Marina Velez CAMBRIDGE

Dutch winter

2009-01-04T00:45:00.000-08:00

we have been blessed with spells of sunny days and beautiful shiny black ice.........2009 found the Dutch at their best!

la ilustracion de Sarah

2007-06-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

ahora que estamos contentos, vamos a contar mentiras, tralala

sali de mi campamento, con hambre de seis semanas, tralala

me encontre con un ciruelo, cargadito de manzanas, tralala

le tire con una piedra, y cayeron avellanas, tralala

por el rio van las liebres, por el campo las sardinas, tralala

y volvi a mi campamento, con mas hambre que a la ida, tralala

the essence of plants

2007-06-19T04:31:00.000-07:00

painted after that trip to China

great-grandmother's sayings

2007-06-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

El que mal anda, mal acaba (don't start off on the wrong foot)

Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres

Al major cazador se le escapa la liebre

El buey lerdo toma el agua turbia

Oveja que bala pierde bocado

Habiendo pan y cueva, dejalo que llueva

En boca del mentiroso, lo cierto se hace dudoso

A rey muerto, rey puesto (The king is dead. Long live the king!)

El zorro pierde el pelo, pero no las manas

La mentira tiene las patas cortas

Es mas el ruido que las nueces

Angelitos al cielo y trapitos al arca

El que siembra viento recoge tempestades

No por mucho madrugar se amanece mas temprano

Contigo pan y cebolla

Mariquita, si quieres que te den, estira la mano y da tu tambien

Casamiento y mortaja, del cielo bajan

Maria tapa el pozo despues que se cayo el nino

El que mucho abarca poco aprieta

El perro del hortelano, ni come ni deja comer al amo

A su tiempo maduran las uvas

shakespeare

2007-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

summer is here again and what can be better than to celebrate midsummer solstice with tea and Shakespeare at The Orchard in Grantchester?

http://www.orchard-grantchester.com/index.html

'One of Shakespeare's most popular works, ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ follows young love’s escape into a magical forest. While Oberon tries to help love along, his not so able assistant Puck manages to confuse the whole affair. Lovers profess affections for the wrong person, and the fairy queen herself falls in love with, well, a donkey!'

the theatre company is called Mouth to Mouth and they're absolutely bananas, any purist out there?

check their website and their forthcoming performances at http://www.allmouthandaction.org/

gay pride and Sotheby's

2007-07-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday day in London, went to see the family painting that is going to be auctioned at Sotheby's to-day, the school of Seville 'Saint Joseph and the Christ Child'. Good to see the 'Old Masters' special two day auction, mainly built around a Velazquez that went yesterday for more than £8 million and a Turner's lot that went for 11 (yes, millions).

On the way to the exhibition we saw the gay pride parade, which made the whole experience seriously funny.

Indeed, there are as many Londons as we dare imagine.

Morris Dance

2007-07-11T02:56:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday on our way to a concert at Ely Cathedral we bumped into a sight of 'middle-aged men bedecked in ribbons and bells, capering and jigging and clacking sticks in the air' or, in other words, Morris Dancing aficionados. As Jemima Lewis claims from the pages of The Independent, 'Morris Dancing is not like other hobbies. It inspires a unique mixture of horror, hilarity and bewilderment. Why aren't they embarrassed? Don't they know how mad they look? All the characteristics that we now think of as typically English (self consciousness, irony, a certain cool) are subverted by this least beloved of national traditions.' But then in a stroke of genius she turns 180 degrees as she goes on saying 'Yet Morris dancers have much to teach us, not at least about ourselves' and as we read on we learn that the English were once, before bureaucrats rationalised and modernised the country, a nation of 'prancing yokels' and that Morris dancers are to be regarded as 'fifth columnists, defending English eccentricity from within, heroes of the ancient and anomalous, in the citadel of the bland.'

I did enjoy watching them and their display of awkwardness, they gave our daughter a badge and explained to her that with such a badge she could be naughty all day. She was delighted.

I wonder whether we, Spanish people, would have the same courage when it comes to analysing our traditions with a critical eye.

