London Borough of Hackney (Unfamiliar Faces, Vegan Anarchists, and Autumn Smell)

Hackney is a lovely place. A little scaring, but I guess it's only because I'm a newby, and I can't recognise people's attitudes by their faces yet - as one can do when is familiar with a place. It will take time. And I'm not used to so many black people around. It's not a racial judgement, mine: it's a realization. It's kinda weird to wander around these white fancy terraced homes, and seeing old black people talking/smoking at the front door of them... I mean: this is the stereotype we have of Jamaica, not of London! But still is nice. And they all great you!

Greeting people you don't know seems to be the easiest and most common thing here. I began a walk of the neighbourhood in late morning yesterday, to meet up with Brigida in the afternoon, and walking down the street to reach the local shopping area to buy some food I was greeted by all the people I saw without knowing them: a woman at the front door of her house, an old man while mending his car, a young guy riding his bike, the dustman who was sweeping the street. This was so weird!

After a few blocks, I eventually reached 'my' place: the Pogo Cafè, the meet-up point of the anarchists/squatters of the area - vegan, gluten free and definitely laid-back. With lovely people inside, sharing experiences about squatting and travelling, or talking about any issues, or simply sitting on a couch and reading. Brigida and I had lunch there and could grasp some words form the tables around (you know: we are anthropologists, always spying other people's lives) - definitely nice ones!

We ended up with a long walk, reaching another nice street - Broadway Market, where on Saturdays there's a vegetables & fruits market - full of fancy people, where you unpredictably feel 'home' even if it has nothing in common with the one you left in your hometown.

And again, walked through London Fields. The leaves mixed with the wet ground produced an autumn smell, and reminded me of many other good moments in my life - like a time warp where time bends on itself.

Is This an Ordinary Day (a Walk in Camden, Unexpected Kindness, and British Good Food)?

Waking up quite early in the morning last Saturday - 4 cats around are not really the best company to sleep as long as you would like to! - I made up my mind to get to Camden Lock Market and have a walk around there before meeting in the afternoon with the London Art & Culture group.

I took the overtrain and then walked down the railway station to reach the market area. Camden is a folkloristic place to say the least, where people go to exhibit themselves and tourists buy any kind of fake punk stuff to have the feeling they recall an old memory, born and developed here, who affected them not only in teenager years - fucking seductive for the ones of us who still live/feel that way.

I mixed with this human flow, and became a further stranger among them. I ended up eating a wonderful seafood paella - sitting on the pavement in front of the channel. Sun was kissing me and about other 50 winter lizards, whilst looking around and thinking about my best friend and how much I desired to have her here with me to share this.

'Kindness' is the password, and no matter at the moment that it might sometimes be connected with hypocrisy - althugh I didn't notice this happening around me up now. "Anything bad that might happen to you, if you go through any crisis or feel like crying or just need to talk, call me!" - a complete unknow lovely girl from the London Art & Culture group told me this after visiting together a contemporary art exhibition last Saturday at Saatchi Gallery. Yes, this is London, something very different from the cold, cool town of our imagination. The exhibition wasn't astonishing: much of the works was somehow already seen - it seems to be quite hard to say something really new in contemporary art! But at least I met lovely Londoners in it - Rebecca and Samina. Yes, my dear ladies: I feel a little more confident now so I'll be able to join you also in the evening next time!

Sunday I met Brigida and her friend Ula to go to a free shop in the area of Spitalfields. But we soon ended up, with some more mates, to join a pub - one of the most messed up place I've ever been, with such a loud volume music you couldn't talk, so stuffy that you can understand why swein flue spread so much here, and with such a bad and mixed taste in forniture&decoration that you don't need to get drunk to throw up. This to tell the truth, but nervertheless the building was really lovely, and in any case there was a very nice and relaxed atmosphere - not to mention the brilliant Brigida's friends and the funny conversations we had with them!

We finally went for dinner in a place that deserves a mention, as everybody say UK food sucks: no, it doesn't (when you have an 'anthropologist of food' leading you to *highly selected* bistrots such as the St. John restaurant where you get local food cooked according to ancient recipes. What I tasted recalled no memory in my head, it was something unexpected and so good that you... ahem... can't believe it's British!

Chronicles from the Underworld (Lost in the Supermarket, Kultur Shock, and Another Little Sister)

Another day wandering around - still not knowing what to do next months, and taking the day off to go shopping and then relaxing, as I needed to... Went to Tesco in the area of Hackney Central Station: "I'm lost in the supermarket / I can no longer shop happily". Little differences for an anonymous non-place. I found my way by talking to people: "God gave us the tongue to be able to ask directions" - as I used to say to strangers on my first Inter-rail when I was 18, and everybody wondered how this young girl could feel home everywhere, even in perfectly unknown places.

