Architect and designer, Antonio Pio Saracino, brings us his “Star Chairs”, recently premiered in Dubai’s annual design expo immediately prior to this show. Do we sit on these works of art, or just view and circle them? Certainly the artist would not be upset if anyone were to sit down, but the setting unquestionably gives one pause for reflection. The Star Chairs – manufactured in Italy by Lamberti Design – give us a rare opportunity to experience a threshold where art and functionality merge.

In the work of Verdiana Patachini, one senses a search, an existential exploration with no discernible map or direction. The amorphous quality of each work is simultaneously punctuated with symbols, words and vague images representing a dream-like state, while each work possesses a depth and passion in the desire to reveal her journey inward.

The “Stitched Bridge” of Borinquen Gallo, lies like an abandoned alien carcass. Closer inspection reveals intricacies of form that are both biological and emotive. Cloth spirals, vegetative and flower shapes project a human presence, the bridge-like structure providing a means of climbing towards a more ethereal plane. This bridge could be a ladder, beckoning the viewer to climb up or down, a returning to or escaping from. Commodification of emotion is revealed in Gallo’s cement castings of hearts like a display in an “organ store”, where the sale of body parts has become more common than most realize. Advances in science have fostered the feasibility of such businesses, yet what is the emotional and psychological fall-out from such “final” commodification?

The “Martyr” rests quietly on the wall, exhausted from struggle, dripping in pain, each ripple of tar silent in its tormented presence. Why do most of us find it both offensive and praiseworthy that one should be willing to endure torture and death for a belief? Paolo Pelosini presents us with love unto death, for mustn’t we be deeply in love if we are willing to die rather than renounce a belief?

Alessandro Del Pero gives us his martyr in “Effort”, a crucifixion seemingly in progress. The presence of the artist is palpable – one expects to see him step back, out of the frame of his work and continue with another swirl of line and form. Del Pero works his sacrificial figure, painting and sketching impatiently as if the image, as well as the environment, need to be captured immediately, before disappearing back into the spiritual cavern of mind and being. The “head” pieces of del Pero convey a comparable frenetic quality of motion and impatience. Nonetheless, particularly in his “Harlem Heads”, the images are a bit more grounded; the eyes, as anchors for the soul, transform each work with a special focus and presence.

In Andrea Bianconi’s videos, the artist portrays the “mental cinema” which never ceases in its projection of images, words, symbols and thoughts. In its circular logic, our minds are engaged in a constant activity of construction and deconstruction. We impose our psychological selves, along with experience, on all new events. To every such encounter we bring our most intimate thoughts, our most private emotions. What we choose to release to the world is different in each situation and for each individual. Our public self is but a fraction of that which lies within.

Despite the outwardly divergent conceptual messages as curated by Alessandro Berni, “Italian Vibrations” offers a uniquely coherent vision onto the stage of current international art. Italian blood flows at Provenance Center, infusing us all with strength and creative vitality.

The exploration of Indian culture clearly appeals to a wide public, as demonstrated by recent cultural events in Rome.

The exhibition “Indian Highway” at MAXXI is about to come to a close (22 September 2011- 29 January 2012). A 360° portrait of the sub-continent and its culture is interpreted through the works of thirty major contemporary Indian artists. Presented for the first time in London at the Serpentine Gallery back in 2009, “Indian Highway” has toured the most prestigious galleries in the world and will eventually close the circle and reach New Delhi in 2013.

In addition, an event called “Italia-India: le vie della Scrittura” (Italy-India: the routes of writing) was recently organized at the Casa delle Letterature (14-15 December 2011). It consisted of a two-day workshop led by both Italian and Indian female novelists. The likes of Anita Nair, Elisabetta Rasy, Priya Basil, Dacia Maraini and Bapsi Sidhwa all gathered for a two-day literature delight in the ancient Biblioteca dell’Orologio, a magnificent building hedging a peaceful citrus garden.  The leading theme of the event was women’s writing as a tool to stir modernity and tradition. An Indian printemps in Rome…

“Indian Highway” and “Le vie della Scrittura” share the same “India-is-going-global” flavor, while exposing several thorny issues: gender equality, caste-based discrimination, the exploitation of thousands of migrant workers, pollution and environmental disasters, the India-Pakistan ordeal.  The latter is the subject of “The Lighting Testimonies”, by Amar Kanwar, in which the conflict is recounted through the testimonies of women on both sides who suffered rape and other forms of gender-based violence. “I love my India” by Tejal Shah sheds light on the 2002 repressive policies against the Muslim minority of Gujarat.

Jitish Kallat transformed an old rickshaw in a work of art: his “Autosuarus Tripous” looks like a relic of a distant past, especially since it shares the hall of MAXXI with “Transit”, a glittering aluminum truck designed by Valay Shende symbolizing the massive urbanization of farmers, fuelled by promises of luxury and a modern life.

