LET Your voice rise up
www.sp-read.com info@sp-read.com
COVER/ West Oxs CONTACT/ westoxs@gmail.com
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I will say just few words about this magazine.
ILLUSTRATION/ De Pica WEB SITE/ depica.blogspot.com
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WE ARE SP-READ Editorial Director Edoardo Ulisse Graphic Designer Ilaria Manna Columnist The American Dude Angeliki Mitropolou Damien Lansade Versusergosum Stefano Elmi Ruzica Devic Translators Gigi Andriani Giulia Terni
Illustrations De Pica West Oxs Sintolabile Photography Ruzica Devic Odysseas Galinos Paparounis Andrea Tamburro
I've a black hole and it's called Albania. Stefano Elmi
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020 021
Breakfast in berlin #1 Edoardo Ulisse
Yes! I'm along way from home Mogwai Live in Indonesia Ruzica Devic
010 011 Travelling alone together The American Dude
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000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009
INDEX
Transmission review
The passion of Andrew and Melissa
The nomadic diaries Journalistic fail in the Netherlands Damien Lansade
018 019
016 017
012 013 014 015 024
Europe is burning #1 Angeliki Mitropolou
Psyco Politics Versusergosum
BREAKFAST IN BERLIN /
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At first sight it seems to be an abandoned tresorwerk , dusty and covered by crumbling wall paint. Actually it is. But who has the time to go over with the vacum cleaner when you have more than 400 artists passing by in less than 6 months? We start our trip inside Mica Moca’s experience from the ending point. An Italian coffee machine (a full manual Gaggia, one of the best in my opinion). I, 14 h per day, just a coffee for breakfast, free fresh mint tee and a full weekly art schedule are just some features of the guy who gave birth to this place. I met Christoph in the afternoon, while the first north see’s coldness was entering the bar room, underlining the importance of a hot tee also if someone says we’re still in summer. We started to talk. Mica Moca is an artistic initiative settled in a 6500 mq building close to Wedding s-bahn station, north west Berlin. It was formerly a plant for assembling money strongboxes, then waiting for being renewed till the moment when Christoph contacted the owner of it Mariano Pichler, Italian art collector and architect. He was wise enough to understand how wise Mica Moca’s project was and gave the space for a 6 month experiment, from May till end of September.
How did this started? " In one month we set up the place , the website, the Facebook group and prepared the opening. We had 18 acts in May and more than 600 people came. This was a big surprise for us, especially in a competitive artistic market such as Berlin is. But all these people were expecting something from us. The question was: how the fuck are we going to cover 5/6 months of program? I’m here in Berlin since June last year, we didn’t have any clue, I wasn’t linked to the art scene. " "And then?"
"Then more than 250 artists just arrived and proposed everyday their ideas" "That sounds like you did something new, something special here.." "What I'm doing here I'm not considering as new or avant-garde" "It's just a need?" "Exactly"
007
The point, now, maybe is that a lot of artists came here to Berlin to produce/expose/get famous/pretend-to-be and there’s not enough space for all of them. Or maybe they/we don't know where spaces are?
Christoph has a precise point of view about that. And it is strictly connected with the speech we started about the relationship between Urbanism and Art. " Is it possible to make a strategy in order for this urbanism not to eat the art after it made its effect, the economical one. As long as there’s no strategy in urbanism it’s wild west. In a poor area of the city, like Wedding is, artists come and start to ‘make’ and also if is a legal situation (unlike the squat scene of the 90's, e.n.) it’s still guerrilla action. No money, no funding.
Just arrive and start to DO.
Then, real estate start to rise the prices (like Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg and, in the last years, Neukolln) and art has to leave. A friend of mine had 4-5 places in Potsdamer Platz. They were completely abandoned and she started to use them in order for the places to stop being wet and dirty. This is called Trockenwohnen (Dry living). Then real estate came and said - Oh, it’s a nice space and it’s used - . So she was kicked out. This is the classical bad aspect of gentrification, that has not a negative connotation itself, it got it because it developed like this; people don’t really take care about it. Urbanism and art are in 2 different part of Berlin administration, one is considered an economical thing, the other just art. As soon as an area is developed, real estate rises and then the economical aspect is stronger than the artistic ones. And, of course, art always loses. When you, as an art promoter, ask for money, the normal answer is ‘there’s no money’ because the value that was created by artists went into another department. If you have urbanism and art in the same department, for example, you can have a long term plan. If we, as city administration, want to develop an area, and we have 50 properties, we’ll sell just 30 for now. In the 20 left we’ll do art for some other years before selling them. And then only 10 will be sold. And a certain amount of this money, the VALUE that was created by art could go back to art. So artists could participate in the value they created and in the next 10 -15 years you’ll have a sort of ‘protected island’ for art."
