getting involved see chicken able to make some place. I'll say really. The guys has just been really make making the plays when it comes to when the when that ball is in the area see guys trying to do everything to possess that ball and keep this keep the change movement, whether it's young guys that I think everybody's trying to to help this past game we know we could do on the ground. And we know we could be really really dangerous in the air. It's a mean combination with our ground game in the past. Chris here. Hey Robert and curious as a veteran and a leader in that room what do you say to trailing to kind of keep his spirits up over the next couple weeks. Yeah, it's a tough.  Just having an injury like this I haven't spoke with him haven't even seen the timeline of how long or what, but I do know just just being injured out there you want to get back as fast as you can. And my thing is just come back healthy. Come back ready, whether it's mentally, physically. We're gonna need all our guys we got the right guys to step up and make plays while he's gone we just gonna need them to hone in and take care of his foot or toe and just just give back a healthy and come contribute when he can. Corey. Robert. I guess AJ Brown did an interview last week, where he talked about how, I guess, serious things were in Tennessee under coach for able and, and there wasn't a lot of room for for fun. This is your third NFL team. Is it really any different or things more serious here. Every, every coach and team has their own style has their philosophy. And I would say, yeah, Tennessee, it is a serious and you want guys in a team that takes winning serious and I think that's just how it is that practice and that work in the workplace. You got to come in and work with a purpose.  I just dropped the week is the working week, but go out there on Sundays you make plays you win games. That's when that's when the fun comes in. Last one Jim. It's kind of along the same lines driving and when you came here you kind of knew what you were getting into it what's the culture been like what's the vibe around the team been like, compared to what you thought it would be. Exactly what I what I thought it would be a lot of hard working guys obviously getting done on a defensive end being able to get some turnovers. Every game that we played in. Defensive and playing pretty well, an offensive side, obviously, you know we feed off the ground game kind of he'll be able to deliver in the play action and also work with his legs. Really it's just as hard as football we want to go out there and beat it up on our opponents run the ball play physical when we have the ball as receivers we want to finish violently. Really it's just it's the same as we want to go out there and win games want to play physical obviously it is a different culture. Then then the two places that I have been in the coaches that I have experienced with. But at the end of the day it's all for winning games. And our team is buying in and that's how you. That's how you win games.  Where you have been getting a lot of attention for the play you made on Sunday whether it's from teammates, you know, family friends just what what's your, what's your text and phone calls been like. It's been going up it's been pretty it's been pretty fun and funny, you know, getting some in some jokes from the DB shout out Christian phone. Yeah, but we can something in some jokes from the DB's and some of the teammates about me day break break dancing on my head so it's been fun. It's been cool to find other ways to impact the game. Yeah, I was going to ask you, you know, we've all seen that play and the celebration afterwards to you what what are you most excited about the interception the headstand or the long power slide in the end zone. I'm going to say about the interception just because it was a big play to help the team may not think no way from the headstand or the slide I just think that was all just a great momentum boost for the team and it brought a lot of positive energy to our sideline. So the interception definitely. Yeah, I'm sure the some parts of the towards the end of last season were were a little difficult for you probably not in as much as you would like what what kind of mindset did you take, you know to the off season and going into this year to kind of win back your spot and get back on the field, you know as much as possible and why has that worked so well. I mean I think the biggest part of all seasons just like not taking anything for granted, because I mean I have one point you could feel like you're on top of the world and next minute everything can be gone from you. So just not taking anything from granted, putting a lot of more focus on taking care of my body to prevent injuries and just trying to stay focused so I mean I like, and also like coming into this season I just wanted to improve on every little detail I could try to become more of a student in the game. Toronto. I mean we're talking about to getting to this point I mean we're talking about four different schools, you know a lot of grinding and everything the juco route all of that. How rewarding has it been for you to, you know get to this point and what has been the key for you to just keep keep pushing when things may have looked like it was coming to a close. I mean the key for me to get to this point is just resilience, you know being through all those jucos, a lot of emotions, you know, a lost family at some of the juco so it was really hard. So I mean just staying resilient and staying focused and knowing like if you just keep staying resilient and keep fighting mean something got to something's good going to come from it. I don't have anything good for coming just standing on one spot. So, just staying resilient and keep working and not giving up but this is honestly. I mean this is dream come true, you know I'm saying I have an opportunity to play in the NFL playing at this level, I just don't want to. I don't want to ever take, I don't want anybody that would feel like you can take this for granted because this is something that doesn't happen often, you know. Here along those lines how frustrating was last year I guess you probably weren't healthy for much of the year right I mean how hard was it to sort of grind through that and try and stay involved. It was extremely difficult. I mean, I mean, I know just dealing with pains from from day to day to practice just trying to go out there and battle like it's really it's really really really frustrating. When you get to see your team is out there celebrating fighting fighting fighting the asses all practicing hard and all you can do is sit there and watch, and it's extremely frustrating but I think it also speaks to like being resilient. Like I was saying like, I learned how to be resilient to you go, you know, through all the schools adversity, tell me how to be resilient tell me how to not stop and I quit and I give up. So it's just, it's just it was just another test. And, you know, I'm gonna keep getting tested throughout my whole career but you know, just staying resilient and keep moving forward is the goal. Corey. Hey, tear this Titans organization seems to be a pretty good match for you as far as getting the most out of you and seeing you improve. What is it about coach for able in this culture that has really connected with you to make you the player you are now. I mean, I think a career and and coach T they just, they, they know how to coach individual, you know, I mean they got a whole collected which is a team. They, they coach individual to they're going to put you in the best position to be the best player you can be, period, at all times so that's that's one thing that I'm, I know this personally from rabble and T and also that they, it's not just about football it's about life. They care about you as an individual in the person, and they want to see you succeed they want to see you do well. I think a lot of times a lot of coaches inside of that of building a relationship and building real genuine relationships and care about the mental health, the physical health of a player of a player in a person, because at any day I mean football is going to end at some point for everybody but you know for them to care about you outside of this and more for then more than just football is this is something a lot of people, a lot of the players can experience because you know they don't play. Yeah, I'm just doing tears and tears. I think I'm gonna be okay. Sounds like you're pretty self motivated guy and have been you know since you started your career me what do coaches. Maybe coach T what other coaches what do they harp on you what do they stay on you about to kind of keep you getting better, you know from their stand, never getting satisfied never getting comfortable, never feeling like you can't find a way to improve.  And I feel like never, never getting satisfied, you know, never, never being content and you know, you know, yeah. Cory. Yeah, I also just wanted to ask you know you guys were sitting there in that oh to whole. And you know you had the Raiders and the Colts coming up and things weren't going to be easy. How big of a relief is it to get out of there with two wins and kind of reset the season two and two after a quarter.  I would never been, you know, we built off of resilience and scrappiness and always and always fighting but you know it's huge for the teams huge huge field morale around here.  Last one Jim. Yeah, I think I read you maybe you're the second of 11 children in your family 11 kids in the family what was that like what was age range and and how how much do everybody kind of support one another. The age range. So the oldest right now is 48 and the youngest which is my little sister, just 23. So I mean it's a pretty big age range. So as far as just like a war zone. You didn't eat first he wasn't eating. So, but um, but it was good having a having a large family, you know, it brought everybody together closer we all have to learn how to work and negotiate. Imagine trying to get the TV remote. You had to learn how to work and negotiate with each other so it's good man. I have, I have three older brothers and the rest of sisters. And so it's a good family came from a basketball family.