Exit Strategies

“Don’t try, do!”. This sentence resounds in my ears as a mantra since when I’m here. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do much up now, but I’m slowly beginning. A guy physically stopped me one evening on my way home, whilst I was still in a temporary flat I rent for one week in Shoreditch. “Come inside and visit my exhibition!” – he said, and I did. It was the opening, with lots of people crowded in the small space of a former shop, now used as an art gallery. His exhibition was actually one single huge work on canvas that covered the four walls of the shop, painted and written with some hints he gave (colours, “symbols”, sentences) and for the rest by those passing by in the street the days before, and curiously asking what was going on, as well as by the ones joining the opening itself.

I read a few words and realised I was interested, but felt like I wanted to visit it another time, without so many people around. “I come back tomorrow”; “I’ll wait for you”. The day after we both kept our word and I came back, to realise that Piero (Arico’ is the surname) is an Italian artist and a lovely guy – generous, passionate and full of fascinating contradictions. A deep rich soul I immediately clicked with and – enjoying his and his mates’ company (he was supported in this work by the crew of ArtFeelers) – joined the following days for a couple of films in the evening and a lovely shared dinner with some more people. So, one evening I felt sad and tired because of the tough flat-hunting turned out to be one of the most intense and enriching event I could live. I wrote on the canvas – and this became part of his work – “From now -> on you belong to my extended family”, and this sentence joined the many contributions other people gave – in the direction of a sort of collective meditation about society, relationships and communication in contemporary world Piero suggested and that is his aim (“but we can only suggest a direction, and then who knows what people will develop from a hint?”).

Anyway, I met a few new ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ by meeting him – and it’s a crew I quite enjoy. Relaxed, deeply in contemporary arts and in sharing food and talks. In spite of those who say London is the capital of loneliness!
Still, somehow, I have to say this is true. It’s quite easy to relate each other quickly, but the flow of the people who come and go is astonishing. As soon as you tie up with someone, you risk that this person goes away (usually abroad – ‘somewhere else’) to follow his/her attitudes, dreams, life. Some people are never fed up by the town, whilst some others ‘bite it and rush away’. London is immense and with many ‘centres’ that still – luckily for me and by my point of view – are build up from former villages and/or act as real neighbourhood. My friends (who are not going far at the moment, or at least have short trips “in the continent”) are all around here. I’m in a multicultural cool place far from the touristic area, with no mess around and a walking distance by the former ‘village’ of Stoke Newington. I only miss the sea, but can reach the Thames – and imagine the river docks as scratches of an imaginary sea – in half an hour by bus. And whilst talking with new people I meet, I define myself in terms of East Ender, living in Clapton (Hackney), and realise – by this same way I talk about me, as “new Londoner” – the way some pieces of my identity are to a certain extent “shifting”- carrying me at least to a new (temporary) definition of myself. It’s a curious process – and something anthropologists love to live on their own skin and self-reflect about!

Do not trust maps, in London, they don’t tell the truth: what you think is nearby on the map, will always be elsewhere in the reality. Walking is something I do really enjoy. Covering neverending distances is something I enjoy less, but still is a wonderful way to get to know a place. When I don’t walk, I observe this town from above: from the upper floor of the buses, from the windows ot the overground train crossing the houses at their somthing like second floor of the houses. And I grasp instants of people lives: a white man gardening the backyard of his place, a woman caring at her kids inside a sad grey block, a couple of gothics walking to reach Camden Lock. I take the chance of any interview and any step I do in my job search (yes, now I’m searching for a job – it seems there’s always something to search for here in London, doesn’t it?) to discover new areas of the town, but at the moment I mostly had the chance to explore – if you look at a standard map of London and use the Thames to split the north and the south of the town, and the City as ‘hardcore’ of all the issue – some east, some north-east, some north-centre and some south-east of the Thames.

I had to meet Chris, a few days ago, at the 56a Infoshop Social Centre. You can reach that place taking a couple of buses from Clapton Pond (where I live) to Walworth and, as I never give up any chance to play, I did it also this time. This means that, without any ‘academic’ intention about questioning issues such as place, standard maps, distances and cultural assumptions about the boroughs I was going through, I jumped on a bus, reached the upper floor and began shooting pics as a common tourist. I wasn’t really interested in anything in particular. I just took a pic any time I had a question or some stupid reflections were coming up to my mind.

