For the first expedition a group of genetists and researchers went along the silk route animated by this question: why food habits differ so much?

Is it due to genetics, culture or to the resources of the territory if people like more certain food than others?

The results will be than useful not only scientifically but also for the health sphere.

In this interesting video the researchers with the support of Terra Madre and Slow Food had been interviewing for 48 days multiple communities from West to East, along the Marco Polo trail, along which the most different cultures, genes, populations and food habits intertwined and mixed up the most during the centuries.

If you want to know more about the project read the interview by Mauro Scanu to the leader of the expedition Paolo Gasparini, which was issued in September on illywords magazine.

In the year 2011 it was the turn for Armenia and Crimea. Let´s see what will be the route of 2012!

I was looking for a place to sleep, so I went into a hostel to ask for a room. As usual the owner couldn´t speak English so I asked Matteo, one of my trip mates who was waiting outside, to try in Chinese. After a while Matteo came out laughing aloud: the receptionist mistook him for me.

The funny thing is that Matteo has got a rasta hairstyle (I’m almost bald), vintage glasses and weighs at least thirty kilos less than me!

For which reason Chinese people aren’t able to distinguish Caucasians and vice versa?

Some scientists think that the capability to effortlessly recognize faces is linked to culture.

For instance Roberto Caldara, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow, using an eye-tracking toolfound that Westerners tend to look at specific features on a individual’s face such as the eyes and mouth, whereas East Asian observers tend to focus on the nose or the centre of the face which allows a more general view of all the features.

Following Caldara these differences are not due to genetics, but to social experience. Also facial expressions could be perceived differently by different cultures: “People from East Asia have troubles distinguishing fear and disgust from surprise and anger if compared with Western participants at our study” says Rachel Jack, another researcher from the Scottish University.

On the other hand there’s someone that thinks that facial expressions are universal, for instance Jessica Tracy from the University of British Columbia and David Matsumoto from San Francisco State University. During the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens they compared the body language in the pictures of 108 judo competitors from 37 nations across the world (41 of whom had lost their sight and 12 of whom were blind from birth). The researchers found out that the sighted and sightless athletes behaved in almost exactly the same ways showing that body language is inborn.

No doubt Cal Lightman of the tv series Lie To Me would like this vision. You know, he is a brilliant psychologist able to decode facial expressions and to unmask liars. The main character of the fiction is based on Paul Ekman, one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century.

Ekman has been a pioneer in the study of emotions in 60’s: studying tribes in Papua New Guinea he concluded that the expressions associated with some emotions were basic or biologically universal to all humans.

“The truth is written all over our faces” says his website. Evidently this is not right for dreadlocks!

I see brave mothers on the bike with their as much brave children on the Christianias danish bikes

What strikes me the most is that these kids are not mummified in thick thermal insulated snow suits. On the contrary, they wear thin jackets and most of the time they don´t wear any scarves or hats!

After five years in Berlin, I realised that the perception of cold is just a cultural matter. If you face the cold already when you´re a child with nonchalance and strength, looking at it not as an enemy but as an habitual company, you´ll perceive it differently when you´re an adult.

The Germans that I met are tough. They love challenges. That´s why for example when they restore their houses they don´t call any plumbers, painters, bricklayers or carpenters. Oh no! They do it themselves. They can be reach or poor, engineers, journalists or teachers, they roll up their sleeves and make it. And the cousin or the friend living hundreds miles away comes and helps. On the contrary we Italians buy directly the service of an entire teamwork, whatever it takes…we pay just to get rid of this headache!

However, I think that the fact that they are so pragmatic and straight makes them more indifferent towards details – dear to us Italians – regarding concepts like beauty and taste. Far from any clichés Berliners like to personally reinterpret things like fashion or food.

Let me give you an example. In Berlin second hand- and vintage shops are very popular. Here you can find unusual and unique pieces to mix as you wish using always a dash of unexpected colour. It can be the sock or the hat in striking pink or yellow! I guess this is just a reaction to the long grey wintertime!

Likewise unexpected mixes are allowed also in the food preparation. I was offered dishes that Germans considered superb which made my taste buds yell: pasta with lemon juice and whipping cream or with ketchup (a classic!) or lasagna with pineapple and sauerkraut!!!! But at least these are hot dishes. Yes, because here people are used to eat warm only once a day. In the evening they usually have Abendbrot: a slice of bread with cheese, two cucumbers, one tomato and salami.

That´s why mums manage to go back home from the play ground at 6 o´clock in the evening and have their children already sleeping at 7…while I am still patiently cooking my risotto….

This makes us think..before going anywhere in the world it is defenetly useful to understand the main differences between our cultures.. just to avoid misunderstandigs.

Watch the video!

it´s time to meet in Bologna for one of the most unmissable events of the year - ArteFiera Art First – where dealers, collectors and in general art lovers want to meet and melt to start the new year in a big way.

Here you can find in fact the gota of all the Italian and international art world! I´am excited to be part of it!

I got a train at the sunrise from my hometown Trieste, greeting my marvellous sea for a few days off under the renowned Bologna arcades (the “portici”), out for tortellini and art! Quite exciting!

Arriving at ArteFiera I got the feeling that this year it was very relaxed and enjoyable. What I noticed straight away was that there were much less galleries exhibiting than the year before. Maybe one more sign of the global crisis…

Also the earth played its part trembling under our feet. Nevertheless the kermesse kept going on undisturbed.

I strolled around the pavilions, 21 and 22 for contemporary and the number 16 for modern art which were quite crowded by a polite and interested public.

As I worked at a gallery stand I had the chance to exchange opinions with gallerists and collectors coming from all over Europe. Everybody agreed that we have been facing a big comeback of painting as an emerging cross-cultural trend.

Artists from all over Europe have been moreover supported this year by the Euromobil Under 30 prize. Great way to exhibit at the fair and give us a chance to touch the new trends coming up. Even though it has been becoming clearer and clearer to me that we are going in a direction where art has been progressively melting with design.

On Friday night, first we had an appointment at the Dipartimento delle Arti Visive dell’Università di Bologna for the meeting with Luigi Ontani (here on the left). Afterwards more or less the same people moved to Palazzo Pepoli, the Museo della Storia di Bologna for the hippest opening in town. I am talking about the new and wonderful steel glass tower!

Saturday 28th it was the turn of the Art White Night, but only for the bravest once of the art world. I have to confess that  after a long day working at the fair I just preferred to hang out at Cantina Bentivoglio. Suggestion valid all over the year. The Cantina is highly recommended for its relaxing atmosphere for all Jazz lovers. It´s the most historic Jazz club in town with an excellent wine selection, in a typical Emilian atmosphere. Perfect for a winter evening!

Before getting my train back direction North East I rushed to MAMbo, luckily located not far away from the train station. Here I visited the small and elegant retrospective of the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers and did also some last-minute shopping at the Corraini Editions bookshop.

Nice balance between working and discovering days. Waiting for the next!

Even though at the start of this year there is not much enthusiasm around us – well, as a matter of fact the news are not supporting our mood … the ship sinking at the Island of Giglio, as well as the spread in Italy and the politics in Europe – we at illywords think positively! That´s why we have been working  hard to shake up and restart in a big way our cultural research allthrough the themes of the year.

First of all, I would like to welcome our new bloggers Chiara, Steve and Danilo that will write from the United States and Brazil and that will join me, Manuela, Silvia and Eleonora to chase up people, facts and unpublished short stories coming from their cities spread all over the world.

The first theme of the year “Different Cultures” seems to fit like a glove because it lets compare thoughts and experiences.

I think that difference is a value as long as it doesn’t feed discrimination or separation among people. Nevertheless I am defenetly convinced that we are getting closer and closer to a global culture that threatens to flatten and smooth the cultural uniqueness that is the lifeblood of different people.

I’m curious to read the examples of cultural differences that the bloggers will nose out in their cities.

Here I will give you my example.

I live in Trieste, in the north east corner of Italy, at the border with Austria and Slovenia. When someone answers to a question with an embarrassed smile using the expression “volentieri” – which in regular Italian means “Yes, I would be glad to…” –  he or she means “No”! The total opposite … can you figure this out? It´s quite strange, isn’ it?

So, just a suggestion from me .. be aware of this when you ask for something in my city… just not to get disappointed.

——–

Ciao a tutti, bentrovati!

Intorno a noi si sente ancora poco entusiasmo in questo 2012. Beh in realtá gli ultimi eventi non é che siano proprio consolanti … la Costa Concordia a picco all´Isola del Giglio, lo spread in Italia e la politica in Europa… ma al di lá di tutto questo, noi di illywords pensiamo positivo! Ci stiamo allenando  per scrollarci questo clima pesante e riprendere  alla grande la nostra ricerca culturale all’interno dei tanti temi dell’anno. Dò dunque il benvenuto ai nuovi blogger Chiara, Steve e Danilo che ci scriveranno dagli stati Uniti e dal Brasile e si uniranno a me, Manuela, Silvia ed Eleonora per scovare persone, fatti e racconti inediti nelle loro città.

Il primo tema Different Cultures sembra calzare a pennello per mettere a confronto pensieri ed esperienze. Penso che la differenza sia un valore purchè non alimenti discriminazioni o separazioni tra le genti. Sono tuttavia consapevole che ci stiamo avvicinando sempre più ad una cultura globale ed omogenea che rischia di appiattire le tante unicità che sono la linfa culturale di genti diverse. Sono curiosa anch’io di leggere gli esempi di differenze culturali scovati dalla redazione. Io vi porto il mio molto semplice. Nella mia città Trieste, nell’angolo nord est dell’Italia a confine con l’Austria e la Slovenia quando uno ad una domanda risponde con un sorriso imbarazzato “volentieri” significa una negazione  anziché un “si”…strano vero? Ricordatevi di questo mio suggerimento se passate dalle mie parti…giusto per non rimaner scottati!

Isn´t it much more fun to do that at the end of it to compare the previsions with the facts?

A few years ago, I was struck by the meeting with a famous astrologist. Despite my skepticism she showed me that the stars and the planets with their movements are a true science if correctly interpreted. I got that nothing is bound to our free will as everything is already written. I have chosen one of her thoughts of the beginning of 2011 when she said: “We will expect a dynamic star constellation..not always harmonious. We will have to struggle in all fields!” I do not want now to discuss now about the technical details that led to this thought, but I confirm that we experienced this year a dynamic Universe, for sure (..do you remember how many historic events have marked 2011?)…on the contrary, did you hear about harmony? I would say: not al all…

On the other side we, women and men, made a lot of efforts: through the social networks, Facebook, twitter and the collective thinking, all of us have participated and witnessed the fall of governments and of the so-called big men, dragged in the dust. It is not a mere coincidence that the “Time” declared as person of the year 2011 not a single one but the “Protesters”, from the Arab Spring to the indignants of Wall Street!