What do you think?

watching the English

2007-07-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

Cambridge is celebrating the Town Bumps this week, in which, unlike the College Bumps, local rowing clubs compete.

In a bump race a number of boats chase each other in single file, each boat attempts to catch ("bump") the boat in front without being caught by the boat behind. The race last several days and each day the boats line up bow-to-stern with a set distance of one and a half boat lenghts' between each boat. At the start signal each crew starts to row, attempting to catch the boat in front while simultaneously being chased by the one behind.

As the name suggests, damage to boats and equipment is indeed common during bumps racing!

Once a bump has occurred both crews pull over to the riverbank and take no further part in that race, it is easy to tell which is which as there is a certain gloomy air in the boat which got the bump whereas the ones who bumped show off their newly acquired status by sticking tree leaves in their hair or around their necks.

Now, honestly, is there a better way of spending your long summer days?

understanding The Other, Thailand

2007-08-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Would you say that you 'go to the market' or rather 'the market comes to you'?

Does Buddha have fingerprint on his toes?

How can one play draughts without pieces?

understanding The Other, Cambodia

2007-08-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

In Ta Prohm, a Buddhist monastery built around 1186, nature holds the ruins together with massive tree roots, framing doorways and covering stones in velvety algae

In Cambodia pigs are transported on motorbikes to be sold in the market

One is expected to become a monk (to 'enter the Sangha' or monkhood) for a short period in one's life. Monks practise meditation and chanting, study Buddhist scripture and philosophy, do not wear personal adornments neither do they eat after noon. They need to go out into the community daily and it is common to see monks collecting food in their bowls or bags

Decades of war and intense poverty have left Cambodian people and their environment in a fragile state. Although tourism has grown dramatically in recent years, very few tourists venture into wider Cambodia. For some ideas for a richer travel experience visit http://www.stay-another-day.org/

Modern pilgrimage

2007-08-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

A woman prays in ecstasy in front of a statue of Buddha

Pilgrimage is widely considered a ritual journey of purification. Whether taken in a metaphorical sense or not, modern pilgrims agree that peregrination is inherently different from other types of travel. Placing its meaning in the actual walking, for the modern pilgrim there is not just one end, but rather there are many. These are attempts to make a visible manifestation of contact between the human and the divine, where personal transformation lies at its centre.
This summer I had the privilege of seeing two apparently different pilgrimages, one in Cambodia, the other in Camino de Santiago, Spain.

A statue of Saint James is being embraced from behind by pilgrims

el sol se pone en el fin del mundo

2007-08-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Finisterre derives from Finisterrae in Latin which means "Land's End", and it had been, indeed, the end of the world for many centuries until Columbus altered things. I read in the Confraternity of Saint James’ website http://www.csj.org.uk/ that there are various explanations as to how Finisterre became a continuation of the pilgrimage, one such is that is was based on a pre-Christian route to the pagan temple of Ara Solis, erected there to honour the sun.
In any case this photo, taken literally at the end of the world, does it justice.

watching the Spaniards

2007-08-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

the above image belongs to the upper paleolithic period and it is believed it was painted by Magdelenean artists in the UNESCO World Heritage, Altamira

the image below is the well known and much loved/hated Toro de Osborne which advertised brandy until in the early 90's were to be taken down for Spain outlawed billboards on national roads, the Spaniards protested, the bulls were painted black and left to guard the hillsides becoming a national symbol

circa 18.500 years separate these two bulls

Chinese love

2007-08-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

I read in the International Herald Tribune that the Chinese government now requires top executives at security firms to pass written and oral exams in Mandarin, the national tongue.

According to Qing Zhang, a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas, Chinese is one of the toughest languages to learn. First, the meaning of each sound depends on tone. Worse, students must memorize thousands of picture-like characters instead of the 26 letters that make up English words.

Since the test began in 2005 fewer than 10 foreigners have passed.

The simplest Chinese word is the character for 'one' which is a single horizontal line; the most complex requires 56 strokes.

