Risotto con Verza e Speck

Risotto con Cavolo Verza, Patate, Speck (croccato a parte e sfumato con vino rosé) e Pomodori (sbollentati, pelati e taglati a dadini), spruzzato d'olio evo Rigalese e formaggio granaglona. Accompagnato (bene) a un Mazets de Saint Victor

Mazets de Saint Victor, Cotes du Rhone Villages Laudun, 2007 (Foncalieu)

Colore rubino intenso, scuro, buona consistenza. Al naso emergono subito le spezie (cuoio, pepe), poi la frutta (amarena e prugna). Alla bocca risulta decisamente tannico, acido e fresco, caldo, vellutato, persistente, meno bilanciato di quanto ci si potesse aspettare.

Classici accostamenti di rito per un Cothes du Rhone Village sarebbero carni rosse e formaggi stagionati, ma questo Laudun risulta molto più fresco e acido di quanto ci si possa aspettare, e dunque dà il meglio con formaggi a media stagionatura e piatti di carne non eccessivamente sofisticati. L'ho provato con delle uova al prosciutto e l'accostamento è stato alquanto soddisfacente.

Il palato delude un pò, non riuscendo a mantenere i livelli dell'ottimo naso. L'alcol inizialmente risulta lievemente aggressivo e, anche se il vino tende decisamente ad aprirsi col passare dei minuti, tale tenue ma sgradevole 'violenza' alcolica rimane. L'acidità, in questi vini robusti e a volte ben troppo stucchevoli, è spesso un pregio, In tal caso però si va oltre. La freschezza è infatti eccessiva, finisce per sbilanciare il vino, compromettendo nel palato il soffice manto che i tannini (di ottima qualità) avevano costruito. Né perde senza dubbio il restrogusto che lascia una persistenza sbilanciata e non convince decisivamente (non si ha troppa fretta di riempire di nuovo il bicchiere). Probabilmente un vino leggermente fuori tempo, il cui equilibrio comincia proprio ora a disgregarsi, e che va consumato assolutamente entro l'anno. Detto questo, resta comunque un vino di buona qualità, che tenderà però inevitabilmente a lasciare insoddisfatti, vista l'incapacità, al palato, di mantenere le promesse dell'olfatto.

pubblicato su Le Strade del Vino

Vellutata di Zucca con Crostini di Mozzarella e Prosciutto

Looking for the right Ham, Mozzarella, Bread and Pumpkin combination

Vellutata di Cavolo Nero e Patate con grano e riso integrale

Black Kale and Potato velluté, served with brown rice and wheat grain, matched (quite well indeed) to a Domaine de Cabanes, Rosé de Provence, 2009.

Me with Arbus in Paris

I recently mumbled through the rooms at Jeu de Paume, queuing to glimpse the pictures, whilst the rain hit the December of Paris outside. As everybody else I was walking and gazing and pondering and moving next. Small monochromatic frames on the wall dictated the rhythm, lines of people slid slowly along the walls, leaving the centre of the room empty . It was Diane Arbus’ hunting trophies we were observing, what her constant quest for difference brought to us.

That is what I love: the differentness, the uniqueness of all things and the importance of life... I see something that seems wonderful; I see the divineness in ordinary things[1]

Diana is the Roman goddess of hunting. Diane is a hunter of instants, collector of singularities, archaeologist of the unseen, chased in New York's dusty streets or existence’s dirty back-stages.

I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.

Diane, the hunting goddess, from dyeus, divine, and dies, day, she who hunts for the divine in the everyday, bringing to the world proof of the empty forest's falling trees, the

proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you^[2]

She makes things exist as instants, instances of an impersonality which is no longer controlled by the will and consciousness of the photographer or the photographed, but rather emerges as a gap, at the

point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you.

The difference from which this ‘gap’ emerges, through the repetition of the photographic act, is what you sought in the greasy dressing rooms of transvestites, or in the coldly distant images of nudists quietly lying on their sofas, the flaccid flesh blurring with the sofa’s skin, smoking a cigar just like the Mexican dwarf on the bed with hat and moustaches, looking at the camera with the involuntary comicalness of an African dictator. Instants, instances of the irreducible difference of life is what you were after in the dusty streets of New York where adults would look back at you with empty diffidence, in-diffidence, suspended between the atavistic fear of you stealing their soul, and the void which the camera lens was reflecting back to them.

