Related posts:

1. The Tamarind saw: Mika in concert
2. Alice in Wonderland… just off Portobello Road
3. Interview with Roozbeh Naghshineh, young Iranian architect

Related posts:

1. The Tamarind saw: Alice in Wonderland
2. Interview: Jay Brannan

Many argue that participants in a development project that contains a concern for culture at its core, will benefit through strengthened identities, reinforced social bonds and an increase in the quality of life. This position has so far found little opposition: in fact, everyone seems to agree that there are many positive social impacts to be gained from a more culturally oriented approach.

Yet we live in a society that on the one hand eagerly promotes the fruits of progress and modernisation, while on the other advocates for alternative approaches to development that favour local, culturally bound conceptions of change. Whether the two realities can possibly coexist remains to be seen.

The degree to which people have the means to direct the course of their own lives, is still subject to intense debate.

The twentieth century was witness to a transition in which, for the first time in history, the greater percentage of the world’s population increasingly began to concentrate in and around its urban centres.

Cities are increasingly multifaceted as new ethnic and cultural realities coexist side-by-side and on top of one another.

Multiethnic cities can produce the best and the worst of worlds: they contain a rich array of people, languages, cuisines and values; their citizens have unprecedented amounts of personal freedom and upward-mobility and the chance to ‘succeed’ can be achieved by everyone, regardless of their class, colour or background. Yet for every bonus there is the inevitable flip-side: diversity becomes a source of conflict as differences are exacerbated and politicised; freedom seems pointless without any money in your pocket; upward-mobility becomes fantastical, as increasing amounts of people find it impossible to break-free from the constraints imposed by the physical marginalisation of deprived neighbourhoods. Communication breaks down, as increasing alienation isolates many who find themselves unable destroy the barriers imposed on them by others, and that they have come to see as normal.

The above problems are not necessarily the exclusive realm of the city but it is often here that they become evident.

We are left wondering what strategies can accommodate all these different realities in such a way that strengthens identities and allows for diversity, yet enables us to live side-by-side, sharing our values, challenging our preconceptions, and engaging in determining the course of our lives.

This article was written to support a belief that culture is a means by which the social fabric of communities can be kick-started in such a way that take the voices of marginalised people into account. Such an approach is difficult to implement as its results are often difficult to quantify but this does not mean that it should be set aside.

The economist Amartya Sen has argued that the best way to measure how poor people are, is to take into account what they can do, what they should be able to do; what they are prevented from doing; and what they have reason to value doing. The idea behind this, is that every person’s individual circumstances influence their ability to use whatever they have at their disposition to different degrees. Income may be a useful starting point by which to assess the needs of a community or an individual but it is a hopelessly insufficient indicator when taken alone. It is important instead to concentrate on the actual ‘living’ that people manage to achieve. As a result, if we are able to see what people are managing to achieve, we can infer what they are capable of doing, and what they are prevented from doing. If we add to this approach the recognition that culture and identity are some of the most important aspects for communities when it comes to defining themselves, we understand how culture might play a key role in helping people envisage possibilities for change.

So, if culture is so central to development how is it to be included?

Ideally the best kind of cultural development project is the one that is set up by members of a specific community without too much external interference.

Across the world, examples of people spontaneously using cultural initiatives flourish.

In India, an organisation named Sadak Chaap – literally ‘Stamp of the Street’ – has been created and is run by groups of street children in Bombay. With the help of several ‘grown-up’ groups, the children have succeeded in developing a series of forums in which they can build conceptual bridges with previously unreachable sections of the city.

For twenty years, children have spontaneously gathered every evening to engage in improvisatory performance, ‘jam sessions’, in which, amongst other things, they address issues pertaining to the question of their own development. These sessions have influenced the creation of another forum: a triennial Mela (festival) that has been running since 1989 and that over the space of five days aims at getting 5000-6000 boys together. During the festival, the children spend time together engaging in many activities like cooking, watching films and during the evenings they host different cultural events. Often these events consist in inviting municipal authorities to come and interact with the participants, thus opening up spaces for negotiation for the children to put forth their respective concerns.

Organic culture forms the basis of identity in society – it is here that ideas are born, expressions coined and creativity allowed to flourish. Organic culture is necessarily informed by the social and economic structures in which it is placed; yet this position is not at all static.