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebrakes.com here doing 2012-2013 Panini totally certified three box break random team number two 30 spots everyone gets random team at NBA all-card ship chasing rookies of Kawhi, Kairi, Klay, Kenva, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Bradley Biel and more It's a dual rookie class featuring 2011 and 2012 And also Kobe Otis, RIP So here is our customer list from Yancy last spot mojo back up to Kenny Severs and the teams from the Wizards back up to the Atlanta Hawks Dice roll to randomize both lists and combine them two into two four times So we got Eric down to Takumi and four times on the teams From the Raptors down to the Orlando Magic. So four there Four there and four on the dice.  Just click on the link in the break description This is Yancy. So trade window is open guys And remember it goes So it goes by City, Yancy.   You know what I mean? We all understand. We're all good Okay, so does anybody's No talks of trades. Okay, so we're gonna figure out which box we're gonna do. We have nine boxes all with the checker marks On there, so we're gonna split them off into one, two, and three Figure out which boxes we're doing One two for the box on left three four for the boxes right in front and five six for the boxes over here on the right It's a three. So we're going with the boxes right there in the middle These six will be for future Random team breaks Cool Trade window closed no talks of trades. So let's go ahead and print and rip Every box gonna have a Kobe pack. We'll set all those aside till the end They should all just be regular Kobe's but potentially Kobe Otis Here is our final list. Good luck. What's up, Adam? Isaiah Thomas rookie roll call auto 102 of 129 for the Sacramento Kings, Yancy Danny Green to 499 for the Spurs, Yancy Jose Calderon relic for the Toronto Raptors Eric Arnson Mike Miller to 499 for the heat Katie Donis Harrison Barnes to 299 Golden State Warriors Tom judge Cedric Maswell relics for the Rockets and to come a obey and meta world peace 150 out of 499 for the Lakers and to come a up LeBron James Miami Heat Katie Nice Gary O'Neill the 299 for the Spurs, Yancy Mark Price three color relic for the Cleveland Cavaliers number to 49 Dean Sullivan Tyler hands brought a 499 for the Pacers Jason Takeda Gustavo a on to 299 for the Orlando Magic and to come a abbey and Rookie roll call auto to 199 John Jenkins for the Landhawks Dustin Hussie Landry fields to 499 Toronto Eric Arnson Marquise T to 299 Chicago Bulls Dean Sullivan and Next rookie roll call auto for the New Orleans Hornets Lance Thomas 121 out of 199 older teams. It goes to the city. So New Orleans for the Pelicans now Yancy That was to 199 rookie roll call auto and Tyrus Thomas to 499 Charlotte Bobcats goes to the Charlotte Hornets now Kelly Williams and 499 That's box one Yeah, these are really really nice set here You get that nice little like color or not color burst but like Sunburst pattern coming out of the middle of the card out to the edges Well box to like I said, we're saving all the Kobe packs to the end We'll rip all those together. Hopefully we have a nice surprise of a Kobe auto So we're looking for Kyrie Kauai clay Camba lots of case Anthony Davis Jimmy Butler and Bradley B. Eric Bledsoe to 299 for the Clippers David Ottensocer JJ Redick to color relic to 99 for the Orlando Magic to come a abbey Chancy billips to 499 for the Clippers David Ottensocer Jeremy Tyler to 299 for the Warriors Tom judge and Travis Leslie rookie roll call auto for the Clippers That's going to David Ottensocer Lance and Isaiah to Byron Mullins to 499 for the Charlotte Bobcats, which goes to the Charlotte Hornets Kelly Williams Goran Draguic Houston Rockets relic For Takumi Abe and Damari Carroll to 499 for the Utah Jazz and Juan Escobie, Pena Is it sold out right? I didn't have any Orders for it today Jordan Hamilton to 299 Denver Nuggets Yancy, okay, so I'll have to check it out Marcus all relic For the Grizzlies Roy Gregman Rowe to 499 for the Detroit Pistons James the majority Marquise Teague rookie roll call auto Chicago Bulls Dean Sullivan. Okay, I'll take a look at it. Yancy Harrison Barnes to 499 for the Golden State Warriors Tom judge Lance Thomas to 299 for the New Orleans Hornets, which goes to the New Orleans Pelicans and Yancy and Festus as Ellie rookie roll call auto for the Golden State Warriors Tom judge Jason Terry to 499 for the Boston Celtics and Tom judges well if it did sell out earlier then I'll shift things around and figure out what's going on Sub Logan there is Are you talking about the one from yesterday Logan the one that Joe did Jeremy Pargo rookie roll call auto to 129 for the Memphis or sorry Who's he on this? Oh Cleveland Cavaliers Dean Sullivan chase Budinger for the Minnesota Timberwolves to 499 for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Malachi Pearson March on Brooks Relic for the Brooklyn Nets and Yancy Kyle Lowry to 499 Toronto Raptors Eric Arndtson Luol Day the 299 for the Chicago Bulls and Dean Sullivan John Salmons relict for the Sacramento Kings to 99 going to Yancy and Grant Hill to 499 for the Clippers and David Otenso sir Hopefully none James March on Brooks rookie roll call auto for the Brooklyn Nets Yancy Chandler Parsons to 499 for the Rockets Takumi Abe Jason Terry to 299 for the Boston Celtics Tom judge and Nicholas Batum two-color relic to 49 for the Trailblazers Dmitri Monta Ellis to 499 Milwaukee Bucks Dean Lewis Williams to 299 for the Atlanta Hawks Dustin Hussie and Justin Harper rookie roll call for the Orlando Magic and Takumi Abe Chris Paul to 499 for the Clippers and David Otenso sir as well Okay, and last up. We've got the Kobe packs Let's hope for a surprise maybe Kobe Kobe Kobe Kobe and Kobe should be pretty pretty much straight scratch, but I know you did Yancy not specifically the players we were looking for but You got a lot that's for sure So these are all Lakers Kobe obviously no autos in there But there you go all those go to the Lakers and Takumi Abe and there you go guys that was 2012-2013 community totally certified three box break random team number two from jaspys case breaks calm I'm Sean jaspys case case breaks calm. Thanks for hanging out and we'll see you next time


Good morning and welcome to CMC Markets on Friday the 24th of April and this quick look ahead at the week beginning the 27th of April. We've come off the back of a very choppy week, a bit of a roller coaster week if truth be told, driven primarily by movements in the oil price as well as changing expectations, if you like, about the prospect of coming out of lockdowns and progress on anti-viral as well as vaccines for the COVID-19 virus. Before we get started, I'll just run you through a couple of disclaimers before we get started and then we can actually get on to what is looking to be a very, very busy week for earnings. It's been a busy week for earnings this week, but next week we're really going to hit our stride with respect to company earnings announcements over the course of the next few days. But I think if I was to characterize this week, it would be as bipolar, schizophrenic if you like, because what we've had in essence is some very choppy downloads, particularly in the oil price where we've seen 20 year lows for Brent crude. We've subsequently seen Brent crude and WTI prices bounce back. WTI prices actually went negative. Whoever thought that would happen, but in fact it did. And while equity markets have been pretty choppy, they've actually been fairly range bound or weird in very wide ranges. So I think as we look ahead to the next few days, it's dominated predominantly obviously by what looks like a consistent drop in infection rates as well as death rates for the coronavirus. We've seen an awful lot of speculation about a European response or should I say an EU response, a EU recovery fund. Hopes weren't particularly high in any case, but I think EU leaders have managed to even surpass themselves by actually missing very low expectations with some speculation that they won't be able to agree anything particularly tangible much before the 1st of January 2021. Despite the fact that Spain and Italy in the weaker European economies really need a significant fiscal injection right now, not in eight months time, given how weak those economies were in the lead-up to this virus sweeping across Europe. That being said, central banks have stepped into the breach as have policymakers, particularly in the US and the UK. The UK looks as if it's going to ratchet up its business loans response from potentially 80% to 100%. We've had the US administration do another small business package to the tune of $484 billion. And next week we've got a trifecta of central bank meetings starting on the 28th of April with the Bank of Japan. And there is speculation that they might actually go a step further and signal that they might start an unlimited bond buying program going forward, as well as ramping up further equity market or ETF purchases. I mean, they're already a majority stockholder in an awful lot of Japanese companies. I'm pretty sure that they're probably going to go the extra mile and potentially ramp that up even higher. For all of this, equity markets have struggled to really move above the highs that we saw a few days ago on Monday, the 20th of April, where we saw the S&P 500 very briefly push above its 50-day moving average. But for me, the same argument still applies as it did in my video last week. The big level on the S&P for me is the 61.8 Fibonacci retracement level here from this down move and the 200-day moving average. It is finding some element of support around about 27-20, and that's going to be a key support level going forward. But ultimately, I think we do appear to be range bound until we get some sort of indication as to whether or not the virus is peaked and the lockdowns will continue to ease. And even here, a lockdown easing is going to be fraught with problems because as soon as you ease the lockdown and people start to mingle more freely, then you run the risk of the infection rate spiking again. So there is an awful long way to go. We've seen a bit of a sell-off in European markets this morning, early this morning, after a setback on the back of an antiviral drug being worked on by Gilead Sciences, which resulted in the fact that the clinical trials were disappointing. The UK is also working on a vaccine, and I think this is likely to be a familiar theme in the coming weeks, with markets swinging around on the success or the failure of antiviral as well