v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Lost

Vallejo Nocturno 2014 - safety in drift

Personal Loyalty

Vallejo Nocturno 2014 - theme of tomorrow in berlin

From The New Yorker:

About three-quarters of the way through Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s latest novel, “The Big Green Tent,” set in the Soviet Union after the Second World War, a character named Mikha stays up all night reading. In the morning, when he arrives at work late, overemotional from the night of reading and from the discovery that his colleagues have covered for him, Mikha is compelled to share his reading with an older co-worker. It is a set of photographs of manuscripts that could not be published in the Soviet Union, and one look at it is enough for the older man to grasp the gravity of the crime that is being confessed. He reports Mikha to the authorities, setting in motion a series of events that will end Mikha’s career and, ultimately, his life.

Back when many books were banned in the Soviet Union, books had that kind of power. The official publishing houses printed vast quantities of a tiny selection of titles. The underground canon—the samizdat—was also small, chosen nearly at random with questionable literary taste and eclectic political beliefs: retyped manuscripts of recently written unpublishable books; facsimile copies of rediscovered books from an earlier, freer era; and printed volumes smuggled into the country by proselytizers of various kinds. In another scene in “The Big Green Tent,” which will be published in the United States next year, a character comes across an entire discarded home library of unapproved books and discovers, to her disappointment, that she has already read all of them—meaning that she has read these physical copies, which once belonged to the parents of a friend.

A book can be an inspiration or a murder weapon. Ulitskaya is fascinated by these transformations, but even more so by the peculiar trajectories that create fate—the travels of a person, a picture, a book. If there is a strange journey to be traced, she cannot resist the retelling. On a warm July Saturday afternoon in Moscow, she gave a talk about an anthology of pieces devoted to the memory of the dissident poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya, her lifelong friend, who died last year. She noted Gorbanevskaya’s political activism and the persecution she faced. Gorbanevskaya was first arrested at the age of twenty, for associating with people who protested the Soviet invasion of Hungary, in 1956. She spent two years in a psychiatric hospital for daring to document the dissident movement, having helped found a newsletter that tracked arrests and dissident activities. In 1975, she was forced to emigrate. But the focus of Ulitskaya’s talk was Gorbanevskaya’s nonlinear private life. The poet never married but, like her mother, adopted a girl; she also had two biological sons. Both of her sons had children out of wedlock before marrying women who were not the children’s mothers. It fell to Gorbanevskaya to create connections among all these people. “She made friends of everyone; she made everyone love one another,” Ulitskaya said, and an extended family took shape. She died a happy death, sudden and peaceful. But she was penniless. As one of her sons sat in her Paris apartment trying to figure out how to pay for her burial, a friend’s widower called to offer his condolences—and ended up offering a cemetery plot as well, which he had bought for himself before remarrying. “And so she lies next to her friend, in a gifted grave,” Ulitskaya concluded.

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Made Up

From Glenn Greewald:

As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.

The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.

The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group:

While the Islamic State group [ISIS] is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.

At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.

AP warned Americans that “the fear is that the Khorasan militants will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.” It explained that although ISIS has received most of the attention, the Khorasan Group “is considered the more immediate threat.”

The genesis of the name was itself scary: “Khorasan refers to a province under the Islamic caliphate, or religious empire, of old that included parts of Afghanistan.” AP depicted the U.S. officials who were feeding them the narrative as engaging in some sort of act of brave, unauthorized truth-telling: “Many U.S. officials interviewed for this story would not be quoted by name talking about what they said was highly classified intelligence.”

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Frunk 29 -Fuselab Podcast 34

 

Frunk29 - Fuselab Podcast 34 by Fuselab on Mixcloud

 

Nana Caymmi in Concert

 

Ever since I became familiar with the musical voice of Nana, in my early 20's after listening to her sing on a Milton Nascimento album of our era back in the early 70's, I have felt that she was singing directly to me. This is a mark of a masterful artist-to be able to pierce and reach the individual who doesn't even speak her language. Years later I continue to discover subtle enjoyments in her passionate singing. Here is a wonderful concert of her work done recently and she continues to capture all the emotions that are necessary to move the people.

raes, as one the
most expressive in Brazilian

Now all of the young people are the old people

 

From The LA Review of Books, article by Esther Yi regarding the East Side Gallery Berlin:

EARLY ONE MORNING this past October,the German pop artist Jim Avignon began to whiten a mural he had painted on the Berlin Wall more than 20 years ago. The police arrived within minutes. Unlike the herds of tourists who walk by the East Side Gallery and discreetly scribble on its surface, Avignon’s top-to-bottom undertaking, backed by 20 assistants, was hard to miss. Prepared, he pulled out a letter inviting him to repaint his work, Doin It Cool For The East Side, as part of a major restoration at the open-air gallery. It’s unclear if the authorities noticed that the letter was several years old. They thumbed Avignon’s passport and let him proceed, deciding he looked official enough.