"For example putting an ‘eye’ on the temporary free places (like in the Katasteramt -the land register in Germany, e.n.). If I know that there’s a plant that is not going to be used or will be renovated in the next months or years, I can propose to the landlord to use it for art in the meanwhile. Like we did here. But we’ve been lucky. If a list, a database of this spaces exists , I could have at least the possibility to present my idea." And let the place dry. Got it. "So we've to speak about this" "This idea is already proposed. The entire city is speaking about that, since Berlin doesn’t have a big economy, big companies that make a lot of money, or big industries then probably the biggest one is the creative industry. Tourism itself lives thanks to art". Christoph lighted a cigarette and offered me a coffee. Why not. Actually it was a really good coffee. And the coldness of the knocking autumn faded away overwhelmed by the warmness of these ideas. Everyone is non stop telling me that Berlin is becoming hype and commercial, a tourist’s luna park, with a disgusted expression in their face. In a recent Resident Advisor’s documentary (www.residentadvisor.net) DImitri Hegemann (Tresor club founder) said that 70-80% of clubbers and people around here are tourists. So the point something thought about as a problem by someone, with the right angle of view, can be just the fucking solution, if Berlin administration will be wise enough to understand the connection. Now time for Mica Moca Berlin is at an end. But Christoph described it to me not as a concrete space, but more as an idea, a project. Maybe next breakfast will be in Warsaw, or Madrid.
Where/ Berlin Author/ Edoardo Ulisse Photo/ micamoca.de//artreview.com Web Site/ micamoca.de
009
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But how do I know about empty spaces?
TRAVELLING ALONE TOGETHER I sit on a wooden bench at the bus stop on Burleigh and Humboldt, smoking a cigarette, passing the time. The day is grey and wet; a group of about ten people play American Football in the field across the street. Hipsters walk by, their scarves and glasses and beards unable to hide that fact that while their hipster friends call them A-Rad or Lapinski, they will always be known to their mothers as little Johnny and Eric.
GO!
The bus comes, but the driver didn't see me. Realizing her mistake (I assume), she pulls off further down the street. I run to catch it. Perhaps this was unnecessary - I climb aboard and the driver doesn't take off.
She sits there for about five minutes, talking on her phone. A girl gets on the bus shortly after I do. She wears a black and red checkered jacket with a fur lined hood and a blue backpack. When she gets up about ten minutes later, I see it is a Chicago Bears backpack. She sits forward, silently looking out the window, wondering when we will move again, about her homework, about her boyfriend, about her dog, why the bus was so empty. And it was. It is sunday, we are the only two people aboard. We sit far away from one another, she all the way at the front, I against the back wall. The grey plastic seats with their blue felt made me think of the seats on the trams in Germany. Same seats, same plastic hand loops for those who stand. The bus takes off. We pass by the park in which Occupy Milwaukee has camped for the past couple months. There are many tents, and a new, large wigwam has been erected in the center. Their signs, declaring desire, demanding economic justice broadcast to the traffic that their voices would be heard, that action is being taken. We double back onto the bus' main route along Burleigh, driving westward. More people enter the bus, the clinking of their change sounding like the plink of rain droplets that had been fallen earlier in the day.
#1
#2
A man sits on the back bench near me, with headphones in his ears coming from the phone in his hand. He wears a grey wool peacoat and a brown knit hat, underneath which his chest-length dreadlocks compliment the tuft of a goatee on his chin. I strike up a conversation with him. His name is Matthew, 23 years old and a recent grad from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He currently works as a freelance designer, and would like to have a job as an illustrator. For him, the bus affords a sense of freedom which driving does not; it is time to be alone, to think his thoughts, and not to concentrate on the process of driving. Listening to his music, staring out the window, puts him in a zone which relaxes him. For Matthew, the bus is the first form of transport. We end our conversation, I take his card, and we return to our separate spaces. I watch him, as he looks out the window at the houses we pass. I reflect on how our experiences and views of where we live are different from one another.
STOP!
Where am I? Take me there, bus.