Well, I might not be willing to read the horoscopes for next year, but I believe in the passion of all healthy and honest Mr “No one” who makes the history.

Happy New 2012 now from me and from all the editorial staff of illywords: Rita Buonarroti, Manuela Castiglione, Eleonora Pallavicino, Silvia Vatta, Irina Zucca Alessandrelli!

A huge constantly-changing kaleidoscopic bazaar of knowledge is mixed together and defines what we call “freedom”.

This flow however, for various reasons such as security, privacy and professional discretion, becomes problematic, erecting as it does protections which are metaphors of our time: each of us feels the necessity to build an “appearance” to define our personal limits of competence, assert our ability and to safeguard our position and certainty.

In my opinion the idea of “Nomadic knowledge” is to be found in these contradictions.

There is, in particular, one view of this situation which seems to me very interesting and important and that is that Man has always felt the necessity to cover himself, to protect himself from bad weather, danger and enemies. Through the ages and with the march of progress this prime necessity has however taken on further functions.

Clothes no longer only serve their primary aim but have assumed other economic, symbolic, political and group-membership roles. They thereby reflect historical change, hope, fear of the future and dreams of a planet with fewer guns and more roses.

In my opinion the best contemporary definition of “Nomadic knowledge” is the way we dress.

We now take the opportunity and have the luck to be able to dress in a way which plays with not only forms and colours but also with a range of cultural diversity.

We wear the colours of India, wool from the frozen North, the American cut, the products of far-off workshops, the magic European styles, traditional embroidery, the see-through look, necklaces made from tropical trees and decorations from antique civilizations.

These are things which easily become ours, and which we can assemble as we like.

We are in a way like geographical globes which are dressed and undressed in many codes, and this fact perhaps provides the best definition of “Nomadic knowledge”.

Or you are a music composer that would like to innovate the conventional character of Berlin´s musical life?

Or you are rather a writer and you want to engage a dialogue between cultures through the verbal mode of communication able to overcome all cultural limitations?

Or you are a filmmaker inspired by the attractive cinematic metropolis of Berlin with its huge network of filmmakers and field of the Berlin International Film Festival?

Well, then you should apply for the Berliner Künstlerprogramm to get a scholarship and come to Berlin for one year.

The programme is like a “meeting point” for artists who want to absorb the phenomena of this city from one hand and from the other they want to set their stamp here. Give and take of skills, knowledge, ideas and inspirations: this is the motto!

Fascinated by this concept, I went last week to see the installation “The conditions of the process” of one artist of the Programme, the Japanese Yutaka Makino at the DAAD Galerie – the art gallery of the institution.

First of all I love Japan and I think that it represents now the real new frontier in creative art. Second I was curios to learn more about the effects of a sound and light installation.

So I got there. I had to wear blue overshoes and in the silence of the gallery I entered in a black corridor coated with soundproof material. When the door closed I was in the full dark. Quite scaring! I didn´t get why that darkness! My first impulse was to go back but I went on and after a couple of turns I entered the exhibition room.

Wow! The installation pushes you directly to your physical and psychological limits. The darkness leaves the way for a flashy, penetrative light interrupted by the outline of fake windows. Your ears get abused by an electronic subtle sound pervading your body, your flesh, your bones. Quite an intense, unpleasant experience that doesn´t leave you untouched!

My first association was with the birthing process. From the darkness to the light. From the perfect silence to the sound. But the poetry of the birth might not fit the feeling… or rather yes. And in this case my question now is: “How does it feel like living in this inhospitable world?”

Foto: The Conditions of the Process
daadgalerie
2011
© Yutaka Makino

In London doing strange things is something that seems more than normal.

In London during the weekend everything can happen, more than anywhere else.

I think that London still embodies the destination par excellence for new nomads, like in the ´80s. It still attracts young people looking for ideas but also professionals in search of new opportunities. It looks like the city itself is nourished and built on these people that come and go, take and give experiences, designing the identity of this city upon the contamination of multiple cultures.

Big part of this ‘nomadic life’ is meeting new people and possibly spending good time together. Giving parties is a practice that needs as much skills and experience as any other else, especially here if you do that seriously, it might become your proper job!

A few months ago a dear friend of mine said to me: “I’ll take you to an extraordinary party tonight! It’s organised by an Italian guy. I don’t know him and I’ve heard it through the word of mouth, but should be really cool.”

Since then every time that the Italian guy organises something, I always try to be there.

The last time was the seventh edition of the Rumpus party, which is held almost every two months in a different venue in central London. I have to admit that if I think how a party should look like, this is exactly what I want.

This time the theme was Pirates vs. Ninjas. You feel ashamed if you are not dressed up at least a little bit!

Juggles and acrobats, musicians and costumed dancers performing in every corner, sax players hanging over the crowd wearing a fake tail that you can buy for a few pounds to be part of the circus, hairdressers styling hair of girls making eccentric hairdos. Then there were even five different dance halls and a cinema, all concentrated in an old iron factory in a hidden street near Angel station.

Amid all this it can happen to discover new things like the exciting balkan jazz of Gorgeous George, a young band that makes you dance all night.

If you pop by in London this weekend, go to the next event organised by the same guys on December the 17th. It will take place at The New Empowering Church, another truly nice place in East London to have a great night out, with the Balkan Beats. Don´t miss it!

Roberto Ceresia is a young Italian man with a passion for art inherited by his family running for years an antique art shop in Palermo. In 2005 he started a contemporary art gallery in his hometown, began focusing on new artistic waves from China and introduced young talented Chinese artists on the Italian scene. Next, in 2008, Roberto felt it was time to be on the move and to settle down in China to pursue his vision. He “landed” in Moganshan Lu, the local art district, opening the first and only Italian owned and managed art gallery in town: the Aike Dell’Arco gallery.

Here’s a quick talk with Roberto.

Eleonora Pallavicino: “How did you choose between Beijing and Shanghai?”

Roberto Ceresia: “When I moved to China, Beijing artistic scene was huge, and 798 Dashanzi Art District was flourishing, but I had this strong feeling that Shanghai shouldn’t be missed. Besides, there were already two Italian galleries in Beijing and one of them, the world famous Galleria Continua, was already a giant. It was like Shanghai was offering more opportunities to a small gallery like mine, however I travel to Beijing very often as some of my artists are from there”.

E.P.: “How about the start-up difficulties?”

R.C.: “The main challenge was to understand how to enter the local art system, cope with the need to be known and get the endorsement, first of all, from the artists. If they respect you and trust you and there’s mutual understanding, the gallery can perform well. In contemporary art – and this is true especially in China – trust and support of the artists is vital. I began exposing the Chinese artist that I have supported while in Italy: Lee Kit from Hong Kong, Wang Zi and Ma Qiu Sha and little by little I built my network.

Another important point was to find reliable and good people to work in the gallery. It was a struggle but now I have 3 persons with me and the team is finally the right one.”

E.P.: “Is the Moganshan district a winning combination?”

R.C.: “The “Moganshan container” works perfectly for Shanghai. The supply of art pieces and the quality of the galleries is really diverse, there are “real” galleries and there are just “art shops”. As the interest on China is so strong and as Shanghai is a business pivot, clients’ range here is wide: from the commuter businessmen to the curators of important museums, not only Chinese but European and American too. The rich Chinese have become big clients, local cultured professionals have also started to buy although currently most of them are just speculators. Luckily there are also buyers that reflect the ideal profile of the private collector, who shows passion and interest.”

E.P.: “Tell us more about your artists.”

R.C.: “My gallery is mostly focused on young, dynamic and promising artists. I still work with Lee Kit that is now been exhibited in important museums, next year in February he’ll achieve one of the biggest rewards for a young artist as he’ll have 2 personal exhibitions in NY.

Rarely I have Italian artists in my galleries, sometimes I showcase long time friends, but my focus is definitively on Chinese art both here and in Italy. I can mention some like Guo Hongwei, a painter that is now on show in Palermo with his watercolors, Jiang Penyi with his decaying urban landscapes pictures, and Wang Sishun, recently reflecting on the body and the ego and also Li Ran and Luo Xiao Dong“.

E.P.: “How did these Chinese years turn out?”

R.C.: “The gallery works well as my choices have always been focused on quality. I put a lot of efforts and sacrifice in my work, I feel like dedicating a lot of energy to the gallery and I feel lucky to be here and to deal personally with the artists. If I had not been so personally involved, I think I wouldn’t have had such good results.”

Unthinkable today!

There are no legendary night clubs in New York anymore. What Aids didn’t do, Giuliani’s “quality of life” policies did, as well as soaring real estate prices and an economy that needs everybody at least half awake at nine in the morning.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no nightlife. It just took on a different shape, and it happens in a new kind of place: in hotels that expand more and more into feature-rich adult playgrounds, urban fantasies and live-in film sets.

It was the Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District that started the trend. Once you’ve been on the roof terrace of this rather bland looking building, you never wanted to go back to the dark caves of yesterday’s nightclubs. So successful was the concept that a new Gansevoort recently opened on Park Avenue. Its nightclub and pool area fills three entire floors on the top of the building.

In the meantime, others have done much better what the Gansevoort did well. There’s the Gramercy, once a stuffy veteran, now an atmospheric urban villa on a huge scale. Or the Maritime, thanks to its generous outdoor space home to a lively party scene.

But the two hotels that epitomize the new trend are the Ace and the Standard.

The latter, part of a growing chain that started in Los Angeles, is a huge concrete slab on top of the High Line Park. You can see both the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty from the Boom Boom Room on the 18th floor, one of the city’s hardest clubs to get into. But there is more on offer: restaurants, an ironic German beer garden, even an ice rink.

While the Standard sits right in the epicenter of a trendy zone, the Ace settled in the seemingly inhospitable area north of Madison Park. But for many of the affluent hipsters it is aimed at, the authenticity of shady discount stores only adds to the fun. And the neighborhood will change soon, anyway.

The Ace came with a complete gentrification starter-kit: there’s a branch of the trendsetting boutique Opening Ceremony, there is the similarly trendy Project No. 8, and a range of bars and restaurants, among them The Breslin, offspring of the celebrated Spotted Pig. The hotel is like a little village in itself where those in the know find all they need.

The new nightlife hotels, far advanced from the early boutique hotels, seem to contradict everything that hotels used to stand for. For starters, they break down the divide between tourists and locals. In those hotels we’re all “glocals”, global nomads, but right at home as long as we’re among people like us, no matter if they’re from Stockholm or L.A.