This is my first attempt at (Chinese) love:

lost in translation

2007-09-01T07:40:00.001-07:00

mensenzoo

2007-09-11T03:47:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I saw one of the best examples of the famous Dutch tolerance in action at the cultural festival and day-without-cars in Utrecht. I am talking of Mensenzoo (people zoo) installed in the post office square, one of the hot spots in the city. Consists basically of a group of stalls in which a ‘specimen’ of the human race is ‘exhibited’ (farmers, homeless, homos, children, immigrants, and almost all the groups in the human family were represented). You could talk to the people in the stalls, ask them questions and, as in any other zoo, take photos of you and your favourite creature.
The idea behind it is to promote a society which does full justice to each individual irrespective of religion, age, social status or sexual preference.
And the way to achieve that? By improving communication and respect for each other’s differences in a funny, provocative way!

Meet one another, exchange views and learn from one another.

autumn

2007-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Calendar of the Soul

September 09, 2007 - September 15, 2007

There dims in damp autumnal air

The senses' luring magic;

The light's revealing radiance

Is dulled by hazy veils of mist.

In distances around me I can see

The autumn's winter sleep;

The summer's life has yielded

Itself into my keeping.

English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch

my dog and the metric system

2007-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

they think he's guilty, he thinks they see the pint before they see the beer!

The European Commission has tired of waiting for the UK to give up imperial measurements, and now says it can use some of them. In that light, English people can continue to confuse visitors with the pound, the ounce and the mile for as long as they want. Although some experts claim that the metric system was originally invented in England before being adopted by the French, English people have barricaded behind the imperial measurements, absurdly making it a question of national pride.

Some people say that that’s exactly why we love the English, because they are different.

I am not so sure I enjoyed their inclination towards peculiarity when we tried to board the ferry that was going to take us from Spain back to England this summer though. We were travelling with our dog Tim, which had to be treated against worms and ticks before what we understood was 48 hours. Having visited the vet in Santander the morning before embarking, we innocently queued on the pier until they singled us out. The dog’s Dutch passport was incomplete, and the worm treatment had to be given after 48 hours before embarking but before 24 hours before embarking. Confused? So were we. Any alternatives? Yes, you can either wait in Santander for the next ferry which will depart in a week’s time or drive 1000 kilometres to France and take the next one tomorrow, by then the treatment will be in the right time window.

Sorry, how many miles to France did you say?

warriors

2007-09-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Thousands of people are expected to see the Terracotta Army at the British Museum from 13 September until 6 April.
I had the privilege to see China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi’s legacy two years ago when I visited Xian. And I am delighted that many people will take the chance to see it now that it is coming to London.
Given the heavy carbon footprint that flights inflict upon the environment, travelling exhibitions may well be the solution for the future.

Power and the instrument to legitimise it: soldiers (2200 years later)

Cristina Iglesias 'Pavilion'

2007-10-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

Cristina Iglesias
Pavilion suspended in a room 1
2005
Tate Modern

This is a big format piece consisting of twenty-six rectangular panels suspended from the ceiling, twenty arranged vertically and six horizontally. Traces of literature, letters which may or may not form any word, can be found in the weaving that makes the structure of each panel. The arrangement in the space of these panels forms a pavilion where an ‘entrance’ and ‘exit’ invite the viewers to enter it. This otherwise static piece welcomes movement as the viewer walks through it.
Each panel is made of flat woven straps of copper wire, welded together in vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, which make its structure. These lines limit an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ depending on which side the viewer is looking from. The viewer can see through the geometric mesh that the lines form, the effect of which may be evocative of Islamic female reclusion, Catholic confessionary or Venetian blinds, bringing the inside out and vice versa and questioning how much shelter does a shelter need in order to be a shelter.
Shapes echo each other all throughout the piece, giving it the idea of units of construction.
The predominant colour in this piece is a tertiary mix of grey, copper and
brown which looks uniform from a distance. As one approaches it, a slight shininess becomes apparent, whereas the welding shows as a burnt grey. The basketry of the wire straps that this work is made of gives it a texture that disappears completely when one analyses the shadows that this pavilion casts. There are several spotlights on the ceiling shining down through the structure of the pavilion which flood the room’s floor and walls multiplying and echoing the lines and shapes of the panels. The twenty panels that make the front, side and back walls of the pavilion are all suspended 30 centimetres above the floor. This space provokes in the viewer the impression that the whole piece is levitating, allowing the shadows on the floor to be experienced by the viewer as a welcoming carpet.
A room, a house, a church, or as in this case, a pavilion, is constructed by people for people. Whether they are present or not is immaterial as human presence is implicit by the mere fact that the house or pavilion is there.
Cristina Iglesias has created this pavilion with reminiscence of intimacy, protection, sacred space. She has materialised in this work the proto-home that every human being has a longing for. The way Cristina braids the metal transforms something heavy and cold into something warm and inviting. Cristina speaks the spiritual language of sanctuaries fluently, which appeals to the mystical needs of the viewer rather than his need for a shelter. The call for the western alphabet as a code with which to engage in dialogue with the viewer radically contrasts with the eastern exotic atmosphere of the piece.

