Visions of Alchemy

First and foremost apologies for the delay in posting. I have finally relocated and settled into London life where there is never a spare moment with the bustle and energy of a happening city. I am still finding myself settling into my home city again and love the fact that I am always discovering new parts of the city, and always kept on my feet; there is never a dull moment.

Last week I attended an opening exhibition of unique sculptures created by Robert Barley held at the Paul Smith furniture & curiosity store on Albemarle Street.

I am intrigued by his work and love the composition of his pieces. It is worth making the visit if you are in the city. Although quite a small exhibition space, it allows you to take time and focus on each; his work reminds me of being a small child again,  fascinated and intrigued by the constructed artworks.

Albemarle street has a great few galleries that always capture my attention as I am on my way to work. They hold my gaze in an unexpected way; the paintings on display exude a strong emotion, each different and unique-I am transported to another world, another life of carefree freedom and imagination. Just for a minute. and then the cold snaps me back to focus!

(Zen I - Fall of the Roman Empire - Magic Carpet Ride - The Bird Alchemist)

Past and Present of Tehran's Longest Avenue.

I have been asked to add a ‘piece of me’ onto this blog. It sounds a bit egocentric but I will do my best to fulfil this duty. I found this photo of my dearest country Iran, taken (I apologise) a few months (years?) ago. However, the picture is still relevant today.

Let me describe what I want to relay with this cliché.

This picture was taken on Vali Asr, an 18km long avenue in Tehran and known for being the longest in the Middle East. During the Shah’s time the avenue was called Pahlavi Avenue in reference to the ruling dynasty. After the 1979 Revolution they named it Vali Asr meaning the ‘Master of Time’ in reference to the Mahdi, the twelfth Shia Imam. This avenue was a focal point during the 2009 Presidential protests, which are sometimes argued to have precipitated the uprisings in other Middle Eastern countries.

On this picture you see Iranian society. Painted on the wall of the building is Ayatollah Khamenei, the actual Supreme leader of Iran, who holds the highest position in the country, successor of Ayatollah Khomeini and elected for life. The other two individuals pictured are martyrs from the Iran-Iraq war. This strong symbol represents the heart of the Iranian ideology; an unjust war, started by Saddam Hussein, financed by the West that lasting eight years mainly because the US was distributing arms to both sides. The government’s whole strategy is very much based on this cult of the martyr, this idea of foreign interventions, the oppression, and the loss of many sons of the revolution. Many arguments have been made around the fact that the regime owes its strength to this famous war and the national mobilization of the eight years following 1979. 

On this photo we can also get a sample of the frenetic Tehran, a city of 13 million inhabitants asking for change, for progress. Not asking for a static present fixated with the past and the pain of war. Close to 70 per cent of the Iranian population is under the age of 30. They alone represent the future of Iran; they are the one ready to die as a martyr for a free Iran, a modern Iran, a democratic Iran. That’s the face we should see on the wall of my city.

Respectfully yours,

Nazila 

P.S.: to make things clear and anticipate any rude message saying that I don’t admire what the Martyrs did to protect our country against a belligerent Iraq. This is not my message here. They were martyrs of the revolution, one which this government is not honouring. As in their memory is being exploited by the current regime. They deserve recognition and merit but not at the price of a stagnant Iran. 

"Feb 17"

I photographed this man on my first trip back to Libya after the February 17th Uprising, which blew a wind of unexpected change over my country. After months spent gazing at my computer screen, watching the news, and reading anything I could put my hands on related to this Revolution - I finally arrived in Benghazi on June 25th, 2011.

As cliché as it may sound, I could smell freedom as soon as my feet touched the tarmac - everything seemed somehow tainted by a palpable sense of rebirth and optimism, after 42 years spent under the rule of a brutal and repressive regime.

A couple of days later, I set out to the Mahkama (Courthouse) where it all started. On February 15^th, families of Abu Saleem prisonners were protesting against the incarceration of their lawyer, Fathi Terbil. Two days later, lawyers and judges, soon joined by students and engineers, doctors and shopkeepers, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons gathered in the early days of the Uprising to claim back their dignity and their most basic human rights.

As I looked around me, I couldn’t help but roam through the crowd with a big smile on my face – a new energy was buzzing through my Benghazi. Freedom.