And while before you had to escape your hotel to find the real life of the city, you’ll now find it right where you’re staying. Gone as well is the notorious lack of character of the Sheratons and Hiltons. The new hotels are saturated with narrative, if real or invented. The owners of The Jane like to point out that the hotel used to house the survivors of the Titanic. And to drive the point home they added hundreds of antiques. The Bowery is a made up old-world fantasy. And the Yotel with its robotic bellman, is pure science-fiction.
Today’s new nomads can choose what role they want to play.

It seems at the first glance a quite weird idea, but Wikipedia can be considered as a real place even though on the world wide web, it is a platform of free knowledge. Defined moreover by its founder the ”Temple of the mind” it has become in the last 10 years a vital part of our daily searches for information on the net.

Would you like to be part of the movement?

Message from Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia for World Heritage on Vimeo.

These people are not playing – or sometimes they even do it, of course – but in general they are working! Berlin has been in the last years a catalyst for people coming from all over the world, looking for a place with a special vibe, where life can be easier and sometime even cheaper. They are artists, graphic – and fashion designers, media experts, advertisers, in general the so called creative people. They represent the new nomads: people who want to travel the world, meeting the locals and remaining active, which means taking their home office with them anywhere in the world.

Nowadays this is quite easy thanks to all media devices that keep us all (not only the nomads) constantly connected to the net.

I myself love to go and work at Café Sankt Oberholz in Rosenthalerstrasse in Mitte, famous for its blackboards outside with memorable sayings like: “Das Leben ist kein Pony Hof” (”Life is no pony farm”). I get my latte macchiato – a must in Berlin, also because it tastes so creamy and great – and I go upstairs. Here if you don´t have a laptop or an iPad you feel misplaced. People who sit here do not intend to talk, but rather stay alone with themselves and their mega bits. A light music on the background does not disturb the concentration.

From  here they primarily work or study, but also buy, communicate, source information. This global community – the good news is that to belong to it, you do not need to be a digital native! – has an enormous power: their ideas, nurtured by instant feedbacks, can interact so quickly and efficiently trough blogs or tweets that they can change the course of the world.

The power of the net with its load of information can be sometimes also scary, so that many of us tried to find some new behaviour rules to slow down from the addiction to instant mail checking, constant internet surfing and prefer time for human contacts.

There are in fact here in Berlin offers like the “Multi Kulti Café” or “Sprachcafé” where you get a drink at the desk, sit at a reserved table where you find people like you – not so expert with the “terrible German” – and a native speaker who leads a conversation… The aim? Just to make new acquaintances and challenge your language skills. Just as it used to be in the old times…

What is amazing of Pixar production is that there is no country in the world where an animation can’t be fully appreciated in every possible reference and detail. How does Pixar communicate with every type of viewers no matter what his/her culture, language or age is?

Having this question in mind I found the color script, a sort of emotional potion that affects every human being, displaying every step of the creation of a digital animation, from the basic sketches of a character to script to the voice of every figure.

It is a board, presenting the color keys of every scene, basically how hue unfolds in the story. To every hue corresponds a sentiment, so the choice of colors is a big deal because it plays with specific feelings that the director wants to generate in the audience. Mood and atmosphere are fully expressed by colors. So the color script, dominated by big and small spots of colors, at the first glance, looks like an image out of focus, but at the end it turns to be the must have ingredient for a good film, because it’s the visual language itself.

After the color script, the coolest discovery of the show was the Toy Story 2 computerized  Zoetrope. In a dark room , sort of magical wunderkammer, there was this device that, with succession of Toy Story main figures, produces this illusion of action. Sort of an equivalent of a motion picture, the zoetrope in a glass box has also a sound that makes it almost real. The viewer could, in fact, hear the noises that Woody the cowboy produces running on his horse, the voices of Buzz Lighteyear Mr.Potato Head, the slinky dog while, watching everybody moving in circle with the little green aliens waving hellosuperfastly.

The last part of the show, is a dive  into Pixar childhood. On the mezzanine, all the Pixar shorts are projected, one after another, from the very first one, made in 1984 by John Lasseter, Pixar’s creative chief, with co-founders Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull to the more recent ones.

I got the chance to fully appreciate this hard work behind an animation, even though the exhibition was more educational than amusing.

At that time, my “romantic” idea was to support a civilization based on knowledge value which could become even economic profit for Nations, companies and people.

For sure romantic, but still and firmly convinced that there isn´t any progress without any knowledge. Furthermore I am more than convinced that knowledge has to be equally spread among everybody in an ethical, democratic and healthy way.

Unfortunately knowledge is actually in the hands of few and most of the time it does not correspond to a real economic recognition for the one that owns it. In fact, how often do we speak here in Italy about brain drain?

Anyway we are at the end of the year and for this occasion I would like to propose you all the last activity for this 2011 of illywords. Let’s give an idea, a concept or a text as a gift to the readers, it may be simple or complex provided that it is a gift of knowledge.

Mine follows straight away: if you add some grappa to the potato gnocchi, they become much more digestible. At a first glance it could seem a very modest gift but you’ll understand the value of my suggestion when you eat a bunch of them.

How do you return my idea?

These fascinating bubbles are actually indipendent cells containing water or living plants or they are empty, but interconnected with each other by an intricate spiderweb-like net. The concept providing the framework for Saraceno in developing Cloud Cities is Air-Port- City which aims at defying all conventional concepts of place, time and gravity. The idea of the Argentinian artist is that in the cities of the future there could be cell-like floating inhabitable bubbles containing entire communities like a real biosphere.

The co-presence in this huge installation of water, synthetic materials and living plants combined with the explicit invitation of entering the space of the works creates in the viewer a unique sensation.

You can climb long aluminium stairs and physically enter and float on the biggest spheres hanging mid air. Here you can finally fulfil your dream of flying!

It is clear that the artist has a deep interest in the changes taking place in the world in which we live. That´s why each of his objects is an open invitation to consider alternative forms of knowledge, feelings and our interaction with the others.

The exhibition is amazing, really worth a visit! It is on until January 15th, 2012. Make sure you have lots of time because you will have to queue for a very long while until you manage to experience the works.

Hard to say, but the 51-year-old announced he would retire after the closing of his current retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Of course, few believe he will exit the art world entirely. There are rumors that Cattelan wants to dedicate himself to projects like “Toilet Paper”, the surreal picture magazine he has created in cooperation with the Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. He might also start another project similar to the “Wrong Gallery”, a one-square-meter exhibition space in Chelsea he ran in collaboration with his friend Massimiliano Gioni, a curator at the New Museum. Or will he just send a doppelgänger again, as he did at numerous events in the past?

In any case, Cattelan seems to follow the old rule to get out when you’re on top. The show simply titled “All” has been drawing crowds like few exhibitions in recent years. In line with his way of being, everything the artist has produced since 1989 (or almost, 128 of 130 works) is hanging from the oculus of the museum’s rotunda, leaving the rest of the museum empty.

There are the wax figures: Hitler as a kneeling young boy (supplicating for forgiveness?), JFK in an open coffin, a big-headed Picasso, hanged children and Maurizios in various sizes. There are the taxidermied horses, donkeys, mice, pigeons, squirrel, an ostrich with its head in the ground, even a cow with a Vespa handlebar in place of the horns, and lots of dogs. There are various canvases slashed in the shape of Zorro’s signature (think Lucio Fontana); nine marble corpses under shrouds, and much much more.

The exhibition has no frills: it is not chronological, there is no hierarchy, there are no titles or interpretative texts, there is nothing. What looks like a gigantic mobile with its bric a brac of objects assembled randomly together, in reality displays the crude reality with no pity. Like in a swirling vortex where everything spins, it also reveals the back sides of every work, the ones that are better to hide.

The decontextualization of Cattelan’s works, which were created for specific situations and venues, causes the loss of most of their meanings. In his most controversial piece, “The Ninth Hour”, 1999 a life-size Pope John Paul II lies on the floor after being struck by a meteorite. Usually the piece is shown alone, in a huge space, with broken glass all over a majestic red carpet. The effect is striking. Here, in the dense crowd of Cattelan’s characters you might even miss him.

Feeling almost dizzy, going up and down the ramp, I found myself wondering about the legacy of Cattelan’s entire oeuvre. It is admirable in a way that the artist decided to show his entire work in such a radical way. On the other hand it almost feels like a suicidal operation: Cattelan’s most brutal hanging.

We are talking about the 64 limited edition moka pots illysustainArt, presented in November at Artissima in Turin. The collection has been created recycling the aluminium of 6,400 illy issimo cans gathered during the 54th Biennale di Venezia. The proceeds will be donated to the no profit foundation lettera27 – with which illy collaborates within the project illy sustainArt – and specifically to the cultural, artistic and educational activities run by doual’art, an art centre in Douala, Cameroon.

Coordinated by Luca Antonini, the marketing manager and owner of MAG, the designer Moreno Balzani, owner of Thinkit! hand-crafted and numbered individually the moka pots, up-cycling the cans – otherwise destined to the bin - creating a strong relationship between the coffee to drink on the go and the coffee that we Italians traditionally drink at home in the morning.

A project aimed at sustaining art, where the “raw-material” collected at one of the most prestigious art events in the world becomes the “fuel” for a new art institution in the developing world.

So, coffee to coffee, art to art!

I am talking about Bunker Boros, probably the coolest place hosting contemporary art in Berlin.

Superlative it has always been: after the reunification the 1942-built bunker was considered the hardest party location in the world for the techno and fetish scene until the last techno party in 1996. Known as banana bunker due the fact that during the GDR it´s been used as a store for tropical fruit and vegetables coming from all over the world, it is a square austere building on the corner of Albrechtstrasse and Reinhardtstrasse in Berlin Mitte.

I was there on Sunday invited by a friend of mine to celebrate her birthday with a special event: a visit of the incredible contemporary art collection that the German tycoon of advertising Christian Boros in cooperation with his wife Karen house since 2008 in this unusual location.

Awarded with the Architektur Preis in 2009, the restoration of the bunker is impressive. They tried and succeeded in maintaining the flair of the old bunker. The walls are 2 meters thick. No light or fresh air are directly coming in. On the walls you can still see the signs “Rauchen Verboten”, the ex-fluorescent arrows illuminating the way out, the colourful graffiti done in its party time, the scissors stairs (according to the invention by Leonardo Da Vinci), connecting separately intermediate floors.

The artists were invited by Mr Boros to have a look and get a feeling of the spaces. They collaborated with each other choosing the rooms for the installation of their artworks, getting along very well without the intervention of any curators.