For a moment, I recognize where I am. 82nd street. A few blocks north of here is the German Immersion Grade School. On 84th and Burleigh is the Milwaukee School of Languages, a high school. An older man talks on his phone. One can hear the cigars and liquor in his voice, gruff and worn by years of use and misuse. I realize we are no longer in Milwaukee, rather, in one of the suburbs of the city. Probably Wauwatosa. Yep. Wauwatosa, to the west of the city. I feel that we are near the end of the line, most of the people on the bus have gotten off at this point. The only ones who remain are me and another girl, who, oddly enough, sits in the same seat as the first girl at the beginning of the trip. There's a certain anonymity to riding the bus. I got on thinking I would speak to people about their experiences and what the bus means to them, but I have ended up just like all the others, walled off by my music and my own anonymity.
We don't know each other, why would we speak? We come to the end of the line. In the brief five minute window in which we are stopped, I burn a quick one. We start to drive back. The area by the end of the line looks drastically different from street to street. There are busy highways with hundreds of cars, a golf course, industrial plants, large shopping areas. The juxtaposition between dilapidation and consumerism is stark, but the bus is peaceful and simple to understand. Driving a car is to remove oneself entirely, but riding the bus is a collective separation. Abandoned tennis courts with their nets long gone, their concrete defiantly broken by the grasses sprouting from beneath, as is to reject what mankind has built. It will all be rejected in time. Two guys get one who know one another. One plays hip hop from his phone and sings along while laughing loudly. His afro is large and wild, his sunglasses dark and his smile wide. We pass a shuttered club which advertises itself as "The Kool Spot." On a section of wall mural, sentences declare "Stop da violence, no gunz now!" but underneath has the unmistakable slashes of gang symbols.
We drive on.
Where/ Milwakee, USA Author/ The American Dude Illustration/ West Oxs
011
I put my earphones in and turn on The Radio Dept's "Bus." Truthfully, I have no idea where this bus is going, I simply climbed aboard and wanted to see where it took me. We've been going west along Burleigh avenue. Houses made of cream city brick, facades dating to the early 20th century, churches, salons, shuttered stores. Auto repair shops stand alone on paved corners, advertising their low prices and professional services. A large hospital stands looming across from a corner chinese restaurant. The question of where we are going is near and dear to the heart of every man. The bus doesn't attempt to solve this problem for us - it simply takes us forwards, on a predetermined route. Certainly everyone on this bus knows where they are going, the exception being me. A cemetery, cut in two by the progress of highways, sits on two sides of a street, the gravestones up to the fence on either side. Progress does not halt for any man, be he living or dead.
013
EUROPE IS BURNING
REVOLUTION A word that Greeks had only been reading in history books for the past few years is nowadays becoming an everyday situation. If I had to choose one word to describe the prevailing feeling that the majority of Greeks share, it would definitely be disappointment. No, let me think again. It would be anger. Or else frustration. Perhaps it would be a combination that can be illustrated as the difficulty to breath while it gets harder and harder.
Greeks are feeling numb when watching politicians talking on TV. More and more measures are added to the political agenda with very ambiguous results. Measures that protect are nowhere close to solving great problems like tax evasion , lack of organization and bureaucracy. Trust in politicians has been lost and that's the reason why people saw positively the selection of Mr Papadimos as a prime minister. He is the Messiah with an expiration date. After that? Oh well, Greeks do enjoy a wild goose chase and they are already looking for the new candidates! The main problem is that they are looking for a politician again.
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015 Greece is still alive, though, and so are the Greeks. They might not be protesting every single day in front of the Parliament at Syntagma Square but they are definitely present. Contrary to popular belief, life and evolution have not stopped (yet)! Yes, it is true that I might be characterized (maybe accused) as being a supporter of utopic ideas. But indeed there are a lot good things happening in Greece as we speak. Thessaloniki is going to be the European Youth Capital for the year 2014 and many interesting events of all kinds will take place there. Youngsters have started being more enthusiastic and supporting more independent artists like alternative music bands that (still) play because they love the sound of drums and guitars. One such band is called "Minor Project". They are university students and good friends for many years. They have been playing in small pubs like SIX D.O.G.S (a new model for a space in the center of Athens). They turn the summer feeling and colors into lyrics and music. And they are not the only ones. Things are happening. November indeed was a very productive month in terms of culture. Some indicative events that took place were the Athens Photo Festival, the Athens Biennale Monodrome and the 2nd Low Budget Festival. Quite recently the Biennale for Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean took place in Thessaloniki, demonstrating in a way that Greece is still an active member of the EU. Every week there is a new event in almost every Greek city. For the big cities whoever is interested can find several ways out of misery. Greeks need to embrace the art of being happy by redefining satisfaction. The hope lies in the youth to think and act out of the box. Greeks need to stop expecting and start taking action. After all, revolution is again used in their everyday vocabulary. Where/ Thessaloniki - Athens, Greece Author/ Angeliki Mitropolou Photo/ Odysseas Galinos Paparounis Web Site/ flickr: odysseasgr
JOURNALISTIC FAIL IN THE NETHERLANDS
"I’ll be close to the Grossplanetarium in Prenzlauer Berg; it’s a huge iron ball in the middle of a green field. When you’re there, look for a parking lot on the left. I’m driving a red Volvo." Well, the indication that Aussie gave me on the phone sounded strange but I wouldn’t have done better actually. So here I am, (almost) right on time, to meet the Australian driver of my carpool from Berlin to Amsterdam in a red Volvo. The two other travel companions were already there, quietly sitting in the car. A tiny Greek girl with a strange curly black tuft on the top of her head and a red-haired-red-bearded Australian stoner greet me gently while I sit in the car. Here we go. "Hey, what’s your name again? What d’you do here in Berlin? Why are you goin’ to Amsterdam? Have you ever been there?"... and so on. The driver is an Australian. He came here for one year to live with his German girlfriend.