Enabling change to take place from below is, unsurprisingly, not a priority at the top, especially if this involves some form of reversal or reshuffling of power. Furthermore, it does not work well with current conceptions of ‘proper’ development programmes.

There is reluctance to release funding for such projects, the outcomes of which are uncertain and cannot be measured with clearly defined indicators of success. But the energy, time and money put into projects aimed at achieving open-ended processes of social transformation are all well spent.

Enabling people to empower themselves, through all the trials and tribulations that this might involve, ultimately makes for a more fair and socially just society.

It might be that here lies the very essence of culture in development: there are no clear-cut practice models to be had, only varied examples from which to draw inspiration. Two main approaches seem to be reinforcing cultural networks and encouraging the emergence of new ideas by striving to create structures that enable people to imagine socially transforming artistic processes. However both approaches might be at odds with the global structures of inequality that are already in place. Because of this, we can only speculate as to how this conflict will dictate the terms of play.

No related posts.

It took the builders about half a day. Who knew that what takes so long to put up can be torn down in a matter of seconds?

I can’t say I feel particularly nostalgic. If anything my regrets are a product of what should have been, not of what has been the reality of my house over the last few months.

Let me explain: on my second week in the flat, I was consumed by the curiosity to find out what lay beneath my ugly laminate floor, so I ripped up a board in what was one day to become my bedroom. Underneath, lay some grey indistinct cement, so I deducted that the people who had converted the block, had made off with any nice existing flooring and replaced it with the cheap floorboards.

I was wrong. Yesterday, while Jack was ripping out the kitchen, he called me over to have a look at something. What the absence of splashback and cupboards had revealed was that there were still the original tiles under the wall plaster and that, much to my dismay, the original floor tiles were also still there!

Whoever the barbarians who undertook this course of action are, I truly believe they should be taken out and shot. Harry, my all-knowing builder, insists that it is a waste of my time trying to recondition the tiles and return them to their original state. This makes me very sad, as I am still struggling to find a floor that I like and the original tiles do look really rather cool. Sigh.

This brings me to an ethical question: in my search for a kitchen countertop and tiles, I have come across various types of Zimbabwean slate. Now, when it comes to wood, I know a bit about sustainability issues and that basically if it isn’t FSC certified it’s probably best not buy it. I also saw with my own eyes the effects of logging in Congo and Mozambique and can’t say I would like to be part of something like that. So what about slate?

Mines are bad. Right? Yet given the fact that we all use computers, phones, electricity etc. however bad mines may or not be, we still enjoy what comes out from them. So how can we understand if something comes from a bad mine or not and what criteria should we use to decide?

I can’t say I’ve had much luck answering this question. The best I managed to uncover was an article that informed us that after ten years of forced nationalisation of private firms, Mugabe has recently done a volte-face and is trying to attract foreign investment. Which brings me to the conclusion that all Zimbabwean slate comes from government run mines and that it is probably pretty unethical to buy it. Sigh. Now that I’ve answered my own question will I heed the answer?

This is probably my last Hackney Bird blog for a long time. I have decided to make like the birds and fly south. I will keep a record of my activities but it will not be as Hackney Bird but me (Katy Fentress).  Enjoy…

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Although this may not be the most famous piece of work by the artist known only as Banksy, it probably is the one that best encompasses the tension surrounding people who choose to express themselves on the walls of our cities.

For the last few years there has been a lot of hype surrounding Banksy and some of his equally elusive contemporaries.  Today, items from their collections sell at major auction houses for up to six figure sums.

Graphic prints produced by a group of New Yorkers known as the Faile Collective, have price tags that sometimes hit the £50,000 mark, while Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt famously bought a Banksy piece for £1 million in October 2007.

Yet with all the media attention, it is easy to miss out on one glaring fact: writing on walls without proper authorisation is considered an act of vandalism and is thus an offence punishable by law.

In 2008, the Home Office declared that people found guilty of making graffiti could be issued with an antisocial behaviour order or be sentenced to up to 3 ½ years behind bars.

Sam McMillan, 38, is one of the managers at Lazarides, London’s only art gallery that deals in works by Banksy and other artists of this kind. According to him, councils just can’t make up their minds what to do: “one minute we have Westminster city council saying that they are going to paint over Banksy’s work because it sends out the wrong message and the next we hear that Camden has moved to restore one of his stencils that have been painted over!”

The art history establishment has traditionally considered graffiti to be “more about text and symbolic imagery than about what we in the modern world would call art” says Dr Caroline Goodson, 36, a professor Birkbeck University.