It is interesting to notice how in the first part of the bunker, the artists adapted their works to the space while in the second part the works are site specific.

I loved the light installations by Olafur Eliasson describing the space around and giving a dash of colour and beauty. On the last floor I was impressed by the work by Tobias Rehberger who created an ensemble of chandeliers done out of coloured Velcro.

It was impressive the work “Temporary Placed” by the Scandinavian artists Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragsetfeaturing a man lying in pijama on an hospital bed facing the only open window of the bunker just in front of an hotel room. I can´t figure out how the guests of that room can react seeing that strange man about to die!

After one and a half hour tour the air begins to be sticky. You don´t get any fresh air in there. I miss oxygen. I cannot help but thinking at the people during the rave parties in there who told they couldn´t light the cigarette because of the lack of oxygen. Now I realise what this can mean.
The tour is over.

Finally I can breath some fresh air but I am carrying with me the incredible atmosphere of the bunker, which is for sure worth a visit!

He lets the story start from the very beginning, when biology rhymed with war, when businesses and nations succeeded only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition, when politics meant to win at all costs…

And here starts a new amazing story, of which we are only at the beginning and of which we are all the protagonists. It is the story of the interaction, cooperation and collaboration of people all around the world who share information, knowledge, goods, bites through open platforms like google, ebay or Wikipedia, just to mention a few of them.

Let´s listen together what the writer of the bestseller “Smart Mobs: the next social revolution” said about the power of mobile phones, internet and personal computers. The new era of open cooperation is just at its start….

The feeling is of a general acceleration and improvement!

The city has been dressing up, tiding everything, getting ready for the big 2012 event. The Olympic Games in London are going to be held from the 27th of July to the 12th of August followed by the Paralympic Games from the 29th of August to the 9th of September.

We still have to wait for a long while until the biggest competition of the world will start. Today the big clock placed in the centre of Trafalgar Square counts still 252 days for the big start, but London citizens have been debating about the impacts of the games in the economy and in the global architecture of the city for years by now!

The controversy about the event involves so many aspects that will see a city radically and suddenly changed as only possible in decades.

We are talking about a material and immaterial space projected and produced by the Olympics process, which involves physical transformations into London and, more specifically, in the so called Olympic Boroughs (Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Walthamstow, Greenwich). From the beginning the East End was framed as a land of opportunity, a land of void, degrade, poverty, crime and pollution, only waiting for the Olympics to arrive and give a start to the regeneration.

Talking about sport I’ve never been a fanatic but I can’t ignore the relevance of the event. Walking through the city I see monuments, palaces and streets under restoration. People are coming here from abroad to get jobs and new opportunities.

Everybody seems to be willing to take advantage from the event in a sort of enormous cooperation among multiple forces aiming at obtaining success out of it.

Also the art system has been affected by this uncontrollable swirl.
A large part of the art events have been scheduled within the Cultural Olympiad, which is a celebration of culture as part of the 2012 Olympic Games. It will take the power of the Games to inspire creativity across all forms of culture.

The city is in turmoil and no one wants to miss this chance. Tracy Emin, omnipresent, has produced a poster that you can buy on the Olympics website at just £7.
The National Portrait Gallery is unleashed with the production and exhibition of portraits of everyone and everything involved in Olympics.
At the Tate Modern the space will be covered by Damien Hirst exhibition.
And from the 21st June to the 9th of September artist from across the world will meet in UK for the London 2012 Festival!
For more information we have to wait, really hoping to be surprised.

252 days to go!

Watch the video!

Cool Hunting Capsule Video: Tony Conigliaro from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Acclaimed as one of the best exhibitions in Shanghai since long time, “Window in the wall: China and India  - imaginary conversations”, is hosted in the beautiful huge new space of Pearl Lam Fine Arts, near the Bund and of course I could not miss it. By the way, the exhibition surprisingly fitted perfectly our monthly theme, coopetition.

China and India are now the most populated countries of the planet and are said to be destined to shape the political and economic features of this century. As ancient neighbors with intense cultural and trading exchanges and as contemporary economic competitors they have been and they are still so strictly linked that the neologism Chindia is now of common use. However, in contemporary art the exchange is just a recent phenomenon and is still limited. To give evidence of this possible and stimulating cooperation curators Gayatri Sinha and Gao Minglu have chosen 15 contemporary Indian and Chinese exemplary artists, bringing them together under the same spotlight.

Welcomed from Indian Gigi Scaria’s photo work Equator, which merges together, reflecting one into another, the skylines of the Shanghainese Bund and of an Indian bidonville, I started an amazing walk from piece to piece.

The exhibition is effective: a “dialogue” develops among the art pieces to investigate contemporary issues common to China and India such as fast growing economy and modernization with consequent loss of traditional values, the struggle to maintain own cultural identity as separated from the Western one, reflection on post colonialism development for India and on the past communist decades for China.

On this respect a whole room is dedicated to Contemplations of Four Great Figures of Chinese Li Zhanyang, a life size amazing sculpture of Marx, Mao, Lenin and Stalin demurely sitting, facing each other, while apparently reflecting on the path of Communism, with their postures in contradiction with their historical role.

The outstanding video installations of Indian artist Sharmila Sarmant provoke about globalization: in Global clones a movie showcasing ongoing steps of old style traditional Indian sandals are juxtaposed to a static real pair of brand new Nike trainers; in Dissonant Consumption different typical dishes from around the world are being eaten with the improper tool (knifes takes the place of forks, chopsticks replace spoons and so on) making the eating almost impossible.

The same feeling of contemporary unease is analyzed in a more introspective feminine way, in the works of two well known female artists: the Chinese Cui Xiuwen displays some pieces from her Existential Emptiness, a black and white photo series and the Indian Mithu Sen showcases her In transit, watercolor and collage series which features colorful memories of her Indian childhood and youth.

I loved the way in which Chinese Ma Yuan and Tan Xun use original archeological finds (Tang terracotta statues and stone carvings, Qing wooden beams) to give them a new vividness and keep reminding us that Chindia, too often viewed just as a mega market, is the cradle of two millenary civilizations.

According to Stanley Kubrick this is the first step of evolution from primates to humans. Also many scientists think so. Since Darwin, intergroup hostilities have figured prominently in explanations of the evolution of human pro-social behaviours.

For instance the evolutionary biologist Samuel Bowles analyzed archaeological records and used mathematical models to show that estimated level of mortality in intergroup conflicts are linked with the proliferation of group-beneficial behaviours.

Other scientists believe that inter-group competition could be also related to intra-group social tension and therefore cause the deterioration of social relationships. A team of ethologists from Liverpool John Moores University and Insitute of Cognitive Science and Technologies (CNR) made an experiment with captive tufted capuchin monkeys to test two contrasting hypothesis.

According to the “cooperative” one, the exposure to a neighboring group is expected to promote intra-group cooperation, increasing levels of grooming and lowering aggression rates. Escalation of violence within the group may be prevented through redirection against the enemies. On the other hand according to the “induced-tension” hypothesis, the exposure to a neighbouring group should cause an increase in intra-group social tension, characterized by high levels of aggression and low levels of grooming. Their findings do not seem to support cooperation as a result of intense inter-group hostility.

Maybe the solution is not so simple. Primates are all different and humans are different from apes. For example chimpanzees live in a male-dominated society where violent behaviors are very frequent. Bonobos society instead is characterized by more tolerant attitudes, flexible cooperation and food sharing.

Brian Hare from Duke University and its colleagues claimed that in situations of competition for food male chimpanzees showed an increase in testosterone, which is thought to prepare animals for competition or aggressive interactions. By contrast, male bonobos showed an increase in cortisol, which is associated with stress and more passive social strategies in other animals.

If we look at hormones levels in humans before competition some men may seem more bonobo-like and others more chimpanzee-like. But there’s something unique about human males: after competition they experience an increase in testosterone if they win or a decrease if they lose, like sport fans following a win or loss. This post-competition changes in hormon levels was not observed in either chimpanzees or bonobos. So humans are unique.

After all there’s something I really like about bonobos society. They use sex to sort out social tensions and end disputes. Thanks to this, their society is very tolerant and non-violent.

Their motto could be: “Make love not war”. Why don’t we put in practice the bonobo lesson?

With his usual hilarious and sarcastic way of going in depth into concepts and into the eclectic use of words, he will entertain us in this video narrating his experience.

One draws a figure and the other receives the drawing folded and hidden,  with just two signs where he was supposed to start drawing again.

We can hear both laughing and the silence of concentration. One after the other, several people filled their own part and went on playing.

They called this practice Cadavres Esquis, literally “tasteful dead bodies”. Also the title suggested that things were put together - words, images, thoughts – with unpredictable associations. Today  we can find these crazy, yet beautiful little drawings in the art galleries and on the wall of the art fairs.

What was born to be a simple way to spend time together, became the way to create something new.

The concept was that a group can share a collective feeling, a deep relationship that goes beyond any word, a sense of unity that leads to a mysterious agreement. Nevertheless, they were there also as individuals. None of them wanted to dissolve his own personality into the liquid of a collective identity.

In fact, it was both a play and a game, a vase in which all the participants poured  their singularity without abandoning it.

Everybody was  having fun, as it used to be in those circles of young, provocative and brilliant men that were what we call now the “historical avant-garde”. But they were also fighting among them.

Everyone wanted to invent the most exciting, wonderful and deep part of the final image, which was discovered only at the very end by unfolding the paper. We hardly recognize the hands now, but they did know or could guess who was the author of the single parts.

They were competitors, but literally on the same level and with nothing to win but the wonderful sensation of a flow based on interaction and amusement. Does not it seem to be what happens also nowadays in the most creative teams?

Put in a huge space a series of zebra finches with red becks, take electric guitars and make an installation with sand, plants, nests and visitors. The result will be a visual translation of actions/sounds.

When I moved in the installation, I followed a wooden path among guitar stations, surrounded by upside down drums filled with water and birdseeds. Every pace started a series of movements developing sounds in a continuous cooperation between animals and humans.

So, like in a dominoes game, my movement translated into a sound made by birds flying from guitar to guitar producing a musical motion to observe and listen. For Boursier –Mougenot it’s a matter of using the space as filter to record the encounters in this balanced atmosphere where everything has been strategically placed, the guitars and basses tuned and the amplifiers adjusted to the acoustic of the space. The balance between technical requirements and physiological needs of the birds generates the “music in becoming”.

Then, the  key for experiencing a concert is not controlling the tempo, leaving the instruments at the birds needs and pleasures and the chance will make the rest.

