fifth column for Kazin

My name is Oliver and I am an urban explorer.
You must all wonder what does that mean. Well, my favourite hobby is going around cities and exploring abandoned places. What got me into it is the attraction towards the derelicts that our progress leaves behind. I do not know if you ever entered an abandoned factory – the atmosphere that reigns inside it is simply surreal. It is an artificial place in which different stories had happened and the weight of all the activities that the place hosted give an identity to the place as a defined being. There was something of post modernity in the fashion of building huge sumptuous lofts in old factories. There was an amazing beauty in seeing features of skyscrapers and old houses face to face. But now, today, in the London that is getting ready for the Olympics there is something sick about building up. I live in Shoreditch, east London. Off Shoreditch you find Brick Lane – what was called few months ago the new heart of London. Now, this is a heart that is hosting the best experiments of postmodernism in terms of architectural rearrangement of internal spaces of old fabrics. Brick Lane was in fact the biggest area of brick factories of the city. Today it is a place that hosts the coolest pubs, clubs and venues. The last derelict buildings are about to die. In the whole area the massive wish to build more and more is condemning to death some gorgeous houses. One of those, located in front of the Tea Bar, that is on its last days. They have already demolished a third of it. This is the case in which an urban explorer gets into action. Digital camera and craziness is all an urban explorer needs. Then is just him and the space to explore. Up on scaffolding we were two urban explorers getting more and more emotional the more we would climb up the house. We then reached the roof and spoke to the house. “We feel sorry you will cease to exist in a week time”, my friend said.
From the roof the panorama it was breath taking. But there is something of an immense beauty and an immense ugliness at the same time: the new skyscraper of London. Behind it is the cucumber of Norman Foster. However the new skyscraper will be massively high and it is already facing the sky in a way no other buildings do here. All glass and height. Simply glass and high as if we are transparently admitting our wish to touch God. And to do that – look how funny – we are destroying our memories, our roots, our small old houses.
Bricks. Why should we keep using bricks when we can just do a steel and glass stairway to heaven?
Let’s do a bet. Go to pass your fingers on an old brick wall and pass them on a glass wall. Brick Lane against Moorgate. Try the difference. Feel the texture. There is a weird smell of history bumping out of the humid bricks of old houses. On the other hand the glass will tell you much – a bit of an artificial perfume. A rose from a garden against cheap and chic by Moschino. Both amazingly poetic. When I go back home and I watch the pictures that I took during the exploration I just feel good. I have some memories trapped in my computer. I can print them: the building (a creature) will keep living in those images. Memories. Memories. And memories can become a creature again in the form of a picture. I dream of a big open air exhibition around the whole of Hackney in which my pictures will be printed as big as the huge advertising of Intimissimi and in stead of naked women posing there people will walk the streets and see the buildings that once where there. Imagine…Imagine a time in which the City of London will be composed of glass – only glass – and the walls of it will be decorated with huge pictures of the old brick buildings. Such a high poetry elevated to the sky. In the dream of scratching god mind I will hope to see the ghost of hackney road’s old buildings (that will be all demolished in few months time) elevated on the wall of our skyscrapers. Because we have to scratch the sky. Get up to god. To the minor god of a multiple multinationality of a big mixture of all cultures and all dreams. London is a bit of this: a mixture of all dreams of all humans. And I. And I love to explore that tunnel.

fourth column for "Kazin"

