#Marcello Di Cintio

[walrusmagazine]

Government Efforts to Help Vulnerable Workers May Be Retraumatizing Them

Exploitation and abusive bosses plague Canada’s temporary foreign worker program

Workers who apply for the open permit program fear reprisals if their employers find out. Many applicants require legal support and translation services to prepare their applications, but such services are not always accessible. Immigration officers might not recognize workers’ experiences as abuse at all, even with clear violations of provincial employment and health and safety laws. Workers might lack computer access, or transportation from their isolated farms, to complete the applications. To qualify, applicants must outline the nature of the abuse they’re experiencing, or risk experiencing, and gather enough evidence to satisfy immigration officials. This can be difficult—workers may not know they need to collect proof, witnesses to abuse may be scarce, and psychological harassment doesn’t usually leave a paper trail.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick (mary-kirkpatrick.com)

[stewhumphreys-blog]

‘Walls: Travels Along the Barricades’ by Marcello Di Cintio

“A denouncement of the stone, steel and barbed-wire structures that have been created to separate peoples on the basis of religion, ethnicity and social class.”

“The wall is a symbol of fear, a symbol of hatred, a symbol of failure”.

A wall arguably suggests a danger. The people on the opposite side pose a threat and so cannot be allowed to mingle with the other side.

“They are something physical that is standing between them and where they want to be, or a physical structure keeping them out.”

“In every single case the walls create an enemy, they create an us and a them or create an other. And the walls suggest everywhere that whoever is on the other side of this wall is my enemy.”

“In every case, the walls fail. They fail to accomplish what they set out to accomplish. Or, at least they fail to accomplish what people have been told they were built for.”

I found the last point interesting in this section because in a lot of cases, walls are built for political reasons that are not released to the public. In several cases, building walls to reduce migration numbers or create social enclaves is simply a distraction to keep a certain community out of society. This then also leads to the demonisation, in a lot of cases towards migrants, who in fact are often the victims, fleeing failing or war torn countries to seek freedom but are instead denied because they pose a ‘threat’. 

[anniekoh]

Looking to read more about migration and borders through indigenous perspectives.

Walls: Travels Along the Barricades Marcello Di Cintio (2013)

What does it mean to live against a wall? In this ambitious first-person narrative, Marcello Di Cintio travels to the world’s most disputed edges to meet the people who live alongside the razor wire, concrete, and steel and how the structure of the walls has influenced their lives. Di Cintio shares tea with Saharan refugees on the wrong side of Morocco’s desert wall. He meets with illegal Punjabi migrants who have circumvented the fencing around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. He visits fenced-in villages in northeast India, walks Arizona’s migrant trails, and travels to Palestinian villages to witness the protests against Israel’s security barrier.

From Native American reservations on the U.S.-Mexico border and the “Great Wall of Montreal” to Cyprus’s divided capital and the Peace Lines of Belfast, Di Cintio seeks to understand what these structures say about those who build them and how they influence the cultures that they pen in.

Undoing Border Imperialism Harsha Walia (2013)

Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America.

"Border imperialism is an apt conceptualization for capturing the politics of massive displacement due to capitalist neoglobalization. Within the wealthy countries, Canada’s No One Is Illegal is one of the most effective organizations of migrants and allies. Walia is an outstanding organizer who has done a lot of thinking and can write—not a common combination. Besides being brilliantly conceived and presented, this book is the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Indians of the Americas and Blood on the Border

Ofelia Rivas, the Tohono O’odham, and the Wall An excerpt from Marcello Di Cintio’s book that he posted in Jan 2019:  

Before the increased security along the border, the O’odham passed freely back and forth across the line, following their traditional routes. Ofelia’s parents’ villages were on opposite sides of the frontier, and Ofelia used to cross all the time. When she was a child, only a barbed wire cattle fence marked the borderline. “We didn’t realize it was a border, really, until 9/11,” Ofelia joked. Now the keepers of the O’odham faith need to face those who hold the line. The DHS has ordered two of the ceremonial routes closed, and forces O’odham to make long detours to checkpoints enforced by the Border Patrol. The agents now insist on searching medicine bundles for drugs and contraband. According to O’odham belief, only the celebrants of the O’odham rituals are permitted to handle the sacred items. The border searches pollute the sanctity of the bundles and, according to Ofelia, violate treaty rights of the Tohono O’odham. After some of the O’odham explained to the guards that they were ceremonial dancers, “the agents said, ‘If you men are dancers, then do a dance.’ They made them dance! Isn’t that so inhumane?” Ofelia told me about a checkpoint near the Yaqui Indian reservation farther east where a guard broke open the antlers on an elder’s ritual headdress to make sure there were no drugs hidden inside.

[jeannekwong]

Readehthon TBR

Maybe it is a little too early to think about what I will read in August, but I just picked out a few books for a Canadian readathon taking place Aug 3 to 9.

Here are the book titles and the prompts they fulfill.