A kid running behind me when I went in, spent more than one hour chasing the birds (his mom tried to convince him to return another time with no success). The good thing for him, it’s the pretty low position of the guitars, that gives him the feeling of touching the finches when they fly or they rest on the tuned strings. Everything seems close and easy. A tiny move is enough to change the whole scenery. A gesture creates a sound that creates a new image. Like in a kaleidoscope, the viewers and the birds proceed together, in a playful interaction that is never the same.

Courtesy Fondazione Hangar Bicocca, photo Agostino Osio.

Just to give you an idea right now I am at Artissima 18, the International Fair of Contemporary Art at Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin.

I felt like beeing at home when I moved in: wooden boxes, workers, painters who painted the walls leaving some spaces blank. In place of furniture and crockery you can see many paintings and installations.

I get that feeling of positive fibrillation running through the corridors. I think this is the file rouge binding all people in here now. Gallerists who tomorrow will compete, have been friendly helping the neighbourgh gallerist who urgently needs a hammer or a pair of pliers.

Not only a cooperative atmosphere is in the air. Oh no! I am just hearing someone speaking loud, losing his temper because a work of art that he was expecting has not arrived yet or he is demoralized because the artwork is not able to “live in the space” as it was thought….

It´s a thrill! I guess this is the most exciting part of the backstage!

As usual, tomorrow at the preview everything will be ready for the official opening.

You´ll find me from tomorrow until Sunday the 6th at Artissima. Come over and visit. We can drink a coffee together.

It seemed to be absurd!

Nowadays it would be hard to conceive a world divided with walls or any kind of barriers. What’s needed instead is bearing into mind and putting into practise the old but nevertheless true motto ”united we stand, divided we fall” when we handle with a good idea that requires a strong commitment together with a considerable outlay of financial and human resources.

Professor Yaneer Bar Yam, expert of complex models and President of the New England Complex System Institute said that in the near future ten billion of human beings will be linked one another in an ongoing exchange process able to create a sort of “hyper-individual” whose creative potential is at this point in time still inconceivable.

I am firmly convinced that human evolution should benefit from the mutual exchange even if competitive. Today we celebrate the 7th billion new born. We are not so far from what professor Bar Yem predicted, but I have the feeling that we still face great competition and less cooperation in our way of working and living.

Is  there any young person or group of young people that is using the concept of coopetition in their life, studies or work? I’d like to hear your voice.

This impression only seems to confirm the complaint from both supporters and opponents: that OWS has not real goals and programs, is politically ineffective and will most likely disappear as quietly as it came.

But look again and you’ll find a lot of method in the madness. What seems like a hodge podge jumble of tarps and stained mats turns out to be as well organized as a beehive. There is the library, stacked with thousands of books; there is the press area, where a dozen OWS volunteers blog, tweet and talk to journalists; there is the kitchen and food stand, where volunteer chefs do their best with piles of donated food; there is a medical tent, a coaching area, where volunteer psychologists help the protesters to improve their skills as “agents of change”. There is even an ecumenical altar, arranged around a tree.

And when there is anything to announce, the protesters use the “human microphone”, an effective – and community-building – method to make themselves heard without speakers. One person shouts out the message, those around him repeat, and those further away repeat again: “We need” – “WE NEED”. “Help with” – “HELP WITH”. “Sanitation” – “SANITATION”. Yes, OWS has its own street cleaners and garbagemen.

The most obvious sign of what’s at work here is the “General Assembly”, the daily meeting where the occupiers discuss fair tax models as well as how to deal with the police. After each of the proposals the protesters respond with hand signs not unlike those of stock brokers to signal approval, rejection or hesitation.

Although being leaderless is one of Occupy’s core principles, many of these unusual techniques go back to anthropologist and David Graeber. For his work the self-described anarchist researched democratic processes in a remote village in Madagascar as well as in the anti-globalization movement of the last 15 years. His view: many of the customary methods of the American left actually help to affirm the status quo. For Graeber, adjusting a little bit here and there just doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, he proposes to “create a model of the society we want”, based on the kind of “true” democracy, that is being practiced each morning at the General Assembly, where no one is the boss and compromise and consensus are the goals.

The fact that this dizzyingly diverse crowd still gets along and is still able to organize its experimental republic might be a bigger statement than many think.

Nobody was allowed to take pictures. It would have had in fact no sense to portray pictures that you all know, unfortunately so well. A masked man looking over a balcony. An airplane flying into a skyscraper. Pictures have an immense power. They do not only capture the moment, they can also influence public opinion demanding a reflection. Pictures of terror have a big enduring power that holds the viewer in their trap. They remain forever in our collective memory.

I saw pictures of the massacre in Munich (Germany) in 1972 and in New York in 2001. Actually the exhibition was organised to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I got the feeling that the entire collective exhibition turned essentially around the question: “How strong is the role that media play in shaping the reality?”

I saw video and pictures of the inflamed World Trade Center, white dust covered ghosts running and crying in total despair in NY. You know what? I discovered that there were only around 30 photographs that appeared on the front pages of newspapers and magazines worldwide but years later only five to ten images remained in the collective memory.

Historical images become quotations and new images become icons. The result is that what at the beginning appeared uncannily at the end turns to be familiar.

The exhibition goes on and it opens up in a big room dedicated to Anja Niedringhaus. Her show´s name is “At War”. She is one of the few women working in the field of war reporting. We know her photos even though we don´t know her name. For the last 20 years she has been travelling to the theaters of war around the world moved by her motto “If I don´t photograph it, it won´ t become known”.

This is another interesting exhibition with 40 black and white pictures capturing moments of chaos created by war. Her focus are people: soldiers, civilians, prisoners. But what I liked the most in her pictures was to realise how humanity can react to drama: faces marked by exhaustion and desperation that unexpected reveal moments of laughter and joy amid the suffering.

Photo Credit: Anja Niedringhaus at C/O Berlin

That’s how my October journey through south east Sicily felt like.

The small town of Modica that my family and I choose as our base appears like a labyrinth of small streets perched on a hill.

Baroque and poor lean one onto the other making it impossible to define their borders. Sometimes the oldest houses are surrounded by a fig tree, a cactus or a thriving caper plant proudly sticking out of what once was a roof. And then the perennial but surprisingly silent traffic jam of the central streets. Everything appears to my senses as a sort of visual chaos and fullness that require some time to get used to, especially for a person like me used to the unfinished open spaces of Berlin.

But all of a sudden the Sicilian pauses kick in and I find myself in a spot of calm made of balconies awash with plants, delicious pastry shops remained unchanged for the last two centuries, little squares of unequalled stillness and our Bed and Breakfast made out of rescued houses that offered us a beautiful shelter in an incredible mixture between sustainable architecture and heritage preservation.

It’s the chaos that gives magnificence to it all or maybe it’s the opposite. Anyway driving through a labyrinth of new meaningless houses we reached the Medieval center of Ragusa Ibla. This was a very surprisingly kind of experience: a central square completely timeless where the old nobility still meets in a circle watching life through wide windows on the piazza… Elegant elderly people walking slowly, capable of a kindness I never experienced anywhere else.

And then again driving through crazy unfinished roads in the traffic of Siracusa at noon just to get to its peninsular centre Ortigia to conquer one more moment of peace: a freshly made cannolo pastry in front of the Dome, all of this under a windy sky as blue as the desert one .. Africa is by the way only a few miles away from here after all!

Well I have to admit that the pastry played quite a role in all of this but the chaos triggered it all. I lived moments I won’t forget!

In a city of 22 million people the opportunities are, as you can imagine, overwhelming. Any country cuisine is well represented: obviously Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghai, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan cooking and more, but also Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese,  Thai, Greek,  French, Italian, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Portuguese, Spanish, Nepalese, Korean BBQ, just to mention some, and any other modern etiquettes like Global, Fusion, Mediterranean and Latin.

This is what I call “chaos” and I am usually panicking when it comes to make a choice.

Eating Asian here is of course a very good option and there are some outstanding restaurants out there, but eating western style is another story. Lots of fresh ingredients, often difficult to source, make it difficult to have a fulfilling “European” dining experience here. Furthermore we Italians are very demanding on food, spoiled from the wonderful unique cooking and tastes of our homeland.

Where to head when homesickness strikes you hard, when you are longing not only the Italian food and taste but also that intimate, convivial atmosphere that some little restaurants at home can offer?

Shanghai is certainly a place which leads you to be adventurous and try new paths: Fabrizio Pizzioli arrived here less that 1 year ago and tried to pursue his passion for food and cooking daring to experiment a new formula-restaurant launching “Il Nascondiglio”, which means “the hideaway”.

Il Nascondiglio is a real private living room with a little open kitchen in the corner, is open 3 evenings per week on booking only.

It’s located, or I’d better say hidden, far from the madding crowd, in an old authentic and unrestored old house, said to have belonged to the Chiang Kai-Shek family, in the charming former French Concession.

The owner/cook and his partner Ting welcome 12 guests each night, sometimes groups of friends, more often people who don’t know each other. Fabrizio cooks for them typical “home” dishes from the Triveneto and Venetian tradition and offers wines from his homeland while a piano player warms up the room.

He has a small “ravioli” machine, the same that Italian mothers use to make the fresh pasta at home. Some days ago he finally added an oven to his homey kitchen and he’ll start to bake soon. There is also a 12 servings moka to prepare the coffee, – rigorously illy blends!  -  as a closing to the dinners.

Well it seems this idea is having quite a success, evenings are fully booked, expats and locals are joining and mixing with enthusiasm. Theme dinners are often organized – I like the 20ies in Shanghai, a costume dinner with men in formal suits and ladies in old style qipao. Another hit is the “alone together” dinner: no couples admitted, you have to meet new friends there, just like in a convivial blind date.

Let’s hear from the owner own voice about the concept under the “venetian private dinner”.

The city is not usually asleep, but during these days, all around Frieze Art Fair it’s been an explosion of art insiders jumping from one venue to the other, probably dealing with a massive after party effect but already thinking about the next happening.

Actually Frieze gave me an instantaneous feeling of chaos, but despite the fact that an Art Fair, and Frieze in specific, makes hard to you to keep loving Art, I managed to escape the crowding of booths in the Auditorium Programme. I went to an interesting lecture: Do you speak English? on the ambiguity of languages, moderated by the young Italian writer and translator Vincenzo Latronico.

In order to confirm that most of the time the most interesting events are for free, I would like to point the finger on the alternative Art Fair – Ambika P3. The fair is for the second time on the London art scene. The location is amazing. Beautiful young people work there. The atmosphere is so relaxed that you can really enjoy your peace and concentration, having the space, physical and mental to think about what your are experiencing.