He’s called Andrew Noel Smith - I wouldn’t have guessed. He plays music in the subway and the streets of Berlin to get his dough. "In summer you can get up to one hundred euros in an hour" he tells me "but in winter it’s more like fifty for an afternoon... And you have to pay the authorization to be allowed to play in the subway. It costs around like eight euros..." As a voluntary journalist, I don’t think it’s that bad actually. His "favorite band in the whole world" is Radiohead. He doesn’t like minimal techno and doesn’t understand what’s with this shit in Berlin. You know It’s like Always the same! (Later on he plays a whole CD of fucking trance music. Yeah right! It’s Dj Tiesto, d’you know him?). What about me? Well I’m going to a techno festival in Amsterdam..." I say shyly.Tristan, the guy next to him is an Australian too they’ve never met before though, it’s a big country you know.
He’s doing a Euro-trip. He liked Berlin. He’s going to Amsterdam. I’m having a really hard time with his accent but somehow I understand he lives somewhere south of Victoria where his days consist of surfing and fucking. He’s in Europe for one year, which is made easier by the fact that he has, in addition to his Australian passport, a British one. He hopes the gigs will be as good in Amsterdam as in Berlin. And that the girls will be easier to fuck. I’m wondering if Australians are all stereotypes but I kind of like the assumed binary philosophy of that one. I propose him to join me to get fucked up with my friends when we get to Amsterdam. Rock & roll” he says.The Greek girl sitting next to me tells me from under her fro she’s an intern in architecture firm. She is working for one of the three studios Richie Hawtin entrusted with
the conception of his future house in Berlin. She had never heard of him before though. She’s not going to Amsterdam, but to a small town a hundred kilometers before to meet her boyfriend who is studying there. She draws abstract things with a pencil while talking to me all the way. I’m wondering how she manages to do that in a moving car without throwing up. After a seven-hour ride through Germany and the Netherlands and after having dropped the Greek girl in the middle of a shitty town which I don’t remember the name, Andrew drops us off, Tristan and I, at Sloterdijk, a station five minutes by train from Amsterdam Central Station and the inner city. I buy a beer before we get the train. So too does my throw away drinking mate. I expected nothing less from that fucking aussie.
I don’t know if you will ever try to arrange to meet friends in Amsterdam, but my advice to you if you happen to be in that situation is not tell them "let’s meet on the bridge in front of the train station", the city is basically made of bridges.
Quite unequally well-realized paintings hang on the naked walls of the underground. It really looks like a dirty nuthouse for old acidheads... which actually has a quite good effect when you’re stoned. I would have stayed longer if free drinks weren’t waiting upstairs. We’ve been fooled. The bar will close in ten minutes. We take four beers each. The restaurant is already closed but there are still some chips... and no sauce. After a short yet "interesting" detour to the hostel disco we soon hit our beds where our nice Spanish roommate has put ear plugs on our pillows because he "snore[s] a lot". His qualification should have been stronger. We didn’t sleep very well. Hard waking up in this wet afternoon... The housewife knocks on the door at 9am telling us to get ready to leave. Right now! We spend the day randomly wandering around the canals wondering what tourists do in Amsterdam outside the coffee shops when it’s raining. I’m the only one who doesn’t smoke pot during the day. I’m not really getting unanimity in the decision making when it’s a question of going somewhere further than 10mn walking from the red light district. We end up drinking Coke on a rooftop before we get beers and our makeshift lunch for our ride to the gig. That’s why I’m here after all. We take a train that leads us silently to 'S-Hertogenbosch -seriously, what a name - through flat and empty landscapes in a thick fog. The city is really the kind of place I think of when visualizing the word "sinister". We are way in advance so we find a spot somewhere in the train station to sit and eat our lavish vodka-and-bread based dinner. A thirsty French girl spots us and decides to sit with us. She came here for Time Warp too.
