Lonely Evening

Here a look at a plain evening from the eyes of an "artist".

SISTER MAGAZINE

Some time ago I purchased Sister Mag online. Which is, guess what, a magazine created to empower women and give them voice.

I’m afraid anything I’ll say will ruin the powerful atmosphere and self-confidence this magazine gives. So I’ll leave all the links and a bunch of pics.

Enjoy.

Website

Buythe magazine

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Zine Review : GRRRL IN PRINT

Before even starting. What the hell is a zine?

By definition a zine is a self-published staple bound  magazine featuring original or appropriated art, comics, photos, poems, rants, reviews... anything creative. Usually they are run by not-for-profit collectives of people and DIYed.

I began to make some researches on zines back in 2015 when I purchased HannahPixie’s zine “The Key” in collaboration with Anastasia Tasou and many other artists from all over the world.

I later purchased some other zines but only recently I began to be interested in some activist-feminist zines.

This is why I bought from Grrrl their first paper zine.

GrrrlZine Fair is a not-for-profit organization based in the UK that puts up inclusive zine fairs and music events in order to ensure a space where everybody who doesn’t  feel accepted in the mainstream culture can find a place to have fun. Anybody is invited: women, queer, boys, gay or straight, black and white. The more diverse the more fun!

This first issue is about DIY in modern culture and how people include it in their everyday life. You can purchase it here.

When the zine arrived in the mail it was inside a recyclable plastic bag, which made me really happy just for the fact that it was recyclable. So I’d say: good plastic bag choice! (I’m not being weird. Professional bloggers review even the bags things come in … so I’m just being professional right now.  Hopefully.)

Back to the topic. Inside the RECYCLABLE bag you’ll find: an A4 magazine with some BRILLIANT comics stripes and interviews, an A5 zine with playlists, interviews, art advices, some rad photos and art pieces. Last but not least some other art pieces and poetry on an A6 format.

And if you think it’s not enough you’ll get also a stunning A3 poster too. Which has instantly gained a special place on my wall near the bed as a constant reminder that Doing It Yourself is better than not doing it at all.

Before you move on with your life, let me finish this by saying that I strongly recommend to check them out and if you feel like a nice human being you could also support them or even take part in some of their activities.

Ok. I’m done.

Check them out.

Bye.

(And no, this wasn’t sponsored.)

SIMONA VINCI - incontro / meeting

This post is divided in two parts: one in italian and one in english.

Scroll down to get directly to the english part or keep reading for the italian one.

Sabato 8 Aprile ho avuto il piacere di ascoltare una conferenza dell’autrice Simona Vinci.

Una scrittrice italiana nata a Budrio (Bologna) che esordì nel 1997 con il romanzo “Dei bambini non si sa niente”.

I professori ci hanno preparati all’incontro facendoci leggere il suo ultimo libro “La prima verità”. Mi ricordo che non appena vidi la copertina del libro rimasi molto intrigata. Un infante che fa il gesto del silenzio con il dito. Quando poi la prof di italiano iniziò a raccontarci di ciò che parlava mi appassionai completamente.

Il libro pubblicato a fine anno scorso parla di malattia mentale. Due parole che non riescono nemmeno lontanamente a riassumere il contenuto del romanzo, che va oltre la rielaborazione di fatti realmente accaduti. Una storia, anzi, molte storie, che si intrecciano e intrappolano il lettore fino alla fine.

“La prima verità” è un libro molto difficile, richiede particolare attenzione da parte del lettore. Ma soprattutto non fa sconti a nessuno e colpisce dritto nel segno: la coscienza profonda di ognuno di noi.

Sentir parlare di persona la voce che prima ci si immaginava solo in testa mentre si leggeva è sempre un’esperienza interessante. Ma soprattutto è interessante ascoltare come l’autrice parla dei personaggi e delle storie che ha raccolto nelle pagine del libro.

Durante l’incontro l’autrice ha trattato di temi importanti, come la memoria e la malattia mentale. Ha detto che è molto facile etichettare come “malato” ciò che semplicemente è diverso da noi. La Vinci stessa ha ammesso che se fosse nata anche solo cinque anni prima della sua effettiva data di nascita avrebbe potuto essere rinchiusa in un manicomio a causa della sua irrequietezza e costante distrazione a scuola.

Successivamente qualcuno le ha fatto una domanda che l’ha portata a parlare della sua concezione personale di arte. Secondo Simona Vinci qualunque forma d’arte nasce da una ribellione, scaturita a sua volta da rabbia. Rabbia che lei conosce bene perché ha affermato di aver scritto molti suoi precedenti libri con rabbia, solo successivamente ha capito che quel sentimento non può essere solo fine a se stesso. La rabbia deve avere uno scopo.

Non potevo che essere d’accordo con tutto ciò che diceva. E più parlava più il mio sorriso si faceva grande. Una scintilla di follia e anormalità probabilmente ci accomuna, anche se io non ho neanche la metà del suo talento nello scrivere.