Cristina has succeeded in creating a three dimensional object that, with an artistic and intellectual pirouette, goes beyond sculpture and architecture.

pheasant hunting season

2007-11-29T03:50:00.000-08:00

I had the most frightening experience yesterday

I was driving through the beautiful gardens of Madingley when a silly pheasant popped out from nowhere into my path. the poor thing was clearly more interested in showing off his feathers than his own safety for it didn't react until the last second. All of my emergency stop procedures converged into my left brain (the right one was busy listening to music) as I braked suddenly.

Driving speed: 20 mph.

I am pleased to inform that the narcissist pheasant is safe and well.

At least until the hunting season.

reason for hope

2007-12-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

One of the world's most admired women - acclaimed scientist and conservationist, Dr Jane Goodall - Dame of the British Empire (DBE), Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace -visited Anglia Ruskin University for a lecture on 'Reason for Hope'.

She is one of those rare people who provoke reverence wherever she goes. She is frail but tremendously strong at the same time. I told her that one of my daughters wanted to study biology and asked whether she could dedicate the book to her. She wrote:

'For B,

Follow your dreams'

She once said: "Every individual matters, human and non-human alike. Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we understand."

She is a very beautiful woman.

new old masters

2007-12-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

Some artists feel it necessary to leave their homeland in order to find themselves. The Spanish painter Miquel Barcelo is one of those artists.
Miquel Barcelo can be considered part of the post-Franco artistic movement in Spain that was able to develop after the election of the socialists in 1982. These artists did not have in common any particular style neither were they aware of being part of a movement. They made works that ranged from lush figurative paintings (Guillermo Perez Villalta, Miquel Barcelo) to austere constructivist sculptures (Susana Solano, Cristina Iglesias).
Placing these Spanish artists in the international context is crucial to the understanding of their uniqueness and strength. Given the present status quo in which cleverness is rated higher than creativity, artistic prospect in the Western world falls short of hope resulting in a replacement of aesthetic values for monetary ones. In the contemporary artistic world the term ‘postart’, coined by Alan Kaprow, seems ironically appropriate.
It is in this background that Spanish art that gestated in the 1980s hit a peak in the 1990s with unprecedented international impact. Democracy alone did not bring about the Spanish art boom. Institutions and private foundations like La Caixa and Caja Madrid and state funding together with the creation of Madrid art fair ‘Arco’ in 1982 helped to make it possible for artists to thrive. It was precisely in the midst of this national and international effervescence, just when Barcelo was experiencing his first artistic success, that he decided to go to Africa ‘in search of uncertainty’ .
Barcelo made his first trip to Africa in 1988. He crossed the Sahara and settled on the banks of the Niger River, at Gao, in the republic of Mali. He then met the Malian sculptor Amahigueré Dolo, whose work is imbued by the Dogon culture and mythology. They soon became work mates and friends. Barceló decided to extend his stay in Africa for another six months to explore Mali and the neighbouring areas of Senegal and Burkina Faso. From the very start in Africa, he drew fundamental knowledge for making new pigments, despite the difficulties caused by the extreme heat, dust, sandstorms, and termites. During his stay in Africa he kept a journal, which has been recently edited and published under the title ‘Cuadernos de Africa’.