Fucking vodka... Do I really have to interview people in these circumstances? When I get there entrance to the "press accreditations" isn’t open yet. Press accreditation isn’t really the proper word in fact; I just received a free VIP ticket. I soon understood when I got inside that no DJs were going to hang out in the empty "VIP lounge" where only drunk wealthy fans were drowsing in the dark, waiting in vain for an autograph or a conversation... I know, I fit right into that bunch except for the wealthy thing. And I’m not going to have an interview. Sad thing, my chief editor will be disappointed... And who wants that? The first people I meet who seem like the right candidates for an interview are the medical staff. They are quite disappointing though... Me too... disappointed also. Let’s forget about the interview, I’ll try the "VIP lounge" again later. My comrades are already high. They met some Italians in the parking lot who sold them high quality cheap MDMA. They were lucky and they are generous – two good points. Foggy memories of sound and colors in gigantic metal halls, the DJs follow one another in storms of colored lights and green lasers. I’m lost in a storm of moving corpses with my ears close to collapse. I make regular pauses in the VIP lounge sipping beers quietly drown in vodka – or the opposite, I don’t remember. But nobody shows up. I woke up on the parking lot in the car of a friend who arrived at the festival later in the night. I’m still wondering how and when I ended up there. I don’t have an interview. The bastards fooled me. Anyway I lost my Dictaphone... Where/ S-Hertogenbosch, Holland Author/ Damien Lansade
017
Yet after a while and several phone calls, we somehow finally managed to find each other. The Australian mate has to find a hostel. Phone numbers exchanged and... Let’s go to the coffee shop! What a strange city... My friends are already way too stoned to take any decision concerning the goal of our night of wandering around. I propose we look for a place where we can drink and get hazed at the same time. Rare thing in Amsterdam now...We end up in a shitty hole on the way to our hostel drinking expensive booze with a perished egg smell before deciding to go on our way to bed. When we enter the lobby though, we learn there is a sort of art fair in the hostel. We have to vote for our favorite artist after having seen the paintings in the underground so we can have free beers and food in the restaurant. Why not?
PSYCHO POLITICS I must admit I'm quite envious when I get to know that my coevals already have employment contracts in cool places or contacts with cool people. They issue statements like. We were a different reality back in the 90s and I know that back in the 90s they were 4 years old and they were eating up their bogeys in kindergarten. They went to Bocconi , or their parents know the right people, or they hook up with relatives of local politicians, this is usually their biography.
Engaged with XXX's nephew from Child of XXX from birth up to now Coming from a rich family
You will never read this in their European resumees In a world full of lions someone must play the rabbit role, though; everybody wants to be the flower, nobody wants to be the vase; everybody wants to be the champagne, nobody wants to be the flute glass (non-literary quotes from Noriko no shokutaru (Noriko's dinner table) by Sion Sono. Japanese people are wise and sick). People say
Go abroad.
In our national newspapers young people leaving is called brain drain (young people coming is called immigration). I don't like the idea of having to leave Italy, I don't like the idea of having to run away to survive, I don't even like the idea of being out of place here.
I'm an unpaid intern who works even more than 8 hours a day everyday for 6 months: in England, unpaid internships have been considered as illegal, while in Italy people say that it's normal In my opinion, a job is that kind of barter in which I give you my time and you give me money in exchange. In Italy a job is like the pussy of prick-teaser for those who never manage to get laid: you know it's there, you need it, you can smell it, you get exploited to be able get it but they never give it to you. There are rich people, poor people and those in the middle. Rich people, of course, lead. Poor people stay behind and for those in the middle it depends. The young are by definition less well-off, they become adults when they begin to be well-off. How are they gonna become so if nobody gives them anything? They live in a constant condition of subjection, they are deprived of their self-exteem and power. Without perspectives, without the chance of perceiving the possibility of a future. To be born and raised in the economical crisis means to deepen the gap between who is well-off and who isn't. Political and social reality innerly and psychologically affects those who are less well-off. This doesn't hold for those who have money (a lot of it). Those without money are inhibited by the impossibility of doing something. They either do nothing or leave. I don't understand what's the use, for my Italian society, of such a situation. Which benefit it can get from this. Italian politicians, now old, will die, their safes will be filled with loads of money and their children will benefit from it. What about the rest? Lying idle? I do not get it.