I spent the evening watching with my flatmate (and landlord) "The Boat That Rocked" (on a big screen & videoprojection: sometimes is not bad to enjoy others' richness!), a lovely good film, with an amazing sountrack, about the first free radios in UK in late 60s. Rebels, pirates - we keep on building on that, isn't it? The last romantics...

Thuesday passed in writing emails to universities, then, in the evening, I eventually went to one of the best concerts I've seen the last years: Kultur Shock, playing at the Camden Underworld. The Underworld is a music club, in the basement of a tipical victorian building. A good band played as supporters, Drunken Balordi. Fine gipsy punk, slightly folk too, sometimes. But really good.

And then Kultur Shock went on stage. And their songs and attitudes are really engaging and immersive! Take a look at the video to have an idea of the two hours I had the pleasure and honour to join. The violinist was the sexiest woman I've ever seen, and the singer had such a powerful voice and shy attitude at the same time, that you felt like crying at the lyrics of their songs.

Little differences: people in Italy dance. With different styles, some being a real vision of beauty, some others making you smile as they still have to train - but yet, they all dance and move according to the rythm. Here none of the people of the audience could dance, not even move to the rythm. Running, punching, kicking or, less dangerously, simply jumping. No surprise that "the music of the people who couldn't play" - the punk - was born here by these beat&melody unconscious people! But I've been told that *the norther people* (expecially the ones from the area of Liverpool or the ones who come from different areas of England and then joined together) are much better, ahahah!...

The concert ended at 11pm - quite surprising for me used to concerts beginning at that hour, but this meant no worries in coming back. Even when not knowing where the bus stop to come back was. I asked a little young girl with violet hair, piercings, black clothes, with the @ stuck everywhere on her light jacket. And she moved from her way to lead me to the right bus stop - walking in the coldness of this humid town. "Aren't you cold?" I asked. "Yes" - she replied with a smile. We said goodbye at the bus stop, and she straight off kissed me on my cheeks. I will probably never see her again, but she is part of my personal beautiful world now - a sister, a mate, an 'accomplice' in making the *wider society* better, and more mutually supportive. So thanks, my dear: wish you to keep on behaving this way!

It's All London Baby (Complaining the English Way, Hygienic Norms, and Some Healthy Confusion)!

I had a wonderful dinner last Thursday with a few (girl)friends - where I learnt to complain in the English way. "Complaining the English way" means that instead of mumbling and telling yourself you will never go again in a place you disliked for something due to the service or the food, you make it notice to the manager of the place, who will do its best to compensate you for what went wrong - with a dessert, or in any other fancy way. Cool, isn't it? I like it - my critic attitude is definitely fulfilled by it.

Anyway, we had a lovely evening any anthropologists would dream about: talking with some other intellectuals, not from your field, about what we notice as similarities and differences between cultures - and Brigida and I are deeply embedded in this educational attitude and in broadering our knowledge about human cultures beyond academic community. So we spent some of our time teaching about hygienic norms and conceptions among gypsies, Italians and British people. When you take the shower in the morning, for example, we first use the bidet, and then take the shower: yes, we wash ourselves twice. And no, the bidet is not "that piece of forniture that fill the space between the WC and the sink". Just as we would never use the small towel - the one we use to dry our privates - to dry our hands and face as well, for which we use the bigger towel. Of course, we had finished our dinner before talking about these issues - it wouldn't be nice to talk about intimate washing whilst eating...
The day after I had what I consider the best interview I ever had for a job with whom could be considered at a first sight as a 'weird' professor - as I couldn't even understand, before meeting, is she was a 'she' or a 'he'. Her name is in fact Sue, but she uses as well the name Johnny to refer herself. On the net I saw some of her articles signed either with the masculine or the feminine name - so I couldn't really understand. But at a certain point I didn't worry about it anymore. "Whatever!" - I told myself, a comment really nice I learnt here, that means something like: "Whatever it is, it's not an issue of mine, and/or it doesn't make any difference" - it's all London, baby!