Large enameled panels by Nalini Malani allude to ancient mythological stories and evocate a mysterious and sensual India, where we can definitely feel the string that attaches today’s life to long-gone eras.

These themes are recurrent in contemporary writing as well. Anita Nair explained during the workshop that her world revolves around the feelings of Indian women, who struggle to find their way, caught between tradition and innovation. In one of her novels, Ladies Coupé (2001), Nair addresses the question of whether a woman can survive in this world without a man by her side. Her main character, a 45-year old single woman in India, asks herself: “Is there a place for me here?”. Another character, another woman, metaphorically embodies the answer to her question: she learns to swim. Isn’t staying afloat in a swimming pool just as easy and possible as staying afloat in life? Hard to tell for the average woman living in a macho society.

“Le vie della Scrittura” was an amazing chance to dive in the world of the Indian woman, get an impression of her joys and pain, the restrictions imposed on her by tradition and her great strides towards modernity. In one word: her Indian-ness. The same charm, doubts and contradictions that emerged in the artworks of  “Indian Highway” and that render India so unique.

When asked by a researcher working on the subject, Xavier, 44, a modern day slave in Amazonia, Brazil reported: “They thrashed me with a whip. I treated the cuts with oil from a tree. But when the overseer saw that they were healing, he threw gasoline over them, and then I saw stars.”

Going further in investigating such realities,  it soon becomes apparent that the majority of workers in India and Pakistan are in bonded labour, that child labour in sub-Saharan countries is considered “normal”, and that coerced female prostitution is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Thailand.

The list continues dramatically, when looking at the working conditions of eastern and southern countries: forced labour  is not only still alive, but often takes place in broad daylight.

The problem is far reaching: slavery is a plague that affects even the United Kingdom. The only difference is that we hide it, and people generally ignore the underbelly of what is labelled the “informal economy”.

Talking with activists of the non-profit organization Anti-slavery International (ASI), based in London,  they reported the words of a domestic worker, who didn’t wish to be named,  and who used to work for a couple in their twenties in London: “I would get up at 6am and work all day until after midnight. I never had any breaks, or the time to take a bath or sometimes even to go to the toilet. I was only allowed one day off a month and I wasn’t ever allowed to leave the house”  (M/F) Her example is just one of thousands estimated.

Ironically the United Kingdom is one of the leading states fighting slavery, since its elimination from the colonies in 1807. The British government has also institutionalized a national “Anti-Slavery Day” on every 18^th of October, which was commemorated for the second time this year.

“The day was thought to increase awareness among people.” explained Paul Donohoe who works at ASI: ”We went out doing education in schools and we launched new campaigns against trafficking.”

More than 4,000 labourer are trafficked in the UK every year, to be coerced into work such as domestic labour or prostitution. Given that enslavement is illegal, the entire trade of slavery is hidden in the hands of a few traffickers, working as the missing link between entrepreneurs and slaves, and who are often settled in developed countries.

According to the International Labour Organization the market in trafficking produces $32 million of profit. “Making use of the Antislavery Day,” continued Mr. Donohoe, “we called on people to sign a document asking the UK Government to incorporate a proposed EU directive designed to protect victims of trafficking and increase prosecutions of traffickers.”

Organizations that work to protect human rights and labour freedoms strongly believe in the necessity of an international governmental coalition in eradicating forced labour. To date 27 million people live under conditions of slavery, producing only $13 million of extra profit (less than what the United States spends on Valentine’s Day). (M/F)

Though the new Antislavery Day may succeed in raising awareness among some Britons, these are the real images of deep economic exploitation across several different countries and cultures.

Tired of western materialism, conformity and consumerism, they packed their rucksacks, took the little money they had and hit the road Eastwards on a trip to discover a different self in a foreign world.

This overland “mission” from Europe to Asia generally ended here in Kathmandu, specifically Jhochhen Tole.
Known for its laid back pace and liberal marijuana laws (shops sold legally until 1972), “Freak Street” became a destination for many daring, free spirited and open minds.

Before coming to Kathmandu I knew these tales from the sixties and seventies. Following their inspiration, I came here via road. After about five years traveling, mostly hitchhiking, and living around Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia —I arrived in Nepal and knew I had reached my destination and found a home.

Recently I found myself eating momos along Freak Street with a nostalgic, extravagant old Italian man.

“Thirty years ago this street was filled with long-bearded freaks!” He shouted.
“We were searchers of existence, wandering from one side of the road to the other, with a cup of chai in one hand and a joint in the other, talking philosophy. No insane behavior could surprise people in this street, we felt free to be.”

