What an event!

citizens vs “la gente”

Yesterday was the Chernobyl anniversary. Compare and contrast.

Berlusconi admitted in a candid way that the recent government u-turn on the nuclear issue was done just to avoid the referendum, because “la gente” (isn’t it populistic?) are emotional and can’t use their brain.

Today Winfried Kretschmann after the landslide victory in Baden Wuerttemberg reassures citizens that now they will have a say in the policies and that yes, Stuttgart will remain an automotive power-hub while embracing greener technologies. Click on the name to see the video.

The style and content are very different, aren’t they? Logical. Kretschmann talks to the CITIZENS. Also to younger people not yet voting but who care about their environment and their economic future in the Land. Or to foreigners who are not voters but live and work in Baden-W.

Berlusconi’s audience is LA GENTE. The amorphous blob: sometimes voters (right now in local elections), always consumers. And mostly TV-viewers.

Easter, yesterday

Honey acacia, ginger cats, buttercup pollen on my shoes, fast sparrows doing raids on the meadows, busy birds collecting materials for their nests. Spring in Rome.

By the way one of the things I love in YouTube is the small collection of birdsongs, quite handy actually when you want to associate names/appearance/song, now that we’re no longer so knowledgeable on this matter like our ancestors.

April 25th, a day to remember

Happy 25th April, Festa della Liberazione!

I will not comment on the fascist billboards appeared in Rome in these days. In several posts we discussed how different is the approach in Germany and in Italy to such initiatives. In Germany the perpetrators go to jail. In Italy they go to Parliament.

I’ll rather talk about the Festival delle Resistenze Contemporanee taking place in Bozen in between April 25th and May 1st:

La cornice di questo evento è quella che emerge dalla lettura sempre attuale dei principi fondamentali della nostra Costituzione.
Resistere è da sempre un pensiero e un agire caratterizzata dal coraggio civile di opporsi a fenomeni di ingiustizia e sopruso. Resistere implica il mettersi in gioco, l’andare controcorrente, il pensare liberamente e adoperarsi per superare le ingiustizie.
Per questo abbiamo voluto proporre una serie di incontri in piazza aperti a tutta la cittadinanza per promuovere la partecipazione attiva alla vita pubblica e per essere protagonisti consapevoli del futuro della nostra società.

Like Triest, Bozen is a land where memory of the 20th century is not being erased easily by the media and easy slogans. The poster is great, it hints to the cross-generation link. Once again, something which is actually cultivated in Germany, as our friend D. in Berlin tells us. A child during WWII, she is frequently invited in schools in order to communicate and share her memories with the teenagers.

ANPI since a few years focuses a lot on the cross-generational link. It’s not just old gentlemen meeting among themselves and going through their memories, they include more and more students in order to pass the message on. These women, these men who fought for freedom in Italy are getting older, it is important that their stories, the energy of those early post-war years is not going to be lost.

For this reason this year I will give my 5×1000 to ANPI, the national partisan association of Italy. Because when it comes to education, probably ANPI is the only one who defends our Constitution.

Deutschlandistan

The anti-cultural imaginaire in Italy is nowadays so strong and so mainstream that, if you try to invite someone to a film seguito da dibattito the cynical Fantozzi cliché kicks in. Think paternalistic and compulsory cine-club cult-movie viewing with the colleagues followed by a debate. This must be the reason why there are so little movie+debate evenings in Italy now?

Meno male that we’ve got the dependable Goethe Institute, who’s not afraid of stitching up very well structured movie+debate soirées. The initiative is part of the “Va bene?!” programme, whereby Italian and German journalists exchange views with the public on common Italo-German themes. A few months ago we had Beppe Severgnini and Mark Spörrle presenting their Berlin-Palermo travelogue. This time round the focus was on immigration policies and their success and failure.

Deutschlandistan, a documentary shot by Pietro Suber and Francesco Tosto focused on aspects of integration in the Berlin district of Neukölln.

Guns and zucchini

In these days another chapter of the post-democratic scenario is on stage. Milan has been covered in billboards associating judges and the brigate rosse. Brigate rosse killed many judges, but the reality is no longer important in Italy. It’s the narrative, the story pushed down the throat of the general public what matters. They rewrite history. I told you, the more I live in Italy the more I recognize the patterns of 1930s Weimar Republic.

Today Repubblica’s Friday magazine, “Il Venerdì” quotes a famous cover of Der Spiegel. It’s the same cover as Der Spiegel but with vegetables instead of spaghetti. “La mafia a tavola: vegetables, meat, fruit, cheeses, bread: clan by clan see who’s controlling our daily grocery shopping, and who turns a profit from it”.

A journalist* from Il Tempo comments on his blog with a blasé tone of those who know better and look down on others:“il Venerdì quotes the sinister Bild cover. Now they put Saviano even in our salad. Ok then, Happy Easter”.

Of course, no comment. Many Italian journalists are not only constructing a fictitious narrative and at best sneer at those who try to do their job and still do reportages. They are also poorly documented and lazy, don’t even do fact check. A journalist confusing Bild and Der Spiegel must really be very ignorant. But I’m not surprised.

PS
*Pardon, he’s not a simple journalist, he’s “il direttore”. Congrats to the YesMen around him too.

Inédit

Inédit. Repubblica publishes a domestic reportage in which Kapuscinski describes what he sees during his morning walk.

L’INEDITO

Passeggiata mattutina

di RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI

Passeggiata mattutina,  inedito in Italia, è un reportage ritrovato negli archivi di Kapuscinski nel 2004 e pubblicato in Polonia nel 2007, due giorni dopo la scomparsa dell’autore. Si tratta di un dattiloscritto di sei pagine, corretto più volte dall’autore, corredato da uno schizzo dei luoghi menzionati nel reportage e da alcune fotografie. Da alcune notazioni contenute nel testo si presume sia stato scritto nel 1995. Il periodo a cui fa riferimento l’autore è quello che intercorre tra la fine del regime comunista e l’ingresso della Polonia nell’Unione Europea (2004), un’epoca ormai conclusa e lontana, in cui erano ancora vivi i ricordi del passato regime e regnavano ancora caos e incertezza. Da qualche anno il percorso della Passeggiata mattutina è ricordato da una lapide celebrativa posta nei luoghi descritti dal grande reporter.

Fabbrica del Vapore

Stefania and I enjoyed a lot visiting the Fabbrica del Vapore. The building is a fantastic example of Industriekultur in the heart of the new Milan, not far from via Paolo Sarpi.

This is where creativity makes you smile. A very interesting book selection, surprising textile solutions recalling those famous Ninfées, and the confirmation that design must make your life easier. Otherwise it’s decoration.

Goodmorning yellow plexi

My office faces west so it’s pretty dark in the morning. For this reason I love to have a bit of yellow plexi in it, warming up those gray and dull office furniture hues. A lamp, a cup, a candies bowl get me started in the morning with their forsythia hues.

In the afternoon the plexi lights up thanks to the reflection of the sun. Around the meeting table four chairs by JM Massaud would definitely fit. After all a touch of fluo office furniture is not such a bad idea. Especially in places where one cannot chose the décor!

Goddess? no…Déesse!

You know am not a car-obsessed girl. But I love the Déesse.

At via Montenapoleone Ora-Ito, the French designer, exposed two Mutations of the Citroen DS myth. The result is magnificent. Even if these forms do not follow function, they generate an incredible amount of wonder and surprise. Passers-by stop and reach for their phones and cameras to snap up the beauty of the soucoupe volante.

Another imaginary product from the French inventor, after the LV and Mac collaborations.