as vaccine trials. Investors are really looking for comfort, crumbs of comfort on the treatment front amidst the incessant flow of awful economic data that we've seen this week. Services PMIs, flash PMIs at record lows. French services PMI at 10.4, UK services flash PMI at 12, you know, 12.3, 12.4, and Germany PMI at 15.9. These are record lows worse than the financial crisis. And I think they really underscore the conundrum being faced by politicians at this point in time as to the economic damage being wrought by the lockdowns and the pandemic when set against the possibility that they, you know, they're coming under pressure to at least try and engineer some sort of restart of economic activity. We've already seen some companies already starting to reopen their factories. Aston Martin have started to reopen their production lines as are Jaguar. And the housing companies, the home builders, are starting to do a limited phased reopening of their construction sites, Taylor Wimpy person. And I think that's really going to be how companies are going to play it going forward. Because I think if they stay down, if they stay closed down for any limited amount of time, that output could be gone forever and doing immense damage to the economic prospects of the country going forward. And, you know, while I think there is probably going to be an increasing debate going on about the economic merits of staying locked down when set against the future damage to the economic prospects, the employment prospects for populations going forward when set against obviously the rising death rate as a result of the virus. So it's very much going to be the politics and economics of trade-offs as we head into the second quarter of this year. So we've got a bank in Japan on the 28th of April. That's followed by the Fed on the 29th and followed by the ECB on the 30th. Now I'm not really expecting too much from any of these meetings. Recent Fed meetings have become a little bit of a sideshow in recent months because the central bank has preferred to act outside of its timetabled meetings. It's made these announcements in between meetings outside of U.S. trading hours. The last such action was on the 9th of April, which was an hour before the U.S. market opened on the Thursday just before Easter when the central bank announced a $2.3 trillion program to support Main Street and undertook to basically expand the scope of its bond buying program to exchange traded funds that specialize in lower-rated or junk bonds. So I think the meeting is probably going to be more instructive in terms of how U.S. policymakers view the outlook for the next few weeks, months in the context of the 26 million rise in weekly jobless claims that we've seen over the course of the past five weeks. So that could have significant consequences of the way the dollar performs over the course of the next few weeks. And we can see that panned out in the way the CMC U.S. dollar index has traded over the course of the past few days. It is much more heavily weighted towards Chinese one and less against the Euro. There's pretty much a 50-50 split now between the two of those. They make up around about 22% or 23% each of the actual index. So it means the Euro is a much weaker component than it is for the dollar index where it has a 57% rating. And that's not really representative, I think, of the overall trade-weighted index of the U.S. dollar. So paying particular attention to that as we will the Euro. What can the ECB do that it hasn't already done with its new pandemic asset purchase program? In recent comments, President Lagarde has said that central bank remains committed to doing everything necessary, but ultimately she warned this week EU leaders that they were running out of time to come up with a policy response to rescue the economies of Spain and Italy. And if they left it too much longer, it could well be too late. Certainly the ECB has expressed concern about an increase in non-performing loans. We've already seen credit suites this week in unit credit, set aside money in respect of non-performing loans, unit credit set aside 900 million euros in respect of that. And the ECB has already talked about the creation of a bad bank, something which markets are likely to be significantly concerned about when German banks report their latest numbers over the course of the next couple of weeks. Italy still remains the Euro area's kryptonite as far as I'm concerned and I think there's to deal with the problems here could well be ruinous for the entire block. So let's look at Euro dollar. I mean basically nothing much has changed here apart from the fact that it still looks weak and I think it's likely to continue to remain weak over the course of the next few days and weeks. We've now broken below that 107, 6070 area is very very gradual but we can see from this daily chart here that the highs are getting progressively lower. That's probably better illustrated in say for example a two hour chart where you can see that every subsequent rebound continues to out of steam. As we can see here these are the lows, these are the lows here and every single subsequent peak gets lower than the previous peak. That's a classic case of weakness and ultimately unless we get a break back above 10840 in the not too distant future then I think it's quite likely we could well revisit the lows that we saw earlier this year. The European policy response has been fragmented I think at best. I think you can safely argue that an incompetent at worst and I think that's why you will still find that euro sterling will probably continue to remain under pressure for all the faults of any UK policy response. At least we do have a joined up response between fiscal and monetary policy and that is likely to I think benefit the UK probably in the longer term which means that any upside in euro sterling is likely to be limited to around about 88 and a half and move towards as I say the lows that we saw in the early part of March in the end of February. So very much a case of sell the rallies on euro sterling. Now cable is very much driven by the vagaries of the movements in the US dollar. We can really see that here 50 day and a two a day moving averages are proving to be a little bit of a barrier. We have seen a bit of a death cross on the daily chart but I'm less concerned about that simply because of the fact that 200 day moving average is very very flat. It's not really going anywhere it's been fat for quite some time and when a moving average is as flat as that you're inevitably going to get the faster moving average cross over it over the course of a period of time. So you know there is a little bit of what could be a head and shoulders forming here on this particular daily chart with the left shoulder here a head here and a right shoulder forming here which is why it's really important that we hold above this 122 to 30 area and take out the previous highs at one round about 126 127. We also really need to take out 125 to move above this series of peaks that we saw through here. The market does appear to be rolling over a little bit we could see a little bit of further weakness but I think as long as we stay above this low here from 7th of April which is around about 121 60 then I think the range that we've been in over the course of the past few weeks is likely to continue to hold sway as we go forward. Other things I'm keeping an eye out for next week is obviously the final UK manufacturing PMI which when you compare it to the services PMI is really stellar it's in the mid 30s it's over triple the level of services activity and manufacturing and construction now does appear to be starting to go back to work on a fairly limited scale so the downside in those particular PMIs should be so should be should be fairly limited. We've got first call to US GDP also on the 29th of April the same day as the Fed meeting that's going to be the first indication of how much economic damage is about to come the US's way but I think you've also got a factor in the fact that the first call to GDP number is not going to be reflective of the amount of economic damage that's been done in April because the lockdown in the US happened halfway through March and as a result of that you're only going to see a significant part of that slow down come towards the end of that reporting period so it's not really going to give you a decent indication it'll give you an early warning the shape of things to come but it's really the the unemployment numbers that really give you an idea of the tsunami of contraction that's about to come the US's way. We've also got first call to GDP from the EU as well and again same argument applies there the lockdowns happened in March and as a result the first two months will probably flatter that number slightly given the fact that we didn't really see the economic contractions really start to kick into gear until the end of that so first call to GDP out of the EU same day as the ECB meeting we've also got German unemployment for April that could be an important bellwether of the economic damage from a labor market point of view for the German economy and the last set of unemployment numbers in Germany should unemployment level study at five percent that's likely to go up quite considerably the big question is by how much and whether or not furloughed employees will be included in that number okay so we're off the economic data side of the equation it's also a big week for company earnings now we've seen US banks set aside enormous amounts of money in respect of provisions for non-performing loans we've seen unicredits set aside 900 million dollars we've also seen Credit Suisse do the same it's probably not going to be too much of a surprise when we say HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and RBS report their first quarter numbers to see them do the same thing because over the last few years the share price of UK banks have struggled to due to concerns over Brexit it's somewhat ironic that it's not going to be Brexit it's really going to cause them the most amount of pain in the short or to medium term it's going to be the after effects or the beginning of the effects of the economic contraction that's about to come our way as a result of the corona virus pandemic so I think the only reassurance I have about UK banks is the UK government appears willing to backstop any new lending that