The police might have been less understanding, had they known that Avignon was not only working without permission, but also painting something entirely new. After the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, a motley international group that included Avignon painted over a hundred murals on a border section facing East Germany. The murals — deemed a unique snapshot of post-Mauerfall jubilation — and the concrete wall sections at the East Side Gallery were placed under monument protection, or Denkmalschutz, in 1991. Any alterations — removal, relocation, renovation — must be approved by Denkmalschutz authorities. The East Side Gallery is now the longest section of the Wall preserved in its original location, running for 1.3 kilometers parallel between the road Mühlenstrasse (painted side) and the Spree River (reverse side) in a central area of Berlin called Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. Hundreds of thousands visit every year. Restorations notwithstanding, every work from 1990 has retained its original content — except Avignon’s, after nine hours on that cold October day.

His timing could not have been worse. Despite the site’s protected status, its overseeing association, the Artists Initiative East Side Gallery, feels that the wall has been treated like a second-class citizen in a city of memorials — long “put off, lied to, and abused for other interests,” as the group writes on its blog. Indignant grumbling escalated into high-pitched furor earlier this year, when a building project behind the Gallery threatened its partial destruction. The developer, Living Bauhaus, is erecting a 200-feet-tall luxury tower in the area between the wall and the river — formerly a death strip where East German border guards kept watch. (Despite popular imagination, the Berlin Wall was not a single barrier, but a multi-layered security system.) As stipulated by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, Living Bauhaus intended to remove about 70 feet of the wall to create street access not only to its high-rise, but also to a pedestrian bridge over the Spree planned by the district.

When construction workers removed a concrete slab in early March, hundreds — and by the weekend, thousands — of demonstrators gathered at the Gallery to prevent further destruction. Maik Uwe Hinkel, head of Living Bauhaus, postponed work on the site. Taking a stance of confused irritation, he pointed at the higher-ups who had signed off on his project. Franz Schulz, then mayor of the district, did in fact approve the building permit — and bystanders have been puzzled by his seemingly casual disregard for Denkmalschutz. (Günther Schaefer, one of the Gallery’s painters and now an active member of the Artists Initiative, puts it simply: “The mayor broke the law. He is a criminal.”) But the district’s Denkmalschutz authorities approved the wall opening. Hinkel complained that he and Living Bauhaus had been “the vicarious agents” of the district’s plan to rebuild Brommy Bridge, destroyed during World War II; they were now “the bogeyman of the nation,” unfairly taking the heat. “Heil Hinkel!” went the online cry.

After unproductive negotiations with city officials, Hinkel moved forward with construction and removed 20 feet from the Gallery in late March. The hole is only temporary, there to create access to the construction site, and it may be closed with the original segments once the high-rise is complete in 2015, says a spokesperson for Living Bauhaus. Hinkel is considering sharing an opening with a neighboring hotel project planned by an Israeli investor. Meanwhile, the construction of the Brommy Bridge has been suspended for the time being, according to Hubert Staroste of the Berlin Monument Authority.

These mitigations, however, make but a small dent in what has been a frenzy of finger pointing and paper waving. Denkmalschutz has been revealed as a loose guarantee. In fact, the Gallery already bears several gaps, with the sections that fell victim relocated nearby; and beach bars have been sitting just behind the wall for years, arguably with the same air of disrespect and commercialism as Hinkel’s building. He claims to be baffled by the fighting words on behalf of a wholesomeness long gone. (Perhaps this shoulder-shrugging attitude comes easily if you’re skeptical of the Gallery’s historical primacy to begin with. “Please note that this is not the real Wall, as the border between East and West was in the middle of the [Spree] river,” Living Bauhaus informed me in an email.)

But authenticity remains a key talking point for supporters of the East Side Gallery. They say it is a historical monument inextricable from its original location, and exceptional for its near-complete continuity. To those who ask, “So what was it really like in divided Berlin?” the Gallery is a tactile answer — and to tamper with it is to undercut, and risk forgetting, the full darkness of the Wall’s history. (Often mentioned as a counterpoint is Checkpoint Charlie, the former border crossing that is universally derided as an over-manicured tourist trap.) As a reminder of its relevance, the past recently snuck into the present in an unexpected twist: Hinkel, the media reports, was once a Stasi informant named “Jens Peter,” reporting suspicious individuals to the DDR’s spying apparatus. The news has added a fatal whiff of intentionality — real or not — to the perceived insensitivity of building condos with “breathtaking panorama views” on land where East Germans lost their lives.