Clapton Pond seems like a fairytale, notwithstanding its poverty. A fountain, a small wood bridge, a few trees, and probably ducks (not in this season). In front of it, waiting for the bus, you are offered the sight of some anonymous shops and a phone box sunk in the cement of the pavement (it’s a pretty traumatic experience calling from there, as the pavement itself is partially lift so that you are forced to assume a diagonal position with your body as well, and hope not to fall out of your centre of gravity).
From the bus I take a few pics, perfectly knowing the areas of the town I’m in – and being able to figure them both in my mental map of London and in the memory I have of the standard map of it, but still… where are the borders among the different boroughs? And how comes that sometimes boroughs are not written in some maps, but smaller areas within them are? Which is the reason why a map includes the name of a smaller area and skips out the one of a bigger borough?

The freedom of enjoying this small trip gives me the chance to notice and joke about the places, so that I feel moved as I see a huge building in cement, glass and steel with two high wings… and something that seems just fallen down between them. I can imagine it desperately crying to the people walking quickly in the streets nearby, and I can hear its voice and story: “Hey, you, can you help? I’m a piece of the roof, I fell between the two wings of this building and it’s so narrowed that I can’t stand up anymore so to climb it and get back to my place… CAN SOMEONE HEEELP?!?!?!?!”.

Chris (Captain Mapp) draws maps, and makes people do the same. Then he collects the works produced and organises exhibitions of them. I ask him what’s next, when he leads a workshop or a walk with people, and they produce their maps of a place, or tell him their stories/memories about a neighbourhood in the past. “What’s next? Nothing!” – he replies. All is spent in the dimension of the actualising, in a full situationist style.

I got to know him whilst searching online for maps and mapping in London, and I met the project “THE MAP ROOM (is open…)” – that exists also in reality as “suitcase” archives of maps, projects, festivals he produced (or led the production of)… The maps we are talking about are not the usual ones, with standard points of reference anybody could use to orientate in the space: they are subjective, emotional, symbolic, and mostly depict their author, his/her memories, points of view and desires. They reflect the sense of a place by those who live it, and for this reason both a (psycogeographer) artist and an anthropologist can be interested in them.  I’m starting wondering how an ethnographic project I have in my mind about the issue of “personal and collective identity” could match with his work and be developed by our different, but closed, gazes. One  of these days, I will find out the time to write a draft about it, and ask Chris to give me his feedbacks and work on it himself too.
But now it’s time to get back to my (desperate) job-hunting, and leave the dreams about my projects, games, and happiness besides – for a little while.

The first time I came to UK I was thirteen years old, and one of the things I still remember was the surprise I had by discovering you could get an ice-cream or a soft drink in a shop that sold newspapers as well. Another surprise was to see cigarettes sold in supermarkets, right nearby the cash desk. Comparing habits between different countries (and/or cultures) has become something I don’t even realise I continuously do now, but at those times it was for me a real shock. Commercial licences in Italy are now a little less severe then before, but still cigarettes can’t be sold in supermarkets (you find them only at the tabacconist, who can’t sell food in the same shop), and you can find soft drinks whilst buying the newspaper only if you are in some fancy small shops selling anything in touristic areas.

Not much has changed here – by this point of view. Shops keep on selling different goods and giving different services at the same time in the same room. So you can get your mobile phone unlocked whilst waiting for your coat to be dry cleaned, or you can get a haircut whilst buying bags.
Whilst walking in Mare Street, I notice a huge amount of mobile phones hanging on the right side of the entrance of a butchery. “Can I take a pic of the shop for my blog?” – I ask. The guy stares at me, and replies “Ask the boss, over there”. I enter this sort of grocery store, meet this man, likely from Middle East, and ask him the same question, explaining I will write an article about this issue as it’s something unusual for us. “Really?”, and then he turns and calls another guy, an even younger shop assistant. “Is it true that in Italy you need licences to open shops and sell goods?”. This last guy looks at me and then at him and replies “Yes”. And then asks me: “Sei italiana? Anche nel mio paese devi avere le licenze. Qui è davvero strano anche per me!” (“Are you Italian? In my country we need licences as well. Here is definitely weird for me too!”), and smiles. He is from Romania, but learnt a perfect Italian by watching Tv shows and cartoons whilst he was a kid – quite a common habit for Rumanians that became an unwilling learning strategy and then a useful competence when they turned adults. “I let you take a pic if you give me the article!” – shouts the owner from the back.  “Fine! You will see it on internet!” – I shout him back.