the banks need to do to keep the economy on life support unfortunately that's not where the real problems are consumer credit provision for credit losses could be a real issue if we see widespread solvency issues for consumers as well as businesses in the coming months now all of these three banks are acutely vulnerable Lloyds, Barclays and RBS are acutely vulnerable to a consumer slowdown Barclays at least has its investment banking division to fall back on Lloyds and RBS have seen significant cutbacks to that area of the business and Lloyds never really had a significant investment bank in any case it was very much a retail bank given that it took over age boss so they will have to I think shareholders will have to contend with not only the dividend cuts that we've seen over the course of the past month or so but they're also going to have to contend with the fact that the revenue streams from investment banks are unlikely to be the buffer that they used to be in the past because simply speaking they're an awful lot smaller so record profits to really I think struggling to contain any credit losses going forward is probably going to be the best that can be hoped for as we head into 2020 I mean at its most recent trading update Barclays beat expectations on profits and revenue but it did warn that 2020 was likely to be challenging well that I think is a significant understatement so what we've got here with respect to banks is have a quick look at these lows that we've seen in April is the bad news already priced in or are the banks going to surprise us this week with much higher than expected provisions so Lloyds is around just dropped below 30 30 pence if we look at Royal Bank of Scotland it's likely to look a similar story and at least the thing you can say for Lloyds is that at least it's no longer taxpayer owned and management have full control of all the levers but even here um but you know the consensus the the inability to rally with any degree of confidence suggests that we could well see further losses on the cards for UK banks and that is a worry I think going forward can UK banks even with the relaxation of their capital buffers help cushion the economic blow and pull the UK economy out of the other side these first quarter numbers will give us a good indication as to not only how well capitalised these banks are but how willing they are to I think extend credit conditions and be sympathetic to the problems that businesses are going to find they're faced with over the course of the next few days and weeks so that's the UK banks big week for UK banks it's also a big week for BP I think unless you've had your um unless you've been living under a rock over the course of the past few weeks you will know that Brent Crewve has been on the slide so BP is going to be announcing his first quarter earnings numbers on the 28th of April and this is really bad news for BP I mean it's bad news for all oil companies in general but certainly for BP which has a large US shale operation they paid 10 billion dollars only two or three years ago for BHP's shale assets and that is looking increasingly like a rather full hardy decision as things stand with demand falling airlines cutting capacity people traveling less um the longer term outlook is also likely to be constrained by the green agenda so the company can cut CAPEX in the hope of covering costs on a short-term basis but what it really needs to see is significant rebound in the oil price and there has been talks of the US president might look to bail out the shale industry so there might be a glimmer of hope there but there still have to be questions about the sustainability of BP's dividend when the share price is trading at levels that we last saw in the 1990s you know we are trading at 25 year lows for BP and royal Dutch shale so I will be paying particular attention to what further measures BP can take to and try and address the cash burn because it has a bake even price of 50 dollars a barrel just below 50 dollars a barrel and as you can see from this watch list here Brent Crewve is currently trading at around about 20 and a half 21 dollars a barrel so the past few months have been extraordinarily painful for BP we will find out by how much when they report on the 28 what else have we got we've got full year numbers from Sainsbury's um now they should instinct should tell you that the lockdowns should be good for the retail sector good should be good for the retail sector but Tesco's recent numbers showed us that their costs increased to the tune of nearly 900 million so um as a result of was it 900 million or was it 90 million it was it was a significant amount anyway so um I have to have to recheck that but the the increase in volumes the increase in sales was more than offset by an increase in staffing costs so Sainsbury's full year numbers are likely to be um closely scrutinized to see whether or not they had the same problems that Tesco's had and I think yes it was 900 million pounds it was it I've just I've just noticed it in my note here so it could be it could be a similar story for Sainsbury's though the business I think could also benefit from increased sales from its Argos brand due to the fact that customers bought electronics and games to see them through the lockdown as well as in my case I had to buy a desk so um because otherwise I might have been sitting with my laptop on the ironing board um so keeping an eye on the Sainsbury's share price having a look at that it's just below two pounds at the moment um keeping an eye on the key levels there and if I just change that chart to um my other saved preset for that and we can see there that it's pretty much in the middle of the range between 170 and 230 it's been quite choppy over the course of the past few days and weeks and I would expect that to continue but I think as long as we hold above 190 then I think the prospects for Sainsbury's look remarkably positive I think in the short to medium term it's also a big week for um US earnings we've got Tesla Tesla motors and we've got Apple and we've got Amazon.com I know this video is slightly longer than normal but there's an awful lot to get through and I don't want to miss anything out so let's start with Tesla's numbers which are due on the 29th now as we can see from this chart earlier this year Tesla's valuation soared to the point that it became the second most valuable car brand in the world only behind Toyota now anyone who thinks that is in any way sustainable I think must be pricing in an awful lot of forward earnings expectations and messes increases in sales now the company has shut its plant in California it did that on the 23rd of March steps have been taken to cut costs by following staff and cutting production and the hope is that operations can really start on the 4th of May now the original guidance for 2020 was production of over 500,000 cars it's unlikely they're going to be able to replicate that unless they have a really good second half in the same way that they did last year they made profits in the last two quarters it's unlikely they'll make a profit in the next in in in the last quarter so the big question is have we got further upside to go $800 is going to be a big big level I would be very surprised if we go above that and I think the likelihood is we could head lower then we've got Apple so what about Apple well they should do quite well they in first quarter they posted record net income and revenue of $91.8 billion and $22.8 billion respectively now services again showed a real strong performance and I think this is here where we're going to have to see services really ramp up with the launch of Apple plus Apple TV plus I think the problem with sales in China is going to be a real problem for the second quarter numbers iPhone sales have been in decline for quite some time and economic disruption by caused by the coronavirus could well have cannibalized sales even further particularly at the higher end and I think that may help explain why Apple's decided to launch a new iPhone SE this month one of its cheapest ever iPhone models so the deviation from the higher end probably not surprising given the intense competition in the market be interesting to see where these latest numbers reflect that and as a result we could see a little bit of a slide back towards the lows that we saw at the beginning of March last but not least Amazon you would expect Amazon to do well in the face of the coronavirus lockdown it's its first quarter numbers on the 30th I think we should see a nice boost it's certainly been reflected in the boost in the share price over the course of the past few weeks in the same way that Netflix has got a decent boost but is this a case of buy the rumor sell the fact because while Amazon Prime is likely to do fairly well Amazon has come in to come in for some criticism with respect to how their workers are treated in relation to warehousing and new distancing rules but furthermore Amazon Web Services is one of their key revenue earners now obviously with businesses being locked down or not doing anywhere near as much business you could see a hit to that particular revenue stream over the course of the last three to four weeks and that could impact its overall revenue numbers so keep an eye on that when Amazon reports its latest numbers on the 30th of April so that's it for this particular week ahead as you can imagine it's been quite a extensive quite an extensive one and with that with that in mind I'd just like to thank you all for listening wish you all a pleasant weekend and hope you have a good trading week over the course of the next few days thank you very much for listening


