Wednesday 30 December 2015
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Friday 25 December 2015
Wednesday 23 December 2015
Monday 21 December 2015
Thursday 17 December 2015
Thursday 10 December 2015
Monday 7 December 2015
Saturday 5 December 2015
Tuesday 27 October 2015
Monday 26 October 2015
Monday 19 October 2015
The uncompromising poetry of Katerina Gogou
What I fear most
is becoming "a poet"...
Locking myself in the room
gazing at the sea
and forgetting...
I fear that the stitches over my veins might heal
and, instead of having blur memories about TV news,
I take to scribbling papers and selling "my views"...
I fear that those who stepped over us might accept me
so that they can use me.
I fear that my screams might become a murmur
so that to serve putting my people to sleep.
I fear that I might learn to use meter and rhythm
and thus I will be trapped within them
longing for my verses to become popular songs.
I fear that I might buy binoculars in order to bring closer
the sabotage actions in which I won't be participating.
Wednesday 14 October 2015
But we are reborn a thousand times
This is a photograph of Emel Kitapçı and Artun Siyah Kitapçı, the wife and son of Ali Kitapçı who was killed in the bomb attacks against the Labor, Democracy and Peace rally in Ankara. The death toll of these attacks currently stands at 128 while there are more than 500 wounded, many of them in critical condition.
The photograph was taken by Burhan Ozbilici at a commemoration held outside the city's train station, where the attacks took place. Ali Kitapçı was an anarchist railroad worker and the secretary of the United Trade Union of Transport Employees’ Ankara branch. The following text is an excerpt of the speech by Emel Kitapçı at his funeral, as quoted in Bianet:
The photograph was taken by Burhan Ozbilici at a commemoration held outside the city's train station, where the attacks took place. Ali Kitapçı was an anarchist railroad worker and the secretary of the United Trade Union of Transport Employees’ Ankara branch. The following text is an excerpt of the speech by Emel Kitapçı at his funeral, as quoted in Bianet:
Biz ‘barış' dedik, onlar ‘ölüm' dedi. Biz katilin kim olduğunu biliyoruz. Ama biz dimdik ayaktayız. Biz vicdanımızla, ahlakımızla ayaktayız, mücadelemiz devam edecek. Bizi bir kez öldürürler ama bin kez doğururlar.
We said 'peace', they said 'death'. We know who the killer is. But we are standing up. We stand with our conscience, we stand with our ethics, our struggle will continue. They kill us once, but we are reborn a thousand times.
See also:
- Continuing the struggle | Güney Işıkara, Alp Kayserilioğlu and Max Zirngast, Jacobin
- Stories of those who lost their lives in Ankara | Bianet
- Thousands gather in Ankara to pay respects to activists killed in bombings | Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian
Many thanks to my dear friend Melek for helping me with the Turkish news sources and the translation - teşekkür ederim.
Sunday 11 October 2015
Beirut, by Ibrahim Maalouf
The second video is a great performance at Jazz in Marciac, and includes Beirut at 20:00
Wednesday 7 October 2015
Living in a panel: Andrea Pazienza
The text reads as follows:
Dedicated to all those who were twenty years old in '77, and now are eighteen
And it refers to the Movement of 1977
Friday 2 October 2015
Once upon a time in Athens, #21
In the world of bosses we are all immigrants
Themeli St., 13.09.2015, mural: Jnor - NDA, Lila
Themeli St., 13.09.2015, mural: Jnor - NDA, Lila
Wednesday 30 September 2015
Tear down the walls of Fortress Europe
- Solidarity with refugees: European day of action
- Solidarity with Calais migrants against borders, racism and fascism | 12 September
- End austerity now, stop blaming immigrants
- Migrant lives matter: protest in London
- Fortress Europe: the precarious lives of refugees
- Death by drowning: precarious refugee lives
- Systematically drowning migrants and refugees
- A watery graveyard for migrants and refugees
- Hanif Kureishi: Europe degrading the immigrant
- Fortress Europe: incalculable cost in human lives
- Fortress Europe's death toll in the Mediterranean
- Farmakonisi: no justice for the drowned refugees
Monday 28 September 2015
Friday 25 September 2015
Thursday 24 September 2015
Art and social protest: Black Lives Matter
That day I was carrying a mask because I thought it might get heavy. [The police] just started launching tear gas after tear gas after tear gas. [...] That’s when I was happy I had the gas mask. That gas was really thick, and I was able to walk into it. She had nothing on. She was hurting. If I didn’t have a mask on, my eyes would have been burning too much to ever take that picture. She stayed there for a while and then she started to be overcome from the effects of gas. Someone came and helped her and got her out of there. An amazing person to put up with what she did.
