11 people die at the Astroworld Festival: Who do you hold accountable?
Posted on November 23, 2021
JJ&J
Eight people died in a crowd surge at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas a couple of weeks ago, on the 5th of November. Trapped in the massive crowds of 50,000 people audience testimonies explain that it was difficult to breathe due to pressure on the chest and lungs. In terms of helping others, people also explained that it was impossible to move arms and legs (ABC13 Houston, 2021). As a call for action, the audience recorded and live-streamed the situation on several social media platforms, along with live tweets; some of them revealing the crowd desperately screaming for help and for the concert to stop. Performer and founder of the festival, Travis Scott, stopped the concert a couple of times, but it wasn’t until 40 minutes after the Houston Police Department tweeted that major casualties were happening that Scott ended the concert, which has later been heavily criticized (KHOU 11b, 2021).
Through the lens of Forensic Architecture: “[A] research agency investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations” (Forensic Architecture, 2021), the physical environment plays an important role but it also has its limitations. As Eyal Weizman describes it, “[b]uildings register some forces and erase others, and any attempt at interpretation must acknowledge the limits of material registration and requires careful reading against other data” (Weizman, 2017: 54). The built environment at a festival mostly contains fences, tents, and scaffolding, and the festival-goers are only present for a short time. While a festival site and global humanitarian crises are not the same, there are some similar characteristics of the space and evidence: They disappear either because they are destroyed, hidden underground, or have been removed from the site (Ibid., 2017). “Luckily” drone technology made it possible to film and document the festival site the day after the crowd surge accident, showing piles of clothes, shoes, bags, and trash left in the crowd area (KHOU 11a, 2021: 03:52-4:20).
But how do I make sense of this drone footage? Following the method of Forensic Architecture, this is where additional data is needed. One festival-goer and ICU nurse shares her experience, after being crowd-surfed out of the crowd. Regaining consciousness, she turns to help others wounded:
ICU Nurse: “Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Nothing […] I saw three people laying on the grown and four medics doing CPR on three people. One of them was blue […] I ran over to the medics and asked, “do we have an ADD, do we have an ambu-bag, what do we have? “How long have you been doing compressions” […] She said, ” I don’t know” […]. (Fox 26 Houston, 2021: 05:55-06:31)
“Some of them seemed to have some experience some of them seem to have zero to none experience with the situation (07:40) […] no pulse checks were going on. It was madness […] (Ibid, 2021: 07:30-08:06)
The very explicit testimony reveals some focal points to why the accident could occur in the first place. Along with explicit video material on people doing CPR or receiving CPR during the concert, this testimony confronts us with the reality of what happened. It also serves as bits of evidence that locates and composes relations between before and after the accident (Weizman, 2017: 58). Another testimony shared on tik tok by a medical worker working on the night of the accident explains the behavior of the crowd:
“So many people are going down, and my observations were that there was zero crowd etiquette. They [the crowd] just wanted to get closer to the show closer to Travis Scott and do their thing. They didn’t give a single damn about anyone around them. It was an absolute shit show, and I promise you a lot of these rumors going around that IMS [physician] weren’t trained enough, that they were understaffed. Every AMT [medical specialist] that I saw, they weren’t new to the job […] Everyone in the medical tent was the absolute A-team […] It was just a situation where maybe just over 100-150 personal was responsible for probably over 50,000 highly irresponsible people. Who’s fault is it? My observations were the crowd” (Remi. rich, 2021: 00:00-1:24)
In comparison to the ICU nurse, this medical worker finds the crowd to be the ones to blame. Being in different places might explain the contradictory experiences, but more importantly, this second testimony nuances the situation and raises at least two questions: 1) What is the recruitment process of medical workers? 2) Travis Scott is known for encouraging wild and violent behavior at his concerts, could that have led to the audience creating the situation to unravel? When asked if a fight broke out in the crowd escalating the situation, the ICU nurse answers:
“No. It was just everyone rushing to the stage to see Travis perform. I’ve been to all three Astroworlds and something like that usually happens whenever the performer goes on. People kinda go forward. But this was completely different. It was way too many people. It was packed before it even started. I mean it was insane […] (Fox 26 Houston, 2021: 10:35-10:55).
Journalist: “Did you feel like there was enough security there for that crowd?” (Ibid, 2021: 10:55-58).
“Not at all. There wasn’t enough medical staff, there wasn’t enough security, even security was trying to get to people out. They couldn’t get to anyone because the crowd was entirely too big” (Ibid, 2021: 10:59-11:08)
These testimonies paint a picture of the lack of capacity at the festival and of security and medical personnel, which leads me to a third question: What are the security measurements of gathering 50,000 people? And to that, who controls that these measurements are being followed? At the Houston Police Department’s (HPD) press conference on the 10th of November, a journalist directs this question to the HPD chief, Troy Finner:
Journalist: “You said that you met with Travis Scott before the concert and expressed your concerns. At that time, did you believe that this was a safe event and that they should be allowed to continue?” (KHOU 11b, 2021: 8:29-8:45)
HPD chief: “Yeah. I had no reason to believe that it wasn’t going to be safe, but I am the kind of chief that meet with people whenever I can, and that includes him [Travis Scott], and we had a very respectful, a few minutes conversation on my concerns” (Ibid, 2021: 8:46-9:01)
A fifth question immediately comes to mind: How is a five-minute conversation enough to go over concerns at a festival where the founder is known for encouraging wild behavior? One might accuse me of manipulating the data, which brings me to my final question: When investigating crowd surge accidents – or humanitarian crises – only through testimonies, photo- and film material found online, what limitations do I need to consider? And how do I filter through data, some produced by authorities and some by individuals, all of them capable of manipulating the data and for social media platforms to promote some over others?
JLJ
References
ABC13 Houston, 2021, ‘concert from hell’: Astroworld Fest attendees describe chaos. [Located on 11.15.2021 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSpHs6vAWHQ&ab_channel=ABC13Houston]
Forensic Architecture, 2021, About—>Agency. [Located on 11.20.2021 at: https://forensic-architecture.org/about/agency].
Fox 26 Houston, 2021, FULL INTERVIEW: ICU Nurse, Astroworld attendees breaks down what happened during the festivities. [Located on 11.14.2021 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxjbc-oD-dY&ab_channel=FOX26Houston ]
KHOU 11a, 2021, Astroworld Festival video: Drone 11 captures stage and area where eight people died [Located on 11.12.2021 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVa06Ila4-I&ab_channel=KHOU11]
KHOU 11b, 2021, Full video: HPD Chief Troy Finner gives updates on the Astroworld Festival investigation. [Located on 11.12.2021 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzx52JOip4Q&ab_channel=KHOU11 ]
Remi.rich, 2021, Astroworld (3/3) #astroworld #astroworldfestival #astroworld2021 #travisscott. [Located on 11.12.2021 at: https://www.tiktok.com/@remi.rich/video/7028103850921954607?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1]
Weizman, E., 2017, Forensic Architecture. “Introduction: At the Threshold of Detectability” page 13-44).