In Berlin, historical inheritance has been positioned as adversarial to the cash-strapped city’s trend toward gentrification — signs at the demonstrations in March, “Berlin sells itself and its history,” “the yuppie scum,” said as much. Given the desirable riverfront location of the East Side Gallery, its survival is almost remarkable. For years, the property investment project “Mediaspree” has been developing the land along the banks of the Spree with building complexes. To antagonists, this means higher rents and the quashing of alt-cultural spaces and Berlin’s cherished reputation as “poor but sexy.” As an example of this clash, one need look no further than the O2 World arena, for which wall segments were removed in 2006 to create an open view to the river. The entertainment complex, formidably modern and glossy, sits across from the decrepit wall like a fattened prince, making for a visual précis of Berlin’s ongoing tussle between, to follow stereotype, the gentrifiers with gold-tipped tongues and the crusty crusaders of remembrance.

The capitalists alone made for daunting opponents — but then came along Avignon, one of the Gallery’s very own, garbling what was supposed to have been a unified message at a critical moment for the monument. With his repainting, Avignon had proved himself an “art terrorist,” Schaefer wrote, in an open letter after learning of his old colleague’s actions:

If this sets a trend, then tomorrow an Italo-artist can come and scrawl over Michelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel. The next day a Berliner can come and can rape the Pergamon Altar […] No, no, we don't need any history! What for? Surely not in this city! […]The East Side Gallery is meanwhile degenerating into a “self-service store.” Anyone can have a go. Behind the wall, the Stasi-turbo-capitalists jerk themselves off with their luxury buildings.

If Schaefer sounds like a preservationist, Avignon speaks a different language entirely: “I don’t think in terms of eternity. I don’t want to end up in a museum. I work in the moment.” Avignon declined the Gallery’s invitation to restore his original work in 2009, calling it “ridiculous to repaint step by step a thing I did when I was 20.” When he worked at the Gallery in 1990, he had not bargained for what his informal creative act would become today: a national treasure that no longer belongs to him. In his eyes, the Gallery’s artwork — as distinct from the concrete wall itself — is not a monument worth preserving. He notes that they were made after the Berlin Wall fell, in an environment void of risk, and that many of the works are not very good anyway (“there is no van Gogh, no Rembrandt”). Value was awarded in retrospect.

Avignon, who was well aware of the Gallery’s protected status, intended his new mural as a show of creative evolution at the wall. He proposes the Gallery host a changing program that showcases new artists every year. “I was one of the young people who wanted to show the world that they can do it. Now all of the young people are the old people, and they want to have their stuff there forever,” he says. “That was then. Now is another time.” (After much sparring in the media, Avignon finally met with the chairman of the Artists Initiative, Kani Alavi, in late October. A solution has yet to be reached.)

Nobody disputes that remnants of the Berlin Wall are worth preserving. Throw a prodigious art project on top, and one would assume this hardens the initiative for preservation. And as it turns out, the murals are the only reason why the East Side Gallery wasn’t immediately plucked out of the cityscape like so many other segments of the Wall. But between the Hinkel and Avignon affairs, the Gallery has often been cast as behind the times. “Let’s stop limiting our lives. Let’s push things forward,” goes a curiously on-the-nose tagline for Hinkel’s luxury tower. In a city that prides itself on unblinking confrontation with its traumatic history, how has a monument like the Gallery come to feel perennially threatened, poised for its next inevitable challenger? “As long as the artists live, we will fight,” Schaefer says. “The East Side Gallery has a past, it has a present — a strong present, because it is polarizing — and it will have a future.”

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East Side Gallery Berlin

Vallejo Nocturno 2014 - from East Side Gallery Berlin

From Virtual Tourist, comments from site :

The Berlin Wall is one the biggest tourist attractions in Berlin so it’s ironic that not much of the wall still exists. The East Side Galley is the largest remaining section of the wall, spanning about 1.3 km. When communism reigned, the east side of the wall was unpainted concrete as anybody getting close enough to that side of the wall would have likely been shot dead. After the wall came down in 1990, this section of wall was converted into a huge open air museum. For the first time, artists were allowed to paint on the wall and many painted very political messages of freedom and liberty. Unfortunately many of those original paintings have been damaged by vandalism, graffiti and weathering. When I visited in the summer of 2009, many of the originals had been repainted (in the same design by the original artists) and others were in the process of being redone. The gallery is a must see because it’s free, easy to get to and the messages are very thought provoking. (Karlie85)

The East Side Gallery is the longest and best preserved remaining part of the Berlin Wall. This 1.3km long section of the wall is home to one of the largest open air galleries in the world.