“Without all these cheap airlines, the only youngsters who could arrive here were the ones with enough courage to pass though Turkey, Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and so on…Now you see these tourists? They wear the most professional trousers for the most professional mountain trek! Mamma mia!”
I laughed.
“Teleportation already exists,” the wrinkled old Italian continued. “We can cross the whole globe in one day. Everyone makes big talks about modernization and development, but I see the development coming up to our necks.” He was right, Nepal these days has become a well known tourist destination, with all the changes that it implies.

Freak Street travelers are now vastly outnumbered by Thamel tourists. Marijuana shops have been replaced by restaurants and cyber cafés and Thamel’s fields and farmhouses, have been developed into a tourist trap with countless trekking and rafting advertisements, hawkers on the street, fancy hotels, live music and a thriving night life.

But the spirit and way of the first travelers who came by land has not died. Travelling in this new millennium, I’ve encountered incredible travelers of all ages and backgrounds crossing 6000 miles of deserts, high mountains with landslides, and rough roads. By motorcycle, minibus, car, bicycle, or hitchhiking.

I met a man who peddled his rickshaw from Kathmandu to Spain, a Swiss couple on donkeys, two French crossing the world wholly on foot, and a man on unicycle (one wheeled bicycle).

Their dedication to traditional and creative ways of land travel writes new chapters in the collective story of the backpacking citizens of the world. Sometimes I meet older travelers who, after crossing the “60’s hippie trail” until Kathmandu, never left.

Their testimony inspires and encourages me to dream big and live out my dreams through my actions and choices. These old spirits follow a simpler path, preferring to travel by land and let the space move them organically. Time passes more naturally as a conception.
When it is time to move from one place to another the body and mind will speak, one only needs to listen to hear .

While the makeup of Freak Street and Katmandu may have been commercialized, the spirit of the original tourists of Nepal lives on through the message of classic rock songs spilling out from windows and those who continue to spill them.

Italy is at a bad turn not because of Berlusconi’s resilience, not for the predicted immigration waves, not for youth unemployment, not for the cuts in jobs and the fall of the small enterprise and not even for the crunching grips of austere economic reforms. Italy is like a patient in depression, looking at himself in the mirror and understanding of being depressed, but unable to think in any other terms than depression. The Italian problem is a problem of imagination. It is a problem of lack of alternative imagination. The imagination of the ideals, of ethics and values, usually triggered by both Realpolitik and theater plays, have all been eaten up by a reinforcing black hole where Berlusconi and his pro and contra commentators have collided. The game is no more Berlusconi’s or the magistrates’. The game is this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, where critiques are self-evident and foster the things they critique. The lack of imagination has produced a Berlusca-centric system that reduced Italy to a thing and a measure of itself, at this stage devoid of a guide.

Silvio Forever comes about in these uni-versal days. An intelligent movie, a sharp, well-informed, poignant, revelatory and (un)surprisingly wit collage of footage and declarations. A movie that would shake a foreigner more than an Italian. As in any addiction, excess of consumption decreases the effect of every amount: an evening in the cinema to watch Berlusconi’s shows simply reinforces uni-directionality. In actual facts, this movie should be destined to a foreign audience, where alternative imaginations could make a cult out of this deeply enmeshed in the Italian-style, but incredibly actual and pan-communicative film.

Silvio Forever is the story of the effects of power and transgression, from the moment the man believes to be the creator, to the moment the man has to blindly obey to his creation. It is a universal parable, telling the story of a country internationally considered a-normal on daily basis, a story that surely will provoke a deep sense of resentment in any one caring about Italy. Also, it is story that speaks the words of truth, a truth contained in the Pandora’s box of liberal theory, which can paradoxically become an instrument of invisible censorship, of self-destructive implosion, of obliteration of democracy through democracy.

Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo, together with Roberto Faenza, acted somehow predictably, as they produced a movie not able to increase the audience already conquered with the books “La Casta” and “La Deriva”, and that slice of population barricaded behind the parallel reality of investigative journalism, the magistrate’s justice and deep “anti-berlusconismo”. Similarly, the three acted very unpredictably too, fact epitomised by the Left’s caustic reactions to the movie. What was different? The movie’s sobriety and ambiguous nature are of rarely paralleled manufacture in Italian docudrama: Silvio Forever could have easily been about a distant autocrat, both in time and space.