Among the extraordinary variety of exhibitions popping up in these days, I think that the most interesting event is the overwhelming Tacita Dean piece at the Tate Modern – The Unilever Series - a massive vertical screen in the Turbin Hall. I was there when three kids started a kind of spontaneous performance in front of the projection, interpreting the sophisticated images of Dean’s video about memory and suggestions. We were all very fascinated about this happening. Don´t miss it. You have the chance to see it until the 11th March 2012 (with or without perfoming kids).

So, it is all done for this year, but I am ready for the next Art week, somewhere else, very soon.

For the last event, after a fine Montalcino wine tasting by Mastrojanni, it was the turn of the brilliant and successful British architect David Adjaye. He did not come alone. He brought two friends or better two stars of the contemporary art field: Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

With them Adjaye went to college and since then the three of them share a close bond of friendship and team-working.

According to Adjaye success is based on a good collaboration. He doesn’t believe in the creative genius that works by himself in an abstract bubble. According to him there is always a team-work. Indeed, Adjaye, Noble and Webster persuaded us showing some of their most interesting works realised together. The first example was the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, where the building is supported by Noble and Webster’s outdoor sculpture, becoming an icon capturing the essence of this city with strong contrasts.

While they were talking you could clearly get the feeling that the three friends can get along very well!

Recently, the three stars have collaborated at the exhibition ‘Turning the seventh corner’ in Berlin, which ended three months ago.

This is a site specific installation inspired by the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs: in this structure designed by Adjaye, after turning the seventh corner of this path – that made you use all your senses rather than just your eyes – you get into the artwork room with a completely pure consciousness.

I was very good impressed at the end of the talk by this great example of collaboration among different skills within a strong friendship! Quite rare to find…

The book published by CHARTA, contains texts by Hans Ulrich Obrist and He Juxing, as well as Guo Xiaoyan, Deputy Director of Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai and Gunnar B. Kvaran, Director of Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, who participated at the presentation moderated by Phil Tinari, Editor-in-chief at LEAP in Beijing.

According to his way of looking at the reality, Liu Wei is a man that prefers express himself through his art.

Nevertheless I managed to capture some of his ideas on the project:

Silvia Vatta: “Can you tell us something about your first meeting with Charta. How have you built your collaboration over the years?”

Liu Wei: “This is my first collaboration with CHARTA.  As I felt the need to have a platform to exchange and communicate also in the West, I decided to go for an English publication, therefore I met CHARTA.”

S.V.: “Starting from the idea of City, a concept that you deeply developed in your research; how would you describe the gap between an example of Chinese megalopolis like Shanghai and a European one like London for example?”

L.W.: “They are all very compatible. The only difference is that Chinese cities offer more possibilities.”

S.V.: “At the Galleria illy in London we have been speaking a lot about traveling and communication, in which way the use of words is important in your work?”

L.W.: “In my opinion, traveling is more like working. The various landscapes that I meet make my brain restless because it gets full of new images. Exchange is a kind of release.  According to me, an artist’s studio can be very isolating, so that all of your decisions, directions of thought, as well as methods, depend merely on yourself, while exchanging, communicating with friends becomes a release of this feeling of isolation. Of course, this kind of exchange indirectly affects one’s creative work.”

Perhaps it was the ethereal, gauzy white fabrics used in Carvalhosa’s a soma dos dias exhibition, where a suspended voluminous cloth construction alters the museum that houses it, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Or Philip Glass’ tender music – played as part of the exhibition – and the way the fabric tenderly rose and fell with the air.

The artist (and trained architect) described how people reacted to the music, asking him: “How did you manage to make the fabric move in time to the music?” Of course, this wasn’t the case, but it’s an interesting example of how sound, visuals, space and an audience interact. Carvalhosa said that the exhibition seemed to put people into “a trance-like state”.

Carvalhosa is fascinated by perception, and how an installation can change – even take over – the space that houses it, to the extent that you begin to feel the installation was there first. Hence the name of his 15-tonne Sugar Loaf sculpture: ja estava assim quando chegwei (it was like this when I got here), housed in the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, near the real thing.

For a large segment of the evening, Carvalhosa talked us through his work and showed us images. He’s intrigued by processes, the journey. His work fuses together different elements – past exhibitions have included poetry performances and live music.

Obrist had a copy of Carvalhosa’s new book, Nice to Meet You, in his hands as he spoke to the artist. It was interesting to hear Obrist ask the artist about the significance of white in his work, and the typically multi-layered answer: “Its simplicity. African religions wear white on Fridays. In Brazil, it’s worn for the heat. Things change themselves better if they’re white. There’s a plasticity, a spiritual purity.”

As a composed Byriel talked the audience through some of Kvadrat’s striking, large-scale artistic collaborations – Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Textile Field at the V&A, Liam Gillick’s cinema at the Whitechapel Gallery, Aamu Song’s blood-coloured Reddress (crafted from 550 meters of red upholstery and shown in Louisiana) – Poulsen sat nodding to the side.

Soon it was the designer’s turn to speak. His approach was more abstract. He talked about information, communication, language – “You’re saying one thing to your girlfriend in the supermarket, another thing in the bedroom…hopefully” – Danish democratic ideals and failure.

Poulsen was honest about his projects. He described how a public structure designed for selling fruit in a socially conscious way didn’t go down well with the locals: “I felt like if I was driving my car with my family and it was burning, these people wouldn’t lend me a phone.”

He was a lively speaker too, drawing and writing on his ‘screen’ to illustrate points. He showed us uniforms he designed (“A uniform is a piece of a sign that reminds you who you are”), and discussed his work with a men’s refuge: “We made the cafeteria nice…we worked on the bathrooms.” The pictures he showed us could have been for a fashionable new café, or a stylish new restaurant.

If the designer’s conversation is as bright, colourful and complex as a patchwork quilt, what seams it together is enquiry. Question marks pepper my pages: “How does a racehorse get to be what it is from eating grass?”, “What do you build in the mountains?”, “Why be retro?”, “How do people like me hold onto my language?”

Powerful phrases stand out too – “I didn’t fit…Hummers, SUVs, that’s a language of death” – and advice: “Never work below your potential…Remember the value of the individual – otherwise, you’re just a slut.”

If it sounds personal, that’s because it was. Keen to not repeat himself, Ross gave us a peek inside his notebooks. The first image – flowing words opposite a sketch of a tree root – set the tone. These scribbles could fill picture frames; they’re beautiful.

We were also shown maps or pictograms, which help Ross “stay on the right path”. Diagrams of things he has made and will make (“though most of these have been done”, Ross noted proudly), drawn tenderly.

This designer is inspired by evolution, seeking the “absolute reduction of form”. His furniture – chairs like the Supernatural – products and sculptures are fluid, fusing the “deep past and the deep future”. For Ross, this means looking to Michelangelo, but designing something of our time – or ahead of it. Snapshots of Ross’ studio reveal a space as bright and white as the Galleria Illy.

This lust for modernity has Ross itching to design a carbon car.

Looking like a handsome pirate – his Bali tan offset by ice-white T-shirt and beard – the designer elaborated: “Imagine a car with GPS, a pod, that cleans the air instead of pollutes it?” So far, so believable. “When you park the car, it goes into the air and becomes a street lamp.”

Amazing. With one breath, one sentence, Ross leaps from the normal to the magical – like all the best creatives.

Being of a convenient size, in central location (Piazza Lavater, next to Corso Buenos Aires), with cutting edge program of international young artists with a very good cv, makes the Vava gallery a must for art seekers. But, there is more. After the Burrata show – from October the 28th to November the 26th – there will be another exhibition in the space, organised by Gasconade , a not for profit art project, then  VAVA gallery again and so on.

What at for the distract viewer could seem a chaotic rotation of arty crowds, starting with a messy cheese (burrata), turns out to be the opposite, a very productive chaos made by a perfectly creative machine.

I erased from my mind any confusion when I met the two young friends (in their late twenties), gallerist Federico Vavassori and curator Michele D’Aurizio who share the same office and the same enthusiastic energy and sharp talent scouting weapons. Their minds are focus as in an after-eruption moment of calm, when best ideas emerge. I appreciate the simple and casual installation of the Burrata show, where I found every work a condensed skein to unravel, like an explosion of input to order.

Greg Parma Smith (American, based in NYC) masters a nowadays mannerism and virtuosity in oil painting, matching comics like characters and street-art to crossing out white effects that brighten the contrasts empty/full palette. While, Ida Ekblad (Oslo based) loves to put in concrete discarded tools and trashed papers. By an extremely honest approach to reality, Ekblad literally transposes objects into the concrete frame for an unpredictable custom-made reality following her own personal cosmogony.

A tall, brilliant man who clearly loves staying on the stage gave to the audience an hour of entertainment and discussion going through his photographer’s career.

He really involved us in the story of his smart and obsessive research built step by step moving his gaze on the world and on the society with a biting irony. Over the years he changed his technique and tools, like for instance using black and white in the ’70s and then falling in love with colors.

As his amazing series of books testimony, he loved both discovering people habits traveling all over the world and observing the English culture from home.

In 1994 Parr joined the Magnum Photos. At galleria tonight Lorenza Bravetta, Sales & Development Director of Magnum Paris, tells us something about him: “Martin Parr is a prolific photographer, able to seek, build and lead several projects simultaneously as documentary photographer, artist, curator and publisher. Magnum Photos accompanies his approach and his career under different perspectives. We support the dissemination of his work through assignments and cultural commissions towards Europe and worldwide. We promote his photographic production and archives through regular exhibitions in main Museums, Institutional venues and publications on editorial media. We require his curatorial skills for group and special projects such as the “Fashion Magazine” or the “Magnum Days”.

Martin Parr is highly requested by art directors, curators and commercial clients from all over the world for his unique photographic writing, high professionalism and creativity. His huge sense of humor makes easy and unforgettable all collaborations with him”.

After his speech I was so fascinated that I decided to interview him very briefly.

Silvia Vatta: “Magnum Photos embodies the concept of reporting visions of the world in terms of culture and society. Can you describe with a word your stile, the starting point of your research?”

Martin Parr: “My style is mischievous with strong graphics”.

S.V.: “In recent years you started using the film-making as a new expression of your gaze on the society. Has this changed or influenced your way of taking pictures?”

M.P.: “I like film-making but I also like curating, editing many things. I am a promiscuous photographer”.

S.V.: “As British photographer, man and observer of the society and the habits of people in their environment, how would you describe the city of London?”

M.P. : “London is a great mix of cross-over, leg-over, eating and cultural and ethnic variety.”

