democracy, activism and social networks

There!

It’s exactly what I wanted to elaborate yesterday in my post (but we had an invitation to dinner and had to rush ).

The economist Loretta Napoleoni tells it very clearly today on D di Repubblica. “Is internet shutting activism down?”. Check out the article here (and babel-fish it, it’s in italian), issue n.652, page 19.

Basically, what she says is that participation (to democracy) is not the same as being connected online. You do not discuss themes which impact society in the same way if you are at dinner with friends, online or in a public gathering (a political party meeting or an assembly). Some things need to be done by being physically there, in the street.

On the other hand, two important events this year.

The Obama election. He’s no Gandhi, ok. But maybe this time the grass-roots movement (especially for the financing of the campaign) really made the difference. And the fact that he was online. The web was not a sticker on this candidate product. It was part of him.

Second event, the Tehran events on Twitter. When I read an account of the precise events of Paris, May 1968, what struck me is the fact that demostrants had to resort to Ancient Greece methods to communicate, namely: run. Run between one barricade and the other, bringing messages and information on where the police was. Even in the WWI trenches the transmission of messages was more efficient. But hey, these boys and girls could just use telephone boots and tennis shoes. Now Twitter brought us the events unfolding in Tehran before CNN. If we want to talk things italian, since we are approaching another G8, it’s on YouTube that you can find the reportage of what really happened in Genoa that night at the Diaz school and in the barracks of Bolzaneto (english witnesses).

I guess that social networks should be an additional mean towards participation and information but not an objective per se. I blog, I twitter therefore I can act. But sometimes the illusion of “feeling in touch with others” can be predominant and annihilate participation. As Napoleoni says “in the end, you are in your pajamas, at home. Alone”. So get in those jeans and get out and meet those people.

Because the Divided Cities exist. The fact is that the wall is not a vertical one that you can stumble upon when walking. It’s horizontal, above our heads. And we move like little ants or busy bees under the slab of grey reinforced concrete that we call “democracy”.

PS
I just saw by browsing on bora.la that the foreign minister Frattini is Twittering from the G8 in Triest…beware…

Berlin Wall, Italo Svevo, social networks

This week Italian students concluding the High School with their Matura exam had 3 main themes to choose from in order to do their dissertation en italien:

a) the state of democracy in Europe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall

b) “La coscienza di Zeno” by Italo Svevo and the importance of psychoanalysis

c) youth cults: social networks and facebook.

The last theme was picked by 33% of the students, the second by 18% and the first by 7.9%.

Quite an intriguing tryptic…psychoanalysis/social network/democracy…and not only for me. Read on Bora.la more intriguing stuff.

Is facebook the Alice in Wonderland interface between psychoanalysis and democracy? Are there new walls, not so apparent like the Berlin one, and disguised by an apparently unparalleled “access” to information?

The Berlin wall had one advantage. It was physical, and visible.

moscow: crimson red (continued)

The weather we had in Moscow is exactly today’s weather in Rome. Blue sky, sun, fresh wind, late-spring temperatures bordering on “cold” in the evening. The Triest weather, without the sea.

The reds of the Red Square were particularly bright under such light and made the recent “PEMOHT” or “remont” (refurbishment of buildings) even more shiny.

MeinMann was in Moscow for a long week, myself for just a weekend, so my comments will not stretch far. Just a bit of color on the surface of things.

teasing you about Berlin (and Rome)

A very packed week, but filled with interesting meetings and impromptu social clips and plenty of food of thought beyond the bread and butter rat-race…witty discussions, clever views, that’s one of the pleasures of Rome in June: friends but also business partners flock to Rome and make it more exciting!