Hopeless, more naked when dressed, the adult self-confidence would disappear in the hesitant defence of a flat mask, or an archaic smile. So were the kids,
who such masks willingly wore, smoking cigarettes, holding grenades, posing as adult couples, pretending to be adult, reproducing a self-confidence which - now fully true because explicitly false - did not let adulthood tragic opacity emerge, and yet unable to conceal youth's pulsating vibrancy.

Woman with veil on fifth avenue, New York, 1968

And what about those heavily made-up old women, them too pretending to be adult, shifting confident posing for the thickness of mascara, lipsticks so purple it can be seen through the monochrome, the artificial smoothness of the chalked skin at the service of aesthetic spontaneity, oxymoronic practices ineluctably uncovered in their home shots,  when their painted flesh is caught resting heavily in private armchairs, abandoned into them with that ancestral tiredness which only to old people belongs. So similar they are to those transvestites applying blusher on their cheeks in badly lit dressing rooms, or to the circus-performer showing his multiple needles piercing his skin, same exhaustion in the gaze, same no-longer concealed awareness that the masks are gone, showing nonetheless that behind a mask is only a new mask, that it is a relentless changing of masks what we are, that what we can ever open to is our own concealment:

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

A Jewish Giant at home with his parents, Bronx, 1970

Badly lit are also the interiors of those Russian dwarfs, whose sad dignity while cooking potatoes resonates in the gallery, or the living room where the giant is barely able to stand, whilst his mother looks at him in routinary amazement, or the faces of the American patriots standing for they no longer remember what. If you were looking through all these border-lines for the possibility to narrate the unseen, to let the difference emerge, this is not what you found. The gaze of the couple going for a Sunday picnic is the same of James Brown resting after a show, the same of the old nudist couple standing in front of you in the tiny bedroom, the same of this transvestite smoking with hair curlers on, the same of Susan Sontag thinking about something on the bed, the same of those twins shining in front of you, the same of yourself, half-naked and pregnant, staring at yourself at the mirror.

Self portrait pregnant NYC, 1945

Amedeo Modigliani, Head

Like an unwitting Modigliani it was an empty, archetypal gaze you managed to uncover, behind which, through which, the impersonal ground of a life can be glimpsed, in its eternal boredom, its infinite purposelessnes. Like an unwitting Mirò your repetitive series gradually dug away any residue of subjectivity, stripping the flesh off the bones of your sub-jects.
Looking for difference you found the incessant, differential repetition of an impersonal Being flashing through the empty orbits of your subjects’ eyes. No difference, then, between all of them and the blind couple gently hugging on the bed – or rather, the difference is that the same subterraneous Being flows freely out of the couples white bulbs, free to roam and pulsate, free from the self-conscious effort of the other subjects faces.

Blind Couple in their Bedroom, Queens, 1971

Then is no chance that the most powerful explosion of this impersonal life is in the series of joyous shots of adults and children affected by Downs' Syndrome playing in the park. Here, hopelessness is gone, the expression is finally liberated from the constraints of the face, the sheer vitality speaks again of the sheer force of the impersonal. No surprise then whether you chose to name those pictures, ‘Untitled’.

Untitled

Their utter impersonality does not allow for a title to be imposed. No room for romanticising here though. No piety either. The sheer vitality of these playful shots is not opposite to the deep, existential boredom to which other shots seem consigned. They are both manifestation of the eternal plenitude of an impersonal Being, a life which in ‘Untitled’ sparks perhaps more vividly, since no longer sought to be tamed, and instead of finding its way only through the uncontrollable crack of the gaze. is now freely actualised in the gestures of the body. 


Perhaps you managed to glimpse 

that terrible line that shuffles all the diagrams ... a line of life ... that carries man beyond terror ... where Life exists par excellence [3] 

This is then what you were looking for, encountering all those freaks (you included). You were looking for ‘masters of their own speed, of their own molecules and singularities’, for aristocrats of Being...

Most people go through their life dreading they'll go through a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

Jorge Luis Borges in Central Park, 1969

---

[1] November 28, 1939, paper on Plato, senior English seminar, Fieldston School

[2] in response to request for a brief statement about photographs, March 15, 1971

[3] Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, p. 123

(Ir)responsabili dell'Ordine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsbR5L7OpLg&feature=player_embedded

l'aggressione avvenuta a Roma il 14 Dicembre sta sollevando svariate polemiche, nonchè la solita quantità d'azioni scomposte. Fascista? Infiltrato? Pazzo Sadico? Leggete i blog e i commenti, specialmente quelli del popolo Viola e delle organizzazioni studentesche, e la maggiorparte degli sforzi letterari sono dedicate alle teorie cospiratorie ed agli insulti spiccioli, con tanto di prove inconfutabili come il supposto saluto romano di un 'amico' dell'aggressore e cosi via.