Venice is not a superficial city to be summed up in one sentece. It is not the city of millions of tourists in shorts and sandals shuffling their feet, neither is it the city of Carnival or of holiday cruisers. It is a complex city, bound and formed by its history, by the tides, by nostalgia, by its troubles and by all the lives that it has attracted and made its own.

To understand it a little one must live it, read it, visit it, love it and hate it. It is a universe, a collection of experiences which are not to be found anywhere else, where every detail is perfectly organized according to the habits and customs of past centuries.

To see the chaos of Venice simply in terms of the tourists who throng its alleways and the results of mass tourism is an example of how we today insist one analysing everything superficially and vaguely.

When examined in deph, Venice is in fact a very ordered city structured over the centuries on an optimum interaction between its ecosystem and its economic and social needs.

We are too ready to impose the characteristics of our time on to any reality, thus creating in the minds of many of us a vision of chaos in this city. It is our own frenzy, our insatiable voracity for experience which drives us to analyse everything short – sightedly and casually.

We are therefore unable to read and appreciate this extraordinary labyrinth of water and land which is Venice. We cannot grasp the fundamental balance on which it is founded and so take refuge in narrow and reductive analyses.

The Venetian chaos becomes therefore a metaphor for our own times, for our unwillingness to understand and for our inattention. And yet it can become a new point of departure for the exercise in our ability to see clearly.

As Brodskij wrote on Venice in “Fondamenta degli incurabili”: “There is nothing for it but to read and wander around – two things which amount to the same thing – because at night these alleways of stone are like the walkways between the shelves of an immense forgotten library and are equally as quiet”.

For sure order originates from chaos. Not that we witness much of it these days: the wars, a devastated Europe, the scandals, serial killers .. well…maybe the chaos is taking its time to give birth to the cosmos, in other words to the order.

Maybe this won´t happen and that entropic sense of creativity and stimulation that is part of the chaos will not lead to any concret results. It’s a pity! But this is not bad. It´s in the deeper nature of creativity the acceptance of the potentiality of not leading anywhere.

Chaos is the monthly theme of our illywords blog. I can´t wait to read the examples that our editorial contributors around the world will make of this.

As for me I would like to read something about your own chaos and only if you have to… about your cosmos.

I had lived around the corner and knew that there simply was no space for that. The last time I was in the area there was no sign of construction. Where did they find the money anyway?

I was envisioning some huge and sleek building like the Guggenheim Bilbao or the even bigger project for Abu Dhabi. But when I arrived at the crazy busy intersection of Houston Street and Second Avenue everything looked as usual.

Until I noticed a strange structure, almost like a scaffold squeezed in between two buildings and hidden behind faux greek columns and other remains of an architectural salvage store that was there until the building collapsed eleven years ago. The pavilion whose structural skeleton is built out of carbon fiber (the first building ever made out of this material) is equipped with flexible grandstands, screens and room dividers, all concealed by a black metal mesh. David van der Leer and Maria Nicanor, the project’s two curators didn’t want an iconic building, so the Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow Wow, which designed the space, conceived it like a lightweight “traveling toolbox”.

“It is part think-tank, part community center, gathering space”, Nicanor says. And the 10-week program reflects this concept: there are talks, workshops, movie screenings, tours and games – all of them free. The theme of the first cycle is Confronting Comfort. “We want the public to think about how urban environments can be made more responsive to peoples needs”, van der Leer explains. You can hear talks by architects like Elizabeth Diller, Denise Scott Brown or Bjarke Ingels, listen to folk songs or go dumpster-diving for food (followed by a “freegan picnic”).

The carbon fiber structure is going to travel a lot in the next two years: after New York it will go to Berlin and then to Mumbai. At the end of the cycle the results are going to be presented in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

After that they will start all over again: in the next six-years there will be three different itinerant structures and thematic cycles, where each structure will be designed by a different architect, and will travel to three different cities around the world.

Why BMW is sponsoring this project is a little bit of a mystery. One can only hope that not only East Village hipsters but also the sponsors themselves will learn something here.

As we settled down for an intimate chat around Pistoletto’s Mediterranean inspired table, I was grateful for the delicious glass of chilled illy Crema that was handed to me on my arrival. Charismatic poet Robin kicked off proceedings with several animated readings from his new book Barry Flanagan: Poet of the Building Site, the fourth in a series co-published by IMMA/Charta.

Marchesi weaves a portrait of a charming eccentric, a man whose generosity and warmth was accompanied with an electrifying creativity and it is clear he has achieved his aim of capturing “the essence of Flanagan” in his writing. Replete with personal anecdotes and observations gathered during a friendship that spanned decades, the entertaining passages really helped to provide an insight into this “enigma of a man”.

Following Marchesi’s introduction, the softly spoken Juncosa skilfully guided us through a variety of topics that included the sculptor’s personal life and career, his interest in Munsell’s colour system, and the strong drive and business acumen that distinguished him as a truly great artist.

Flanagan drew his inspiration from his friends and his surroundings, including the artistic scene in Ibiza; the bohemian island where he lived part of his life in relative anonymity. However, the relaxed, hippy community did not quell Flanagan’s frenetic imagination. His passion for originality and a love of trading ideas not only inspired his own work but resulted in an eclectic personal collection filled with the work of friends, dragons, and pieces purchased from struggling young artists at Central St. Martin’s.

I was fascinated to learn the importance of colour and place in Flanagan’s work. An itinerant sculptor, he was always roving from country to country, constructing studios as he went and producing his work from locally sourced materials. His art embodies the fluid, communal lifestyle shared by many artists of his generation. He had no one fixed place, his work was at once everywhere and everything. One audience member observed that Flanagan’s philosophy was “where I am, makes me what I am,” an ethos which I think we would all do well to reconnect with.

The book launch co-incides with the launch of a retrospective of Flanagan’s work at the Tate Britain (from 27 September to 2 January 2012.)

The general theme is “The Journey”. I met Ian Noble, Professor and Curator of the magazine´s illustrations, Pietro Corraini, graphic designer and Ariella Risch, managing editor of illywords.

The team has already worked together in 2008 for Innovage with the London College of Communication.

While they are getting ready for the talk, I try to steal a few details about this experience that more than ever represents a successful example of fusione of multiple creativity approaches.

Silvia Vatta: “How was the first feedback that your students gave, when they heard about the illywords project? And how did they develope their ideas in relation to the magazine needs?”

Ian Noble: “The students were very pleased and excited to have the opportunity to work on this project. As illustrators, working with an editorial it is always interesting, especially when it is an entire themed issue”.

SV: “Which criteria do you follow to select the art works of the students? How do you usually deal with the combination of images and texts? For example in this particular case?”

Pietro Corraini: “The process of creating images for illywords is actually very simple. The high quality of schools invited to collaborate involves that professors and students are able to meet our expectations very effectively. Every time we start with an open discussion on the illywords issue. Here the students, coordinated by professors, have total freedom of expression. Illustrations become real interpretations of the theme and not just something needed to complete texts, which by the way, the students have no way to read first.

With Ariella we like to define illywords as a laboratory, where the research takes place on an equal footing among articles, interviews and illustrations. However, without a precise connection between images and text, the work can sometimes be complex. We try to use all the illustrations, building a sort of parallel story to the text, and not a compendium, as usually happens in newspapers. In illywords we let these two levels cross-over one in the other with no overlapping, creating this way a sort of dialogue between the two.”

IN: “The works´ selection was interesting. Each student produced a wide range of works exploring different approaches in multiple ways”.

SV: “What´ s your personal opinion about the creativity expressed by Galleria illy?”

PC: “In Galleria illy, or better in the Gallerie illy, I can see illywords soul. I mean, the desire to bring together different voices and points of view to draw out discussions and thoughts, not only in the audience but in illy itself and I think this makes the content much more interesting and ‘real’”.

IN: “The galleria seems to offer a location where interested people can come together, meet and exchange ideas about creativity, communication and design”.

SV: “Can you imagine a word that embodies for you the whole concept of illywords?”

AR: “The word I think is ‘Crossover’. In synthesis, illywords is an editorial concept which stimulates the meeting among different expressions of creativity. When I identify the general theme for the issue, I try to connect it with the contemporary values of life and illy philosophy. All I do is asking people and experts in different fields to compare their creative ideas in relation with the topic. Illywords is a crossover of thoughts!”

IN: “To me the spirit of illywords seems to be about cooperation and understanding. It brings together different people who have different expertise and work in this occasion with each other. It is a long-lasting project that offers an interesting insight into design education from around the world. As we live nowadays in a time when we all need more understanding, I would choose ‘understanding’ as a word describing illywords concept”.

With the decorative inner surface of his sleek lights reflected tantalizingly in the mirrored surface of Pistoletto’s Love Difference table, the scene was set for an insightful discussion, which took an unexpected turn towards Wanders’ philosophy in life.

Referencing the Norwegian saying ’the unexpected welcome’, Wanders described his desire to create work that at once feels familiar but holds an element of surprise. “Like an old acquaintance”, he mused, art should contain “a sense of intimacy” so that people can truly connect with their surroundings.

After a discussion that touched upon the future of design and the exciting ideas that partnerships between designers and companies can produce when there is “mutual respect”, a laid-back, charismatic Marcel opened the floor to questions and gave advice to several budding designers.

Marcel’s counsel to confound expectations was fittingly embodied in the creations of experimental food designers Blanch & Shock, who enthralled guests with their unusual and engaging coffee menu. The Galleria took on the air of a science lab as the duo, sporting white lab coats and goggles, magic-ed deconstructed cappuccinos and nitrous-aerated illy coffee brioche, out from under billowing clouds of liquid nitrogen.

Guests were also delighted by the edible coffee grounds – coffee cake crumbs masquerading as coffee grounds which were served in coffee filters, creating an illusion that seemed to encapsulate Wanders’ proclivity to turn the familiar on its head.

Sipping on a cappuccino decorated with a stenciled logo of Wanders himself meant that the event certainly left me buzzing. But it was the words of Wanders that really stayed with me as I left the vibrant Gallery. In a phrase as deftly crafted as the clean curves of his lamps he told us “Words are like objects which stand alone. But when you put them together they form a poem and that’s what interior design is.”

I live 100 meters far away from the Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, the street that after the wall was erected, with the help of western media spreading the voice, seemed to be a good place to escape and leave finally the wall behind.

Every day when I bring my daughter to school, we walk just across the area between the two walls where people escaping got shot by the snipers, the so-called “Death Strip”. To me everyday it is a big emotion. Yes, because I clearly feel that I am walking on an extremely particular land, where the dramatic past is just round the corner and where the present with its new face is already established by now.

As this land is so overloaded by sorrow, it could have been designated exclusively to the proper remembrance. In fact the Memorial Park on the Bernauer Strasse plays this role. Bare, empty, voluntarily without any trees, the park evokes the absence of the past.