Approximately 106 paintings by artists from all over the world cover this "memorial for freedom", which has been painted on the east side of the wall. The first painting was started in December 1989, immediately after the fall of the wall.

Over the years the frescoes have been eroded by the weather and exhaust fumes, and also destroyed by tourists wanting to take a part of the wall home with them. The gallery is slowly being restored by non-profit organisations, and the paintings closest to Ostbahnhof are in the best condition.

This is a very interesting place to visit, not only do you get to see part of the Berlin Wall, but you also get a glimpse of the hopes and dreams for the future for people all around the world, via the artists' work.(SueStone)

In Berlin

Vallejo Nocturno 2014 - from East Berlin Gallery

A Very American Question

Writer Andres Neuman from an Interview in Tweed's:

Some people ask me, “Since you have had such a strong experience when you were very young, taking care of your father and then your mother, why didn’t you just write a memoir?”

I find this to be a very, if you’d allow me, a very American question. This impact of the real story, this certain sensationalist approach to writing. I’m not saying that all American readers want this, but it’s like a journalistic infection of fiction, which is beauty on one hand—but on the other hand, this has restricted the perspective of the complexity of fiction. What I mean is that if I had written a memoir with my experiences, I would have been much more constrained. I would have been much more concerned about my family. I don’t think I would have dared to say all the things I said about my own family through Elena.

Thanks to the filter of the fiction, thanks to the fact that there was a factor of difference—because it was Elena and not me—I felt less scared to go really deep within my own real conflicts and contradictions about taking care of someone. So I call her Doctor Jekyll and Lady Hyde of the caregivers, because she tells all the parts: giving yourself—entregarse—devoting yourself to someone, doing so many things out of love, taking genuine care of someone, having a very intimate and deep experience with someone else’s body and needs.

Everyone talks about that part of the caregiver—the politically correct part. You’re giving your life for someone else—the sacrifice, the obligation. That’s great. That’s what religion taught us. I understand that. But what about the other part that only Elena—not me—dared to say? You feel resentful. You can hate everyone, and you can hate yourself. You have fantasies of running away, or throwing yourself through a window. You fantasize about having another life. You’re looking for the other to die, and on the other hand, you’re looking for the other one never to die, even though he’s suffering, because you don’t want to be left alone. So one part of you can’t wait for this to just stop, and on the other hand, in a second way of selfishness, you prefer the other one not to die even if they’re suffering, because as long as the other person is there, you won’t be thinking about your own suffering. In a way, it’s safer to be taking care of that person, because after the death, there will be the grief, their regrets, the questions—the dark side of the caregiver giving. I don’t see this on TV or on the radio. It’s like: love as much as you can and say goodbye with love. It’s not that easy.

Progress & Efficiency

From The New Inquiry:

Nicholas Carr’s forthcoming The Glass Cage, about the ethical dangers of automation, inspired me to read George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which contains a lengthy tirade against the notion of progress as efficiency and convenience. Orwell declares that “the tendency of mechanical progress is to make life safe and soft.” It assumes that a human being is “a kind of walking stomach” that is interested only in passive pleasure rather than work: “whichever way you turn there will be some machine cutting you off from the chance of working — that is, of living.” Convenience is social control, and work, for Orwell at least, is the struggle to experience a singular life. But the human addiction to machine-driven innovation and automation, he predicts, fueled apparently by a fiendish inertia that demands progress for progress’s sake, will inevitably lead to total disempowerment and dematerialization:

There is really no reason why a human being should do more than eat, drink, sleep, breathe, and procreate; everything else could be done for him by machinery. Therefore the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle.

Basically, he sees the Singularity coming and he despises it as a “frightful subhuman depth of softness and helplessness.” And there is no opting-out:

In a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned foods, aspirins, gramophones, gaspipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc., etc.; and on the other hand there would be a constant demand for the things the machine cannot produce. But meanwhile the machine is here, and its corrupting effects are almost irresistible. One inveighs against it, but one goes on using it.

This “brain in the bottle” vision of our automated future, Orwell surmises, is why people of the 1930s were wary of socialism, which he regards as being intimately connected ideologically with the theme of inevitable progress. That connection has of course been severed; socialism tends to be linked with nostalgia and tech’s “thought leaders” tend to champion libertarianism and cut-throat competitive practices abetted by technologically induced asymmetries, all in the name of “innovation” and “disruption.”

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