There are no certainties when a work by Barcelo needs to be catalogued by curators. His approach to material is both economic and primeval. In a recent interview about his retablo in the Chapel of Sant Pere in Palma , he explains his choice to work with clay ‘because it is a very elemental and previous-to-art material’. Such a choice of material in a digital era is nothing but a powerful statement in itself. What makes Barcelo’s works interesting for the viewer constitutes a nightmare for conservators. Pieces of organic matter, bones, sand and whatever happens to participate in the moment of creation are welcome by the artist. We read in his ‘Cuadernos de Africa’ that sand blown by the wind covers his African canvas and that he even once dipped a sketchbook in a termite hole only to work around the marks that the insects had left on it afterwards.
Africa offers Barcelo what the academic life did not. He powerfully describes it when he says in his ‘Cuadernos de Africa’: ‘The Dogon country is like a gigantic Buddhist garden where everything makes sense, although at the same time and in many different ways’.

Although Barcelo benefits from Africa’s culture, his quest for the essence of things does not leave the Dogon people untouched. As he writes in his ‘Cuadernos de Africa’, he periodically lives in the Dogon region, becoming part of village life and interacting with them. So, what do the Dogon people receive in this exchange? They receive Barcelo himself. This is clearly exemplified in his journal entry in ‘Cuadernos de Africa’: ‘As it’s Christmas Eve, I told the Dogons about the life of Christ; then, the lives of Caravaggio, Frankenstein and Billy the Kid. I mixed them all a bit. It made a great impression on them (Mali, 24th December, 1994).’

Barcelo finds in Africa a new order of things. And he documents this ‘A woman is worth five cows, a cow is worth ten goats, a goat costs 125 francs.’
We could cynically consider Barcelo as a sort of enfant terrible, just another little Rimbaud playing anthropologists. But it is only when we place Barcelo in the contemporary art world scenario that we can begin to appreciate his escapes to Africa, his choice of materials and his painting techniques.
In a world in which art is considered to have reached a dead end, and where the trend of thought goes from ‘emptiness’ to ‘stagnant narrow ideological interests’, contemporary Spanish artists have something to say. It is in this context that a painter such as Barcelo should be analysed and valued. A painter who in spite of living in a digital era knows how to engage in a raw emotional dialogue with the media he uses in his work, be it paint or vegetables, sand or clay.

Barcelo has recently completed the Cathedral retablo in Mallorca, his native island. Some art critics marked this event as a culmination of a circular journey that ends at the point of departure. Perhaps it would be better to consider this work as just another step in the artist’s search for the roots of things. Or as he puts it in his African book: ‘pintamos porque la vida no basta’ (We paint because life just isn’t enough).

the division between the haves and have nots

2008-01-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

I have recently visited Doris Salcedo's 'Shibboleth' (known among visitors as 'the crack') at the Tate Modern. 'A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group. ‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself.' says the text on the wall of the Turbine Hall.

The Crack represents the division between the haves and have nots, between oppressed and oppressor and, if you like me choose to look at it from above, between those who 'get' it and those who 'don't'.

The Prime minister said recently inflation must be kept down - and called for wage restraint among public sector workers. In today's England nurses, teachers and social workers will soon join those whose houses have been repossessed in their fall onto the wrong side of the crack.

guillotines and nouvelle cuisine

2008-09-28T01:26:00.000-07:00

there is a good place in Lyon where one can have terrific food without having to pay astronomical prices: http://www.institutpaulbocuse.com/ which is the cookery school of the celebrated French chef Paul Bocuse

Almudena asked the maitre d' why chefs had to wear tall hats, to what he replied that it was simply a question of hierarchy and protocol,

which brings me nicely to her next question (yes, she's six) 'why didn't you want to have another queen after Marie Antoinette?' although such a question only provoked giggles among French people.............. I suppose the adult answer to that should be 'because the French tired of paying for the overspending of the privileged and the country was buried into debt'...............hang on a minute, does it ring a bell or two?.............maybe we should be shipping guillotines to Mr. Bush and Mr. Brown all the way from France!