1. I Am Woman by Lee Maracle - Book by Indigenous author

2. The Far Side of the Sky by Daniel Kalla - A loving relationship

3. Molly of the Mall by Heidi L.M. Jacobs - Canadian publisher

4. Wild Rose by Sharon Butala - Nature on cover

5. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx - Set in province haven't been

6. Air Salt by Ian Kinney - Debut author

7. Rebent Sinner by Ivan Coyote -LGBTQIA+ author/Queer story

8. The Skin We're In by Desmond Cole- Anti-racism lit

9. Long Change by Don Gillmor - Set in province I have been

10. The Boat People by Sharon Bala - Immigrant/refugee story

11. Pay No Heed to the Rockets by Marcello Di Cintio - Canadian book award nominee

12. What We All Long For by Dionne Brand - Red on cover

13. Asylum by Andre Alexis - Black author

14. Beyond Shelters: Solutions to Homelessness in Canada from the Front Lines edited by James Hughes - Not a novel

(Prompts I am missing books for: Black Canadian history, children's book)

[sallygcronin]

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily Wednesday January 29th 2020 - #AuthorPromotion Susan M. Toy, #PoetryChallenge Colleen Chesebro, #Community John Howell.

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily Wednesday January 29th 2020 – #AuthorPromotion Susan M. Toy, #PoetryChallenge Colleen Chesebro, #Community John Howell.

The first post is a generous marketing opportunity being featured by author and author promoter Susan M. Toy. Susan is showcasing authors that she has promoted before and updated their information and latest work. This post is the latest in the series and features an author who takes researching his books to the next level. You can find out more in the Original post

Marcello Di Cintio –…

[tmnotizie]

di Stefania Mezzina

TERAMO – Avviata il 16 luglio, con conclusione prevista al 12 agosto, la rassegna concertistica è organizzata dall’Associazione Culturale Luzmek con la direzione artistica del Maestro Carlo Michini in collaborazione con Itaca – Agenzia per lo Sviluppo Locale, rappresentato da Luciano Di Giovannantonio, con la Valle delle Abbazie, con ACS – Abruzzo Circuito Spettacolo, (presidente del cda è Amelia Gattoni) e con il patrocinio della Regione Abruzzo e del Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali. 

Giunta alla quinta edizione, i “Concerti delle Abbazie” sono diventati una realtà stabile e riconosciuta nel panorama musicale nazionale, un appuntamento atteso dagli appassionati e non solo, per poter vivere serate uniche e suggestive, in luoghi meravigliosi, accompagnati da un intreccio fra l’esperienza di musicisti famosi e il talento di artisti della più recente generazione.

Domani, giovedì 8 agosto nell’Abbazia di San Clemente a Guardia Vomano si esibirà Mario Spinnicchia, al piano, con “Sacro e Profano”, mentre a chiudere questa stagione sarà il Trio Essentia, lunedì 12 agosto, nel Teatro Santo Spirito a Cellino Attanasio con Vanessa Di Cintio al violino, Umberto Aleandri al violoncello e Carlo Michini al pianoforte.

“Il punto forza di questi concerti – spiega Carlo Michini – vive nel fascino che location e musica riescono a suscitare nel pubblico. Un connubio perfetto tra patrimonio culturale materiale e immateriale che sintetizza un’idea di identità e di appartenenza a un territorio ricco di tante interessanti sfumature. A differenza di un teatro o di una grande sala da concerto, in abbazia il rapporto tra interprete e pubblico cambia radicalmente a favore di una maggiore complicità emozionale. Grazie alle dimensioni ridotte degli spazi la fruizione del concerto gode di sensi alternativi a quello uditivo rendendolo un’esperienza sinestetica a tutti gli effetti

La programmazione si presenta come sempre eterogenea e molto attenta alla proposta di tutti i più grandi capolavori dal Barocco fino alle più moderne avanguardie del XX secolo. Dagli ottoni ai legni fino agli archi e al pianoforte, i concerti presentano ospiti di assoluto prestigio. I Quintessenza Brass, l’Orchestra da camera Benedetto Marcello, Hot Sax Duo Mazzoccante/Di Bacco, Gianluca Caporale Trio, il grandissimo violinista Pavel Berman con uno Stradivari del 1701 sono solo alcuni dei grandi nomi che regaleranno alla Valle delle Abbazie concerti di primissimo livello”.

Con l’aiuto di donazioni provenienti da sostenitori  per quest’anno è stato possibile estendere l’offerta musicale anche in altri luoghi presenti nella Valle, come la rinnovata Chiesa di Santa Giusta a Penna Sant’Andrea, Palazzo De Berardinis a Canzano, il Teatro Santo Spirito a Cellino Attanasio, la Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista a Castelli riaperta dopo anni di forzata chiusura, la Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli a Castellalto e la Chiesa di Santa Maria a Portolungo a Basciano.

L’edizione 2019 offre l’occasione di ascoltare il suono del pregiato organo della Chiesa di San Salvatore e San Nicola, a Morro D’Oro, realizzato dal celebre organaro Adriano Fedri nel 1758.

