auguri

"Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"

god jul *

cacofonie urbane

mi sono persa a disegnare la linea degli edifici che fronteggiano la mia finestra milanese e a lavoro ultimato non posso che rilevarne l'insensatezza. un equilibrio senza regola che ribadisce quanto sia meravigliosamente unica questa vista.

stasera

alzando lo sguardo dal libro mi ha sorpreso questo scenario. e l'ho voluto immortalare.

attitudini

sagramatura

TEST SITES

Carsten Holler
per
Unilever Series
Turbine Hall
TATE Modern
London



Slides are a device for experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness. It was described in the fifties by the French writer Roger Caillois as ‘a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind’.
The slide is an object that we associate with playgrounds, amusement parks and emergency exits. I’d like to extend the use of the slide: I don’t see any reason why slides should only be used by children and in the case of an emergency. The Turbine Hall installation is called Test Site because it enables visitors to test the functions of differently shaped slides, mainly to see how they are affected by them, to test what it really means to slide. Again, this applies both for those who actively engage in the process of sliding, and those who watch. People coming down the slides have a particular expression on their faces, they’re affected and to some degree ‘changed’. This aspect of my installation is very spectacular, as you said, because the performers become spectators (of their own inner spectacle) while going down the slides, and are being watched at the same time by those outside the slides. I’d like to suggest that using slides on an everyday basis could change us, just as other commodities are changing us. For instance, I’m convinced that the use of cars has changed our perception of time. I could imagine slides having an impact too. The state of mind that you enter when sliding, of simultaneous delight, madness and ‘voluptuous panic’, can’t simply disappear without trace afterwards. In this sense the ‘test site’ isn’t just in the Turbine Hall, but is also, to an extent, in the slider or person watching who’s stimulated by the slides: a site within.
Carsten Holler

come al solito. retroattivamente.

i buoni propositi c'erano. forse la virata dall'inglese all'italiano. forse il rientro. di nuovo a dover riassumere puntate su puntate precedenti. solito fotoromanzo.

memoria. al netto delle miniere.

+ alberto + giusi

a 25 anni dalla chiusura delle miniere di capoliveri un evento che è una festa col potere distruttivo di un rito dionisiaco. funerale : rave

party survival cupcakes @ 100%design TOKYO

my project Party Survival Cupcakes has been chosen by DesignBoom to be exhibited at 100%Design - Design Week in Tokyo

TED

ancora le valige da disfare, £££ nel portafoglio che ormai sono illusioni spazio temporali in forma di potere d'acquisto, eccomi in partenza per l'ennesima avventura strampalata. un workshop all'isola d'elba - ambita destinazione di meritata vacanza (ma sarà poi vacanza vera?) - di cui ci viene indicato questo video come introduzione concettuale. qui lo copio, visto che si può. riflessioni inutili, geniale perchè ironico e self-explanatory. see ya.

26th may 2006

ritrovo questa nota e la copio così che non vada persa.

dal caffè Clicia - Church Street - Stoke Newington
più di un mese a Londra tante cose sono successe eppure poche hanno lasciato segni, assorbite nella camaleontica schizofrenia di questa città. oggi mi sono svegliata con il solito mal di testa che mi appanna la mente - intrappolata in una bolla gelatinosa e baluginante. sono i momenti di lucidità, in cui non penso alle solite cose e persone.
vivo immersa nel colore frastornante di questo quartiere, la grande stoke newington road - mille 1£ shops che noi chiamiamo tragat, i fruttietuttovendoli, le bakerie dal profumo allettante, il nostro piccolo Taj Mahal che fa le pernaccie al Pisellone di Foster in fondo alla via. orizzonte. ho trovato anche oggi il mio angolo di chiassosa tranquillità. un caffè che si chiama clicia e ha il caotico fervore di un angolo di mediterraneo dove il clamore che si sente è il suono del lavoro e della vita del sud. ed è piacevole.

CAFFE' PELLICCI

This morning I decided to cycle along Bethnal Green Road on my way to the office. Thus I could not avoid to stop by the place Joana was alway talking about as one of the most true corners of Italy in London. Caffè Pellicci was founded by a family from tuscany in 1900 and since then has been delighting the Londoners with gourgeous breackfasts and lunches. It is best known beacuse it has been the hearth of gangster and mafia stories in the 50s.
Me - today I have been sitting here at breackfast time, reading the Guardian (did I ever say this is my favourite newspaper?), sipping from a very good cappuccino (obvious / banal!) and tasting THE BEST EVER apple and blackcurrant cruble with custard!!! and I managed to take these 2 pictures but to me shooting inside this place was like braking a familiar picture with coarseness. I will combine them with images froma web archive - because they seem more authentic? more because they amuse me.


Italian cafe gets the cream | The Guardian | 23 February 2005 | by Mark Gould

The backlash against the Starbucking of the high street has started, announced caff aficionado Adrian Maddox at the news that Pellicci's, a tiny time capsule of a caff that has stood in the East End of London for 105 years, has been given listed building status.