Many of the people who do graffiti would probably agree. Being a writer (as graffiti artists call themselves) has traditionally been about juggling artistic talent with the buzz of actually getting a piece done.

“There’s no question about it,” says the British writer Elk  (who asked that his real name not be revealed): “I started writing my name on walls around the age of 11 and did it because I knew it was naughty”

At fifteen, Elk went on to paint his first train: “It was like stepping through the wardrobe and into another world. All of a sudden I felt like I had really crossed into the illegal and I just loved the buzz it gave me.”

Yet in order to paint trains, graffiti artists put themselves at incredible risk:  “I once got raided in a yard while I was painting a Circle line train,” recalls Elk. “There was nowhere to go. I was just about to finish my piece and all of a sudden they were coming from every direction.

“In a panic I climbed under a train and into the undercarriage but there was nothing to hold onto so I just pressed myself up like Spiderman and kind of hooked my buttock onto a lump of metal.

“After they’d left, I managed to climb out under the wheels but had to watch out because by now the electricity had come on and I risked electrocuting myself. It was the closest to death I’ve ever come, I’ve known people who have gone that way…”

Sam MacMillan, who has closely followed the careers of many of today’s street artists, feels that at a certain point the people who had started out doing graffiti began to look for different ways to express themselves: “Graffiti was the seed,” he says, “but as kids grew older they began to experiment with painting images and making sculptures and no longer wanted to just tag their names.” He feels that these artists maintained their sense of bravado and it is from this combination that the movement now known as Street Art was born.

Caroline Goodson, who last year organised a symposium on graffiti at Birkbeck University, recognises that there has been a shift in the way the academic establishment views graffiti and Street Art: “Artists took over previously overlooked media such as spray cans, markers and stencils. This is very much what happened during the Surrealist movement and the Arte Povera movement in Italy. At first, people didn’t get any credibility but as time went on, perceptions began to change”

Cans Festival is a Street Art event that took place under Waterloo Bridge in London at the beginning of May 2008. On the day the tunnel gallery opened to the public, thousands of people queued for hours for get a chance to see the artwork.

MacMillan feels that Cans Festival was a seminal moment for the movement: “The fact that someone could get National Rail, Eurostar, the police, the council and the mayor to endorse a whole street designated to spray can art, signifies a major shift in cultural perceptions.

“It would never have happened without someone like Banksy,” MacMillan comments. “It’s not like Redbull said ‘we’ll pay you two squillion if you let us do this thing.’ There was no money involved, it was just born out of belief and trust in a new movement.”

There remains however a fear that as street art becomes increasingly mainstream, it might lose some of the edginess that originally defined it. “Unlike a lot of other art forms, the temporariness of graffiti is really important,” says Goodson, adding: ” it’s ephemeral and reactive and that’s what makes it so fascinating yet so difficult to study”

Elk doesn’t see that the change has really affected writers. If anything he sees there is still a real lack of legal spaces for writers to go and paint.

“It’s a real tragedy that kids don’t have somewhere to go but at the same time,” Elk says, “even if there were such a space, there’s always going to be a disturbed angry young man that is going to go against it.”

MacMillan definitely does not feel street artists are losing their edge, if anything he believes that they’ve created a new one. “Look at what Banksy has been doing,” he points out, “he is passionate about so many different causes and gives almost all of his money to charity. What artist has ever done that?”

MacMillan goes on to describe the work of JR, 25, a Parisian Street Artist with a Tunisian and Eastern European background. He says that JR has managed to focus worldwide attention on forgotten places like the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the Slums of Nairobi.

One of JR’s techniques is to photograph the inhabitants of these places and then create huge billboard-size images that he plasters back onto their roofs. MacMillan stresses that: “JR doesn’t only bask in the publicity of his art. In every place he has worked he has gone back and invested in social projects.”

Elk maintains that graffiti is mainly the product of people who “come from broken homes and have disturbed backgrounds”.  If this is the case, then it makes sense that as these people grow up, they stop focussing on their teenage angst and start to direct the sensibility they have developed towards making art that deals with larger social issues.

The situation is not simple and it is understandable that the authorities have a hard time marking out boundaries between what is and is not acceptable. It does however seem that the law veers towards punishing youngsters solely intent on leaving their territorial markings but letting off the hook those same people once they are older and focus less on themselves and more on issues of substance and style.

