Football fans and art! What else do you call the deliberate creation of something that pleases the eye and has no practical use? In a village in Germany a wall was painted over with slogans of the local football club. Next to it a small wooden bridge over a stream was decorated with this pattern made from caps of beer bottles. Was it a collaborative piece? From the depth to which each had been punched, it probably was. Football fans can give other street artists a lesson in permanence.
Category: Culture and Folkways
See Germany by rail
When the train halted at this little station for two people to get down and one to get on. I had time enough to take a photo of the charming ivy-covered building. “So lovely,” wrote friends who I shared the photo with. Another asked “How did you find such a place?” I didn’t answer, because the true answer is disheartening. The German railway system is a shambles. The fast intercity trains are often tremendously delayed or cancelled.
The reason, apparently, is that the tracks have not been renewed since the 1970s and can no longer really support the speeds that are required. As a result, missed connections and cancelled trains are an everyday affair. When an intercity train is cancelled, all the passengers rush into a small slow train, which is then stuffed as full of people as a suburban train in Mumbai. And, of course, it stops at every town and village.
I’m glad that people are still friendly, retain a sense of humour, and that there are beautiful places and railway stations covered with ivy.
Mythmaking
Hans Hummel is one of the fond legends of Hamburg. Two decades ago when I visited the city, his statues were everywhere. Now there are only a few. The rest were auctioned off the year after I was there last. Spotting the statue again chimed well with the book that I began reading in that city one evening. This was The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. Undoing the tropes of fairytales, swashbuckling boy’s tales, and Tolkienesque fantasy is a genre that has developed in this century. This book is a very good example.
What does every king want? To stay king.
Alix E. Harrow (in The Everlasting)
“Study fairytales if you want to write,” my high-school English teacher had advised me, handing me a slim volume of Tolkien’s lesser-known stories. That remains true today, I found as I read this book. The story is a time-loop, of the kind that has become very familiar since Groundhog Day brought it into the mainstream. It is a love story between two soldiers, separated by a thousand years, and it is a story about the power fantasy that causes them to meet. In the structure and central theme it is similar to last year’s Hugo prize winner, Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh.
Nevertheless, its narrative structure is unusual. The first two iterations of the time-loop are narrated by different people, once each by one of the principals. So it took a while for me to figure that the two traversals of the loop were going to go slightly differently. The later traversals are written in other registers: for example, one as a fairytale. This is where secondary characters begin to come into their own, further subverting genre conventions. A stylistically interesting aspect was that through a large part of the book the second person narrative is used, but by different people. So the reader is drawn into deconstructing a power fantasy.
Everything I had believed in and fought for – crown and country, the flag and the church, even the past itself- had proved false. What remained were those trivial, nameless moments which would be swallowed up by the tide of history and forgotten: my father’s hand on my hair when I was a boy, ruffling it awkwardly, the brusque press of Sawbridge’s lips on my cheek; your eyes on mine at the very end, full of faith, so certain I would come back for you.
Alix E. Harrow (in The Everlasting)
It is interesting at the end to see the unmaking of Tolkienesque narratives: of anointed royalty, of magical objects, of quests to kill dragons, of jealousy amongst knights, and of the notion of just wars. Instead new narratives are seeded.They seem more like the Hans Hummel story. There are many of these also in Tolkein, but modern media corporations will not fund the making of movies from them. I’m glad that they are being arrived at, and enriched, by new authors.
Wakaura harbour
Luck eluded us on our visits to fishing towns on the coast of Wakayama peninsula. We visited two, on different days of the week, and found the village shut down in each case. We’d left Wakaura bay for the last day of our visit to Japan, and it was a bit of a shock to find the docks so completely deserted. Boats were tied up neatly. Fishing nets had been cleaned and spread out to dry. Flocks of noisy gulls were conspicuously absent. At the far end a fish shop was open. Cars came in one by one as we watched. Someone would get down, buy fish and leave. Eventually we walked up to investigate. Some shirasu (whitebait) was drying on mesh tables, and a vwry kind lady offered us some. This is the local delicacy. Since most restaurants were closed, we never got to taste the local shirasu-don. We did have a plate of sashimi for lunch, and enjoyed more of the Kansai-style shirasu.