'Fuck me, is it that important?' said equally amazed owner Nevio Pellicci as he raced around the Formica tables serving up gargantuan breakfasts at 7am, 'Your not having me on are you?'

Pellicciís has been in the same family since it was built in 1900. Nevio was born above the shop 79 years ago. And English Heritage is not having him on.

Recommending Grade II listing inspectors lovingly describe it as having a 'stylish shop front of custard Vitrolite panels, steel frame and lettering as well as a rich Deco-style marquetry panelled interior, altogether representing an architecturally strong and increasingly rare example of the intact and stylish Italian caf that flourished in London in the inter-war years'.

But they also issued a warning: 'The 50s caf is indeed becoming increasingly rare and the recent proliferation of new chain coffee shops is threatening their economic viability.'

Around 2000 Italian owned cafes and coffee bars flourished in the UK after the Second World War. Maddox, whose website www.classiccafes.co.uk is part memorial to the departed and part calls to arms, estimates that fewer than 500 remain.

He says they have been forced out by massive rent rises and what he calls 'a campaign of corporate cultural napalming' by the coffee chains.

He says these old cafes created an artistic and social cohesion that can't be invented by corporate chains desperate to create ersatz atmosphere.

'Music, fashion, film, advertising, photography, sex, crime, the avant-garde. The cafes were the creative enclaves where it was all honed. They added an impassioned European vibrancy to Britain's deflated post-war social, artistic and commercial scene - all we get from the coffee giants is McCappuccino jobs and Clone Town high streets'.

Pellicci's has its own place in popular culture. It was a meeting place of the notorious Kray gang who lived just around the corner in Voss Street.

Nev's son Nevio junior pulls out an autograph book stuffed with signed pictures of more recent Pellicci worshippers: a sunburst of soap stars, tabloid faces and Page 3 stunners.

It's also part of the fabric for Iain Sinclair, chronicler of weird resonances of the East End, who has been a devotee since the 1960s (see interview in Classic Cafes).

The caff is a focus and social hub of the area. Nevio is small and immaculately turned out in shirt, tie and zippered pullover and matinee idol pencil moustache. He knows everyone and everyone knows him.

And he thanks a sharp-eyed customer for saving the caf from being burnt down in 1999: 'It was about 11 o'clock at night and a regular was driving past in his cab and noticed what he thought were lights on in the kitchen. He stopped and saw it was a fire and phoned the Fire Brigade. They were here very fast and managed to save us.'

One of the many regulars who have been eating here for decades explains the Pellicci strategy: 'He gets you in with them,' he says pointing to a row of brilliant coloured sarsaparilla bottles sitting in the front window, 'you pester your mum and she brings you in and your hooked.'

Nevio Pellicci says the listing is 'a great honour' but he has one dispute with the inspectors. The Vitrolite panelling is primrose not custard.

But he says the tributes should go to his mother Elide who supervised the art-deco style marquetry interior created by in 1946 one of the best local carpenters - Achille Capocci.

'Around here was all carpenters, they all knew each otherís work, but mum wanted Capocci to do the marquetry as he was the best - everyone could tell his work.'

And as a tribute to Elide Pellicci, Capocci placed central marquetry plaque marked 'EP' in a place of honour along the panelling behind the counter.

It's the 1946 work that is so significant for English Heritage: 'This work was fitted in the context of the period just after the war. This was the year of the Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, heralding modern British design, and a few years later the Festival of Britain brought a style and design awakening to the Capital. It was also a period of increased Italian immigration and a great number of new cafes and espresso bar started to open up - a modern continuation of a long London tradition that started with 17th century coffee houses.'

So will Nevio be leaving the marquetry and Vitrolite to a coffee chain when he retires? 'Over my dead body.'

A well-breakfasted customer puts down his Star and laughs: 'I always said you was in institution, or should be in one, Nev.'

alimentazione posmoderna

post per chi fosse interessato a come mangiare poco con tanto a Londra...ovvero diario di uno spuntino di lavoro all'inglese. accadde lunedi. morsa dal verme solitario della fame che mi affligge ormai da troppe settiamane (mi mancano i tortelli d'erbetta della nonna???) mi fiondo nel primo andro dall'aria gastronomica che mi capita a tiro ( well non proprio il primo purtroppo seleziono sempre gli spazi dall'apparenza linda e un po' scandinava che qui a Londra portano l'icona del feticcio alimentare piu diffusa: l'ORGANIC ) Cosi volendo fare di necessita virtu di esplorazione curiosa delle deviazioni post-anoressiche di un intero popolo mi sono ordinata un rotolino integrale contenente sedano crudo zucca cotta e l'immancabile humus (povero sostituto della maionese quando il pesto si sottrae al tiro del sandwicharo salutista) + un must del energy bursting a mezzodi: il centrifugato di carota e ginger. il tutto per la cospicua cifra di 5.50 £ cui si aggiungano i 3 £ del kebab che si e reso necessario alla mia sopravvivenza poco piu di due ore dopo. impressive?