Parlando di stranezze, non appena finita la presentazione Simona Vinci si è resa disponibile a firmare le copie del suo libro. Così mi sono letteralmente catapultata davanti perché avevo qualcosa da dirle. Mi sono avvicinata e lei mi ha accolta con un sorriso curioso mentre provavo a dare un senso compiuto alle mie parole. Le ho allungato un disegno, che rappresenta un occhio dietro ad un muro, ma non uno qualsiasi. È il muro dove venivano rinchiusi, o meglio, lanciati, i malati più gravi, gli irrecuperabili, nell’isola di Leros (dove sono ambientate le storie). Quell’occhio blu che fissa lo spettatore da una crepa nel cemento è stata tra le immagini più forti dell’intero libro. Così, dato che l’immagine era tanto vivida nella mia testa, ho deciso di portarla su carta.

Solo qualche giorno prima mi era venuta in mente l’idea di portarle il disegno. Solitamente i miei “capolavori” li tengo in un raccoglitore poco costoso chiuso in un armadio.

Sono anche un po’ gelosa dei suddetti “capolavori” così ne avevo fatto una copia: l’originale gliel’ho data e la copia me la sono fatta autografare.

La dedica che mi ha scritto è tra le cose più belle che una persona mi abbia mai detto. La sua voce, profonda e calma, mi ha accarezzato il cuore mentre mi allontanavo dal tavolo dove era seduta. E mi sono sentita ancora più lusingata quando ho scoperto che quello stesso pomeriggio, ad un’altra conferenza, ha parlato del mio disegno di fronte alla platea di spettatori. 

Nel complesso è stata un’esperienza molto interessante e senza dubbio bellissima. Non solo l’aver letto un libro così pieno di passione e verità mi ha fatta riflettere, ma anche la possibilità di conoscere una donna come Simona Vinci mi ha dato un po’ di speranza in più per il mio futuro.

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Saturday the 8^th of April I had the pleasure of participating to a conference held by the author Simona Vinci.

She is an Italian writer born in Budrio (Bologna) who debuted in 1997 with the novel “Dei bambini non si sa niente”.

Our teachers prepared us for the meeting by letting us read her last book “La prima verità”. I remember that as soon as I saw the cover of it I was really intrigued. It portrays a baby while doing the silence sign with the index. Then, when my Italian teacher started to tell us what the book was about I got into it completely.

The book was published at the end of last year (2016) and is about mental illnesses. Two words that cannot even remotely sum up the essence of the book, which goes over the re-elaboration of true facts happened in the past. A story, well, many stories, that link and trap the reader till the end.

“La prima verità” (literally translated means “The first truth”) is a really difficult book, particularly demanding for the reader. But above all it doesn’t spare anyone and hits right in the spot: each  human’s deep conscience.

Listening to the actual person whose voice was just an imagination in your head while you were reading is always an interesting experience. But even more interesting was listening to the author speaking about the characters and stories she collected in the book.

During the meeting the author has debated some important topics such as memory and mental illness. She stated that it’s almost too easy to label as “ill” something just different from us. The author herself admitted that maybe if she were born five years before her actual day of birth she could have been put in a sanitarium because of her restlessness and her constant distraction at school.

Subsequently someone asked her something that brought her on the topic of art and how she perceives it. To her, every form of art begins with a rebellious act, originated by anger. The same anger that she put into her first writings of previous books. Only afterwards she understood that anger couldn’t just end in itself. Anger must have a purpose.

I completely agree with what she said. And the more she spoke the bigger my smile got. A sparkle of madness and abnormality probably are the things we have in common, even though I have half of her talent when it comes to writing.

Talking about weirdness: as soon as the meeting ended Simona Vinci said she was available to sign the copies of the book. So I literally threw myself near her because I had something to tell her. I got closer and she welcomed me with a curious smile while I was trying to put the words in a full sense all together. I handed her a drawing portraying an eye behind a wall, but not a random one. The wall where the most ill were thrown into, the lost ones, in the island of Leros (where the stories take place).

That blue eye that stares at the reader for the entire book was the strongest of all the settings described in the book. So, since that image was so vivid in my head, I decided to put it on paper.

Only a couple of days before the meeting I decided to bring her the drawing. I usually keep my “piece of art” in a cheap binder hidden in my closet.

But since I’m quite jealous of the above-mentioned “pieces of art” I did a copy of it. I gave the author the original one and asked her to sign the copy.

The message she wrote for me is one of the most beautiful things a person ever  said to me. Her voice, deep and calm, caressed my heart while I walked away from the table she was sitting at. And I’ve felt even more flattered when I discovered that later that evening she showed my drawing to the audience at a conference she held.

Overall it has been a really interesting experience and without a doubt beautiful. Not only I read a book full of passion and truth but I also had the possibility to meet a woman like Simona Vinci. All of this gave me some hope for my future.