But on the other side you can clearly feel the disruption to the past.

In fact a compound of architectonically groundbreaking townhouses stands out distinctly on the left side of the “Versöhnungskirche”. These houses have been built by a group of international architects in the full respect of the environment: using ecological materials, reutilising rainwater and heating through geothermal systems. Among them you can find even a “Passive House”, a super insulated building that needs no heating – even in the extremely cold Berlin weather – and is able to generate enough energy for its own needs.

This approach to the respect of nature, which is so tangible here, makes me think to the 17,000 hectares of “Green Land” that had been protected in 28 years (1961-1989) by the wall in all the DDR area, by the barbed wire and by the firing order. For nature this inhuman regime revealed itself as a bless! Hundreds of biotopes could be maintained and reproduced.

I´ve been waiting at the traffic light. A loud group of Italians asks me to take a picture of them laughing in front of the wall. The funny Berlin Ampelmännchen turns green. I cross the Bernauerstrasse and go east with a feeling of lightness.

The show presents possibilities of redemption. At the same time, the exhibition pays tribute to Georges Didi Huberman, who, in an essay entitled “Come le lucciole. Una politica della sopravvivenza” disagrees on the Pasolinian idea that contemporary human beings have no escape from social stereotypes.

For him, the “fireflies”(in the Pasolinian use of the word) are individuals, or events that, with innocence, as signs of naturalness offer a glimmer in the conventional existence, as fires of critical rebellion.

Huberman’s essay stresses the importance of nourishing an intelligence of the present through these apertures, against a distressing prediction of the future that kills any reaction. Every art work, as a firefly, shines and awakes the viewer’s awareness.

I found the first room at the entrance a theatrical set, where golden rays act as main characters. The work by Liliana Moro, gives to gold nuggets qualities of a precious intimacy, dreamlike kid’s treasure against the brutality of the reality tv. Recalling the tragedy of the 4 years old boy who in 1981 fell into an artesian well and the Italian start of a cynical tv of sorrow, Moro’s piece is a tender word to a boy who now would be 36 years old. While, Mario Airò engaged Cartier to sponsor the encounter of two golden wedding rings in indissoluble cuddles, far away from life tangles.

I adored the last room, the office of the gallerist, where in a corner on the wall, a discarded shot by Luigi Ghirri has been transformed by his friend Franco Guerzoni with salnitro crystals, opening a window to imaginary scenarios.

Room after room, the place of the gallery becomes a tale to listen to. Like a book where characters are in constant dialogue, a successful exhibition, blurs the boundaries of a physical space to land at somewhere else, in the form of thoughts, actions, discussions. A show not to miss to understand why, now more than ever, we need curators.

Photo Credits: Luigi Acerra

On Monday night at Galleria illy, Mark McCrum shared some of the faux pas we might be inclined to make when visiting a foreign country. A captive audience gathered around  Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Mediterranean Table to hear McCrum’s insights, garnered from his own journeys and experiences as a travel writer, and collated in his book “Going Dutch in Beijing”.

Whether you’re travelling for business or leisure, McCrum says, it’s important to be sensitive to the cultural idiosyncrasies of your destination. He shared some of the illuminating – and entertaining – anecdotes he uncovered while researching his book, shedding light on how to avoid offending people in different countries.

“You should” – McCrum revealed – “make sure to clean socks in Burma as you will be expected to remove your shoes when entering a person’s home” (learned the hard way by McCrum himself after travelling for a week in a pair of socks that were, shall we say, less than fresh).

“Your Japanese host may be rather taken aback if you hand her a bouquet of carnations when you arrive for dinner” – the flowers are associated with death and funerals.

“And you mustn’t offer to ‘go Dutch’ anywhere in China” – your host will lose face if you don’t let him pick up the bill. Simply make sure you return the favour another time.

Going Dutch in Beijing is a ‘light-hearted way of approaching travel,’ McCrum says. “The best way of really understanding the cultural memes of a location”, he says,“is to meet and talk with local people, to go beneath the surface, beyond the standard tourist destinations”. ‘For me – that’s real travel,’ he says.

This doesn’t mean that I freak out if a Sicilian chef uses caviar, or if an Indian chef uses olive oil instead of ghee. Not at all, fundamentalism is not my cup of tea, not even when it comes to food.

Actually, I know for example Pino Cuttaia of La Madia Restaurant in Licata, near Agrigento, who uses caviar following the tradition of some Sicilian monks that in the past centuries used to make their own caviar. And Sanjai Dwivedi of Zaika Indian restaurant in London who gave up ghee to embrace the “extra-virgin olive oil religion”. By the way, he still cooks brilliant Indian dishes!

I believe that the mood of the place is not given by labels on ingredients, but by the mood of the person who cooks.

As a travel writer, I love those places-not-places par excellence called airports. I like getting to the gate in advance and taking time to gaze at the never boring show provided by the multicoloured people strolling around. Airports belong no longer to the city where you’re embarking, they are already potentially everywhere.

Recently, Italian airports made some efforts to improve the quality of food served in theirs bars and restaurants – trying to play it more local. You board in Rome, and you can have a great gelato or a good pizza al taglio filled with mortadella (the favourite snack of Roman students playing truant). You land in Catania and you can have a cartellata (stuffed and baked savoury raviolo), a cannolo, or, in the summer, a granita.

For this reason, I like Italian airports even more, now. They are still the exciting places-no-places I am so passionate about but now you can guess from the bar menu the town where you are. And that’s so exciting.

The striking white space of the Galleria was altered with reflections of light and shadow formed by the geometric shapes and cosmic formations of Italian artist Christian Frosi’s installation.

Frosi is the London recipient of this year’s Moroso Award for Contemporary Art. His piece ‘New Title Sparkling Water’, which explores the themes of space and light, was projected on to the wall for this special preview, creating the hypnotic effect.

I stole a few minutes with the artist to discuss the inspiration behind the piece.

In 1952 in Milan, Christian Frosi explains, as the shadows flicker over our faces, a group of artists calling themselves Les Spatialistes broadcast the first ever television manifesto. Led by Lucio Fontana, the artists extolled the virtues of a new space to be interrogated thanks to the advent of this new technology – a ‘cosmic’ space – a space that was no longer confined to matter.

‘It is a manifestation designed to renew the fields of art,’ they declared.

Six decades later, Frosi reconstructs the principles of Les Spatialistes in his installation four years in the making, adapting these principles to the very different technological landscape that exists today.

The forms on screen are in fact an exploration of how our perception of the ‘cosmic’ space has evolved since the 1950s, incorporating recognisable symbolism from early PCs, themes from NASA images and highly-polished 3D formations. These sequences are overlaid with an interference filter typical of the early television sets evocative of the original manifesto.

‘The idea of using television like a ray of light to change shadows and shapes in the houses of Italians in the 1950s seemed to me touching but also politically provocative,’ Frosi said, ‘for its vision so extremely positive and free towards technology.’

‘Frosi is a very special artist,’ said Moroso’s art director Patrizia Moroso who presided over the Award, ‘his animation comes from something remarkable from the past that he discovered and that’s very interesting.’

‘New Title Sparkling Water’ is on display at Galleria Illy until 16 October. I encourage everyone to get down to Galleria Illy to view it for themselves.

The room buzzed with anticipation as the art icons gathered around their esteemed colleague Michelangelo Pistoletto’s reflective table to speak in front of a crowd of design fans. When someone as creative as Marina Abramovic is involved, it’s exciting to see just what will be delivered, and this was certainly felt in the Galleria before the talk commenced.

The Pistoletto table proved a fitting backdrop, since its organic, wooden form matches Marina’s view that artists ‘crave nature’ more than technology. The pair discussed the best way to find time in this increasingly busy modern world. Marina asks for time in exchange for her work – it’s not easy to rush art. It was interesting to hear how even a prominent artist gets weighed down with the everyday stresses of phone calls and emails.

For Patricia, ‘art is a matter of life and death’, and Marina said that she agreed 100%. This sentiment is clearly shared by the crowd of art and design devotees, who were still enthralled by the speakers’ insights.

When considering the relationship between pain and art, Marina said, ‘Memory will survive everything.’ She’s no stranger to suffering for her work, having pushed herself to the limits of pain, exhaustion and danger in search of an emotional and spiritual transformation. The Aboriginal culture of Australia, which Marina spent a year immersed in back in the Sixties, is her example – ‘not one word is written down, yet the rituals and lifestyle have been remembered for 20,000 years,’ she said.

Marina and Patricia opened the floor to questions, allowing the audience to freely converse with their icons on this momentous occasion, and hung back afterwards to talk to guests over a glass of wine or a cup of illy coffee.

Attendants also learnt something new: Marina Abramovic is a massive Liberace fan. She said that you can’t compete with his Vegas shows for wow factor. I doubt she’ll be donning a sparkly suit for her next performance, though.

Photo Credits: Richard Bailey

The venue was transformed into a striking white space with bright stripes and splashes of colour, an illy bar, bookshop and a cavernous corner housing a load of candy-coloured chairs and the evening’s entertaintment – a jive-y double-bass player, backed by vocals and drums.

Curated by the Italian artist, Pistoletto, who was there looking sharp in a purple trilby, the centrepiece is his free-form mirrored table, edged in wood and surrounded by several chairs – each based on a different culture or religion. Chairs are also stacked up in rows on shelves to admire. The most comfortable by far? The squashy orange blocks that looked more like playing cubes than a sofa.

Pistoletto said of the concept, ‘Coffee and art are a basic physical need. Let’s join in the common desire to produce a better life for everybody.’

Upstairs, espresso cups are lined like dominoes, each representing the design of a particular artist and a particular year. Since its first incarnation in New York in 2005, Galleria illy has spread art appreciation through communing with coffee in Milan, Trieste, Berlin and Istanbul.

The galleria brings an exotic taste of the Mediterranean and Africa to this urban London quarter – from the gilded Persian-inspired cushions to the recycled outfits designed by Cameroonian artist, Alioum Moussa.

The food had a distinctly Italian flavour, though, with Giorgio Locatelli of Locanda fame flying the flag for his nation’s gastronomy: guests were treated to crostini with a spicy Calabrian salami, burrata and rocket pesto on toast and bresaola, goat’s cheese and rocket involtinis, as well as cylinders of punch-packing tiramisu. The baristas from illy’s Università del Caffé were also on hand to educate in the art of coffee-making, and Illy Wines kept glasses topped up.

The space will be in action until the 16th of October, with a busy calendar of events keeping the art crowd happy – and fuelled with coffee.