Quoted in Behind the best pictures from Ferguson, with Getty photographer Scott Olson | Joe Coscarelli, NYMag
"The painting is most definitely informed by my experience, as someone who’s been on the receiving end of police brutality — as well as someone who’s witnessed numerous incidents of police violence toward peaceful protesters," Drooker said. "The composition is a subjective view of someone in the street, beholding a military-style assault by police."
New Yorker’s Ferguson cover artist has been on the front lines of police protests | Benjamin Mullin, Poynter
See also:
Monday 21 September 2015
Saturday 19 September 2015
Saturday 12 September 2015
Refugees Welcome Here: London, 12 September
See also:
- Solidarity with refugees: European day of action
- Solidarity with Calais migrants against borders, racism and fascism | 12 September
- End austerity now, stop blaming immigrants
- Migrant lives matter: protest in London
- Fortress Europe: the precarious lives of refugees
- Death by drowning: precarious refugee lives
- Systematically drowning migrants and refugees
- A watery graveyard for migrants and refugees
- Hanif Kureishi: Europe degrading the immigrant
- Fortress Europe: incalculable cost in human lives
- Fortress Europe's death toll in the Mediterranean
- Farmakonisi: no justice for the drowned refugees
Friday 11 September 2015
Monday 7 September 2015
Solidarity with Calais migrants against borders, racism and fascism | 12 September
We reject the politics of xenophobia, and are disgusted by those who seek to dehumanise migrants. We see the so-called “migrant crisis” as a humanitarian crisis, of migrants uprooted by war and poverty coming into contact with a brutal and inhumane border regime, engineered to kill. We are calling for anti-racists and anti-fascists to join us in Dover to stand in solidarity with migrants, demand an end to borders and stand up to the racists seeking to sow division and hatred.
Our mobilisation joins other campaigns fighting racism, nationalism and the border regime including convoys heading to Calais with much needed resources and campaigns against immigration raids, deportations and detention centres.
Friday 4 September 2015
Solidarity with refugees: European day of action
It's time to speak out against the deadly borders that have been enacted in our name. People all over Europe are organizing resistance and solidarity in their towns and cities. On the 12th of September we want to show with thousands of people all over Europe our solidarity with those fleeing war, violence and destitution.
We want to let all the refugees know: You are welcome!
London 1 | 2 | Dover | Birmingham | Chichester | English Football League
Tuesday 1 September 2015
Art and social protest: police violence in Athens
[N]umerous allegations have been received regarding excessive use of force, including the use of chemical irritants against peaceful or largely peaceful demonstrators, and the use of stun grenades in a manner that violates international standards. For example, video footage, photographs, press reports and witness testimonies point to the repeated use of excessive force by police in the demonstrations organized against the austerity measures on 15, 28 and 29 June 2011, including the excessive use of chemical irritants against largely peaceful demonstrators.
Wednesday 26 August 2015
![Composition 6, 1913 [Wikipedia]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vassily_Kandinsky,_1913_-_Composition_6.jpg){kind=link}
![Composition 7, 1913 [Wikipedia]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vassily_Kandinsky,_1913_-_Composition_7.jpg){kind=link}
Saturday 22 August 2015
Is this the time I should be on my knees for you
Union Chapel, London, 16.05.2014
Why have you put so many things into my eyes
That I can't see clear
Who's paid you for telling me what I'm worth
And run in fear
That I can't see clear
Who's paid you for telling me what I'm worth
And run in fear
It has been for me a strain to see already
What have you done
The rising noise
The sharpened smells
The deadened sight
What is it in my eyes
A piece of broken glass
Is this the time I should be on my knees for you
Is this your way of telling
Is this the time I should be on my knees for you
Is this your way of telling
Another has been found
Now I know
It's teargas in my eyes
See also:
Wednesday 19 August 2015
A day in the life: Keith Haring
If I was going to draw, there had to be a reason. That reason, I decided, was for people. The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins in the eyes of the beholder and gains power through imagination, invention, and confrontation.
Monday 17 August 2015
Awaking the fire: thoughts on Forever Still
Surya, London, 30.04.2015
I happen to commute through King's Cross station to go to work. I usually come back around six in the afternoon, and anyone commuting in London during peak time knows what this means: desperately trying to avoid the massive crowds and get home as quickly as possible. But not me. Rather than going home, I have this impulse to walk down the road to a nearby music venue. This is where I saw Forever Still play live, and ever since I can't help wishing I was able to experience their concert all over again. With this thought in mind I smile, and then I take a deep breath and unwillingly find my way through the massive crowds. Forever Still's Open Wound Tour brought them to the UK for the first time this spring. Simultaneously they released the Save Me EP, a follow-up to the Scars EP that came out last November. These two releases, together with a forthcoming third EP, will form the basis of the band's first album, the concept of which traces the course of a woman from personal crisis to empowerment. Forever Still are based in Copenhagen, and a first glimpse into their work was offered by the Breaking Free EP in 2013. Their current line-up is Maja Schønning on vocals, Mikkel Haastrup on bass, guitar, keyboards and drums, and Dennis Post on guitar.
