There are many stories that make up our lives, and one of the various ways that these stories are recorded is in the spaces that we occupy: the houses, the corners, the streets and the trees; where we live, work, play, cry and laugh. These stories emerge from and develop out of what influences us, this being the society and culture that we live in, and so they are recorded in our spaces for space is both social and cultural. We are spatial story-tellers, explorers, navigators, and discoverers. The buildings in our space emerge from a cultural context; they reflect the social fashions of the time. They do not exist in isolation from us and our stories, and so they are one of the ways in which these stories are told for there is a consistent connection between people, their spaces that they occupy and the cultural worlds in which they live.

The Fiat Tagliero petrol station is an iconic Futurist, with some Art Deco features, building that was built in Asmara in 1938. It was built during the time when Eretria was a colony of Italy, the Fascist Italy led by Mussolini. Also then Italy was in the middle of a war with neighbouring Ethiopia. She wished that this land was her colony, but, despite her massive munitions and fighter jets which dropped mustard gas and other chemical bombs onto civilian communities, her soldiers were soon routed in guerrilla skirmishes with the Ethiopian forces. So for Italy the need to proclaim and to hold onto Eretria as a colony was vital for Mussolini’s and his peoples’ self-esteem and hubris; Italy desired to hold her head high among those in the European community. And so, to show this prowess and supremacy to the world, the Italians sought to make their mark in the one country that was their colony, Eretria. How did she do this? She did it by, among other things, building; by erecting, new, modern and, some would say inappropriate, others exciting and dare devil, buildings.  (continue reading…)

The photograph moves me; not because it is sad, not because it shows something horrific, or how the world is a bad place, but because it shows dead people dressed in the clothing of an era which is no longer. They are famous people, people who took art and what it means to be an artist to a different height, a zenith, some would say, in that they said nothing at all.

The photograph shows artefacts of life that do not breathe, they do not smell; it is a replica of life. And because they are in the photograph they are an imitation, and so you want to fill them with meaning. Art must have meaning, you think, and so while they are impassive these people in the photograph, you believe that they are also filled with wistfulness, they are dreaming. No matter how hard they try to be hard, how they try to be the artefact of their own creation, they are unable to do this because they really are wistful, they must dream of something other than themselves. (continue reading…)

It is a very hot day. Johannesburg does not known this heat (that is if a city can know anything); it is so hot that only the old remember that fifty years ago it was hot, as hot as it is today. Memory atrophies, but the old still validate breathing the air of the young with stories of the memories that they will never have.

Remember

Jodie sits at a computer. (continue reading…)

Is it impossible to be you if I do not accept myself in the cities terms?

You are a brand, you say, a stereotype, we are all special, and no-one is special, let the logic happen itself.

On the corner of 97^th street and Broadway, New York City, is a Starbucks coffee shop. But maybe it is not on this corner, I say to you, it is on the corner of 103^rd and Broadway? This is a coffee shop in a big city, you say, one coffee shop is the same as another; hey, coffee to sit or to go, one coffee is the same as another, one brand, the city is a brand, the neon lights up the buildings of Time Square, Calvin Klein, Gorgio Armani, one name, my name, what’s in a name, you say, I am the same as you are. Are the lights too bright, I say? (continue reading…)

AN AMERICAN (MAYBE JACK KEROUAC) IN AFRICA (POSSIBLY KENYA)

NB:

In 2006 Binyavanga Wainaina gave a few tips to Americans on how to write about Africa – some tips: sunsets and starvation are good.

So Go!

Let’s fly; with the poor for they are in heaven, they live in the blackest of all darkness, in moon shadows and wide open skies where the sunset signify today and bygone tomorrows. Let’s fly (in a Cessna 182, made in America) to God’s primordial spaces.

Where am I going?

AFRICA …… AFRIKA ….. AFRICA (continue reading…)