April 21, 2008 by Mirjam Hirch.

It is a rich ghetto. Block-type, closed- shaped buildings form a concrete jungle of cold steel and glass constructions: Living in a Bock’s in newly developed little SoHo, Deutschherrnviertel, in Mainhatten, Bankfurt, alias Frankfurt on Main, Germany. The incarnation of a trendy locale, modern lifestyle- the urban principle of the global city.
Functions are mixed: living and working in the upper areas, below are studios and offices, restaurants and shops, swimming pools, a health club. The quarter, Deutschherrnviertel, is named after the Teutonic Knights (in German Deutschherrn), an old germanic crusading military order during the Middle Ages and much of the modern era. In former times the imagery of the Teutonic Knights was used to promote German nationalism, the symbol of the German Empire’s policy used by the Nazis to spread their propaganda and ideology.

The image of the Deutschherrnviertel residents is not one of the traditional local families but one of the dynamic, cosmopolitan, young and happy ladies and gentlemen.
The comfortable neighborhood draws the most affluent residents. The Capital Aristocracy, a class of gentry whose wealth is the dictate by which they rule, seperate from other people and the land. It is an atmosphere of self- ghettoization or “monetary apartheid.”
Most residents base their actions on external pressures - the pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person, the pressure to adopt a particular mode of living, the pressure to ignore one’s own moral and aesthetic objections in order to have a more comfortable existence.
This insularization of the wealthy on the side of the Main river tells tales of similar recent developments within European societies and of the global mentality that affects peoples the world over.

Walking down the streets of the quarter instills one with a feeling of sterile monotony, alienation, loneliness, even threat. The sidewalks in this area- empty. Where are the kids the elderly, the people. Where are laughter, love, life?
Here and there are plants. They look like parts of a scenery, not allowed to grow and develop naturally, but arranged in line or planted in big plant pots.
Where in this is the room for existential experiences of a deeper reality, the feeling for the mysteriousness of life? The marvel and wonder at fantastic constructions, their inspiring forms and shapes that stirs our curiosity, makes us want to explore and fills us with respect for all of creation? Where is this essential quality of life there?
What types of mentality must places like this shape? What is a child’s experience of reality growing up in such modern lifestyle surroundings?

The children sure grow to understand that public housing is sold to international investors. And that a landlord is not a living being you can see, hear, and talk to. The landlord is some sort of property group based somewhere in this world where taxes are low, created to develop, invest and manage funds in real estate. The administration of the buildings is completely disconnected and anonymous, without anyone feeling responsible. The residents simply appear as a number in a computer system.

Certainly digital numbers on screens of their bank accounts, the newest technology, fancy cars, fashionable (and expensive) clothing, personal comfort and concentrating wealth are the dominant preoccupations on these residents’ minds. Only occasionally a neighbor might quietly disappear due to insolvency. But there is no time in the busy day to give this a second thought. Nor is there room to think about justice and life, humanity, the loss of cultural and biological diversity. Whatever that is, it must affect someone else, happen somewhere else, at another time, in another world maybe?

Technorati Tags: lifestyle, housing, culture

Posted in Artby - Mirjam Hirch, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

January 19, 2008 by Jay Taber.

In Living the Brand, a new article from the International Journal of Communication, Melissa Aronczyk of NYU offers an account of the strategies involved in the production of culture through the particular phenomenon of nation branding.

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

December 30, 2007 by Jay Taber.

While we’re taking some time with family and friends, here are some unusual photos from daily life in Palestine.

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

December 22, 2007 by Jay Taber.

As a writer, I often find the limitations of language too restrictive for my sensibilities. I found these Sebastiao Salgado photo essays on human migrations particularly engaging.

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

November 23, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

Famous Roman myths and legends are considered true reality, historic facts in Europe.
On the Palatine Hill, the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome, Italy, archaeologists have discovered one of the most sacred mythological places of Western Civilization: The holy cave. There, as legend has it, Romulus and Remus the two founders of the city of Rome were raised and nourished by the famous lupa (she-wolf) after washed ashore the Tiber River in a wooden basket.

What the discovery of the sanctuary clearly reveals is that the founding myth of Rome undoubtedly contains true stories. The events related in the legend can be precisely located. In ancient times everyone familiar with the places could find and recognize the sites which vouched for the truth of the stories told.

The emperor Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) must have known about the actual existence of the cave. He turned the cave of Romulus and Remus into a sacred place and built his house on top of it, considering himself the refounder of Rome. After times of civil war Augustus wanted to achieve stability based on old traditions and reintroduced ancient customs. One of which was celebrated in honour of the cult of the founding of the city.
Amongst the most famous Roman festivals, originating long before the Trojan War in the remotest antiquity and then observed in commemoration of Romulus and Remus, the kings of shepherds, was the ancient fertility festival, Lupercalia. It was held in a cave on the Palatine Hill. Originally a shepherd festival it was celebrated in honour of Lupercus, the god of fertility. It took place every year in the last month of the early Roman calendar, on the 15th of February (the name of the month is derived from Latin februare which means to purify). The ceremony was probably a symbolical fertilization and purification of the shepherds the city and the land.
The worship at the Lupercalia was led by priests called Luperci who began by sacrificing goats and a dog, animals remarkable for their strong sexual instinct. After a ceremonial meal the Luperci dressed in goat skins and raced around the Palatine brandishing goat-hide whips with which they hit passersby. Women who wanted to have children often stood in the path of the Luperci because their lashings were thought to encourage fertility.
The Lupercalia festivals were celebrated until the end of the 5th century AD when the rites of fertility incurred the strong displeasure of the popes who ended the practice. Nowadays, Rome, the formerly holy site of fertility cults is the ´first seat`, the Roman Catholic Church.