Thank you so much Melinda also for bringing me back here. I had a wonderful time here in June and July and therefore somewhat closer to finishing that book. Thank you. I'm not sure it's forthcoming with Duke yet. That's still to be addressed. But anyway, thank you so much all for coming. First thing this morning. So the day on which the former authoritarian leader of Indonesia Suharto made his momentous decision to step down from the presidency after more than 32 years in power and his formal announcement of this decision early the following morning on May 21st, 1998 coincided with no less than two national holidays. The first was National Awakening Day, commemorating the birth in 1908 of the student national movements dedicated to achieving independence from Dutch colonial rule. The second, though much less widely recognized, was the ascension of Jesus Christ that in 1998 fell on May 21st. I only became aware of the second holiday as I began to write the introduction of the book on which this presentation partly draws. But in light of much that follows, it is hard not to discern some poetic truth in the concurrence of the regime's collapse and the assent of Jesus Christ. Now in the early 2000s at the far end of Indonesia, in the islands once renowned as a source of fragrant spices like nutmeg and cloves, Jesus appeared again and again rising out of the ruins of the war-torn central Malaccan city of Ambon. During a brief visit to the provincial capital in 2003, still then under emergency conditions, my curiosity was piqued by the immense faces of Jesus and Christian scenes that whizzed by the car in which I rode with colleagues from a local university as it navigated the city's complicated zoning and religiously marked neighborhoods. As I came to know Ambon in its new post-war circumstances, I encountered a city crowded with such pictures. Along highways and important crossroads or facing outwards from the gateways of Christian neighborhoods, huge Jesus faces towered over the passersby and traffic moving below, while murals showing Christian martyrdom or emblems snatched from Christmas cards like Santa Claus and bells formed brightly colored backdrops to the urban congestion of bed shock, petty cabs, motorbikes, pedestrians, minibuses and Toyota Kijang vans. Returning to Ambon in 2005, I began my fieldwork there by pursuing the pictures, following them to different locations around the city, up into the hills where many Christians live and into churches where arresting and unprecedented figures of Jesus had recently appeared behind some Protestant church altars. Over time, I discovered more new pictures tucked away in Christian homes whose well-to-do owners had commissioned small painted rooms set aside for prayer or Christian themed walls and most unexpectedly an immense triptych prophesizing the apocalypse hidden out of sight in a warehouse only a short drive outside of Ambon. During the years in which I visited and carried out fieldwork in the city, the magnitude number and heterogeneity of the street images never ceased to amaze me. From the tormented Jesus face with a crown of thorns and huge dark eyes upturned to heaven on a billboard along the highway from the airport into Ambon or another brilliantly blue eyed billboard Christ about which many of the city's Christians never failed to comment, to scenes of Jesus surrounded by Roman soldiers stretching out on public walls or his head hovering above an urban battlefield where tiny white clad jihadis and national army soldiers engaged each other in fighting. Some stood out even more than others. A few indigenous Christs, but also the cameo Jesus portraits with painted serrated edges that due to their cut out appearance recalled state ID photographs. There were also more regal Christ dating from a later moment emanating authority and protection from behind altars in Ambon's Protestant churches, others elsewhere on the island or on neighboring ones. I begin today with the image asking what it is about the image and specifically here the image of Christ that moves at center stage and monumentalizes it publicly at this historical and politically fraught moment in Indonesia. What was the affective charge of these images such that their presence in Ambon was capable of offering some solace to the city's Christians who launched the new medium during the conflict that from mid January 1998, 1999 engulfed the city in intermittent violence for more than three long years. The conflict left the city divided into Muslim and Christian territories up to 10,000 persons killed and close to 700,000 displaced with ongoing tension and occasional outbreaks long thereafter. Beyond any signification in Ambon's war or its aftermath, these pictures in the first place were something to be seen. Admired and gazed out by Christians, catching the eye, approving or otherwise of passersby, interrupting the flow of traffic or marshalled as a backdrop for photographs of young Christian men, brandishing weapons or other poses caught on camera. Potent material presences standing on sidewalks and along streets in the wartime and post-war urban environment. These images had the capacity to move beyond any specific context. Even something as dire and encompassing as a profound uncertainties and violence of war. If any image necessarily establishes its own force field, my book examines at length the various forces that coalesced around and animated the specific pictures. One such force is the sheer materiality and assertiveness of the place they occupy in the city, itself a kind of place making in the sense of a place taking or an aggressive seizure of place. Another is what I call the work of appearances of which these images form an intrinsic and intimate part. Now as the title of this presentation intimates, I situate figuration in direct of complicated relation to processes of disfiguration. From the outset, I understand the production deployment of the Christian images, my main example today of figuration, within the more diffuse crisis in appearances or disfiguring momentum that took hold of Ambun during the conflict and that more generally describes a relatively unstudied if long acknowledged aspect of war. Already in the early decades of the 19th century, the Prussian general and military theorist Karl von Klausowicz captured the uncertainty and challenged a perception posed by warfare. Noting how quote, all action takes place so to speak in a kind of twilight. Which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. With respect to Ambun, it's crucial to realize how indebted the city's images were to a situation of acute crisis where the world as ordinarily apprehended not only seemed to change its appearance but even more disturbingly began to relinquish some of the aesthetic forms and visible outward appearances that it hitherto held it in place, making it imaginable and livable. Trust in appearances on which much of social life relies and the taken for grantedness that leaves aesthetic forms broadly conceived largely unnoticed in everyday circumstances declined dramatically. It was in response to this crisis that what I call the work on appearances aimed to bestow shape upon a nervous city and profound disarray or more graphically a place in the grips of disfiguration. For the Protestant Ambunis who produced the street pictures these offered I propose, among many other things, a new visible medium through which to figure their own place in precarious times. Through them they aim to secure the presence of God as the guarantor of their longstanding prominent position in the city is quite an elite group these Protestants, a claim to recognition and even a right to existence and futurity in Indonesia after Suharto. Prior to Ambun's war, God's previously limited or even largely invisible presence suffused the highly contested if still Christian dominated city, sufficing as a tacit assurance that he watched over the congregation of the Protestant Church of the Malakas, the Gay Payem or the direct descendant of the Dutch colonial Calvinist one. In the midst of the nationwide crises accompanying the Suharto regime's collapse and their various ramifications across the archipelago, a pressing uncertainty had arisen in its place. Seen in this light, as I have argued elsewhere, the Christian pictures might also be understood as a case of protesting too much. Now orphan landscapes, the title of the book and also of this presentation serves as a gloss for the larger predicament of uncertainty, crisis and rupture or the orphaned landscapes had issued in the wake of the Suharto regime's collapse and the withdrawal of a leader who styled himself the father of the nation, Indonesia by extension as one big family and addressed even his cabinet ministers as children. Across the country, great uncertainty accompanied the longstanding dictator's departure and the downfall of his regime. Writing about the capital of Jakarta, one author, Aberdeen Kusno, describes the profound sense of a looseness at the center, afflicting city residents and the feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and general disorientation that went with it. With the evacuation of power at the nation's center, he writes, it is if a central support that has stabilized the island of Java for ages has been removed, a sense of restlessness prevails among the inhabitants. Now in the book I tack back and forth between several dimensions of the pervasive national predicament characterizing this initial period after Suharto's withdrawal. From the nation's orphaning or precarity of citizen subjects bereft of the paternal force that had previously authorized their place, granted them recognition and orchestrated everyday national appearances to the painted urban gallery of Jesus faces and Christian scenes altered by Protestants affiliated with Ambon's gay PM church. Leaving at risk in the ravaged city and increasingly altered country, it is no exaggeration to say that many among the gay PM's congregation felt both figuratively and literally orphaned in relation to their own context of production and activity. Highly ambivalent works, the city's Christian pictures are in some respects just pictures, as good Protestant Ambonese would not surprisingly often insist. Or landscapes in the European, more traditional sense of stabilizing a view and offering a perspective on things. But beyond such stability they may themselves be seen as orphaned landscapes or act effectively charged aesthetic presences shot through with a desire to be seen and they're in safeguarded as well as haunted by the doubt as to whether indeed this is the case. Now while it is important to recall how inflected circumstances in Ambon were by the larger national circumstances I just sketched for you, I hone in here on three examples of more localized registers of placemaking. The figures of territory and landscape embedded in place through the street paintings and the performances of their young male motorbike taxi supporters. The enclaving of place exemplified by a private Christian prayer room and the carving out of a place for the protoplasmic creaturely potential of the nation that's from McTausig