La rassegna aveva preso il via il 12 luglio, con il concerto nel Palazzo De Berardinis a Canzano, dell’Orchestra da Camera Benedetto Marcello con il maestro concertatore e basso continuo Ettore Maria Del Romano il quale ha proposto musiche di Vivaldi, Mozart e Elgar, è andato in scena l’ulteriore, nell’Abbazia di San Giovanni ad Insulam, dei Quintessenza Brass “Dalle corti al Jazz”; successivamente, nella Chiesa di Santa Giusta a Penna Sant’Andrea i Tetra Saxphone Quartet; e nella Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista a Castelli ha suonato il grandissimo violinista Pavel Berman con le tre partite di Bach.

Nella Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista di Castelli il Galà della lirica ha offerto l’esibizione della soprano lirico Kristine Nowlain, la soprano Ksenia Khovanova, il baritono Vadim Prudnikov e Ugo D’Orazio al pianoforte, mentre il 29 luglio, presso la Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli a Castellalto il clarinettista Antonio Tinelli ha suonato con il Méditerranée Clarinet Ensemble.

Il 31 luglio, nella Chiesa di San Nicola a Morro d’Oro  “Si suoni la tromba” con la sopranoManuela Formichella, Giuseppe Orsini alla tromba e Walter D’Arcangelo all’organo ha suscitato il plauso del pubblico e il 2 agosto nell’Abbazia di Santa Maria di Propezzano gli applausi sono stati rivolti agli Hot Sax Duo con “From Paris to New York” con Gaetano Di Bacco al sax e Giuliano Mazzoccante al pianoforte.

Il 5 agosto nello spazio antistante la Chiesa di Santa Maria a Portolungo, Santa Maria di Basciano è stata la volta dello spettacolo del Gianluca Caporale Trio con Gianluca Caporale al sax, Fabrizio Ginoble organo hammond e Glauco Di Sabatino alle percussioni.

Il costo dei biglietti è di 10 € prezzo intero, 8 € il ridotto; abbonamento intero 70 €, ridotto 50 €, numerose le agevolazioni previste. Per ulteriori informazioni info@concertidelleabbazie.it ewww.concertidelleabbazie.it.

[williamchasterson]

NPR News: Building Walls Are Not A Solution To A Problem, Author Says

NPR News: Building Walls Are Not A Solution To A Problem, Author Says

Building Walls Are Not A Solution To A Problem, Author Says NPR’s Noel King talks to Marcello Di Cintio, author of Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, about the political and cultural effects of installing barriers between nations.

Read more on NPR

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

PALESTINIAN AMBITIONS have not fared well under the Trump administration, which cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), closed the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, DC, and moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Each of these moves strengthened the relationship between the United States and Israel, encouraging American voters to view what’s left of Palestine as a sinister land full of half-built houses, rocket-launching sites, and angry terrorists.

Both Seth Anziska and Marcello Di Cintio grew up with this Israel-centered Western narrative; now they have written books that explore the complexity of the historical and political reality of Palestine. In Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, the Israeli-American Anziska traces how diplomatic relations following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War set the stage for the current sidelining of Palestinian demands for statehood. In Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary Palestine, the Canadian Di Cintio travels to Palestine to see how al-Nakba — or “the catastrophe,” the displacement of Palestinians after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War — has shaped Palestinians’ everyday lives. Both authors show how attempts to quash Palestinian nationalism have only prolonged violence in the region.

Anziska views the 1978 Camp David Accords as the primary enabler of Israel’s suppression of Palestinian self-determination. He documents President Jimmy Carter’s attempts to include Palestine in the discussions, which soon faltered when faced with the intransigence of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who criticized the mere suggestion of interacting with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Begin assumed that the United States “would wish to refrain from having any contact with this terrorist organization whose method is the murder of innocent civilians, women and children, and whose purpose is the destruction of the state of Israel.” Backed by the 1975 US pledge not to negotiate with the PLO until it recognized Israel, the negotiators banned Palestine’s main representative body from the Camp David Accords.

While the topic of a Palestinian state remained on the Camp David agenda, without the PLO — or Syria or Jordan (both of whom refused to negotiate with Israel) — the significance of the discussions was diminished. Instead, Carter mediated between Egypt and Israel over the status of the Palestinian territories. Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who prioritized the return of the Sinai Peninsula over any allegiance to Arab-nationalist goals, agreed to self-autonomy rather than sovereignty for Palestine. This framing of Palestinian political rights as non-territorial allowed for increased Israeli settlement in the region.

Transnational skepticism of Palestinian statehood grew with the rise of neoconservatism. During his 1980 election campaign, Ronald Reagan cast Palestinians as proxy warriors for the Soviet Union. On November 30, 1981, President Reagan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel promoting strategic cooperation to deal with the Soviet threat. Israel took advantage, rapidly expanding an operation meant to combat PLO attacks in Beirut into an attempt to destroy the PLO itself. The violence that followed included a saturation bombing that killed 500 Palestinians and a massacre of at least 800 others at the Israeli-controlled refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed the dead as terrorists; however, the PLO had already evacuated the camps, meaning that only Palestinian civilians were killed. Anziska supplies numerous examples where the Israeli government refused to differentiate between PLO fighters and civilians, a conflation that justified any military action against Palestinians.

