Water, Wasser, L’eau

by Monica Peters

Looking through the twin lenses of water quality and water use in two European landscapes highlights a lengthy history of reshaping the environment.  

The German town of Freiburg (pop. 230,000) owns a network of narrow, shallow ‘baechle’ which cut through the cobbled streets. They are a mildly hazardous, distinctive feature of the town and an historic remnant of days when these diminutive urban canals were needed to provide water for drinking and quenching fires. Today, the waters are so clean that they are used to cool hot feet in the summer time, feed thirsty dogs and to sail specially designed miniature boats along. More

Lithica Foundation

About 30 years ago a French architecture student Laetitia Lara decided to turn an abandoned sandstone quarry in Menorca into a post-industrial heritage park - the Lithica Foundation. Roads were opened and gardens were created in the oldest part of the ancient quarries, along with creating a range of labyrinthine spaces that were to become the settings for concerts and workshops with schools, artists, and visitors.

Circuits in history

Now that we have a few days respite from traveling it's time to reflect...

Of all the artworks and pavilions we saw at the Venice Biennale, two works stood out: Ai Wei Wei’s piece, SACRED and Bill Culbert’s FRONT DOOR OUT BACK - both ‘whacked’ you but in totally different ways. SACRED takes up the central nave of Sant'Antonin church with its six large iron boxes, into which we could peek to see miniature worlds recreated from his lengthy incarceration by the Chinese government. 

Ai Wei Wei being interrogated, another of him showering, sitting on the toilet, or sleeping outstretched on his back, and always two blank-faced uniformed guards standing over him. In every cell he is stoically coping with being hemmed in  - it was horrifying and fascinating at the same time, so we waited patiently to get to those tiny windows. The only detail of the cell's exterior Ai Wei Wei said he observed on his release was the number on the door: 1135, fittingly each of the boxes’ smooth surfaces are etched only with this …More

Culbert’s seven different works in FRONT DOOR OUT BACK, simply took our breath away with its luminescent beauty making the ordinary extraordinary. Seeing it as we came out of the bright Venetian light into its brick building’s soft dark shadows, we felt a little dreamlike as one does when confronted by the familiar made unfamiliar, home but not as we remembered it… More

 

The theme of the Biennale this year, The Encyclopedic Palace, brought a huge array of outsider art into its sacrosanct arena, but sometimes the juxtapositions of spiritual, occult, and downright obsessive alongside the conceptually challenging was enough to send you spinning towards the nearest Espresso machine! I found myself wondering: are we seeing a desperate search for any possibilities that might take us out of the material crisis we’re experiencing? If so, it's intriguing the circuits in history this is taking us through.

Reviving art & cuisine skills in Tuscany

We are staying in Toscana about 12 kilometres from Florence with Fabiola and her delightful 94-year-old mother, a long-since retired archaeologist, who both speak excellent English, luckily for us as we speak no Italian whatsover! They share a typical Florentine countryside house on several acres of olive trees, where Fabiola has revived the ancient technique of Scagliola,  creating objects and images with a composite substance made from selenite, glue and natural pigments.

Fabiola says she's 'passionate about everything that is art, but also nature and the kitchen. "I cook traditional Tuscan and Italian dishes using products I collect in the field according to the season." This afternoon she is going to show me how to cook Fiori di zucca Tuscan style, a little mozzarella and and a dab of anchovy are placed inside the flower before it's sprinkled with flour and deep-fried. We bought the Zucchini flowers together this morning at the local market, where they were selected fastidiously for their uniform shape by the seller, 1 Euro for a kilo!! And if we get enough time we'll also make a favourite Greek dish of her's with sliced eggplants scorched over the fire before cooking with wine and plum tomatoes, I can't wait! 

When you're living on a small budget as Fabiola and her mother do, it's sensible to buy food the old ways. They don't go to the supermarket much, instead they buy the local Chianti wine from a nearby vineyard, and olive oil by litres from a neighbouring farmer. Water is scarce here - summer and winter - and only farmers with deep wells can manage to make a living all year round. So their neighbours with a well let them run a hose to water their herbs and salad vegetables over the summer. 

Fabiola says the last two years have been disastrous for Italy, the political reaction to the GFC of increasing taxes has affected small businesses and artisans, like herself, to the point where increasingly more and more are closing, leading to less and less spending money and jobs. "We are the ones carrying the burden of increased taxes, up to 70%, but it's us that kept the economy going, what did they think would happen? Of course there'll be less to spend and less work, even a pizza out is too much for us now!"

While workers and youth in Greece, Spain and Portugal have been waging general strikes and taking to the streets in their millions in opposition to a never-ending austerity onslaught, in Italy there has been relative quiescence. This is in spite of the devastating economic impact on ordinary people, with living standards falling to the level of 27 years ago, but a new political movement is spelling change...More

Thriving Green Shoots in Europe

It’s difficult not to feel a little guilty at spending so much time and money traveling in Europe as we have been for the last two months and, incredibly, will be for another two! We come to terms with this by telling ourselves we’re supporting local economies by using airbnb, accommodation that’s included young semi-employed professionals renting rooms in their flats as well as smaller traditional B&Bs, and whenever we can buying food from local farmers markets. And along the way we keep scanning for thriving ‘green’ shoots in still GFC-affected Europe, read on…

Thousands of Greeks are coming to terms with the collapse of a failing social and political system by taking matters into their own hands through grassroots activism and local collective action. There are signs of a lifestyle transformation, incorporating values and social patterns of the past…more

Photos: Solidarity and second-hand clothes at Akadimia Platonos and Rebel zest and great food at El Che-f collective kitchen by Kostantinos Koukoulis

La Cravate Solidaire

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When your income is falling, keeping your wardrobe up to date is hardly a priority. Two young Parisians, Yann Lotode and Mademoiselle Oz, have founded La Cravate Solidaire, a non-profit, to help people give a good impression at job interviews. They take used clothing and recycle or up-cycle it: people can try on garments, which Yann alters for a better fit or to the taste of the job candidate. Oz then offers hairdressing and makeup to give the job seeker the best chance to look his or her best at their interview. http://lacravatesolidaire.org/#

Creating employment through recycling and up-cycling

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Gerald Poter gathers rags for a living, going door to door to ask for old clothes, then reselling what he can. But Poter, 27, is neither a hobo nor homeless; in fact, he`s got the best and the only job he`s had in years. A worker at an experimental company in this recession-hit area near the north-western coast of France, Poter is one of 180 employees back in the work force because of the approach taken by a company called Le Relais that seeks to make money to create jobs.

After seven years, Le Relais now takes in about $5 million a year with its labor-intensive enterprises-collecting, resorting and selling used clothing in France, Africa and Asia, recycling paper and manufacturing paint. Profit is ploughed back into the company and shared with employees. A project that grew out of a charitable commune run by Catholic priests, Le Relais (The Relay) has helped dozens of virtually unemployable people - former convicts and people out of a job from one to five years - discover usefulness to society and a long-lost sense of self-worth. And if Le Relais is far from solving France`s economic problem of 10% unemployment, which runs as high as 18% here, where the coal mines shut down years ago, it has already inspired the creation of similar companies near Toulouse, in Burgundy and in the city of Mulhouse, near the Swiss border.

``Society is flawed; the fact that there are people who are completely excluded from society is unacceptable,” says Pierre Duponchel, Le Relais` managing director, standing in a warehouse full of sorted, used clothes. …More