Where are the people? Where's humanity? Where are the feelings? Why?
Where/ Italy Author/ Versusergosum Illustration/ Sintolabile Web Site/ sintolabile.blogspot.com Translator/ Gigi Andriani
019
I don't like the idea of having to turn into a lion and I don't want to think I'd have been better off being born in a different family and everybody says Go abroad. By now, in Italy, the only solution left seems to be going abroad. Perhaps it's true, I don't know. We've spent years listening to politicians who denied that their behaviour would have had consequences on our lives, on our future. We demonstrated for this and we heard back from our representatives that we were bamboccioni , good-for-nothing, shitty people. Now in Italy there's a technical government. Our new prime minister delivered a speech, he explicitly said this: it is because of that kind of politics that our new generations struggle to find a job, that there is such a consistent gap between the North and the South, that our national debt is so high. It's not that we didn't realise this, but the problem, according to me, a nobody, lies in the economy, of course, but also in our minds. And decrees are of little help for the psyche.
I have big black gap that is called Albania, the only things I know and associate to this are: the Fascist invasion. Enver Hoxha. The Vlora ship. The satellites on the roofs. Rubber dinghies. Mission “Arcobaleno. Sali Berisha. Igli Tare. Broken Mercedes. My former neighbour, of whom I don't know the name. Such big black gap posseses a limited knowledge of Albania, I don't know about the rest. In Ancona all the busy tourists with their flip-flops pass in front of us and hop onto ferryboats to Greece. On our ferry nobody embarks. A part from 2 guys with Vespas, the ferry is full of Albanian families going back home for the summer holidays. Everybody speaks Italian. And us.
Two tickets Ok, car? No, we have bikes, do we have to pay? I'm not sure, it never happened to me. Wait.... no, you don't have to pay
The ferry has a Philippine crew and the food is terrible. As we approach Duress the first thing I spot is the Italian Guardia di Finanza patrol boat that passes right next to us. The half sunk fishing boats in the harbour. Our mobile phone are curiously silent, no typical sms assault by telephone companies like when you usually enter a country. On the display it just says “Vodafone”, nothing more. We pass customs with our loaded bikes and ask informations to the captain of the ferry who has just disembarked.
How do we get to the city centre?
Big smile and the answers: Try over there, Indurain and Armstrong! But where are you going then? Tirana, then Berat tomorrow On a bike? Careful with the roads and good luck boys!
Good. The first person I see in the traffic jam of Duress is an Albanian guy who always drives around my village with his noisy Spider with high volume music. I don't know his name neither. Our eyes meet and we greet each other with a nod of the head. Next to the port there are rail lines, but no trace of train is to be found, a part from old rusty wagons lying of the sides. Everything is full of dirt and children happily play in it. But what you notice immediately is the contrast. After these India-like scenes, getting closer to the fictitious centre, we see more or less the same things you find in Italy, exactly the same! The same cars, with the same number plates, and other similar stuff. Then stunning buildings, building sites, supermarkets, brand new German and American suvs. And what about the broken Mercedes? There are also there, luckily. I am relieved.
ALBANIA.
AND IT'S CALLED
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The furniture is about as old as the house. A second living room with crammed bookcases on the first floor. Our first impact of Duress as soon as we disembarked, with the chaotic traffic, broken or brand new and, at times, kitsch cars, all feels so far away.
And our stereotype of Albanians? Has it vanished at the very start, just a few hours after our arrival?
The family is certainly peculiar, even they know it. The head of the household, Mr Giuseppe, starts off by saying: the problem here are those who come back from Italy in the summer with their huge cars, they always create a lot o mess. We still cannot have an opinion, we have to digest all those contrasts to which we were not ready for. The house turns out to be the former consulate of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The funiture inside, the paintings and every single object seem to be unaffected by the passing of time. Difficult to explain how it survived two World Wars, the Nazi and Fascist invasions, and around 50 years of paranoid socialism, one of the strongest ever existed. Ideological affinities that made Albania first ally with and later enemy against all. Yugoslavia was the first impure nation to break all kinds of relations in 1948. Then was the turn of the Soviet Union, with the consequent expulsion from the Warsaw Pact (1968). Lastly in the 70's it was China's turn. The Marxist-Leninist ideological purity had to be preserved, and a country like Albania and its citizens were the best candidate for this task, at least that is what was in the mind of president Henver Hoxha. A project that was not easily achievable by anybody. In order to move forward it was necesary to posses a certain amount of courage and insanity, depending on the perspective you look at it.