“There is definitely a correlation between the drive of a big graffiti King and their home life.” concludes MacMillan, adding: “whether they should be punished for their greatness is a matter for debate.”

Related posts:

1. Italian graffiti
2. UBS openings: do it yourself
3. Barbara Kruger: pasting slogans

New Years resolutions hang over our heads as we increasingly retreat into a state of denial exacerbated by the looming January 31^st tax returns deadline… “£800 all in one go? But that’s so much money!!! This year I promise I’ll put aside 20% of my profits every time I get paid…” (Yet isn’t that what we said this time last year?).

Just last week, I was walking up an icy Sandringham road – the last intersection before the Dalston/Stoke Newington boundary marker which is Shacklewell lane – when I spied, about forty feet ahead of me, a man stumbling across the road in an obvious state of drunken disarray. Before I had a chance to fully take in this lonesome figure, I spied another man walk up behind him and nonchalantly kick him in ankles. The drunk stumbled but did not fall. This appeared to give displeasure to his assailant, who hung back, kicked him once more and then sped up and overtook the utterly baffled victim (who had still, impressively, managed to keep his balance). The drunk tried to regain his dignity and began to shout after the perpetrator of this meaningless attack, challenging him to come back and fight him like a man. The assailant walked on, ignoring him and causing the people on the street to think that the drunk was a loony who had no doubt inexplicably lost the plot.

A quick postscript to this story: I believe I was the only person who witnessed the incident and further down the street I happened to be walking directly behind the sauntering assailant. As the shouts of the victim finally began to fade into the distance, the brutish man decided to glance back. I caught his eye and gave him a dirty look but beyond that did not express to him my utter contempt at his desire to pick on weaker and more pathetic members of society. I doubt he even registered my look. I suppose in some way that makes me an accomplice, even though I took no pleasure from the scene. Sigh, so much for being a paladin of justice.

Construction work on my beloved place of abode is proceeding slower than expected. In a way the presence of two sofas has made living here more bearable, to the point that I sometimes think this is how the flat is supposed to look and forget about the grand plans I have for this high-ceilinged, big-windowed space.

Work was actually supposed to start today but the freeholders have been slow in approving my plans and the bamboo flooring isn’t arriving until the 20^th, so it looks like I’m just going to have to sit tight a little while longer.

Luke, a good architect friend of mine, has warned me that I must be more concerned with getting out some kind of a liability insurance in case my builders were to accidentally damage some part of the building, leaving me to foot the bill. It’s good to have pessimistic friends who predict that negative things might happen, it helps keep my “oh whatever I’m sure it will all work out fine in the end” attitude in check.

At least having sofas and crockery means I can indulge in one of my favourite pastimes: cooking dinners for friends. The problem with this, is balancing this fun occupation with my otherwise constant concern of not piling on the pounds just because the temperature outside has been sub-freezing for weeks and I’m spending too much time sitting on my sofa (working that is, I don’t yet own a desk). In theory this means not, I repeat not, making super heavy pasta bakes, which contain more butter, cheese and milk than I’m sure is good for anyone and then snacking on the leftovers of this super-heavy meal for days afterwards. This of course is NOT what I did this weekend. Promise!

Oh the guilt of overindulgent eating. To prove my repentance I am heading to the gym. Now. No really.

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3. Rodent curries

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, his debut is that of a writer, when in 1946 he published Elisabeth, a novel – characterised by subtle prose – that let us forsee the style of the scripts of his future movies. The book came out with the pseudonym Gilbert Cordier. A pseudonym is often associated with shame and resentment (see Stendhal), and in this regard Monsieur Rohmer, with his double nom de plume, probably had something to reveal.

Following the first feature films, the artist begins to see his path. His adventure in the world of art-house cinema has begun. Director on the one hand and, on the other, theorist. In fact, Rohmer was Editor of the Cahiers du cinéma for some years. Those were the years of Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, Eustache, Truffaut. Years of unforgettable movies (the legend of À bout de souffle, the poetic story of Jules et Jim) when Rohmer chose his position (on the sidelines) to play an independent game. He conceives an ambitious project: cycles of movies (stories at different stages, on multiple levels) in which he intends to recount the endless facets of the human soul, the worthlessness and the complexity, the splendour and the fragility, with all the comic aspects (or tragicomic).