Anyway, the inverview didn't give me (at least not immediately) a job, but opened up some opportunities. What's more important is that it has been the best inverview I had in my life: two hours spent 1) with a passionate person willing to learn about my researches, attitudes, aims, 2) listening with a sincere interest and care to me, 3) telling me a true and objective analysis of what I've done up now (so congratulating me for the good things as well as criticising for the wrong ones), 4) suggesting me the further steps to achieve my goals (and not forcing me to necessary do this in her department), and showing to be a people person with a deep and warm kindness to support me - like she could see my past in my eyes. Unbelievable! Something special I wish all the ones I love to live by/with someone else such as a potential mentor/tutor. So I'm keeping on thinking/wondering/reflecting about this still now. I'm getting every day more confused, but still in a serene way. Thinking about next steps. What I want to do. Where I want to live the next few months. What am I actually looking for in general...

A Town for the Senses (Soundscapes, Scents, and Time Warps)

There's a book I bought 15 years ago that one day I will make up my mind and spend the time to read (as I perceive this action as fulfilling a useless longstanding desire and therefore a luxury, up now I never allowed myself to). This book is The Soundscape, by Raymond Schafer. I'm not only dislocated in a new visual reality here, but also in a new audio reality. When we are not professionals of the sound we rarely notice it, as the power of the visual is much stronger. And there's quite a huge number of sounds we are exposed to, in urban areas, that are pretty common in most of the towns where we live. Noises produced by cars and motorbikes, the ones of the planes flying over our heads and landing in the local airports, and - further less enjoyable - the cracking-nerves noise of the garbage bins empitied in the dust-cart. But sometimes, something unexpected can brake the common mixture of noise/silence we are used to, and reveal us the place we are in is not a familiar one.

There's a kindergarden right in from of my room. I can't see anything as the flat is on the ground floor and there's a wall surrounding the building that covers the view, but still you can get the sounds of the neighbourhood. And the sound, today, comes from the kindergarden where - among the crying of the kids and the rolling of bikes, balls and anything they play with, someone is giving a workshop in xylophone, and the music is amplified by loudspeakers. I say "someone is giving a workshop" as you can distinguish specific audio sequences played once, and then repeated by less experienced people. So I presume it's something like that. The result is quite enjoiable, but unusual to my ears. A different soundscape.

I got the same impression a few days ago, whilst - getting out of my place on a Sunday morning - I was exposed to the music and choirs coming from the nearby Baptist church. The voices coming from inside were mainly feminin. I'm not specifically moved by this genre of songs, nor by this audio experience itself, but behind the sound there are people, and I felt somehow less lonely and more protected although the human presence could only been assumed, but not seen. So I stopped for a while and enjoyed, as churches always give me the same effect of isolated places - far from everyday life - where one can experience a feeling of a strong energy given by the gathering of different people who have a common faith in something (the same description can be applied to different gatherings of people - it's what Csíkszentmihályi calls "flow experience"). I was perceiving from outside the result of the flow experience others were living.

Then, suddenly, my attention turned to be grasped by the visual - that recalled its power on me. Right on my left - in front of the church - a phone box was covered by an unusual advertisement. A white circle on a black background included the words "A ring of salt will protect you". I looked at the phone box, then looked back at the church on the other side of the street, then again concentrated on the phone box to eventually realise, at the end, that is was (probably - but who knows?) only by a coincidence that the two opposite communications were sharing the same crossroads.

Besides the hearing, another sense competes to grasp a person's attention whilst travelling: the sense of smell. Any place has a different smell, and - like in another book (Picturing Culture, by James Clifford & George Marcus) was noticed - ethnographic diaries are full of references to smells that are never present in the final monography we write about the situation we studied/researched about.

The sense of smell is the most powerful provoker, in me, of frequent time warps - as it leads my mind to memories, sometimes far in years in the past, I completely forgot, and make the visual images associated to those time distant situation flowing in front of my open eyes and superimposing on the real ones I'm seeing in a specific moment. That's probably the reason why I look for these sensations - that can be negative or positive (it's up to the way to judge a scent) - and enjoy so much those places where smells/scents/perfumes are strong and can lead my imagination to other similar situations experiences in the past. And - let me behave as an anthropologist for a minute - the judgement of a scent as nice/bad is again culture-based (the same could be said about the appreciation of something you hear or taste). I was quite surprised so, when I was living in Germany, to buy a handcream that was exactly the same I was used to use in Italy, and once opening it realising it had a very different scent. The ingredients were the same, only the chemical composition of the perfume was different - to localize the product among the place it was sold. But I was quiet young, I couldn't realise someone else was already aware of the phenomenon ans was also able to build a marketing strategy on it.