Conclusion: TOTAL ISOLATION.
Author/ Stefano Elmi Web Site/scrittimaiali.wordpress.com Translator/ Giulia Terni
021
The skyline of Duress is made of concrete. Buildings under construction, old soviet blocks, detached houses still to be finished. Finally a bit of history, we find an ancient Roman amphitheatre in the centre, surrounded by semi-detached houses with balconies orientated towards the semi cycle. Surreal. Technical note: beautiful girls almost everywhere. The Lonely Planet, our guidance in this first cyclo-touristic approach to Albania, directs us towards a Bed&Breakfast in the city centre. We cannot find it. Nobody seems to know it. In the end an American and an antiquarian from Rome pop out of a garden and tell us kindly that this is the B&B we were looking for. Then they give us the telephone number of the owner. They are very curious about our bikes and ask about the details of the journey we are about to face. They are together. Shorty after arrives a guy speaking with a Florentine accent, he's been studying there for more than 10 years. He is the son of the owners, Tedeschini. The house is quite anomalous for Albania. It's old. It was build in the 19th century and is incredibly well preserved, in spite of all the unthinkable invaders and regimes, and resistant to the construction boom of the past 20 years. Such boom treats our sight with a 15 storey building on the opposite side of the little paved street where the B&B is. We lift our heads until our necks hurt, and we almost manage to see the top. The Tedeschini's house has a colonial look, as if it belonged to a decaying empire. Here everybody considers us crazy because we live in such an old house tells us Mrs Alma, who had arrived in the meanwhile. Low house. Ground floor and first floor. Green shutters. Worn out but dignified plaster on the walls. A big garden with trees, plants and flowers. Everything is out of time. We enter through a wide entrance and walk up the stairs.
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YES! I'M ALONG WAY FROM HOME MOGWAI LIVE IN INDONESIA
When I came to Indonesia I was sure this will be one long straight year without drugs, alcohol and rock and roll. Two months of being here, flipped my mind in so many ways and made me believe that here everything is possible. And indeed it is. Not in my wildest dreams would I ever think that Mogwai would play in Indonesia. But they did. On December 4th Mogwai rocked Indonesia. This was their first and only show in Indonesia and for that special night they choose Bandung, capital city of West Java. Bandung is together with Jakarta and Yogyakarta the center of modern art and culture. Here you can find all modern urban trends. Anyway, it was somehow cool and strange that Mogwai chose Bandung and not Jakarta, but as cool and weird as playing in Indonesia at all.
The concert was organized in Dago Tea House, built during the Dutch colonial times, situated on top of the hill with great view over Bandung. I came just in time for the sunset and rainbow, which showed up after hard hard rain so typical for monsoon season that just started in Indonesia. Pink sky with sun going down and with view over the city was just perfect opening scene for Mogwai show. And the concert was full mind explosion. Opening band, Alfa Alfa from Jakarta, was very good with typical post rock sound, very similar to Mogwai or Godspeed You Black Emperor. Excellent choice for opening band. And it was nice surprise for me to hear that kind of sound coming from Indonesia. Concert hall was full with more then five hundred Mogwai devoted fans.
Mogwai rocked Indonesia that night and you could see on their faces how pleased they were because of that. Playing mostly songs from their new album Hard Core Will Never Die But You Will but also older stuff from very early albums that made even more mind melting atmosphere among the hungry crowd. This concert was for me one of the best shows ever. As I heard from young people who are following this kind of music, you can’t see this type of concerts happening in Indonesia so often or ever. That’s why this night was so special and in some sense revolutionary. It showed clearly the need for it among the rising generation. There is an audience, we are just missing the bands.
Where/ Bandung, Indonesia Author/ Ruzica Devic Photo/ Ruzica Devic Editing/ Elena Kragulj
TRANSMISSION REVIEW “
On the stage, behind a wall of lights, e.Claypool are playing, a bunch of guys with a natural attitude to tickle the knobs of their Akai controller like their girlfriend's nipples. Or at least that’s what I think.
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After the show I had a chat with Bernardo, a member of the Claypool Family and organizer of that second edition of their showcase, "Transmission". Surrounded by an urban atmosphere and drown in some rounds of gold tequila (well, both of us), he showed me some towers built out of televisions, mannequin’s heads taken from Blade Runner's set and some guys printing live hard-techno design on fruit of the loom shirts; "We're now in the second step of our postmodernist evolution".