The first cycle is that of the Moral Tales. Six astonishing movies, of great depth, each profoundly different from the other and yet all linked in a closed circle. La boulangère de Monceau (1962), La carriére de Suzanne (1963), La collectionneuse (1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969), Le genou de Claire (1970)  and L’amour l’aprés-midi (1972). Each of these stories involves a moral choice, a dilemma that puzzles the protagonist, a fork in the road. It’s the serried dialogues between Jean-Louis Trintignat and Françoise Fabian (unforgettable Maud), it’s the obsession focused on the knee of the young attractive (and arrogant) Claire, it’s the thoughts of the three characters of La collectionneuse (a sort of Jules et Jim with colours borrowed from Matisse and Bonnard).

This meditation in six acts is followed by an historical pause, during which Rohmer directs La marquise von (1976, inspired by a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, a beautiful period movie characterised by masterful lighting) and Perceval le Gallois (1978, a heavy adaptation from Chretiens de Troys). These are historical and literary digressions, recaptured by Rohmer toward the end of his career in L’anglaise et le duc (2001).

Once again absorbed in everyday life, Rohmer initiates a second cycle, that of Comedies and Proverbs. If the objective is always the same (a man, a woman, their psychology), the tactic has changed: a folkloristic adage is quoted and presented in the context of a beach in Brittany or in 1980s Paris. The films in this cycle are: La femme de l’aviateur (1981), Le beau mariage (1982), Pauline à la plage (1982), Les nuits de plein de lune (1984), Le rayon vert (1986),  Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) and L’ami de mon amie (1987). All these movies enjoyed the success of critic and public, all were characterised by the Rohmer-trademark: the dialogues chasing each other and interweaving, the simple settings (often beaches, equally often the countryside, an unexpected Paris), the accomplished actors (cleverly directed but also free to improvise in order to convey more spontaneity to the memorable fast-paced dialogues).

Another cycle follows, that of the Four Seasons: Conte de printemps (1989), Conte d’hiver (1991), Conte d’été (1996) and Conte d’automne (1998). The seasons are identified with their colours – the light-blue of the skies of Normandy for Summer, the red green and brown of the vineyards for Autumn. The sensitivity is, by now, familiar: the meditations of a young man caught in his dreams and in his incertitude, two friends in their middle age enjoying themselves in a comedy of misunderstandings (serious, but with a smile). Juggling and balancing. 

There are also films outside the cycles. Those Rendez-vous à Paris, in which the structure is still typical of Rohmer. The recent L’anglaise et le duc (2001) from the memoires of Lady Grace Dalrymple Elliot, lover of the Duke of Orléans interpreted by the excellent Lucy Russell. And here Monsieur Rohmer finds one of his strengths: the unequalled taste in choosing the actors. Actors who give an astonishing performance and then disappear (from the screen, not in the memory of the public), such as Haydée Politoff, protagonist of La collectionneuse. But also legends of French cinema: Françoise Fabian (the seductive Maud) and Jean-Louis Trintignat. André Dussolier and Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory. Some of the actors and actresses are a fetish, especially Béatrice Romand (young in Le genou de Claire, then in Le beau mariage, for which she was awarded the Coppa Volpi in Venice) and Marie Riviére (seen in La femme de l’aviateur and Le rayon vert) both united in the Autumn Tale in a memorable double interpretation. Or young promising actors, such as Melvil Poupaud in the Summer Tale.

Overall the strength of Rohmer’s cinema lays in its delicacy. The ability of recounting the fragility of a relationship, the intensity of an impulse, the complexity of a doubt. Often intertwined with the movements of the body (very observant the director, very refined the actors), the feelings are the real protagonists of the moral debates, of the comedies and the proverbs, of the seasons of life (a passionate summer, a melancholic autumn ending with a smile). A film by Rohmer can be ironic, humoristic, subtly sad, patently intimate – always, however, profoundly human.

The repetition of the themes (lastly disguised in the classical setting of the Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé) was a demonstration of clarity. Awarded in numerous editions of the most prestigious festivals (the lifetime achievement Leone d’Oro dating to 2001), Rohmer never lost his freshness, sometimes joyfully baroque sometimes astoundingly simple.

One day, in an unexpected place, we will find ourselves engaged in a discussion or sharing doubts with archetypal symbolic characters (Frivolous, Gullible, Strong, Ambiguous, Constant) and we will recognise ourselves as characters in one of his movies.