Yesterday I went to a building that is going to be demolished soon, but before this happens it is hosting the Market Estate Project - an art experience and a series of events with about 75 artists - that will end the 6th of March. The project is connected to the idea of helping the local people - formerly living in the social houses that are going to be destroyed, as crumbling and impossibile to refurbish anymore, who had relocated nearby - to emotionally overcome, by the support of arts and artists, the loss of a place were they led their lives up that moment. A collective "rite of passage".

I had a tour in and around the building, actually in unaccettable conditions. The water was dripping at every floor from cracks in the ceiling and gathering in little pools on the corridors, the electric cables were hanging from walls cracks - giving me an uncomfortable, precarious sensation. But then, I had a wonderful time warp.

Humidity + chill + concrete. Humidity and chill is a smell I know since the first (squatted) social centre I joined in my late adolescence, places where I grew up and where I still go to meet most of my friends - for concerts, dinners, talks. Humidity and chill recall as well the memory of the flats my friends, coming from villages in the region, rented during their university years, and where it was quite common to have lunch and pretend to study together. The smell of concrete comes from the experience of different houses' restorations I had been exposed in my life, both in case of family's flats and because of my father's work - for which he was always in company of bricklayers whose clothes were impregnated of powder. Where I feel that smell, I feel "home". And then, I first perceived these three scents together many years ago, one day I got out of the overground train connecting the airport to the city centre in Hong Kong. Humidity was 95% and a few people were involved in the restauration of the building. I couldn't breath properly as the powder and the humidity were so concentrated - so this might be the reason why I remember it so neat.
The scent I breathed yesterday was right the same one. I climbed the stairs in this empty building, listening to the water dripping and the pieces of concrete craking under my shoes. The shadows of two chinese guys carrying a beam overcame me smiling. I smiled them back, although there was nobody around.

Fortuitous Encounters (I'm Doing Art!, My Extended Family, and the Perception of Self Within a Place)

"Don't try, do!". This sentence resounds in my ears as a mantra since when I'm here. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do much up now, but I'm slowly beginning. A guy physically stopped me one evening on my way home, whilst I was still in a temporary flat I rent for one week in Shoreditch. "Come inside and visit my exhibition!" - he said, and I did. It was the opening, with lots of people crowded in the small space of a former shop, now used as an art gallery. His exhibition was actually one single huge work on canvas that covered the four walls of the shop, painted and written with some hints he gave (colours, "symbols", sentences) and for the rest by those passing by in the street the days before, and curiously asking what was going on, as well as by the ones joining the opening itself.

I read a few words and realised I was interested, but felt like I wanted to visit it another time, without so many people around. "I come back tomorrow"; "I'll wait for you". The day after we both kept our word and I came back, to realise that Piero (Arico' is the surname) is an Italian artist and a lovely guy - generous, passionate and full of fascinating contradictions. A deep rich soul I immediately clicked with and - enjoying his and his mates' company (he was supported in this work by the crew of ArtFeelers) - joined the following days for a couple of films in the evening and a lovely shared dinner with some more people. So, one evening I felt sad and tired because of the tough flat-hunting turned out to be one of the most intense and enriching event I could live. I wrote on the canvas - and this became part of his work - "From now -> on you belong to my extended family", and this sentence joined the many contributions other people gave - in the direction of a sort of collective meditation about society, relationships and communication in contemporary world Piero suggested and that is his aim ("but we can only suggest a direction, and then who knows what people will develop from a hint?").

Anyway, I met a few new 'brothers' and 'sisters' by meeting him - and it's a crew I quite enjoy. Relaxed, deeply in contemporary arts and in sharing food and talks. In spite of those who say London is the capital of loneliness!

Still, somehow, I have to say this is true. It's quite easy to relate each other quickly, but the flow of the people who come and go is astonishing. As soon as you tie up with someone, you risk that this person goes away (usually abroad - 'somewhere else') to follow his/her attitudes, dreams, life. Some people are never fed up by the town, whilst some others 'bite it and rush away'. London is immense and with many 'centres' that still - luckily for me and by my point of view - are build up from former villages and/or act as real neighbourhood. My friends (who are not going far at the moment, or at least have short trips "in the continent") are all around here. I'm in a multicultural cool place far from the touristic area, with no mess around and a walking distance by the former 'village' of Stoke Newington. I only miss the sea, but can reach the Thames - and imagine the river docks as scratches of an imaginary sea - in half an hour by bus. And whilst talking with new people I meet, I define myself in terms of East Ender, living in Clapton (Hackney), and realise - by this same way I talk about me, as "new Londoner" - the way some pieces of my identity are to a certain extent "shifting"- carrying me at least to a new (temporary) definition of myself. It's a curious process - and something anthropologists love to live on their own skin and self-reflect about!