We are all becoming cyborgs, following blindly what Society tells to us. But sometimes the machine arises against the creator" and he put the hands on a pink head with a serious face and a mohican pvc haircut "we're the final product of the Nihilism, since years, steadily and slowly decomposing. I understand what's happening, which are the rules we have to follow. And I don't give a shit". In the meanwhile the stage is taken by TOMZ.DB (CROMEDROP) and TIBURON. The oxygen starts to switch into vibes acid like the feeling of a gasoline's shot. Without salt and lemon. But getting you high. All these artists, djs, screenprinters and visual designer are from Rome. They're cool. I mean, they give the impression they know what are they doing. "Italians aren't bad people. They're chill people complaining. And when they're trying to find out a compromise they restrain themselves instead of doing more. Only when they're arriving to a point of no return they show their rage, the one build up in years". And the rage behind the Transmission turned into a postmodern show of old televisions, techno stadtkinder and thick curtains of sounds. With the constant smell of the hot-press non-stop leaving alien signs on scared textiles. Where/ Rome,Italy Photo/ Andrea Tamburro
023
After the 5th beer we just decided to move. It was around 1 a.m., that's fuckin late for Rome, where cops start to march throughout the city around 2 a.m., hunting assholes like us with a bottle in the hand. Yes, is not allowed to drink on the streets during the night. To balance it out, the corners are full of pushers selling heroin to spoilt boys dressed like ravers with expensive clothes and punk dogs and beer already in their bellies. When we decide to solve the problems we act like trying to cut down CO2 emissions forbidding to fart.Btw, clubs are open. And that night a dear friend of mine brought me to Locanda Atlantide. Cheap entrance and I-don't-give-a-shit-about-your-shoes bouncers. Nice start. Coming back from Berliner clubs I had really low expectations about electro nights in Italy, but when I start to hear psychedelic bells floating around massive basses close to a cyber-punk installation I fade into a different point of view.
THE PASSION OF ANDREW AND MELISSA
The old school Fiat Panda from the glorious late 80's was overeating the asphalt with its 95 km/h. I was sharing the car with the Depech Mode (yes, without the final "e") and their dj equipment. 50 minutes before their performance – 'The Lost Tapes' - we were still on the highway. The radio was missing, so our soundtrack for that 100 km from Florence to the outskirts of Bologna was composed by the hard rain trying to smash the roof of the car and some weird sounds coming from the engine. "Do you hear this noise?" "which one?" "This one! Did you heard it?" "believe me man, there're no noises". After a couple
of musical/theatrical performances that I didn't actually get at all, I moved back to the open bar, finding in a delicious wine one of the best guests. Well, you know, art is dead, like Frank Sinatra or the Roman empire. It's just a matter of taste. Then the lights went off. And a massive feedback surrounded by low-fi signals started to fill the space around me. A wise sailor look-like guy was moving a dictaphone in front a 15W Marshall, hitting with a sniper accuracy the foot-pedals on the desk. When everybody was still trying to understand what was going to happen, Melissa enter into the 3x3 meter linoleum carpet in front of the console, starting to perform in a middle way between the most beautiful classical ballet and a scene taken from the Ring. They went on for 40 min, never decreasing the fire coming out from the soundsystem and that surreal stage. I started trippin' . And it brought me far. Really far. But I didn't know where. So I decided to ask directly to them, bringing Andrew and Melissa in a toilet - the only warm and not noisy place there - to clarify that.Andrew took a sip of his dark beer and close a bit his eyes, finding The word. "Passion. This was the destination I'd like to bring the audience towards to. Passion is the absolute expressionism.
There's no beginning, there's no point, is pure expressionism. Maybe this is coming from my childhood, where this love, this passion, this hate, were stopped from this rigid structure coming from society, politics and economics. The origins of the decease." I moved my eyes to Melissa. I still had in my mind her legs and hairs and arms floating inside an invisible bubble on the linoleum, her overloaded energy flooding out of her body in the shape of shouts. "I had to shout" she said, "the energy I build up inside me was struggling. I can't go on, I said to myself in some moments." "So I responded with a sound shaped on your pathos" added Andrew , "then she was on the floor hard breathing and I was a bit worried. When she stand up on her feet it was a relief". She laugh. He laugh. I look to them fascinated. I've met several artists working shoulder to shoulder, sharing not only the stage but also part of their lives. But not so often I've seen such a so deep connection that you can feel from their performances, words, sights. If this is the Passion they're speaking about, I wonder to come back there soon. (see the video and the complete interview to Andrew L. Hooker and Melissa Pasut on www.sp-read.com) Where/ Bologna, Italy
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