In Anziska’s account, Israel and the United States are the leading powers, the intricacies of their relationship sometimes overshadowing its impact on the Palestinian people. Anziska dedicates a chapter to political alternatives to the controversial PLO, although a more thorough discussion of the difficulties of Palestinian political representation would have been welcome here. The chapter on the PLO illustrates how the organization evolved away from radicalism but remained the main representative party; in 1988, the poet and member of the PLO Mahmoud Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, proclaiming that an independent Palestine could coexist with Israel. This possibility was noted in the 1991 Madrid Conference and subsequent Washington talks, where Palestinian delegates were invited to speak for the first time. Anziska believes that these talks offered the greatest potential for a peaceful resolution.

Yet the hope was short-lived. Following outbursts of violence by Hamas activists, Palestinian participants were again excluded. Without the knowledge of Palestinian delegates or American mediators, a frustrated PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat turned directly to Israel. These discussions led to the Oslo Accords of 1993–’95, which divided the West Bank into three separate zones of control. The result, far from the national sovereignty the delegates had fought for in Washington, mirrored the language of the Camp David Accords.

Where Preventing Palestine concentrates on the diplomatic history surrounding the crisis in Palestine, Pay No Heed to the Rockets is a ground-level view that shows the real-life consequences of that history. Rather than adopting a third-person viewpoint, Marcello Di Cintio is an active participant who reacts emotionally to the Palestinians he interviews. A photograph of a smiling girl pulling books out of shattered concrete in Gaza functions as a metaphor for Di Cintio’s reportage. Rather than focusing on the ugliness of deprivation, he seeks out the experiences of Palestinian writers and artists for whom, he says, nothing is more beautiful than a story.

Di Cintio begins his time in Palestine by researching the late Mahmoud Darwish, from whose work the book draws its title. (During Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982, Darwish wrote about the mundane process of brewing coffee: “Turn off the heat, and pay no heed to the rockets.”) Darwish puts a human face on the contentious PLO; a member of that organization when they still endorsed violence, he resigned in the wake of Oslo. Darwish’s influence was so great that, when he wrote a poem criticizing the Oslo Accords, President Arafat demanded he revise it. The most influential Palestinian writer, Darwish was in many ways also the most constrained. In general, his work sought to transcend politics, presenting Palestinians as more than the products of repression and war. As a result, he was sometimes rebuked for writing about trivialities like love during a time of pressing need.

Di Cintio also explores the work of younger writers, such as Maya Abu-Alhayyat, whom he meets at the Café Ramallah in the West Bank. On the first day of the Second Intifada in September 2000, Israeli forces shot Abu-Alhayyat’s boyfriend. Yet, Israelis rarely appear as characters in her stories, since Maya admits she doesn’t know any. Such omissions are a common practice of many of the writers Di Cintio interviews. But he also shows that partitions exist not merely between Israel and Palestine, but within the Palestinians themselves. When he travels to “the 48” (Israeli-controlled territory that had belonged to Palestine before 1948), he discovers that Palestinians living there are called, by their countrymen in the West Bank, shamenet, a term meaning spoiled from birth.

Yet the reality is more complicated. As Di Cintio shows, some Palestinian artists enjoy greater freedom in “the 48” than they do in the Palestinian territories. For example, gay writers like Raji Bathish can publish homoerotic works without fear of persecution. Nevertheless, Bathish rejects the notion that Israel’s accommodation with the LGBTQ community proves its humanitarianism. “You cannot be a fascistic state, with apartheid and occupation,” he tells Di Cintio, “and be proud of your gay integration.”

Pay No Heed to the Rockets ends where it began, with a dedication to the people of Gaza. Despite poverty and war, Gaza is the only place where Palestinians live as Palestinians among Palestinians. Here, Di Cintio meets Mona Abu Sharekh, a writer who believed Arafat when he promised that Gaza would become the next Singapore. But the Israelis shut the Erez border in 2000 and starved the region of resources. While Abu Sharekh may have grown up in Gaza, she hates the place. She sees her people’s difficult lives as only likely to worsen, pointing to a 2012 report by UNRWA that claimed the region would soon be uninhabitable. But Mona cannot leave: Israel considers Gaza a “hostile entity” and requires Palestinian people to acquire permission to pass the Erez Crossing, a boon bestowed almost exclusively on traders or medical patients seeking treatment in Israel.

A contrast between the domestic and the political informs nearly every scene in Pay No Heed to the Rockets. While most of the writers Di Cintio meets describe themselves as non-political, their charged words reveal the inescapable influence of their situation. This painful contradiction exists side-by-side with the beauty of the landscape itself. In one scene, the author hikes in the Hashmiyet Mountains: “We passed pomegranate trees ablaze with scarlet blossoms and old olive trees bearing new fruit as small and green as peppercorns […] Tender chickpeas grew in wide fields near lentils, tobacco, and Egyptian cucumber.” In another scene, he visits Khuza’a, a small town in Gaza, “with concrete roofs that sagged, almost comically, on the broken bodies of houses.” Through its rich descriptions, Pay No Heed to the Rockets depicts Palestine as a place filled with life and hope.