It’s  friday night. The Monocle copy is under my arm. This one is a gift by an Aficionado (or addicted, just like us) to both the magazine and Berlin. So even more appreciated! The weekend starts and a light breeze is mitigating the baking-oven heat. The groceries will be delivered on our doorstep by the e-shop. Jazzanova is spinning the records. Perfect…

We are going to take it easy in Rome, which is something quite unheard of for locals during the week. We morph in tourists for the weekend, and like them, we are not commuting to Tuscany in tight air-conditioned car-sauros wearing Tod’s loafers but rather seize the best of Rome in Birkenstock style. We’ll be spotting the first cinema en plein air venues, and we planned brunches in the shade for today and tomorrow.

Friends in Berlin and London: please send us a bit of proper rain showers and we’ll give you plenty of sun we can part with. Reading the morning papers in yet another good cappuccino place with the metallic smell of dust being moist by the first fat drops of rain is a pleasure in the summer.

And yes, we are reading this issue’s Editorial by Tyler Brulé, “Observation” with a connoisseur’s smile…in August we’ll be at our buen retiro in Berlin…can’t wait…

So here we are, teasing you with the preface and a nice illustration from the Editorial, tempting you to discover why Brulé is now observing “love at the second glance” Berlin…

“What would win your heart - an alluring first impression or a tempting parting glance? For Tyler Brûlé it was the latter that had him dreaming of relocating the Monocle team to Berlin and bagging a summer retreat”.

Source: picture and quote = Monocle

Mexico? no, DDR…

Tonight at the Goethe Institute we saw “Spur der Steine”, a 1966 DEFA film. It was censored immediately after its first screening and it became available in theaters in the DDR only from november 1989…not surprisingly!

As per IMDB: “Hannes Balla is the foreman of a group of building construction workers at the large construction site “Schkona” in the GDR. They spend most of their time working hard and drinking harder – to some they are fun, to some they are a public nuisance. Things get more complicated when the good-looking Kati Klee is employed as a young technician, and the ambitious new Party Secretary, Werner Horrath, aims to boost work efficiency and downsize Balla’s ego. A contemporary movie about work, love, and everything in between”.

Interesting film about “carreerism”, with an almost critical view on the SED party, with Walter Ulbricht portraits and  the like. A bit of a Peyton Place film too. And the foreman…he’s got a great presence. In between 1960′s Alberto Sordi’s “spaccone” characters and today’s Ben Affleck equally “spaccone” characters. Manfred Krug is groβartig in this role. The film is weird too…where women engineers remove their tights in the middle of a building site in order to avoid the dust, widows are mad for Eilikör, carpenters wear an earring with a pearl and swim naked in the middle of ducks.

Berlin: number 10 best city in the world!

Berlin moves up by 4 positions, from 14th to 10th Best Place Where to Live! Have a look at this weekend’s Financial Times article by Tyler Brulé. Zurich is unsurprisingly Top Prinzessin. But Berlin registers the sharpest advance. And this, in a crisis year. And this, for a high-unemployment town. But trends matter…

Needless to say, we’re happy…Also, we feel Monocle’s ranking closer to our values than Mercer’s, and better suited to the new millenium than the Economist Intelligent Unit’s survey.

You can read the article and see the full ranking…no italian big town is featured in the top 25…too much carelessness and not enough Weltanschauung I suppose. Maybe Belluno or Bolzano or some town in the Marche eventually made it…but here we’re talking about friendly metropolis, not cute second-tier towns. Listen to the full ranking in MP4 format here...article follows!

moscow: crimson red

Lots to tell about Moscow 11 years after my first trip…but wait, I have to recover my photos first…

münchen: electric blue perfectionism

München. After the no-man’s-land of CDG 1, Munich airport is just a continuation of Lufthansa’s perfectionist maid attitude. But if you have to kill time, better doing it in a beautifully organized space, comfortable, with bright lights but not garish, nice newsstands, efficient watering holes, kind waiters, technology working properly and zero noise.