I stopped by a small crowd that had formed around a charismatic man with a book in his hands. He seemed to be holding on to it as though it were his most prized possession. As I was trying to figure out what was going on, he carefully unwrapped the book, presented it to me, and asked me to take a picture of him holding it. The book, titled "Gaddafi and the Politics of Contradiction” (written by Mansour el Kikhia, a Libyan political science professor exiled in the USA) had, like many others, been censored in Libya prior to the Uprising. Freedom of speech, of thought, of association, to participate in civil society, just to name a few, were simply inexistent under Gaddafi’s rule.

It was only later, when flipping through my pictures, that I noticed his gaze, full of pride and hope, encapsulating the Libyan people’s expectations and excitement as they face their future in Free Libya.

ccbg (Benghazi, September 2011)

Life is Elsewhere

I cannot help but be fascinated by this building. Everyday on my way to the monorail in KL, I pass this group of derelict block of flats and I can't help but be intrigued by the life that went on in what seems like small cells, holdings of life. The colours of the balconies are the only signs of the love and happiness that may, or may not have occured. That and the broken furniture that still stands in some of the rooms when I find myself looking inside. 

There are quite a few abandoned places amongst the bustling cityscape; Passing more on the monorail, two chairs are abandoned, they are still left facing one another outside; a moment of connection now abandoned; A ghost. The physicality of a memory now lost but the shell remains.

It always seems life is elsewhere; vanished before its even realised.

Perhaps the thought is melancholic but it is a reminder at the start of the day; to breathe in life, and appreciate the small things and the kindness of people. Even the ones that push against you when its crammed rush hour and an armpit is in your face.

Mei (Kuala Lumpur, August 2011)

The games of old...

This restaurant is somewhere I stopped by when on a work trip to Taiwan..

Simple food, basic settings (as you can see from the table) but shelves full of memorabilia and images from the past.

Visuals we have long forgotten, writing that is so very faded but not lost...

Not the vacuumed packed seal of the present, but the earthy rusty smell of the past.

The things we used to have were so simple, so common.

No millions of colours or thousands of pixels.

Nor 3D worlds or virtual images.

Just the infinite resolution of our imaginations, and the endless extents of our minds..

When did we decide we needed help to have fun?

Marcus (Singapore, August 2011)

Halkan élünk - we live quietly

In Budapest, artists live quietly...
This street-art-manifesto on the wall of an old building of the 7th district, the old Jewish ghetto, is trying (quietly) to catch one's attention. Imagine yourself in the middle of the Budapest-nightlife, where the price of the vodka is playing the leadrole and the youth gets lost in the narrow streets full of bars hiding in some inner-courts. There is little place for big thoughts, not only because of the ebrious state that takes its territory every week-end, but also because the actual nationalist/right/extreme-right political environment kills slowly but surely all kind of free thinking.

Hungary has always been on the wrong side, for every significant moment in History. But today, the last hope in solidarity, optimism and a positive development of the society is killed by some crazy and selfish right-wing politicans. So artists keep on living, but quietly... Halkan élünk.

Mariann (between Vienna and Budapest, July 2011)

Pass the Eviair

Eviair (not Evian) seems to be one of the largest "ad" campaigns to have recently hit the streets of New York. Exhibited on phone booths to dumpsters all across the city these ads are endorsing a new and unusual product - bottled clean air. Some of the black and white ads feature young girls on piggy back, a young woman tending to her garden or a father carrying his son at the beach- these familiar scenarios quickly turn grim though as the models are wearing gas masks which are attached to a bottle of Eviair. I am not sure who can be credited for these creations – possibly an environmental group or street artists- but they are an effective campaign that highlights the need to improve air quality or our future looks bleak.

Karine (New York, June 2011)

Half-Awake in a Fake Empire

Burj Khalifa from Dubai Mall, picture taken on the 1st of July, 2011 at 7pm (local time) 

Dear Gnubrev'ers,

How could I avoid to show on the first post the tallest building in the World transcribing the audacious endless limit of Dubai Empire? 

In My desert, we cannot rely on history, culture or tradition. 

However, we're building the City together by mixing anyone and everyone from the World. The result is the biggest Hub for intercultural relations. We are every single day in contact with people from so various places that it feels like Dubai is the reverse story of the Tower of Babel. We don't understand each other, simply we learn to understand each other by growing together and by aiming to accomplish any type of achievements, as the symbolic Burj Khalifa for example.

From some basic assumptions, few people would think only how fake Dubai can be. Unfortunately, most of the time, the media will introduce this region as it appears to be, not as it really is. To better understand what this place means, you have to come here and discover how this Fake Empire works. So many people will never try to experience the journey, but so you should do. Come and see how we do live in a place where every step has to be created by us.