Another pleasant surprise about London is the existence of so many open air markets selling any kind of merchandise. Markets are wonderful places to grasp the mood of a place. You can experience different way of greeting and talking together between the people, you can understand much about the common food eaten in a place, the gender relationships issues, the city councils strategies to improve an area, the values and attitudes of those working or living nearby and so on. I had the chance to visit a few markets up now – quite different as goods sold. I already told about Broadway Market (where all the young creatives and artists of London Fields meet to buy expensive organic or imported food), and as well I did about Camden and its (fake) punk reminder. Let’s switch to two new discoveries: Ridley Road and Brick Lane markets.

Ridley Road one (in the area of Dalston) is what is more closed to my personal experience of Italian open air markets: housewives meeting and comparing prices, people wandering about without a specific need, dealers shouting the freshness of the seafood they sell. Little differences are what I got used to notice: whilst in Italy you would have a stall assistant collecting for you the food on the quantity you require (kilos, hundreds grams) from a tidy pile of a specific vegetable or fruit, here you have the same product already split in different baskets, each of them going under a specific price (1 pound, 50 pence etc.). And, of course, the variety of imported goods is quite undelievable too, and reminds you constantly the colonial past of this land (not to mention the people themselves): I keep on wondering about the use of huge cactus limbs perfectly aligned nearby other fruit, and still old african men comfortably dressed in tunics and gym shoes – arguing about the quality of a yellow/golden/green coat coming from Ghana – attract my surprised gaze.

Brick Lane is a flea market that take place on Sundays in Shoreditch. You can find quite a few used stuff there, ideally gatherable under the notions of ‘posh snobbish vintage’ on one side, and ‘desperately sadly miserable’ on the other. Nothing in between – apart from (stolen) bikes. But, as it always happens in these kind of makets, people can express their creativity in drawing the attention of potential custumers with odding strategies, such as  placing a perfectly functioning and switched on television right on the pavement nearby a rubbish tin.

But the best DIY attitude is testified by an online resource for professional beggars: the Hackney freecycle. Freecycle is online community of ‘givers’ and ‘takers’ under the notion that what is the garbage of a person can be a treasure for someone else. Membership is free, and everything posted must be free as well. Anything can be given, taken and recycled in different ways, using all your creativity to fullfill your needs. Brigida got four folding chairs that match perfectly the eco-style of her flat. I got an ink-jet printer Epson Stylus probably sold around 2001 that matches perfectly my old laptop bought in 2002, so that none of the two feels old-fashioned. And one day I will be able to find a black toner so not to have to use the blue left one in the space of the black – as I’m doing now. Or I will find a way to refill the toner myself, by buying some fresh black ink and probably wasting the half of it in my hands… Awww, whatever!

“There’s nothing more permanent then the temporary” (Greek said). But at least this time it was wrong: it took something like 20 days to found a place, but I eventually did. Mankind can be perverse when has to deal with the chance to gain money by any means, as you can desume by Mr Captain of the Rant‘s poem Trust In Stan – an ode to Estate Agents:

Hi there
I’m Stan from Stan, Stan and Stan Estates
How are you?
Good good, I’m glad
Glorious day, glorious day
Except for the massive storm obviously
Look at my hair!
It’s a kind of gel
It’s all crinkly and messed up
It’s supposed to look casual
But I spend five hours every morning
Making it look just right
Teeth shining like a shark’s
Look at my tie!
Pure penguin skin, I’m assured
Spanking suit and sparkling shoes from Topman
Yes, this is a great area, great area
That wasn’t a gunshot you heard it was a dog bang-barking

Concentrate on my voice
My confident, fast-talking, I-know-my-business voice
I love my job, you’re my new best friend
I am a human being
And I’m certainly not doing this for the money

Anyway, this is the building
Crumbling to death?
No, no no
It’s beautiful and archaic, isn’t it?
Yes, of course it is.
Don’t look at the front garden
Ignore the dead cats and used needles

Concentrate on my face
Look at my face
Look at my face

Let’s go in
This is the hallway
No time to look at it properly
What’s that?
Smells like a three week-old corpse that’s been drowned in its own piss?
Oh, I love your sense of humour
Let’s go upstairs
No wheelchair access
But then again
It’s their fault for pricing themselves out of the market
By getting all crippled up

Ignore what I say
Just concentrate on the tone
Look at my face
Look at my face

Right now, this is the flat
It’s very comfortable and compact
This room is a bedroom slash kitchen slash bathroom
That’s not mould, it’s just got a very lived in look
Don’t look at the mould!

Look at my face
Look at my face

There’s no toilet as yet
But there is a very deep sink in the kitchen
And you look like the kind of practical person who will make do
do you like animals?
Great, great
Then you won’t mind the incredibly cute
Special breed of rat-looking mice we installed just for you

Oh look, there’s ones now!