Pay No Heed to the Rockets portrays Palestinian writers without exploiting or romanticizing them. Some were admittedly involved in violent terrorist organizations from which they now seek to distance themselves. Di Cintio concludes with a return to Darwish: “The Nakba is not a memory; it is a continuous uprooting that makes Palestinians more worried about their existence.” Most of the writers Di Cintio meets tell stories of what it means to be human in a context where the prevailing powers do not view them as such. All Palestinians are shaped by this conflict, but none are fully defined by it.

Both Preventing Palestine and Pay No Heed to the Rockets offer vivid portraits of Palestine that transcend the fragmentary glimpses of poverty and violence that the region is often reduced to in Western media. Anziska provides the historical background, while Di Cintio explores the lived experiences, of a people whose homes, but not their identities, have been displaced.

¤

Sam Risak is a short-story writer and MA/MFA candidate at Chapman University, California.

The post A Sidelined People: On the Crisis in Palestine appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2Bovdqt

[ibnsiqillioccident-blog]

Across Palestine, from the Allenby Bridge and Ramallah, to Jerusalem and Gaza, Marcello Di Cintio has met with writers, poets, librarians, booksellers and readers, finding extraordinary stories in every corner. Stories of how revolutionary writing is smuggled from the Naqab Prison; about what it is like to write with only two hours of electricity each day; and stories from the Gallery Café, whose opening three thousand creative intellectuals gathered to celebrate.

Pay No Heed to the Rockets offers a window into the literary heritage of Palestine that transcends the narrow language of conflict. Paying homage to the memory of literary giants like Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani and the contemporary authors they continue to inspire, this evocative, lyrical journey shares both the anguish and inspiration of Palestinian writers at work today.

[kaploded2]

#Repost @octopusbooks (@get_repost) ・・・ New in the shop: Pay No Heed to the Rockets, Palestine in the present tense by Marcello Di Cintio. Marcello Di Cintio first visited Palestine in 1999. Like most outsiders, the Palestinian narrative that he knew had been simplified by a seemingly unending struggle, a near-Sisyphean curse of stories of oppression, exile, and occupation told over and over again. In Pay No Heed to the Rockets, he reveals a more complex story, the Palestinian experience as seen through the lens of authors, books, and literature. Using the form of a political-literary travelogue, he explores what literature means to modern Palestinians and how Palestinians make sense of the conflict between a rich imaginative life and the daily tedium and violence of survival. . #paynoheedtotherockets #marcellodicintio #palestine #freepalestine #books #internationalpolitics #cheguevara #chemybrother #ibnkhaldun #biography

[repwinpril9y0a1]