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Peruvian Pink Salt is brought to us from the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Andes Mountains of Peru, slowly carried on the backs of donkeys down the steep descent. In breathtaking scenery where time seems to have stood still, warm water from a spring fed from an underground ocean oozes into terraced ponds and from there the salt is hand-harvested after the water evaporates in the sun, repeating the same cycle for some 2,000 years now. The crystals have a subtle pink colour – due to trace minerals such as iron – and high moisture content.

If alpine destinations are not really your cup of tea, why not dive together with the dolphins of the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Kona in Hawaii, for some Deep Water Sea Salt? Pure seawater is brought from a depth of 2,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to enclosed spaces where it dries in the sun, without having ever been directly exposed to the pollutants of the environment. This salt consists of moist and snow-white flaky crystals, is extremely pure and rich in trace minerals, and (the good news!) has very low sodium content, making it suitable for a healthy diet.

Hawaii also produces the widely known Red Alaea Sea Salt. From ancient times, the inhabitants of Kauai Island had discovered that a very special salt was forming through sun evaporation during the rain season, when Pacific Ocean water infiltrated with washed-down alaea (red volcanic clay), became trapped in the shoreline tidal pools. This salt has been used since then in sacred ceremonies and healing rituals. Alaea salt is full of goodness and captivating looks, being rich in iron oxide, nutrients and trace-minerals and full of vibrant colour.

Marsupial friends can be visited by proxy via the south-eastern Australian Murray River Salt, worth buying not just because of its superior flavour, but also as an (admittedly symbolic, rather than substantial!) environmental act. Under the Murray Darling Basin there are large quantities of naturally saline water. Although the Basin is flushed by the snowmelt descending from the Alps via the Murray River, salt is making its way into the soil and the groundwater, causing agricultural, ecological and economic concerns. Using the saline water of the Basin for salt extraction improves the environment and produces an exquisite salt at the same time. Murray River salt flakes are crunchy, with a warm peach colour, due to the red pigment of algae that inhabit the brine.

Although salt is inherently related to water, the very popular Himalayan Salt will convey you to a place where you can keep your feet completely dry! This rock salt is from Pakistan and is mined in the Khewra Salt Mines. It is essentially prehistoric sea salt, from seawaters that existed when our planet’s ecosystem was still perfectly unspoiled. The colossal geological phenomena that led to the formation of the Himalayan Mountains and the disappearance of the Tethys Ocean, simultaneously resulted in huge quantities of salt being buried and crystallised deep within the mountains. Himalayan salt is usually light pink, but the exact colour varies depending on mineral content.

Another exciting salt originating from Hawaii is the shiny and (literally!) coal-black Lava Salt from the island of Molokai. This salt, similar to the silvery Cyprus Black Lava Salt, is produced by blending local sea salt with purified black lava rock and activated charcoal. These salts are very rich in minerals and have detoxifying properties. Apart from all these benefits though, isn’t the idea of bringing both exotic Hawaii and a tiny hint of Earth mantle to your plate, with just a single pinch of salt, simply fascinating?

Japan might be surrounded by water, but due to the damp climate Japanese salt is quite rare. Nazuna Salt is produced at the Kyushu island of Japan, inside pyramid-shaped solar houses where it is left to crystallise in dishes made from cypress wood. Jewel of the Ocean is another Japanese salt, produced from mixed deep and surface seawater to achieve a potent mineral content. Evaporation through the sun and the wind and further dehydration in ceramic, hand-made pans inside glass hothouses yields this beautiful salt. The name is derived from the appearance of the salt crystals, which are reminiscent of gemstones, both in terms of looks and quality. This salt is very difficult to find on the market.

And for a more local trip, how about Cornish Sea Salt? It comes from the pristine turquoise waters around Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula, where salt was produced by the Celts as early as the Iron Age, by boiling seawater in clay pans over open gorse- and hazel-wood fires. Today though, saltwater is steam-evaporated in very modern and environmentally-friendly facilities and the salt is hand-harvested from evaporation pans. The resulting crystals are brilliant white and flaky and – due to the natural way of processing the Atlantic seawater – this is one or the purest sea salts you can find, retaining all of its minerals to the full.

I hope reading this helped you banish those negative thoughts triggered by the bad weather outside! If not, maybe you should try carrying some salt in your pocket for good luck and also throw some over your left shoulder, just for good measure!