The harbour being closed turned out to be a bit lucky for us, as we discovered as we walked out along a pier towards the lighthouse at the end. The harbour was full of interesting birds. The highlight was our first ever sighting of the Japanese cormorant (Phalacrocorax capillatus). The strong sun, the absolute quiet, and the birds were quite a contrast to the reminders of the normally busy dockside in the moored boats, drying nets and floaters.
We got warmer as we walked. Our layers began to come off. There was an interesting stone arch ahead and we walked off along the beach towards it. Unfortunately it turned out to be impossible to get a photo of the opening of the arch. Most views were as you see above. It was time now to go find a place for lunch. As we walked along the beach I found an interesting bird’s track. The Family wondered “Can the middle toe really be that long?” Unlikely, probably the heron had been dragging something in its beak. It was lunchtime for everyone.
Wellington street, Hong Kong
Searching for signs of normal life in Hong Kong, I moved out of the glittery main roads. Duck through an alley, and suddenly you are in narrow roads, where regular life goes on. Even on emptier, more traffic-bound sections of these roads, the sunlight plays games that the camera likes. High-rises crowd together so the sun reaches the ground only in a narrow window around noon. The rest of the time the towering blocks present a lovely contrast to the twilit bustle below them.
The regular surge of vehicles released at metronomic regularity by traffic lights seemed to me like the pulse of mechanised blood driven by a pumping heart of the city. An all-encompassing boom-boom: lane, street, lane, street. People drive at breakneck speed here. Strange to an Indian eye, where you always have to watch for a pedestrian who might have gone off course. Not that the pavements are free of obstruction here, they are quite as bad as in India. But people scurry out of the way of the rushing traffic.
Human crowds are to be found in the alleyways where the street vendors are. We were lucky to find these places soon after breakfast, so the press of bodies was not too bad. I could take photos, and help The Family put a few fruits in my backpack to serve as snacks as we walked about.
Winter festival, Hong Kong
Lost in Hong Kong, we meandered downhill and came on preparations for the Winter festival. This is one festival that has been enthusiastically accepted across the world, since it allows businesses to make money. We were lucky to hit this spot around the lunch time break on a workday. A group of carol singers was assembling. We joined the gaggle of bystanders around them.
The Family had spotted a conical spire off our route and made a beeline for a photo. It was an innovative take on a Newton’s tree. I liked it, especially the stacking of spheres that reminded me that Newton explained the regularity with which the planets move around the sun.
Our waiting paid off. The group started to sing. Bystanders jostled to come closer, but I managed to get an unobstructed view of the big choir. I leave you with the Hong Kong winter choir.
Thirteen in Chinese is Four
When we checked into our hotel in Hong Kong I came face to face with a superstition which I’d never actually seen in this form elsewhere in China. Every number ending with four was missing from the buttons in the lift. That doesn’t mean you have to walk from to floor four from five. It is not used, for the same reason that floor 13 is sometimes not used in floor numberings in the west. The Chinese word for four ( 四 pronounced sì) is said to be unlucky because it sounds like the word for death (死 pronounced sǐ).
Textiles: Monday Art
Pottery and weaving are among the two fields of art we developed globally after invention of settled life. Forms of pottery have been given their place in museums as high art. But I’d never seen textiles used as a medium for contemporary art. So it was eye-opening when, a few years ago, we walked into the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art to look at an interesting exhibition called “The event of a thread: Global narratives in textiles”. The use of textiles in art is not something I’ve seen done systematically. I took photos of some of the pieces I liked, but the exhibition was much bigger.