Apparently Forever Still have made an impression; online reviews and comments overflow with superlative adjectives and comparisons with bands like Evanescence or Lacuna Coil. Such tropes and conventions of music criticism may be understandable as a form of praise, but it seems to me that the question remains, and given that there are so many new, talented, and hard-working bands it is rather obvious: why Forever Still?
Maja Schønning and Mikkel Haastrup's collaborative songwriting is a useful starting point, chiefly because of their addictive melodies and articulate rhythmic patterns. These two features, sometimes merged together, and other times juxtaposed to one another, complement their lyrics addressing pain, loss and, ultimately, hope. The strength of the songs, however, stems from the clarity and coherence of their structure. There is hardly a note more or less than necessary here; in this respect, and despite the difference of genre, one is tempted to make a comparison with the starkness and intimacy of Nirvana's songwriting. Even when stripped down to their bare bones, as in the case of the acoustic version of The Last Day, the songs maintain their expressiveness, just as they thrive on their arrangement for amplified instruments.
Inasmuch as composition and arrangement are important, music is first and foremost sound, which is why major rock and metal bands relied upon the production of a particular sonic identity; a classic example here would be Deep Purple's pursue of the aesthetic of a live performance during the recording of Machine Head. Unlike bands who spend time and money in the studio to construct a rich albeit artificial sound they cannot reproduce in concert, Forever Still come across on record as transparently natural, courtesy of Mikkel Haastrup, who is also the band's producer and recording engineer. Forever Still's sound seems to capture the physicality of their performance on stage, as well as combine stellar professionalism with a warm handmade quality that informs the band's distinct character.
And then of course there is Maja Schønning, whose vocal abilities have been met with unanimous praise. This is hardly surprising given that she is gifted with a voice that listeners can easily be impressed by and respond to; however, as her modesty and lack of self-indulgence demonstrate, this does not seem to be a goal of hers. On the contrary, and like any major singer regardless of genre, Maja seems to be concerned with and consistently working on the way her voice operates in the context of the music. And whether she carries out and sustains the melody throughout Save Me, or improvises the chorus on top of Denis Post's tasteful guitar licks at the end of Once In A Nightmare, or shifts from the elegance of her breath to the might of her growl in Breathe In, Maja makes the choices that best serve her material.
Last but not least, Forever Still's musical identity is inseparable from their independence as a band; in other words, there is a correlation between being honest and being independent. See, for instance, the credits of the Save Me EP: composition and arrangement, production and engineering, mixing and mastering, even photography and design, are all attributed to either Maja or Mikkel. And in this respect, independence first and foremost means full artistic control, just as it means tons of devotion and hard work, which any autonomous endeavour entails and requires.
It is no secret of course that the profit-orientation of the music business promotes standardization over originality and creativity. More often than not rare gems have come and gone unnoticed, if they ever surfaced at all, while heavily promoted commercial outputs prevailed despite being unbearably conventional; or rather, exactly because of that. A walk along the platforms of the London Underground, for instance, can easily demonstrate advertisements of hyped-up albums destined to be forgotten a few years down the line. Welcome to the machine, as Pink Floyd once put it.
The development of digital technology and the emergence of the Web 2.0 era have created new platforms of accessing, distributing and sharing music with a potential of transcending the confines of the music industry, from Radiohead's pay-what-you-want online release of the In Rainbows album, to Kingfisher Sky's production of the Arms of Morpheus album through crowdfunding. Forever Still make their music available online, to their credit on a pay-what-you-want/free download basis; and inasmuch as their output has been praised, the fact that it is a result of self-management needs to be acknowledged in equal measure. In other words, it seems to me that any independent band is in effect a call to independent-minded fans and music lovers who understand and support both the music and the context of its production.
It is no secret of course that the profit-orientation of the music business promotes standardization over originality and creativity. More often than not rare gems have come and gone unnoticed, if they ever surfaced at all, while heavily promoted commercial outputs prevailed despite being unbearably conventional; or rather, exactly because of that. A walk along the platforms of the London Underground, for instance, can easily demonstrate advertisements of hyped-up albums destined to be forgotten a few years down the line. Welcome to the machine, as Pink Floyd once put it.
Times change and music styles differ, but exquisite creativity is not hard to recognize; and it is for such reasons that discovering Forever Still can be so intriguing. In what concerns their upcoming album, it seems to me that one should expect nothing less than Iggy Pop's view that "a good LP is a being, it is not a product; it has a life force, a personality, and a history just like you and me." I have of course no way of knowing what the response will be or what the future will bring for Forever Still. I am not a fortune teller, but then again maybe I am to some extent; I do know, for instance, that I will hardly find myself again at King's Cross station without having this impulse to walk down the road to another Forever Still concert.
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