WOODPECKER DISCO

March 26^th was a day dedicated to the main museums and artistic sites in my city and surrounding.

That’s why I decided to get back to the dismissed disco ”Woodpecker” in Milano Marittima, near Ravenna.

It formerly was a disco built in 1966 by Filippo Monti, the architect that planned the building and dispositions. It was a revolutionary building at the time, divided in different pools filled with water, and a big dome covered the dance floor.

Unluckily the disco was closed in 1975 after a big fire destroyed some parts of the building.

Now it is an abandoned place. I explored it two years ago and took some crappy pictures of the amazing graffiti inside the dome, done by the great Italian street artist Blu.

I got back some weeks ago and took some better pictures.

Enjoy.

Trip to Bosnia - I have something to say

It seemed like a so far away place. 13 hours by Pullman are very much actually. But geographically, if I think about it, it’s a stone’s throw from the sweet and innocent Italy. So close to us that I can still hear the screams of the sentenced to death echo, those who didn’t die immediately so they begged the soldier to shoot them again.

These screams have always been here, since the late 90s they wander in the wind and bounce between the Adriatic shores. But honestly I’ve never heard of them. Maybe I confused them for some seagull complaint.

But once you see, or better, you hear those atrocities, you can’t close your eyes and plug your ears. The silence that scratches the ears, the silence of entire families swept away from the face of this earth governed by infamous men, the silence can echo too.

Beings, not humans, I didn’t see anything human there. Only the tears of the people that visited the graveyard or the pictures of those who hung themselves to escape the tortures they knew, because they knew, would have been inflicted to them.

                            

 

The question spontaneously rises in me: why all of this? The answer still slips away and this not-answer leaves me a bitter taste in my mouth, that sometimes, when I don’t notice, it turns into anger. That anger that makes your tongue itch so much to let you spit out rash and inappropriate words.

I wasn’t, I wasn’t there those days. The days of the massacre. I wasn’t even born. And maybe my resentment sound ridicule, almost hypocritical. But if there isn’t anyone still  resentful, that clasps their fists and cry tears in front of these useless bloodsheds, then there is no purpose in talking about this either, everything is lost.

I don’t want to believe to this eventuality, I want to imagine one thousand resentful faces and one thousand tears that line just as many faces. I want to imagine one thousand people that tell other people about their tears and their resentment to another one thousand people in order to spread resentment but most importantly awareness, for what happened.

For those 8372 who now are no more.

(Those are the pictures I took during my trip to Bosnia in Srebrenica)

ALIENATION

I really like this word. I really do.

It’s one simple word describing a lot of things.

To introduce the topic I’d like to start by talking about Marx’ and Hegel’s opinions about the concept of alienation. Who the hell are them? Well, simple: philosophers.

I am one of the privileged kids that study philosophy at school. Mainly because in Italy it’s obligatory in all high schools. So some may ask “What’s the big deal?”. Well, the great thing is that we are able to discuss about different topics in a conceptual way.

Nowadays we are almost  too worried to take care of our possessions and “useful” knowledge rather than learning to know ourselves and cure our minds. This is why I consider myself privileged: among all this mixture of “useful” information, without those we (according to some adults) will never be able to live a decent life, I am blessed with some pure conceptual knowledge.

Before I start: I’m no philosopher nor I have a philosophy degree. I’m just a student who wants to write on her useless blog.

Back to the topic. Hegel was convinced that each man, in order to understand himself had to “alienate” his “self”. Was only thought making the “self” a objet that the person could see himself and observe himself. To make it easier: imagine your inner and dipper essence that leaves your body, you can see it therefore you can experience yourself and understand yourself.

But let’s get to Marx and contextualize. Karl Marx was born in 1818 (as Wikipedia clearly states) so right before the Industrial Revolution. Imagine all these small cities exploding into a mixture of grey walls and smoke. Not that pleasing, right? Consider also that jobs inevitably changed and so did people’s lives.

If the cities weren’t that nice imagine working in the factories: a minimum of 12 hours per day shift to work in order to receive a shitty salary. No surprise that workers as soon as they left the factories went out to drink and do drugs!

And right here is where Marx’ philosophy finds its basis: the alienation caused by the factories. To Marx this situation led people to hope for something better one day, not in this life, which was a living hell, but in the afterlife. That’s why, to Marx, religion was the “opium of the people”: it was a drug to distract the inhabitants of the cities from the misery they were living in.

I’m aware I’m no Marx nor Hegel but since this is my blog I guess I’ll leave my opinion on the topic too.

Alienation to me can have positive and negative aspects.

Alienating ourselves to better understand who we are and what we want can be necessary at a certain point in everyone’s life. Imagine it like meditating: abandoning the world around you and focusing on your perceptions, feelings and all the stuff a shrink would love to analyze.

The negative part of all this process may become isolation. Self-analysis is important but it shouldn’t become an excuse to conceal the outer world from your life.

My rumbling ends here.

Sorry if I bored you… no, not really.