Look at my face
Look at my face

What was that?
Oh it’s only nine hundred pounds a month
Very cheap for this area
And think about it this way:
That’s only a pound for every arrest a week in this borough
And doesn’t it make you feel safe?

Look at my face
Look at my face

So that’s two months rent deposit
And one month rent in advance
And the cough contract handling fee cough
Is a hundred pounds
Those contracts are very heavy
Agreed?
Fantastic.
Sign here.
Brilliant.
Pleasure doing business with you.
Are you getting the bus home?
Well, good luck, I’ll probably pass you in my Merc
Which you’ve helped pay for.

Have a great day.

Immigrant among immigrants, as living now in a flat managed by a nice Turkish guy whose manners are much better then any Londoner landlord I met so far. What I hadn’t for all these days made me think a lot about how important is what we usually take for granted: a warm place where to feel safe. And I’m feeling like a bird building her den, now, but by collecting pieces from bump hunting (as long as I don’t figurate myself as a desperate poor immigrant, but look at this research with curiosity and sense of adventure, is fine). I can perfectly understand Virginia Woolf’s A room of One’s Own, and in my imagination – and in concrete facts – I’m playing as a kid having a coloring book.

And then, again those graffiti, again those desperate, witty, sarcastic and high quality stencils. You get them everywhere in London’s markets. But it can’t be an institutional supported art this one – that shows two male policemen passionately kissing, or a member of the royal guards pissing on a wall whilst hoping nobody to see him, can it? I keep on wondering about its possible being an amazing market campaign, or some sort of “underground production”… I buy three posters (1 pound each in a 1-pound-each-product Middle Eastern shop), and once home I do some researches on the net: their author is a guy called Banksy.

Banksy is likely to live in Hackney, this Londoner borough I like so much and where I’m living at the moment. His works are – black&white, pure, essential but sharp – stencils with either the human subject, or monkeys, or rats. The issues he works about concern freedom, surveillance, responsibility, loneliness, death, violence, war, peace and hope in the contemporary society, and show a sharp mind, a quick deep thought and a rare ability in synthesis of words in messages (and messages in words).

Surprisingly, in reading about his work, you get his quotation “Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place”. Well, I’m not pretty sure about the first, but for the latest you are quite wrong, my dear: in fact, as we can inscribe you in this category, with your art you make people think, and this already means promoting the change of the world (although we can never control the direction – or better the end spot – of the changes we promote) and not only his looking better.

So don’t think about skipping your merits nor you faults: in a word, your “responsibilities”. A pic of your graffiti with the guy holding the sign that says “Keep your coins. I WANT CHANGE” is in front of me now. I stare at it, and look for strategies to make this happen, in a big personal blast, with both my usual critical consciousness towards the society, and the lightness of your cute, tender girl making soap bubbles.

Hackney is a lovely place. A little scaring, but I guess it’s only because I’m a newby, and I can’t recognise people’s attitudes by their faces yet – as one can do when is familiar with a place. It will take time. And I’m not used to so many black people around. It’s not a racial judgement, mine: it’s a realization. It’s kinda weird to wander around these white fancy terraced homes, and seeing old black people talking/smoking at the front door of them… I mean: this is the stereotype we have of Jamaica, not of London! But still is nice. And they all great you!

Greeting people you don’t know seems to be the easiest and most common thing here. I began a walk of the neighbourhood in late morning yesterday, to meet up with Brigida in the afternoon, and walking down the street to reach the local shopping area to buy some food I was greeted by all the people I saw without knowing them: a woman at the front door of her house, an old man while mending his car, a young guy riding his bike, the dustman who was sweeping the street. This was so weird!

After a few blocks, I eventually reached ‘my’ place: the Pogo Cafè, the meet-up point of the anarchists/squatters of the area – vegan, gluten free and definitely laid-back. With lovely people inside, sharing experiences about squatting and travelling, or talking about any issues, or simply sitting on a couch and reading. Brigida and I had lunch there and could grasp some words form the tables around (you know: we are anthropologists, always spying other people’s lives) – definitely nice ones!
We ended up with a long walk, reaching another nice street – Broadway Market, where on Saturdays there’s a vegetables & fruits market – full of fancy people, where you unpredictably feel ‘home’ even if it has nothing in common with the one you left in your hometown.

And again, walked through London Fields. The leaves mixed with the wet ground produced an autumn smell, and reminded me of many other good moments in my life – like a time warp where time bends on itself.