Book Review: 3 Small Books with Big Ideas

Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Ronald Rael University of California Press, 2017 Flexicover, 200 pages Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington Melville House, 2016 Flexicover, 112 pages What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower? 70 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think About Architecture by Jonathan Glancey Laurence King, 2017 Flexicover, 176 pages Recently I received a few books on a diversity of subjects that share one trait: they are small. Of course, small page size does not mean the ideas inside aren't grand. Even though their topics don't overlap in any obvious manner, I decided to review them together. [Border Wall as Infrastructure, Rael San Fratello Architects] The output of architect and educator Ronald Rael is varied, with three primary though apparently unrelated areas of research: earth architecture, the US-Mexico border wall, and 3d printing. Yet as he writes in the introduction to this book focused on the second subject, "buildings using mud and concrete ... we saw as conceptually parallel to the contrasts of poverty and wealth [in] Mexico and the United States." Extending the parallels further to 3d printing, which gives anybody with access to the technology the ability to create industrial objects and even building elements, there is an apparent interest in informal architectural production and the social aspects of design in all three areas. With this in mind, it's not surprising that Borderwall as Architecture is more a critique of the US-Mexico wall than realistic proposals for it. With the book being released early next month, the timing is fortuitous, for obvious reasons. One could even argue the timing is opportunistic, but Rael – alone, with his students at University of California, Berkeley, and with his partner Virginia San Fratello – has been tackling the subject since at least 2008, when he led a "Borderwall as Architecture" studio at UC Berkeley. The following year Rael San Fratello was a finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition with "Border Wall as Infrastructure." That entry, which depicted a row of solar panels alongside the fences and a library bridging the wall à la Haskell Free Library and Opera House, is included in Borderwall as Architecture among numerous other scenarios, some of them real (Friendship Park, tire dragging) but most of them imagined (cactus wall, teeter-totter wall). Rael's projects, which take the form of drawings like the cover, renderings like above, and even snow globes, are found in the chapter "Recuerdos/Souvenirs: A Nuevo Grand Tour," which makes up most of the book. Other chapters include texts by Rael but also a foreword by Teddy Cruz and essays by Marcello Di Cintio, Norma Iglesias-Prieto, and Michael Dear. The last, "Why Walls Won't Work," is particularly apt now, given the Trump administration's recent RFP, which is getting a fair amount of protest but is still likely to draw a number of responses from architects who don't have ethical quibbles with such a commission. One form of protest is inaction (not submitting and convincing other architects not to submit), but Rael shows that alternative proposals depicted through architecture (drawings, models, renderings) are also a legitimate form of protest. [Ingrid Burrington's self-published Networks of New York] Although I've never read Andrew Blum's Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, I'd wager that if it came with a companion guidebook, it would look a lot like Ingrid Burrington's Networks of New York. What started as a website and then a self-published book was turned into a handsome, durable, pocket-sized book last year by Melville House. In it the author/illustrator Ingrid Burrington takes readers on a vertical journey through internet infrastructure, from below-grade services to ground-level buildings to above-ground elements hidden in plain sight. The idea is to turn something apparently invisible – the movement of bits and bytes through the air – into something physical...which it already is, but we just don't pay enough attention to realize such. Focusing on New York means that much of the physical infrastructure is beneath our feet, in old buildings that were used originally for telephone lines, and attached to light poles and other pieces of existing urban infrastructure. The first becomes known in the colored markings spray painted on sidewalks and streets and in the labels on manhole covers; the second are discussed in the context of Lower Manhattan, which has some notable examples of building-size network infrastructure; and examples in the third do their best to blend in with their surroundings but all-too-often make their uses evident. As an architect, I found the "Ground Level" chapter most fascinating, since that one includes the buildings – carrier hotels and data centers – that house the "architecture for the Internet." The largest such facility is located at 111 Eighth Avenue, just one block from the High Line. I knew beforehand that the block-long building was built by the Port Authority and was bought  this century by Google for their NYC HQ, but I learned here that Google's physical footprint extends across the street to the Chelsea Market, where the NYPD's Intelligence Division is located, and, further still, to 85 Tenth Avenue, where the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is located. The existence of these law enforcement agencies in these locations is not spray painted on the sidewalks or mounted on light posts, but thankfully Burrington's book digs deeper to discover these adjacencies and other instances of how networks impact the city. [Spread from Glancey's book courtesy of Laurence King.] When I received What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower?, the latest book by Jonathan Glancey, the former architecture critic at The Guardian, I was very intrigued, particularly by the book's subtitle, "70 questions that will change the way you think about architecture." Opening the small book to the table of contents, though, I was disappointed to find, not 70 questions like the title, but 70 either/or questions, such as "Deconstructivism: Architecture meets philosophy or fashion?" and "Postmodernism: Modernism redeemed or duped?" Although technically questions, it seemed like the 70 either/ors – about architects, buildings, movements, ideas, and other things – were not real questions like the title, making the latter misleading. Diving into some of the questions, I didn't discover Glancey landing on one side or the other; instead he gives mainly "yes" answers, where both parts are true to some degree. "Brutalism: Grim or lovable concrete?" "Yes." "Thermal Baths, Vals: Building into landscape, or landscape into building?" "Yes again." One exception I noticed is "Säynätsalo Town Hall, Finland: Convincing new vernacular, or precursor of vernacular kitsch?" Here, he clearly questions the almost universal appreciation of the project, finding the roots of later "dismal, bricky" buildings in Alvar Aalto's brick masses about a raised courtyard. Even then, he finishes by countering that assertion: "Aalto showed how a modern vernacular architecture could be shaped in the most convincing manner." In another instance, I covered up the subject and question to see if Glancey's text was clearly answering a question and making a critical reappraisal of the subject. I did not sense it, but I did get a short but thorough description, contextualization, and critique of a project (Dunmore Pineapple, Scotland). That times seventy and it's a good book, with a wide range of topics in terms of chronology, geography, and theme. The questions are a gimmick that unfortunately don't add much to the content; if anything, they create a situation where more is needed than what was delivered.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mzFffE

[mrmichaelmbarnes]