See more pics I took of the exhibition here: Too Much Rum in a Cup of Tea

A Place to Sleep (Searching for a Flat, Gossip, and the British Library)

Searching for a flat in London is an experience I don’t wish upon my worst enemy. It exposes you to the weirdest humanity you can imagine meeting. It seems that all the borderlines of the world have gathered here with all their financial resources, and bought flats to rent out in an act of affirmation of their identity. Renting a flat or letting a flat is a matter of status, in fact. And newbies on both sides know and accept this. All except the last, who could care less about this rubbish: me.

I’m not a Muslim woman willing to sharing a flat while waiting for the right one to whom to devote myself. I’m not the lesbian frightened by men to the point of not allowing – just in case – even my father to come, visit and sleep near me. Not to mention all the 20-something idiot girls I met who told me: “Sorry, but you seem to be too old to get on well with us” (in this last case I’m only upset I will not see you in the next 15 years, darling, when your life will be fucked up by an inconsiderate man and a couple of useless kids and you will wonder why you were so stupid to party every night instead of studying and building your means of survival).

But most of all I’m not the eco-vegan-animalist willing to recycle every tiny little thing I use to show how much I care about this planet: nice one, but on the contrary I think the best demonstration of my care for it would be to spread (and join) the proposal for a mass suicide of mankind as the friendliest act to let the earth regenerate by itself, and – hopefully – in less than one hundred years to forget the existence of human beings on its surface. But eco-vegan-animalists would never care enough for the cause to be the first ones to do it (at this point, dear reader, I want to enlighten you to the fact that – in case you are of such bad faith as to accuse me of instigation to suicide – I am not supporting this perspective in any way: mine is only a reasonable observation).

So I’m looking for a simple, clean, unpretentious place. Given all this background, my search is quite hard.

I keep on looking on the internet at Gossip, a lovely café in Broadway Market. Yes, it’s fancy and elitist – in this renewed area which ten years ago was considered such a slum that people willing to open a business couldn’t get bank loans, and those working in the area had to come by taxi because they were afraid to use public buses. But now it’s a “stylish” area, where young people come on Saturday mornings to buy expensive organic food in the market and wander around all day showing themselves off. All dressed in the same, classical English style: tweeds, tartans, lots of wool pullovers, jackets, coats and scarves. All pale, with sad, depressed eyes giving the impression they are always about to faint. And all with the same haircut, the one that made me hate the Beatles from the very first moment I saw them.

The Gossip has wi-fi, a great selections of teas and two young people as staff who are supportive and let me stay there the whole day to search in exchange for the few teas I drink while almost “squatting” a table and a chair. I will never be able to thank the people here enough for their kindness and hospitality (in spite of the desperate room search).

Today I found another place whose destiny is to become “my place”: the British Library. A huge, modern building and a paradise for book lovers. Here, you don’t even understand how they check you, but they do, deeply. You can plug in your laptop anywhere and leave it (apparently) unguarded. You have a free wi-fi connection (but no chance to do any political activity through it) and gluten-free chocolate cakes (the only way I can survive, as all the other food costs too much for someone with celiac disease).

I took off my shoes, since my left foot hurt, and realised after a while that I was walking around the library barefoot. “Whatever”. I sat on the floor and checked my email. My status on Facebook today says: “Cristina is still homeless but searching for a room at the free wi-fi hotspot in the British Library”. My punk attitude always comes out, aligned to my new conception of myself as somehow a snobbish newbie Londoner.

And, as I’m a part of it, my dear new co-citizens, can’t you let me sleep inside here for free? I feel safe here, among lively books you consider unanimated. “Adopt a book” – an advertisement inside says. Yeah, I’d rather pay for a book than for a room at this point. Would any of the books among the social sciences sector adopt me as well? I would feel “home” surrounded by them – and sleep quite cool and safe on the floor, imagining all the wonderful, surprising, unique and adventurous lives and stories they contain, and which my life will not be long enough to read.

Il senso degli altri. Cibo, identità e metissage

Lo scorso 12 settembre, su proposta di Vittorio Castellani - Chef Kumalè, ho tenuto un incontro sul rapporto tra cibo, identità culturale e metissage nel contesto dell'iniziativa "Apettando Terre 2011" all'interno del festival OrienteOccidente di Rovereto (TN).

Il senso degli altri. Cibo, identità e metissage

Questo il testo, scaricabile gratuitamente.