and there in Indonesia's Futurity in public service announcements that depicted children on television who spoke out against violence amidst images of war's ruins. In all three examples of placemaking I foreground the relationship between images and the environments in which these emerge with an eye towards problematizing and complicating a connection that all too often is disregarded or understood complacently. Now all images necessarily enjoy a certain autonomy and excess with respect to their surroundings and in the words of the marvelous Chris Pinney cannot just be plucked in any simplistic way and sutured with the sociological and political reality of any particular historical moment or with what as it were presents itself as the most compelling context around. To be sure the immense energy with which the Christian pictures surfaced in Ambon City and clamored to be seen had everything to do with a devastating conflict in which they came to be. Yet even as there are crucial connections to be made the pictures neither reflect nor are merely expressive of the war carried out in religion's name or its multiple enabling circumstances nor can they be reduced to or systematically embedded in any significant circumscribed setting. For that matter war's twilight or the cloak of fog that Klausawitz von Klausawitz saw as one of its constituting conditions is itself an enabling context for violence that needs to be understood as generated rather than merely assumed. Relatedly with respect to images the inherently transitory fragile nature of the associations between any given social reality and the image world to which it somehow provisionally is conjoined must be recognized as such that is as provisional and as something therefore requiring explanation. Now in the anxious rapidly changing circumstances of Ambon's war many of the taken for granted appearances of the everyday urgently and repeatedly called attention to themselves revealing the inevitable transience and difficulty of keeping in place the forms that hitherto had characterized the city its inhabitants and the fabric of its complicated urban every day. Regarding specifically the images conventionally deployed by Christians until the war that is from small scale posters and wall calendars to scenes of the Last Supper inlaid with the Maloccan islands lustrous mother of Pearl and restricted for the most part to Christian interiors. These began to fall short visually of what was expected of them as a consequence the long familiar props of Ambonese Christian homes and stores so familiar that largely they could be taken for granted and pretty much overlooked appeared newly out of place. Put otherwise from the perspective of many among this privileged Protestant segment of the urban population in these extraordinary times the world had itself begun to lose the image that they had long held of it. Those are some of them. Now situations of crisis it is often claimed that the need for art and novel forms of expression becomes enhanced. Elias Kauri the Lebanese novelist and prominent public intellectual writes of Beirut's crisis in a way that exposes how the present comes to defy the aesthetic forms of an earlier pre-crisis moment and I quote him. The present has to be written about he says not contextualized in historical terms. The present is mute. It cannot be evoked in yesterday's language. Repeatedly he continues in our interviews we heard about changes in art and language during and after the civil war. Now although little was said about art during my field work in Ambon it is possible to paraphrase Kauri's words in a manner that makes them resonate powerfully with this other troubled city at a far removed in most respects from Beirut. Along these lines I propose in the book that the present of warfare and rampant uncertainty was blind in Ambon in close so to speak in a kind of twilight such that made it impossible to evoke through yesterday's pictures. In their stead huge scaled up public images refigured in ways that in some poignant sense spoke to the predicament of Ambon's Christians were made to suffice or at least I argue this was part of the impulse behind them. From this perspective it becomes possible to understand Ambon's new pictures littered among war's wreckage around the city as a response of sorts to the significant mutual orphaning of image and world. The Protestant pictures aiming anxiously to address and shape the world around them and the world perceived as morphing out of the pre-crisis forms and appearances through which it was previously known. Now to set the scene for placemaking beyond the usurpation of place by the pictures themselves I offer a brief impression of this world or the war torn urban environment in which the street pictures arose and to which in certain important respects they opened up. This was a city dramatically and palpably transformed the presence of ruins, the no-go areas, divisions and new obstacles in urban space. The myriad symptoms of crisis, things like faces flitting across chapel walls, blood coursing out of faucets, pineapple jelly congealing into blood, crystals possessed by Muslim spirits and other very disturbing events, not to mention the conflict itself and its many implications. All of these radically reshaped and continued to reshape the appearances that had made Ambon hither to what it was. Already in the early days of the conflict barricades sprung up in Ambon streets and the habitats set up postcode or communication and command posts at the edges of their neighborhoods. Bullets guard buildings replaced the shiny facades of fish restaurants, coffee houses, gold and souvenir shops that had once lined the city's main arteries, now increasingly littered with a debris of battle and garbage that remained uncollected. In the wake of the destruction of Ambon's main market at the onset of the war, the very first days, smaller religiously segregated markets that were literally shocked into existence emerged in their stead, obstructing sidewalks and cluttering streets where the itinerant five-footed vendors of satay, yellow rice, hot tea and the like began to sell articles previously available only in the city's shopping mall and fancier stores like clothing. For most of its inhabitants, the space of the city shrunk as they became more and more confined to one or another of its increasingly religiously marked areas. Like some monstrous checkerboard, Ambon morphed rapidly into a vast patchwork of Christian red and Muslim white issuing in a highly segregated every day with red market, white market, red and white speedboat case, red and white petty cabs, red and white mini buses, red and white banks and so on. At the same time, the city was unmoored in unprecedented ways. Much of its population was on the move, beginning with the forced exodus of the derogatively named Bebe M, short for Bhutanese, Bhutanese and Makassarese, all Muslim migrants in the first days of the war and the multiple displacements occasioned by the fighting, the destruction and torching of homes and buildings, the refugees fleeing from one part of the city to another, as well as into and out of Ambon from other areas that were affected by conflict as well. As a population dwindled from a pre-war count of around 300,000 to almost half of that towards the end of the war, all kinds of new people also began to arrive to the city, battalions dispatched by Jakarta to quell the violence, journalists and other media practitioners, NGO activists and humanitarian workers, but also some 2,000 jihadis from Java a good year after the conflict began. Over time, what one priest called new categories of mobility emerged. These comprised, for instance, petty cab drivers and easily mobile others who as the war dragged on and the city became increasingly rent began to traffic between the protagonist of the conflict, supplying Muslims, for instance, with vegetables from the city's traditionally Christian hills and Christians with fish from the largely Muslim controlled coastal areas. Relevant to are the motorbike taxi drivers whose numbers increased exponentially in the early to mid 2000s since they could navigate the difficult segregated terrain of the city more easily than mini buses or any cars. It is to this uncertain, tumultuous and danger-ridden world that the images I speak of today opened up. But not only as a sense of their advent to public urban space and the adamant publicity they sought in the city's wartime and post-war physical environment, moving from the interior spaces of Amrani's Protestant homes and stores and dramatically increasing in size had several implications. First, it meant that the cannon from which the street pictures tended to be quite faithfully drawn became more directly infused with the concerns of the larger world around them, specifically those of the young Christian men who put them up. But also the members of the Christian neighborhoods who backed the pictures production and took generally pride in the results as well as more diffusely, many other especially Protestant Christians in the city. As a result, the Christian cannon and the images of which it is composed quite literally opened up an ombun to embody new things, changing not only in scale and location but iconographically as well in ways that inflicted the desires, contingencies of place and immense investment in the taken for granted consensus, taken for granted contours and privileges of a Christian life world on the Wayne. Secondly, opening the images also meant that many of these same Protestants but also for better or for worse, others in the city opened or were forced to open themselves to these images, whether these were experienced as comforting or soothing terms used by some of these Christians or alternatively violent and offensive terms by some Muslims. Whereas these implications pertain to ombun and its religiously mixed population in particular, a third implication relates to the changing nature of public space in Indonesia generally after Suharto and its highly contested open-ended character described by the Indonesian cultural activist Intan Paramadita as crowded with a visibility contest. Even before the war, albeit in a more muted fashion, some of ombun's inhabitants, notably those whose place in the city was most precarious, armed themselves visually against the potential misdeeds and ill intentions of their neighbors. An anthropologist working in one