Book Review: 3 Small Books with Big Ideas

Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Ronald Rael University of California Press, 2017 Flexicover, 200 pages Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington Melville House, 2016 Flexicover, 112 pages What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower? 70 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think About Architecture by Jonathan Glancey Laurence King, 2017 Flexicover, 176 pages Recently I received a few books on a diversity of subjects that share one trait: they are small. Of course, small page size does not mean the ideas inside aren't grand. Even though their topics don't overlap in any obvious manner, I decided to review them together. [Border Wall as Infrastructure, Rael San Fratello Architects] The output of architect and educator Ronald Rael is varied, with three primary though apparently unrelated areas of research: earth architecture, the US-Mexico border wall, and 3d printing. Yet as he writes in the introduction to this book focused on the second subject, "buildings using mud and concrete ... we saw as conceptually parallel to the contrasts of poverty and wealth [in] Mexico and the United States." Extending the parallels further to 3d printing, which gives anybody with access to the technology the ability to create industrial objects and even building elements, there is an apparent interest in informal architectural production and the social aspects of design in all three areas. With this in mind, it's not surprising that Borderwall as Architecture is more a critique of the US-Mexico wall than realistic proposals for it. With the book being released early next month, the timing is fortuitous, for obvious reasons. One could even argue the timing is opportunistic, but Rael – alone, with his students at University of California, Berkeley, and with his partner Virginia San Fratello – has been tackling the subject since at least 2008, when he led a "Borderwall as Architecture" studio at UC Berkeley. The following year Rael San Fratello was a finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition with "Border Wall as Infrastructure." That entry, which depicted a row of solar panels alongside the fences and a library bridging the wall à la Haskell Free Library and Opera House, is included in Borderwall as Architecture among numerous other scenarios, some of them real (Friendship Park, tire dragging) but most of them imagined (cactus wall, teeter-totter wall). Rael's projects, which take the form of drawings like the cover, renderings like above, and even snow globes, are found in the chapter "Recuerdos/Souvenirs: A Nuevo Grand Tour," which makes up most of the book. Other chapters include texts by Rael but also a foreword by Teddy Cruz and essays by Marcello Di Cintio, Norma Iglesias-Prieto, and Michael Dear. The last, "Why Walls Won't Work," is particularly apt now, given the Trump administration's recent RFP, which is getting a fair amount of protest but is still likely to draw a number of responses from architects who don't have ethical quibbles with such a commission. One form of protest is inaction (not submitting and convincing other architects not to submit), but Rael shows that alternative proposals depicted through architecture (drawings, models, renderings) are also a legitimate form of protest. [Ingrid Burrington's self-published Networks of New York] Although I've never read Andrew Blum's Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, I'd wager that if it came with a companion guidebook, it would look a lot like Ingrid Burrington's Networks of New York. What started as a website and then a self-published book was turned into a handsome, durable, pocket-sized book last year by Melville House. In it the author/illustrator Ingrid Burrington takes readers on a vertical journey through internet infrastructure, from below-grade services to ground-level buildings to above-ground elements hidden in plain sight. The idea is to turn something apparently invisible – the movement of bits and bytes through the air – into something physical...which it already is, but we just don't pay enough attention to realize such. Focusing on New York means that much of the physical infrastructure is beneath our feet, in old buildings that were used originally for telephone lines, and attached to light poles and other pieces of existing urban infrastructure. The first becomes known in the colored markings spray painted on sidewalks and streets and in the labels on manhole covers; the second are discussed in the context of Lower Manhattan, which has some notable examples of building-size network infrastructure; and examples in the third do their best to blend in with their surroundings but all-too-often make their uses evident. As an architect, I found the "Ground Level" chapter most fascinating, since that one includes the buildings – carrier hotels and data centers – that house the "architecture for the Internet." The largest such facility is located at 111 Eighth Avenue, just one block from the High Line. I knew beforehand that the block-long building was built by the Port Authority and was bought  this century by Google for their NYC HQ, but I learned here that Google's physical footprint extends across the street to the Chelsea Market, where the NYPD's Intelligence Division is located, and, further still, to 85 Tenth Avenue, where the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is located. The existence of these law enforcement agencies in these locations is not spray painted on the sidewalks or mounted on light posts, but thankfully Burrington's book digs deeper to discover these adjacencies and other instances of how networks impact the city. [Spread from Glancey's book courtesy of Laurence King.] When I received What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower?, the latest book by Jonathan Glancey, the former architecture critic at The Guardian, I was very intrigued, particularly by the book's subtitle, "70 questions that will change the way you think about architecture." Opening the small book to the table of contents, though, I was disappointed to find, not 70 questions like the title, but 70 either/or questions, such as "Deconstructivism: Architecture meets philosophy or fashion?" and "Postmodernism: Modernism redeemed or duped?" Although technically questions, it seemed like the 70 either/ors – about architects, buildings, movements, ideas, and other things – were not real questions like the title, making the latter misleading. Diving into some of the questions, I didn't discover Glancey landing on one side or the other; instead he gives mainly "yes" answers, where both parts are true to some degree. "Brutalism: Grim or lovable concrete?" "Yes." "Thermal Baths, Vals: Building into landscape, or landscape into building?" "Yes again." One exception I noticed is "Säynätsalo Town Hall, Finland: Convincing new vernacular, or precursor of vernacular kitsch?" Here, he clearly questions the almost universal appreciation of the project, finding the roots of later "dismal, bricky" buildings in Alvar Aalto's brick masses about a raised courtyard. Even then, he finishes by countering that assertion: "Aalto showed how a modern vernacular architecture could be shaped in the most convincing manner." In another instance, I covered up the subject and question to see if Glancey's text was clearly answering a question and making a critical reappraisal of the subject. I did not sense it, but I did get a short but thorough description, contextualization, and critique of a project (Dunmore Pineapple, Scotland). That times seventy and it's a good book, with a wide range of topics in terms of chronology, geography, and theme. The questions are a gimmick that unfortunately don't add much to the content; if anything, they create a situation where more is needed than what was delivered.

from A Daily Dose of Architecture http://ift.tt/2mzFffE

[tmnotizie]

TERAMO – Giunti alla quinta edizione i “Concerti delle Abbazie” sono diventati una realtà stabile e riconosciuta nel panorama musicale nazionale, un appuntamento atteso dagli appassionati e non solo per vivere serate uniche e suggestive in luoghi meravigliosi accompagnati da un sapiente intreccio fra l’esperienza di musicisti famosi e il talento di artisti della più recente generazione.