Yes, indeed, there is Life here. Almost two years of mine at least, and certainly more to come...

... in My Fake Empire

I cannot forget that I was listening to the song by the National (Video: Live at Terminal 5, New York) when I landed for the first time in Dubai. It expresses a feeling that I have acquired not so longer after my arrival.

Yes, we're half-awake in the middle of this huge Hub, but we still do our small little things like spending time with friends, enjoying good food, working hard, partying, resting, going to the beach... in a word like thousand, we do live in the City of Life where all our dreams can be true, where we can feel at home far away from Ours...

Faithfully yours,

Vahe (Dubai, July 2011)

Stereotypes & Symbols

light

 Light is both the bridge and the subtlety between these two pictures. The italian sun is radiant with energy. It's a beautiful thing that you must capture from Italy, the sun, so much energy.

nature 

Rome's sun-drenched flora deliciously "melts" into the italian chaos. Nature plays an important part here, and even more all over the world. In some other places I visited, especially south America and Asia, the vegetation is so green that you think to yourself: "our green is not green but grey..." 

Please always try to respect it.

beauty of daily actions 

The clothes and linen hanging in the sun simply give a taste of beauty, the spell of simple things. I especially notice this unassuming charm when I'm on holiday or travelling and these kind of things gently remind me: "Don't run, enjoy!".

art 

Stereotype and proudness of Rome and honestly still so impressive. Open air museum. 

I love art, every kind...

water 

And finally water trying to refresh my country. Italy is in turmoil. Young people urge for change.

"Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence." Ovid

Maybe. But how long can Italy afford to wait?

Elisa (Rome, June 2011)

Trevi & Trastevere pics from federica (http://fedegi.tumblr.com/)

Play me, I'm yours

Over the last two weeks, twenty second hand pianos were installed around the streets of Geneva with a simple label on them:
''Jouez, je suis à vous'', in other words, "Play me, I'm yours".

Based on the original concept by Luke Jerram to enhance communication between people, this event took place simultaneously in twenty cities around the world.

Back in 1887, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, a polish doctor, published an ambitious project: "Lingvo Interacia", which was to be known as the most important attempt to create an international language. He named it Esperanto (Hope). Zamenhof's language and Jerram's project share a common goal: make people use an easy to learn, politically neutral language. Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? 
In the meanwhile, we still have music. 

"Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words." 
Robert G. Ingersoll

D. (Geneva, June 2011)

(http://www.streetpianos.com/)

Lapa baby!

 The bright optimistic colours reflect Brasil's rough beauty that slowly captures your heart.
Like a beautiful Tattoo, Rio is imprinted in your soul and you can't just describe it,  you need to

Live it.

''tenho saudades tuas''

The Brasilian way is one strong attitude, abundant in Life and Passion.
Let go; Lay on the beach in the deep heat with cariocas selling and surfers riding the waves of Ipanema: Samba in the rain at a Lapa block party, drink Caipirinhas to delerium... Zoom up the favelas on the back of a motorbike, wind past traffic, reach the peak and gaze at the sunset whilst street kids fly kites over roof tops; a sense of beautiful optimism.
Then party non-stop; day and night - carnival time - get robbed in a crowd, have a taxi driver scam you...
And learn to let it all go - It is not about possessions - it's about Life and Passion.
That feeling that you are alive, right here, right now. Feeling the electric vibrancy of Rio and appreciating the 'joie de vivre' with the fellow next to you, regardless of where either of you are from.

''In Brasil the motto seems to be; if you've got it, flaunt it, and if you don't, flaunt it even more.'' 
John Malathronas

Mei (Rio, March 2011)

Welcome back

This moment was seized in a stormbeaten light-house on the Pacific Ocean. The dark green chair is worn and torn, yet draws you humbly into its peaceful release. Then there is a touch of ”been there done that” nonchalance in the way the window focusingly leads you out and towards a pure blue sky, seamlessly joining into the distant water.
I feel this moment like an old couple welcoming you back home. The ocre in the bottom right corner adds to this effect. It reminds me of Grandparents. Coffee stains. Homemade cooking. Picture frames. Non-judgemental free flowing trueblood love. The irreplaceable dampness of a Sunday afternoon.
Truthful. Simple. Authentic.
I hope this space, Gnubrev, will inspire you to do the same.  To feel at home, and suprise yourself in something true. Now get out there and get those colors splashing!

-Thank you-

A. (San Francisco Area, May 2011)