of ombun's most impoverished, cramped and largely illegally settled neighborhoods, according to some illegally, registered a surplus of protective amulets tacked above the doorways of especially migrant Muslim homes, dried seahorses, magical files, and other potent substances. The proliferation of such overt signs of animosity and suspicion or an expression he wrote, and it's David Mearns, who's an Australian anthropologist, and proliferation of these signs of animosity and suspicion or an expression he wrote, of quote, the dangers of living so close by those who were strangers in significant cultural and social terms. It is not stretching it too much, I believe, to see a strong resonance between this kind of magical gating and the religious gating of Christian neighborhoods via the huge billboards and murals set up at their entrances. These sites, which today accommodate the motorbike taxi stands, were places during the war where the neighborhood watch was based, trumpet sounded before battle, and Christians set off bearing images of Christ and mass ambulance prayer sessions that filled Ambon streets. Looming over this terrain, Jesus' gigantic glossy face with its adjacent murals simultaneously gated the community and branded it as decidedly Christian. God was her only weapon, and Christians would sometimes say, well, they spoke to me about the pictures. Much like an amulet, the material presence of God's image seemed to serve the community as a protective, if also quite aggressive shield. As such, these pictures also posited a direct relationship between the core symbols of the Ambonese Christian community and physical territory, at the same time that they also facilitated an identificatory relay between the martyred male Jesus and the young men who gathered around his images and threw them a connection to the suffering of the wider community, or at least neighborhood, for which these men and their particular location stood. Now, while the specific designation of these locations as motorbike taxi stands dates from the war where the bikes flourished, as I said, as substitutes for minibuses and cars, such sites generally enjoy a long history in the archipelago, one that dates at least to Dutch colonial times, in the form of neighborhood guardhouses where young men customarily hang. At these potent sites in Ambon, highly territorial versions of community became articulated at the same time as the very idea of community in relation to territoriality became the site of creative exploration and experimentation. Put otherwise, the assertive strategically placed pictures themselves seemed to depict and perform the larger drama of detoritorialization and social displacement suffered by the city's traditionally privileged Protestants according to themselves, of course. That's what I was saying. While Jesus' portrait consistently graces the street pictures, the backdrops to his face very widely in terms of the orphaned landscapes into which the Christian God is inserted and which he Christianizes by virtue of his presence. The backdrops are highly heterogeneous, displaying a myriad of otherworldly and thisworldly landscapes of possible future Christian habitation from familiar topi like at Semeny and Jerusalem to Christ in situ in Ambon. So there you see the kind of reproduction of a Dutch Christmas card in the back there. That's another site. That's a prayer niche in a house and I'll get to that soon. So these are some of the different backdrops. This is Christ, obviously, overlooking the Malakas. Christ overlooking the city in flames and exploding. Christ overlooking not Jerusalem, but Ambon from the spot in the city which is said to be the best place to get the best view of Ambon on tourist brochures. When I asked one of the city's most prolific painters and his supporters what drove them to make these pictures, they replied they did so because they knew he was here. God in situ watching over Ambon. An insistence that I suggest elsewhere covers a doubt. Christ's gigantic face interchangeable with or a figuration of the phrase he is here claims territory for the self displaces and he faces the Muslim other. And like the graffiti also sprayed on city walls, the insults of Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad, references to Muslim power or Muslim pigs, bears within it highly charged figures of territory. Now taken together the figures of territory and of landscape built into an arising at these defensive neighborhood locations, fed on and were energized by the symbolically charged dense sociality that converges on the borders, demarcating the city's Christian neighborhoods from the city and the country around them. Nowhere more so than via the young men identified with these places and with their protection and with masculine performances in which the motorbike figures as a crucial accessory. During the war they sometimes wore t-shirts with Christ's face on it and Christian Bling in the form of large gaudy gold crosses that grew to immense sizes around motorbikers necks. Suffice it to say here that there are many such groups of young men around the city that they compete with each other in a generally convivial way and that some of them document and photographs the before and after of their embellished motorbike stands along with scenes of male camaraderie like young men performing motorbike stunts in front of the billboards and murals. And you can see some of them doing stunts here and there. And these pictures from the mid 2000s, male bodies merged with the Christian landscape behind them as in one this remarkable image in which the erect bike supported by its owner attired in his Christmas best, it was Christmas day aligns perfectly with the crucified Christ behind. In these carefully preserved photographs, bikes, Bling and backdrops work as prostheses of male bodies in public space, enabling a masculine assertion of public Christianity and an aggressive Christianization of territory in circumstances where many gay-paying Christians but also other Christians felt themselves not only under siege but also increasingly bereft of a place in the city and even perhaps in Indonesia itself. It is in light of these general conditions that the commissioning in the aftermath of war by some of the city's more well-to-do Christians of prayer rooms or Christian themed walls as special places set off from the rest of the home should be understood. One example will suffice. Tucked away in a Christian neighborhood in the hills overlooking the city, the miniscule prayer room in a Protestant minister's home is painted entirely from floor to ceiling. Forming a single unbroken surface, it envelops those who enter the room to pray within a miniature Gethsemane garden. On the far wall that is the room's immediate focus when one enters, Jesus Christ prays in profile against a shiny green background. Although lavishly sprinkled with flowers and boasting luxuriant vegetation in Congress rock formations and occasional palm or olive tree and a few stiff glossy sheep, the remaining three walls in the room are predominantly green. Not a single spot has been overlooked. Even the door to the room has been painted over to resemble a cave. Now, since the room's decor is also minimal, there's little to distract one's eyes from the painted surroundings so that these tend to gravitate towards the quiet, silhouetted Jesus bent in prayer. This directionality, along with the shiny seamlessness of the space, may be one reason why the sense of closeness and of being physically held in Christ's hands is one of the room's celebrated effects. The moment we enter the special room, the minister explained, it's as if we are in his hands. There are olive trees painted there and there's a painting of Jesus praying. And if we open the window, I planted some green trees outside. So if we pray with the windows open, one feels as if one is praying in his hands. It happened that in the magazine Gloria, there is a photo of the Garden of Gethsemane with those olive trees. I said, please paint like this. I want a picture for the atmosphere of Gethsemane. Now to enter this special room is to leave one world behind and be enclosed in another. A Christian elsewhere that bears only an oblique, tenuous connection to the first. The existence and circulation of such Christian elsewhere's and sacred sites or differently those of other religious traditions like Islam is not in itself remarkable. Adam Becker, religious studies person, observes for instance how, quote, scripture and Jewish and Christian traditions carry with them a certain geography. And it is natural for Jews and Christians to employ this geography when they occupy those regions it describes. Close quote. Along with this inbuilt portable geography, the religious universality of Christian holy places like Rome or Jerusalem, along with affect-laden sites such as Gethsemane is one that pushes them beyond any linguistic or geographical particularity, making it difficult for them to be circumscribed with an entirely regional, not to mention national geographies. And that's a quote from Faisal Devji. Now notwithstanding such mobility, what strikes one here is actually the careful hedging of such circulation, the carving out of a cave-like enclosure and the creation of a miniature Christian enclave cut off from the world outside. In my use of the phrase Christian enclave, I draw in Christiane Abrosis' understanding of a visually induced space or what she calls an enclave gaze that imports images and perspectives from various ecologies of circulation. Generating imagined colonies that nest like spaceships on in her example, the foreign planet India. Now notable in her definition is not only the enclaving gesture, but also the complete incongruity with the larger world outside, like spaceships indeed arriving to wholly distinct surroundings. Like spaceships too, at least in their common portrayal in popular media, also available in Ambon, such enclaves often signal an attack or at the very least a defensive stance towards the foreign environment around them. Now to a large extent, the defensive attitude exemplified by the miniature Christian enclave is an extension of the experience of war and the siege mentality of many Christians. Besides the gay payam, the charismatic church rock, representative of Christ's kingdom, erected a so-called prayer tower, nonstop praying that went on for 24 hours a day for days on end