Tonight I was bored of London and human beings.
I went into a cool place on the corner between Old Street and Great Eastern Street: there are scaffolding around but the owners are that creative that they folded with wood and graffiti.
You pass by there and feel the urge to get in.
However, I had pass in front of it for a whole year and never entered, I waited for the right occasion.
If you pass by, do it soon – not like me.
Then you enter and you are suddenly embraced by one of the most incredible places I ever been to.
And you feel you are not bored of London anymore, and you think that human beings could actually be captivating.
Big television cables are used as ceiling and among some old sofas there are artists and short wooden tables.
On a wall there are pictures of Africa, while on the opposite some intriguing maze like paintings.
On the side of the counter a small space for the dj is created with walls done with old broken computers.
If you follow the cables you get to a big basement of four big rooms full of art installations and weird people playing improvised music with guitars, violins and clarinet flutes.
I sat there with a friend from Nazareth and I started telling him about London. Look at us, I said, we are here and we pretend not to see all these interesting people surrounding us. I would love now to talk to them. But we never get the chance, because everyone in London is supposed to live in his small world. London is a universe of small worlds. You can meet everyone, but you do not. We walk everyday elbow to elbow and we pretend to be stranger, we pretend that that physical contact did not take place – that physical contact is not a contact.
But this is absurd, people are alienated and their only way of surviving is becoming more and more alone – more and more stranger to others.
If from one side people are trying to gather together they do it in antisocial places like clubs, for example. And they take antisocial drugs, like amphetamines. Synthetic drugs belong to a synthetic world and a synthetic music of which London is the empire. An empire of loneliness.
Too much together but nothing gets shared. If you actually go and walk the streets of London you will get a lot of sights, emotions, sensations, smiles from people but all these contacts are sudden and when you lie down in your bed at night you feel full but empty.
So I thought we should create in London a different place – and there is one up in Kingsland Rd, the Melange Collective. But, I think, we, Londoners, we should create another one.
There are too many clubs in London and they are all so standardized. It is impressive – synthetic world with synthetic sensations people are searching their souls but they get it lost again by taking amphetamines in prisons – clubs.
If you actually think about it you might have fun dancing in a London club but after a bit you will feel just the four walls of that artificial cage of fun and the sweat of people.
So, I think we should create a new place. I had a vision of this new place. I want a place in which people can gather together and not be bored of each other, in which the creativity of each of us will come out and shine of uniqueness. I want a place in which you do not need to take an amphetamine to find your soul because you will be there to donate your soul to others. I want a place covered up in art.
And now I tell you how.
It will be a place that will have not real walls. It will be build up with old screens of computer and from the outside it will be just covered with a particular metal foil. Around there will be a garden with coloured lights and their colours will reflect in dozen of imaginary lullabies dancers.
Then from the inside each computer screen will have a different video art record and the whole place will just look like a harmony of colours and images. The floor must be just wood and the ceiling, oh, I would love a glass ceiling to see the stars out of it. I do not want any clocks because the time should not be counted in there. Music will flow among screens and huge speakers and people will dance happy. There should be a basement all white where everyone can paint on the walls and around, play, do theatre or whatever installation.
I would love people to know that by building such a place, we would avoid the dumping of all our old computers to the third world.
I would love to see people happy because of this, I would love to see people understanding that our objects do have a soul too. That we cannot just use a computer and when we do not like it anymore we dump it to Nigeria. One day, that computer will come back to us. He will knock at our doors.
I would build a disco labyrinth done up of computers and leave the Third World clean.
I would love to see Londoners happy to dance inside a labyrinth of computer and souls, and smile, hand in hand.

Poetry of William Blake

LONDON


I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

wisdom - communication is wisdom

"Socrates asserted there was a third, even deeper way to discern truth, and this was through dialogue. It was his conviction, carried forward by Plato, that the deepest way to perceive truth was neither through revelation nor through science, even though he honored both these pathways. For Socrates, it is when seekers come together and discuss the profound questions of existence in a spirit of deep inquiry that the truth is perceived most deeply. It was this perception that informed how Socrates conceived of wisdom itself."

This is what I mean - why we never sit down in this LondON to discuss the profound questions of existence?

I am bored of london and human beings.
Is this normal?

I am bored of this standardization of place of people of speeches...
I am bored of going out and seeing not-social human beings I am bored of seeing mad faces I am bored of seeing non-communication.

I am bored - so bored that I miss Italy and my village as I never though I could.