In addition to that, the editing of the movie was about one possible alternative for Italy: the lack of an orienting voice, if we consider Silvio’s voice as ‘within’ the narrative and not as the ‘narrating voice’. The movie has met unconscious, deep audience’s dissatisfaction by the fact that there is no clear moral, as the stark contrast between Rosa Bossi Berlusconi’s (Silvio’s mother) declarations and their dismissal by the unfolding of history, or the juxtaposition of a 1910s betrayal of Caesar movie and the fairy-tale like tone of the ending song are elements framing the nebulous state of the Italian real. The movie’s cynical, witty and ambiguous alternative style smells of the unknown Italy, of a country brave enough to completely dismiss itself and build a new cosmos: possibly, it smells of the non-televised alternative country. Silvio Forever deserves to be the last act of a play where all Italians are unconsciously playing, as it feels like that not only there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but that the tunnel is not even felt. Nevertheless, the few subjects still gravitating around the imaginative black hole are wondering how to escape the aggrandising magnetism. And they also feel that they cannot do it through neither the large or the small screen.

For a moment I was worried, but realizing that this wouldn’t prevent me being engulfed, I looked back to my host and pretended to be calm. I asked: “What should I do?” He said: “Look at your footsteps behind you and come back the same way. Move slowly to pull one leg out, then you’ll follow with the second.” It worked. In a few minutes I was out of danger and, deciding to abandon my conquest of unexplored lands, I went back into the water and reached the boat in which ‘Uncle’ Gabriel and ‘cousin’ Alex were waiting for me.

Neither Alex nor Gabriel were my relatives, but they became so in those three days when they invited me into their lives in this remote village – Nagè – on the Rio Paraguaçu in Brazil. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” was the first thing Alex asked me when we met. I said yes as I entered his house, he gave me a pillow to sit on before he took an old clothes iron plugged into the mains and threw it into a bowl of water.  A singular way to make water boil, but the coffee was delicious.

I was there almost by mistake. Some days before arriving I had heard about a guy who built his house from plastic bottles in a ‘nowhere’ place at the end of the river. I was skeptical about the news, but decided to go and take a look. As soon as the bus reached Nagè, early in the morning, I saw from the window a green house, which stood out from the rest. Intrigued, I went looking for its owner and there I met Alex, 26, who immediately decided we were cousins.

My first question was about his house. I wondered how could he live in a home made of plastic bottles. He smiled and explained to me that plastic bottles, inflated with the right amount of air, are more resistant than stone. I was surprised and kept asking questions: How did you know that? How do you inflate them? How do you stop the air from leaking out? And so on. He laughed and he showed me his tools: a piece of old bicycle; a piece of a spray gun; a nozzle from a perfume bottle; a razor blade, and one or two other bits of kit. They were joined together in a single machine that he had made, designed to cut the bottle in a precise circle, fill it with air, and then fit the bottle into the next. There was no glue at all in his construction.

He spoke a lot and everything he said pointed to a possible idea for the next invention.  His bed, his tables, his shelves, and the outside garden with several weather vanes, so that each of the four winds could have its own, all were built by blown bottles. The carpet that linked the gate to the door was made of bottles filled with water, to give the feet a pleasant massage. I was amazed, even more so when I discovered that Alex was not able to read and write. “How do you know all this physics?” I asked. “I like to observe”, he answered, “sometimes I spend hours just looking around me and thinking.”

While I was finishing my coffee he went out for a second and came back with two bikes. Mine was small, red, and in good condition, while he rode on a green one without brakes. We cycled all over the village to show me how people were living there, as if he was reading my mind. I saw the ladies sat on the ground of their stone houses working at ceramic pots, the famous “paille de barro” which are sold in the nearest city. I saw the men working at rolling cigars, in dark rooms of abandoned little factories. Here and there we stopped at some friend’s house, where I was offered delicious cakes or pastries straight out from the oven.

To end the day we went up the hill, where we left the bikes and climbed an old water tank from which I could see how all the houses where placed to follow the shape of a big bookshelves.

We watched the sunset and came back down. At night we had dinner at the house of Gabriel, who informal. He lived in pentagonal house build above the water, full of white geese and a dog.

Uncle Gabriel invited us to have a soup of fresh seafood – Rio Paraguacù is a salty river. Unlike Alex, my new Uncle asked me several questions about where I was from and where I was going. Then he decided on my behalf that I should stay at least a few days, because I couldn’t leave the village without having a trip on his boat to see the people fishing and the wild islands on the river.  I was happy to listen, and I stayed three days more in this place which lies so far from any tourist path, but so near to the kind of Brazil I wanted to know.

They made me sleep in a local school, that for the occasion become my personal hotel. Uncle Gabriel and cousin Alex took care of me as though I were part of their family, the family of Nagè. I spent the most simple and beautiful days of my three months in South America. This village, which was originally one of the first places where Europeans arrived when conquering Brazil, allowed me to be part of the local culture without asking anything in exchange. And when, three days later, I took my backpack and hit the road again, our farewell was a simple “See you”. No matter how, and no matter when.