Dal 16 luglio al 12 agosto 2019, torna la rassegna concertistica organizzata come sempre dall’Associazione Culturale Luzmek con la direzione artistica del Maestro Carlo Michini in collaborazione con Itaca – Agenzia per lo Sviluppo Locale, con la Valle delle Abbazie, con ACS – Abruzzo Circuito Spettacolo e con il patrocinio della Regione Abruzzo e del Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali. Undici gli appuntamenti della quinta edizione, il primo è per il 16 luglio alle 21 nel Palazzo De Berardinis a Canzano con il concerto dell’Orchestra da Camera Benedetto Marcello con il maestro concertatore e basso continuo Ettore Maria Del Romano il quale proporrà musiche di Vivaldi, Mozart e Elgar. A presentare il progetto, sono intervenuti, nella sede del BIM a Teramo, il M° Carlo Michini (direttore artistico), Luciano Di Giovannantonio (Itaca) e Amelia Gattone (Presidente del cda di Acs).

“Il punto forza di questi concerti – spiega Carlo Michini – vive nel fascino che location e musica riescono a suscitare nel pubblico. Un connubio perfetto tra patrimonio culturale materiale e immateriale che sintetizza un’idea di identità e di appartenenza a un territorio ricco di tante interessanti sfumature. A differenza di un teatro o di una grande sala da concerto, in abbazia il rapporto tra interprete e pubblico cambia radicalmente a favore di una maggiore complicità emozionale. Grazie alle dimensioni ridotte degli spazi la fruizione del concerto gode di sensi alternativi a quello uditivo rendendolo un’esperienza sinestetica a tutti gli effetti.

La programmazione si presenta come sempre eterogenea e molto attenta alla proposta di tutti i più grandi capolavori dal Barocco fino alle più moderne avanguardie del XX secolo. Dagli ottoni ai legni fino agli archi e al pianoforte, i concerti presentano ospiti di assoluto prestigio. I Quintessenza Brass, l’Orchestra da camera Benedetto Marcello, Hot Sax Duo Mazzoccante/Di Bacco, Gianluca Caporale Trio, il grandissimo violinista Pavel Berman con uno Stradivari del 1701 sono solo alcuni dei grandi nomi che regaleranno alla Valle delle Abbazie concerti di primissimo livello”.

Con l’aiuto di donazioni provenienti da sostenitori illuminati e sensibili per quest’anno è stato possibile estendere l’offerta musicale anche in altri luoghi presenti nella Valle, come la rinnovata Chiesa di Santa Giusta a Penna Sant’Andrea, Palazzo De Berardinis a Canzano, il Teatro Santo Spirito a Cellino Attanasio, la Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista a Castelli riaperta dopo anni di forzata chiusura, la Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli a Castellalto e la Chiesa di Santa Maria a Portolungo a Basciano. L’edizione 2019 intende, inoltre, offrire l’occasione di ascoltare il suono del pregiato organo della Chiesa di S. Salvatore e San Nicola a Morro D’Oro, realizzato dal celebre organaro Adriano Fedri nel 1758.

Tra gli altri appuntamenti in cartellone, con inizio tutti alle 21, il 19 luglio nell’Abbazia di San Giovanni ad Insulam ci sarà il concerto dei Quintessenza Brass “Dalle corti al Jazz”; il 21 luglio nella Chiesa di Santa Giusta a Penna Sant’Andrea ci saranno i Tetra Saxphone Quartet; il 25 luglio nella Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista a Castelli ci sarà il grandissimo violinista Pavel Berman con le tre partite di Bach;

il 26 luglio nella Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista di Castelli ci sarà il Galà della lirica con la soprano lirico Kristine Nowlain, la soprano Ksenia Khovanova, il baritono Vadim Prudnikov e Ugo D’Orazio al pianoforte; il 29 luglio presso la Chiesa di S. Maria degli Angeli a Castellalto il clarinettista Antonio Tinelli suonerà con il Méditerranée Clarinet Ensemble;

il 31 luglio nella Chiesa di San Nicola a Morro d’Oro è in programma la serata titolata “Si suoni la tromba” con la soprano Manuela Formichella, Giuseppe Orsini alla tromba e Walter D’Arcangelo all’organo; il 2 agosto nell’Abbazia di Santa Maria di Propezzano ci saranno gli Hot Sax Duo con “From Paris to New York” con Gaetano Di Bacco al sax e Giuliano Mazzoccante al pianoforte.

Il 5 agosto nello spazio antistante la Chiesa di Santa Maria a Portolungo, Santa Maria di Basciano ci sarà lo spettacolo del Gianluca Caporale Trio con Gianluca Caporale al sax, Fabrizio Ginoble organo hammond e Glauco Di Sabatino alle percussioni; l’8 agosto nell’Abbazia di San Clemente a Guardia Vomano si esibirà Mario Spinnicchia al piano con “Sacro e Profano”, a chiudere questa stagione il Trio Essentia il 12 agosto nel Teatro Santo Spirito a Cellino Attanasio con Vanessa Di Cintio al violino, Umberto Aleandri al violoncello e Carlo Michini al pianoforte.

Il costo dei biglietti è di 10 € prezzo intero, 8 € il ridotto; abbonamento intero 70 €, ridotto 50 €, numerose le agevolazioni previste. Per ulteriori informazioni info@concertidelleabbazie.it e https://ift.tt/2XtRVFm.