in what was seen as spiritual warfare waged against the devil. During Lowe's and the violence, rocks, teams ventured out while the rest of the city slept to heal the land, drenching the doorways of gambling dens, karaoke bars, and other sites infected by sin and violence with Christ's purifying blood. Beyond war, the defensive stance on the part of many Christians has also to do with the changing nature and physical transformation of public space in Indonesia. In particular, the enhanced public visibility and publicity of the nation's embattled religious composition from especially the 1990s on, augmented more recently by the intense visibility contest that I mentioned before. Now Ambon's pictures arose also on the ruins of war but also in the midst of what scholars describe as a burgeoning public Islam. In the streets of Ambon and across Indonesia, Islam's indisputable public presence registers visibly and audibly in the many mosques being built, the popularity of Quranic reading sessions and typical Muslim fashions, the rise in the number of Indonesian Muslims performing the Hajj, increasingly also at a younger age, the resurgence of Islamic print media, of Islamic film, the development of new forms of da'wah or proselytizing like cyber and cellular da'wah and the spread of Islamic economic institutions. Or as the gay pay and minister of the home prayer room volunteered in the mid 2000s, characterizing the city's new street paintings as a direct parallel, even a counter to this public Islam. It's the same day, the Muslims don't make pictures much but they wear head scarves as their own kind of special characteristic to show that we are Muslims. Yes, he said that's what stands out. Now that which also stands out and figures as an invisible backdrop to the Christian pictures in Amman's streets, churches and homes is a very fact then of Muslim presence. In the form of the overwhelming numerical dominance of Muslims in Indonesia, some 90% of the total population, in the public prominence of Islam throughout the large majority of the country and in the conviction prevalent during the war among many of Amman's Christians that they were the target of a Muslim driven genocide. Claiming and proclaiming the city as Christian, the pictures perform God's partisan presence in Ambon at the same time as they pictorially effaced the Muslim who hovers at the edge of the frame and charges these public pictures effectively. In an article on the colonial backdrops of photographs, Arjuna Pottawai writes how the backdrop relevant to understanding a given photograph is two fold. The first is the visible backdrop and the second an invisible one, a secondary order that shapes the interpretation of the intended viewers. An immediate post war Ambon against the backdrop of an encroaching public Islam, a religiously inflected war, an urban environment where societal spaces as well as individual bodies continue to be marked by the signs of the recent brutality and where violence remained visible. It took little imagination, I suggest, on the part of those who engage these images, Christians that is, to see as it were the larger invisible backdrop looming behind. Now to pray in the miniature, get so many garden, is to enter into a kind of tet-a-tet that realizes itself through the embodied mimicry of the painted God's gestures on the part of the person praying and can lead to being swept up in this physical exchange by the incredible sensation that one has caught protectively in his hands. Together with the unbroken seamlessness of the space and the impact of its images, this sensation seems to be in effect of being momentarily suspended and hermetically sealed spaceship-like from any outside surroundings. With leafy trees planted immediately outside the prayer rooms, windows, even the city's invisible backdrop can briefly be held at bay. In its place, a delicate and moving closeness comes to the fore that the minister's wife has had a loss of words to describe. One in which the room's painted backdrop forecloses the invisible one pressing in from the outside, thereby allowing those praying in the foreground to merge tenderly with the affectively powerful Christian scene. Now while highly condensed in the prayer room, this is a Christian landscape and sense of place that has spread more diffusely throughout the city, carried by the pictures that have arisen in its streets. It is one in which these Ambronese Christians aim to gather a visual world around themselves, hence the frequent emphasis on the public picture's comforting nature, on the need for their multiple large-scale presence and on their continual reiteration. It's self-a-material image, this landscape is mediated by a Christian print cannon that while formally identified with intimacy and interiority and as such a long-standing conventional feature of the city's more domestic Christian spaces had on the war and thereafter been stood on its head. It is worth considering how the picture's prior exclusive association with the more intimate spaces of the Christian every day may have contributed to their appeal during the war and aftermath of the war. As these images moved out of houses and stores and grew in size, they did not displace the earlier calendars, posters or embroidered last supper scenes, but merely supplemented them. Given this local trajectory, the pictures may still somewhat retain the promise and buttress the performance of a Christian Ambronese subject as visually construed and familiar, comfortable and essentially interiorized surroundings, even as these surroundings have been stretched in quite formidable new directions. At issue then in some basic sense would be a new acute awareness of the subject's emplacement within a field of vision, but that's another part of this story. Now if the Christian Enclave disclosures of the impulse to figuration as a way of hedging disfiguration or even imagined erasure, a recurrent feature of the public service announcements PSAs aired on television during the war and the occasional documentary on the city's violence was a city in ruins or the portrayal of disfiguration itself. In such production, disfiguration came paired with and was set off by the potent figure of the child, her photographed unfilmed face or drawings from her hand. For instance, the short documentary piece song from 2001 by the Indonesian filmmaker Garanugroho opens with children's drawings successively filling the screen while stills of children's faces come in at the end to frame and literally enclose footage excerpted from national news broadcasts that show Muslim migrants frantically boarding and scaling the sides of deporting boats as these migrants were driven out of Ambon and the destruction of the city's main market both in the very first days of the war. Here the faces are drawings of children, what the anthropologist as I said, McDowsey calls the protoplasmic creaturely potential of the nation serve as a kind of cordon sanitaire that contains violence. Somewhat differently the PSA is commonly carve out miniature child worlds, sort of enclave worlds in heavily disfigured dare I say orphaned urban landscapes from which Muslim and Christian child pairs speak out against violence jointly. Examples include a quite infamous PSA that early on in the war featured the Muslim child Acha and the Christian Obed meeting clandestinely in the empty basement of an abandoned building in war-torn Ambon. There they affirm their blood brotherhood while condemning the adults who allegedly caused the violence. In blaming adults the pair also underscores their symbolic orphaning. Or another PSA aired in the immediate post war years that begins with a panorama of Ambon city and female Muslim and Christian civil servants walking hand in hand. It is followed then by a scene of traditional dance, caption Pela Gandonghe, indexing the central Malacca's famous interreligious blood brother alliances that often provided a model for the city's multiple reconciliation ritual. At the ad's core is the Barist of Scenes, a Muslim girl with a headscarf and a Christian boy stand side by side in a tiny ruined space. Without a word they turn stiffly to each other, shake hands in a gesture that recalls both the long arm of Indonesian state bureaucracy and the numerous handshakes of reconciliation depicted in print and electronic media. Together they unfold and hold up a sign that reads in a faint childish scroll, I, heart, Ambon Manise or sweet Ambon in English. Now powerful figures of redemption, Christ and the child emerged again and again in the ruined disfigured landscapes of Ambon's drawn out war. Christ in Ambon assumed a markedly partisan guise, even if following Christian theology, he is held to have sacrificed himself for the whole of mankind. By contrast the child was inevitably paired in an interreligious Muslim Christian version of we too form a multitude, the multitude authorized and circumscribed by the Indonesian state. But I would like to conclude not with Ambon today, but with a different example from, drawn not from Indonesia, but from Venezuela. An example of an equally desperate turn to figuration amidst rampant crisis and violence. In January 2014 in the capital Caracas and elsewhere in the country, I was amazed to hear former President Hugo Chavez's voice emanating from television screens and radios in bars, government offices, grocery stores and other sites that month as well. That same month he was appointed president for life of the country's ruling party and most uncanningly his disembodied paired eyes were depicted often in multiples against different colored backdrops representing Venezuela's main political parties including that of the opposition on huge billboards along highways in downtown Caracas and in other public places. All of these traces of the Bolivarian leader emerged post-mortem, not even a year after Chavez died. In a world in which images increasingly lead the way in politics and social life, a world increasingly troubled by warfare, violence and rising inequality, it is crucial as I hope to have shown today to think the relationship between projects of figuration and the myriad disfigurations of our current times or more radically even to think the community to come in the absence of any figure that presupposes abounding a totality and the myriad enmities to enable and keep those in place. Thank you.


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