For inquisitive cooks: Salt Traders, Beyond the Shaker, Salt Works and Tuareg salt caravans.

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Summing together technique and imagery from the Futurists, the Dada and the Pop movement, Kruger has created a bold and effective body of work that combines black and white photography (rarely colour) with resonant, advert-like slogans. Images such as the pin puncturing a finger with the writing “Thinking of you” or the motto “I shop therefore I am”. Kruger’s experience as a magazine editorial designer is evident both in the choice of subjects and in the approach to the image and the typographic element. The result is a direct message to the viewer (the consumer) who is often entranced by the contrast between the words-layer and the image-layer in the paste up. However, the “advertisement” aspect is kept separated from the art work by the artist herself: “Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways”.

Barbara Kruger, born in Newark in 1945, studied with Diane Arbus at the prestigious Parson’s School of Design in New York. From her first 1980 solo show at PS1 in New York, to the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the 2005 Venice Biennale, her work has been consistently exhibited over the past thirty years: the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, the Tate in London and the Whitney in New York, and numerous solo shows, especially with the influent Mary Boone Gallery. Her work has remained direct and sharp, analysing the way in which we relate with language and the stimulation  of the viewer’s (consumer’s) mind through bold imagery.

Barbara Kruger, Paste up, Sprüth Magers Gallery London, until 23 January 2010
Image credits: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Money can buy you love), 1985, Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London

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1. Workshop Missoni: daring to be different
2. UBS openings: do it yourself
3. Outsider art

Instead, I moseyed on down to the highly recommended Mess Café on Amhurst road. They say the hamburgers and milkshakes there are to die for, although so far I’ve only had the American breakfast, which was decent and nothing like anything I’d ever had in the States before. Unfortunately the rain seemed not have deterred the eager café enthusiasts and after about three minutes standing in line (patience has never really been my virtue), I gave up, bought a Saturday Guardian and some free-range bacon and eggs at Marks and Sparks. I know, shopping at such a controversial supermarket was highly politically incorrect of me. Yet where else am I to get free-range in this neck of the woods if not at Tescos, which is arguably much worse than M&S? It’s hard to balance the need to be virtuous and buy free-range and organic, with the need to not shop at evil corporations that are ruining our society, potentially backing the oppression of Palestinians and squeezing out small-businesses across the world.

Oh, so while I’m reviewing my culinary week, Friday lunchtime saw me head down to Brick Lane to indulge in one of the only decent curries in a hurry that I have found there. Shalimar does not outwardly seem any different from the other multitude of Bangladeshi eateries in the area but don’t be fooled: for well under a tenner, you can indulge in some pretty high quality spice-tastic concoctions. I had the lamb and spinach curry and apart from spending the rest of the day worrying I had green stuff stuck in my teeth, it was well worth the cycle.

Later, while lazily pedalling home, my eye did catch a sight of a little junk shop that stood out from the rest of the high-priced, crappy old furniture establishments, simply because it did not appear to be trying at all. I ended up bargaining for a rudimentary mini-coffee table and mirror that had been haphazardly banged together by the owner of the shop from random bits of wood he had picked up. After considering for a couple of minutes if it might not be worth just doing the same thing myself, I decided that at £20 for both items, I couldn’t really go far wrong. The mini-coffee table (which looks more like a miniature bench) and the mirror have now been painted white and I’m still umming and ahhing over whether I should take some sand paper to them to create that “distressed” look that I so hankered after a month ago but which I am beginning to tire of already.

I’ve made a monumental decision about the flooring in the flat. Enough with all this reclaimed floorboards business. From what I can make out “reclaimed” has simply become a catchphrase for “old and yukky but with a 1000% mark-up for you silly twats who want your flat to look ’shabby chic’!” Instead I’ve decided to go down the sustainable road and invest in a serious bamboo floor. My online research has so far thrown up the company Simply Bamboo as one of my prime candidates. After having received some samples from them, I am now pretty convinced to go for their strand woven coffee boards which, at around £22 per square metre, is well less than half the price of anything I have seen until now.

Beyond that, I now attend a response from the freeholders of the building to whom I have submitted a plan of what I intend to do to the flat. I sent them a printed out letter by mail on Thursday, so hopefully they’ll get back to me some time this week.

I do hope everything will be ready for our January “begin to build” deadline…

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1. Swine me baby!
2. New Year’s blues
3. The Downs