It’s all very Kapitalismus and Vorsprung durch Technik. I do prefer smaller airports that can be crossed in a few minutes. I love the gemütlichkeit and civilized retail of Kastrup Copenhagen, the only nice airport on Christmas day. Am getting used to the simplicity of stripped-bare dignified Schönefeld – you cross it so quickly, you have just what you need and nothing superfluous, but that’s ok and not too over-the-top.

But hey! If it has to be one of those big hubs, Munich is super. It has Asian efficiency and variety of choice. Feels a bit more human and less beehive than Frankfurt am Main. At check-in, you swipe the boarding card just like the underground ticket.

Off I go, another Lufthansa flight…destination Moscow.

paris: à bout de souffle

A Jean Seberg déjà vu. Well, it was not on purpose. But as I found myself heading for a walk on l’Avenue in front of the Plaza, wearing retroussé cigarette jeans, a striped t-shirt with a col claudine, ballerine and holding a copy of the IHT under the arm, well, that gave a spring to my step! A marvellous day in Paris, lots of things to do but one hour for a quick bite on my own before starting work…And I had a glimpse of old modernist Orly staircases…good good!!

The illusion shatters away almost immediately. Guichets in the metro are now dismissed, but the new machines don’t work that well, long queues for the tickets…people grow impatient. Dirtier metro stations. Aggressive and unprofessional waitress in a small restaurant. Miserable discussion with the restaurant’s owner. Grotty Fnac bookstore. Enfin. An hour later, everything looked dusty, deteriorated and unpleasant. It’s not a nice feeling.

Paris à bout de souffle. Splendid and brilliant, but on a sort of downward trend. I’m glad it’s time to go back to work. At least something that will be up to my expectations there. Things will be done professionally and graciously. Dossiers will be taken care of, one by one. Meetings will follow in time, like swiss trains.

A the end of the day a car will get me – after an even longer périphérique queue – to CDG 1, an airport that I fondly loved. Bubbly chimes-like jingle would announce flights while you were “beamed up” along the glass tubes. Now it’s a non-place. Gone is the slightly nevrotic Playtime technocratic charme. Garish fuchsia giant cache-pots disturb the formerly sci-fi décor. Only the corridors resist the ill-looking refurbishment plan.

Please Lufthansa get me out of Paris. Yes, the light in the long springtime nights in Paris is still so beautiful. But I hate to see things I used to love getting worn out, tired and angrily à bout de souffle…it’s already a too familiar feeling, in Italy, ageing in an angry way.

berlin: pink pink pink!

So this is my first Pfingstein in Berlin. Pink pink pink Berlin. My friends in the Bezirk had told me: “you’ll see, pink is the colour of the year in the Schöneberg balconies”. It is indeed…and also, Pfingstrosen (peonies) were marvellous…they are my favourite flowers.

Schöneberg in bloom. Flowers are 1 month back with respect to Italy. It was like going back in time. Orange-blossoms filled the fresh breeze along the Volkspark. Rabbits had family brunches close to the Rathaus pond.

A nice photography vernissage on Uhlandstrasse. Checking out a brand new Leckerei in the Kiez, on a quiet spot on Grünewaldstrasse…

A couple of trips to my favourite flea market. A cappuccino in each of my local cafés. Nice dinners with friends during the long sunsets in Schöneberg and Kaffee-Kuchen is SO36…in the middle of quite violent late-spring showers.

The kerbs in Berlin seem to have engaged in fierce competition…roses in Goltzstrasse, in Nolle blankets of tender-green Linden leaves…

Shop-keepers and restaurateurs do their best to have clients stopping by…

Everybody is working hard sprucing up, decorating, making that window display nicer…or even making a dull wall look nicer…(Berliners know a thing or two about dull walls).

Florists treat the street as a part of their lives not as a convenient place where to dump stuff…trees lining the streets have all sort of plants making them company.

Oh I love Berlin! Public space is something everybody cherishes and takes care of and this makes the town splendid and civilized…like the nice pond in front of home.

Tschüss pink Berlin…gotta go to Paris for work…