Ulla von Brandenburg exhibited three quilted fabrics called Flying Geese, Log Cabin, and Drunkard’s Path (featured photo). The artist points out that quilting is not “just women’s work”; they were also used by various revolutionary movements.
Sakir Gökçebag’s piece called Kosmos was a stunning installation using a partially woven carpet. The artist says that the partial work reminds us about the work that goes into the making of a carpet through the parts which remain to be completed.
This painting on a head scarf by Güneş Terkol was called Against the current. The concept was developed during a workshop in Vienna, where several women discussed the slogans to be displayed, and worked together to sew them into the banners held by the painted figures.
Belkis Balpinar’s work entitled Singularities uses weaving as a medium. She says that two planes with singularities of different forms are joined by the vertical threads which are called warps. The horizontal threads are left unwoven. I liked the medium and the strikingly bold visual pattern that was tied together with the threads.
The bulk of this post is taken from an earlier post.
Fika in Lund
Was it twenty years ago that I’d last been to Lund? An old friend and I reminisced over a coffee. I thought it was. He thought it was more like thirty. Sometime before that, in a more innocent time, I recall taking a bus in town. When it drew up to the stop it belched black smoke which smelled sweet. The buses of that time burnt rapeseed oil instead of petrol in an effort to be ecofriendly. Now I walk everywhere, although if I’d stayed more than a couple of days I would have tried to hire a bicycle.
The first afternoon an auld acquaintance of The Family took a train down from Gothenburg to meet us. As a result, we had a big group of people coming together for coffee, and we walked from one bakery to another trying to find a table. Eventually we did find one at our first choice, and had a grand time catching up. At least for some parts of the whole it was catching up, for others it was getting to know new people. When we visit an university town for a short while it sometimes feels like we are a catalyst in a flask. Lund feels small, with a population which matches that of the three streets that I cross every morning to my gym. But it is a 1200 years old town. Most buildings in the center are from the 19th century CE, but I did find a timber-frame house. That could date from anywhere between the 13th and 16th centuries. The church and the building next to it are even older, dating from the 11th century.
The next afternoon I walked through the university to meet my friend. The various faculties of medicine had impressive old buildings. I passed a snowy field which had sculptures representing the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. It was fika time again soon, and a little group gathered to talk of changes and people. We watched rooks at their nests in trees outside the windows as we talked. The university dates from the middle of the 17th century, and, from what I saw, grew together with town.
The last Sunday of Ramazan
Ramazan is a month of fasting for those who believe. The first day of the next month, Shawwal, is a happy day. For those who fasted through a month, and for their guests, it is a feast day, Id ul fitr. Gifts are exchanged, and special dishes are made for the feast. Bazaars and shops are busy on the last weekend of Ramazan as people buy new clothes, shoes and handbags. This is a great time for people watching. I walked about the Camp area of Pune just before sundown and the breaking of the fast for believers.
With families out shopping, it was easy to spot children with mothers. In crowded places their interactions are interesting to watch. Safety of the children in crowded places is always a concern for parents, but it plays out in different ways. Many are relaxed but alert, some are rather less cool about it.
Even apart from the crowds of Ramazan, Camp is good for street photos. On M.G.Road there are street vendors, shops which have run for three generations, fancy new clothes shops, and people hanging around. In spite of the bustle, people are relaxed. Much of the crowd is here for the cafes and old Parsi bakeries, the ice cream and the street food.
In a little alley behind M.G.Road is a lot packed full of kiosks selling clothes. This Fashion Street was my target for street photography. The alley leading to it is narrow even without the parked scooters. Following the little opening left by them for traffic, I found that this rear view mirror attached to the handle of one of the scooters gave and interesting perspective on the place.
Fashion street on this Sunday was a dream destination for a street photographer. People were so engrossed in their lives that no one noticed a man with a mobile phone hanging about taking their photos. What could be a more relaxed session of photography for me?
Don't hold your breath 