The discovery of the sanctuary certainly, as Andrea Carandini a renown Italian archaeologist states, “is one of the most important discoveries of all time.” 
And could turn out to be especially important for the indigenous fight for right and justice.
What about we see the reality and truth in indigenous songs and origin stories for what they are and use more the wonderful and precious knowledge conveyed in indigenous mythology the world over in education, self-determination struggles and the settlement of indigenous claims and disputes?

Technorati Tags: indigenous Europe, culture, myths, archaeology

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Mirjam Hirch, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

November 19, 2007 by Jay Taber.

“I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

—from Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

November 15, 2007 by Jay Taber.

I was only nineteen when I first saw the tumbling falls of the upper Skagit from behind some huckleberry bushes that grew along a river path that I’d stumbled on while picnicking. Having just moved from the dusty pines of the Yakima where Peregrine falcons nest in the volcanic cliffs, I was still absorbing the lush mossy green of the west slope.

I’d recently heard of the “Magic Skagit” and was curious to know how it differed from the middle Columbia where I grew up.

Walking on in silence, I overheard a soft, solemn, baritone song mixing in the wind with the sounds of water and muted footsteps. Turning my head toward it, I glimpsed a lone man gently dancing and singing aside the rock promontory above the falls, completely enthralled in the moment of being.

Startled by this unexpected encounter to which the Indian I watched was unaware, I found myself unable to move for fear I might disturb the sacred poetry he was offering in his native tongue, and was only jarred into making a stealthy retreat after witnessing the splendid leap of a steelhead trout as long as my arm into the dip net swung swiftly under its belly by the dancer who’d swept the long pole handle from the ground in a seemingly effortless fancydance spin.

Today, in my fifties, I remember that mirror into my childhood when I watched the Yakama dip salmon from platforms on the Columbia, and wonder if my memories include the great Celilo on the gorge where the buffalo and the salmon peoples met to trade stories and goods. I know I was there.

[ Mirror Dance is from Life as Festival, a collection of short stories by Jay Taber. ]

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

November 9, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

My World In My Kitchen

Food and how we prepare food is one of the most central aspects of daily life. More intimate than our language can ever be, cooking expresses most eloquently our personal creativity as well as cultural mythologies and beliefs.
When you take away the food you take away the culture and ultimately the health of peoples. Relocating peoples, wiping out local foods or forbidding indigenous cultures through “legal” means to hunt and gather traditional foods is the most subtle and thorough way of colonization. Impeding access to traditional foods goes deeper than physical weapons ever could as cultures get shaken to the very core of their spiritual and phsical health and well-being.

Smells taste and looks of food install in us a sense of place and identity, strongly connected to our personal histories and regional upbringing. Thus the cloudberry is to the Finn what the salmonberry is to peoples inhabiting the wild Pacific Northwest.
Illustrated and spread is the knowledge of the beautiful variety of local food cultures by use of cookbooks, which can have great political power too. No wonder one could find a whole stack of cookbooks right at the entrance of the UN library in New York.

Sacred foods, the seeds for growing cultures, nowadays to many inhabitants of the developed world have completely lost meaning. Reduced to a mere commodity available only in big supermarkets. Thus the adventure trip in modern times becomes a well planned tour into the depth of buyers’ paradise with a lot of dead food sitting as special offers on top of shelves. Not the palate and the idea of how to best nourish body and soul make the modern hunter decide what food to get. He is led by clever advertisement campaigns and the driving thought the cheaper the better. Upon showing the processed long-lasting trophies at home it is proudly announced how much was saved. No word about the natural smell or excellent taste of the food is lost. Maybe because there is no such thing? What sensual experiences are possible when consuming pre-prepared food? Now what might that tell us about the quality of life and personalities?

Technorati Tags: culture, food, colonization, quality of life

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Mirjam Hirch, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

November 7, 2007 by Jay Taber.

Leslie Marmon Silko and Ray A. Young Bear, both of whom pleasantly informed my appreciation of storytelling, seem almost like a different world from the dark, poetic weavings of Louise Erdrich. But all three authors impart a distinct, enriching view of American reality created out of the conflicting mixture of blood and origin stories that inhabit it. Ceremony, Black Eagle Child, and Love Medicine should all be required reading for students of American literature — even if they are in reality Laguna, Iowa, and Ojibwe.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »

October 29, 2007 by Jay Taber.

Disheartening as our absence of communal relations is in America, it does help to explain our persistent affection toward institutions, as well as our attachment to their recognition and acknowledgment in validating our self-worth — indeed, in bestowing on us the right to exist.

Unhealthy as this institutionalized relationship is for us, both individually and socially, it is comprehendable; institutions — for better or for worse — are presently the only enduring loci of collective memories for our rootless society, disconnected from the land and lives that surround us. Until we construct more functional alternatives, institutions — despite their repeated betrayals and systematic exploitation of every aspect of our daily lives — will maintain their grasp on our lonely psyches in this perverted exchange for a sense of belonging.

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Arts and Culture, Daily | Print | No Comments »