Però, se leggete un po’ di post dell’area ‘attivista’, osservate i video, ascoltate le parole che vengono urlate, ben presto capirete che non di poliziotto infiltrato, nè di fascista (è evidente che il gesto dell’amico è tutto meno che un saluto romano) si tratta.

Il ragazzo faceva parte del ‘servizio d’ordine’ del corteo, per questo cercava di impedire che la camionetta degli sbirri fosse assaltata (un infiltrato non sarebbe così stolto). La vittima gli ha tirato addosso qualcosa, lui non c’ha visto più e (giustamente) innervosito lo ha (ingiustificatamente) aggredito. In effetti, e solo un pregiudiziale complottismo può impedire di comprenderlo, questa interpretazione è confermata da ciò che accade dopo:

Nonostante quella che dalle immagini sembrerebbe un’arbitraria aggressione, nessuno reagisce nei confronti del suddetto aggressore. Credete che, se si fosse trattato di fascisti intenti ad aggredire manifestanti, per di più platealmente ostendando saluti romani, nessuna reazione da parte degli altri manifestanti sarebbe conseguita? Idem per il caso di un infiltrato, non trovate assurdo che nessuno reagisca? Avete notato che a soccorrere la vittima è Francesco Caruso? Pensate che l’ex deputato non avrebbe legalmente e pubblicamente denunciato l’aggressore se di fascista e/o infiltrato si fosse trattato?

La storia è quella di un’operazione di autocontenimento finita male. E’ ironico, tragicamente ironico, poichè mostra come il ruolo di ‘polizia’ comporti una forte propensione a ricorrere all’eccessivo e gratuito uso della forza una volta che si sia posti sotto pressione. Non è la divisa che rende picchiatori. Nè semplicemente la volontà di distruggere, di creare disordine. Piuttosto il tentativo di mantenere l'ordine, e l'esasperazione che segue l'essere aggrediti mentre si ritiene di svolgere un compito necessario.

Insomma, sarà difficile per i ragazzi del ‘servizio d’ordine’ criticare apertamente gli abusi dei poliziotti quando loro stessi, se messi nella simile condizione di dover garantire un ordine - per di più senza l'aggiuntivo handicap di dover portare divise che attirano già da sole astio e violenza - se ne macchiano. In tal senso il loro (degli organizzatori) silenzio fin’ora è bizzarro, irritante. Senza nulla togliere alle responsabilità del 20enne, al tempo stesso abbandonarlo in tal modo alla pubblica gogna come fascista, infiltrato o semplicemente pazzo criminale mi sembra un gesto vigliacco ed ingrato. E’ ora che i responsabili del ‘servizio d’ordine’ della manifestazione se ne assumano, appunto, le responsabilità.

What is Violence?

is violence a gaze, a charge on the crowd, a maze of keffiyeh, placards and sound?

is violence a moving pack, the frenetic urge of thousands getting stuck, the lonely wisdom of a revolting stomach?

is violence a symmetry of green benches?

is violence the violence done erasing evidences?

is violence a silence?

is violence, coherence?

is violence a stance, gesture, fragrance?

is violence a march, is violence massacre?

is violence red warmth in the bowels, black noise on the square, the white shock of mental congestion, the grey glue of dejection?

is it rejection?

is it procrastination?

is violence being the same everyday, insane on extraordinary day, radical on mayday?

is violence throwing stones, receiving stones, carving stones, the monotonous placing of first stones?

is violence a placard, a vote, a laugh, a shivering in the cold, a spit on the batoons?

is violence common sense?

is violence the police?

is violence a matrix of control?

is violence a meretrice?

is violence helicopters hovering forever, legs taking the street in every crisis, opening a crack in every hard-cover, breaking the law into thousand pieces?

is violence a violation of pure thought, burning the cold in the freezing crowd, a hysterical dance over a Greek pillar, a purposeful sublimation in the smoky cloud?

is violence a fury, and blind, an unwarranted action, a reaction, a painful contraction?

is violence a stasis, a revolutionary hypothesis, the day-to-day mimesis, the once in a while catharsis?

is the murmur that dwells in the air when the air is gone, that resounds in the ear when is chopped off, that shines in the eyes made by punches blind?

rising pressure on shaken helmets,

bloody rivulets on filthy hairs,

non-cancerous proliferation of unsettling joy,

enveloping vapour which makes you smile,

burning wood,

burning wood,

burning wood

that keeps alive the soft tissue in which you fail.