Seduction when the feeling that the end is nigh

translation from http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/mexiko-verfuehrung-
mit-endzeitstimmung.1013.de.html?dram:article_id=295272

Although Yuri Herrera's novel sold poorly, the S. Fischer Verlag nowis publishing him again three years after the first appearance, in a band with two other novels by the author. The central theme is violence in Mexico and the fragility of life.
It is early morning in Mexico City. Yuri Herrera holds his backpack in his arms and tries to sleep on the hour trip to his hometown of Pachuca, past the slopes with settlements where the poorest people of the country live.  A movie about the racing driver Niki Lauda is shown on the bus. The 44-year-old Mexican author is awake again. Fortunately, only because of the film:

"On this route buses have sometimes been attacked. And since it has happened before that the criminals who were involved in the attack, first sat asdisguised passengers on the bus. That's why they did not just let us getting on the bus so easily. First  they registered our documents inthe computer, searched our luggage and our bodies for weapons and finally even a security guard has filmed us with a video camera when boarding, in case something happens later. "

 Violence is, in the foreground or background, always present in Yuri Herrera's "Mexican Trilogy". So states rightly his German publisher  the three published novels in one volume: you grab all the problems in Mexico. And yet you think that these stories could happen everywhere. Or nowhere. For Yuri Herrera seems to write with an open and a closed eye. There is a dreamlike haze over the world, in which the main characters have magical name, a world that  Herrera portrays with its dense, wonderfully rhythmic language. This has been confidently transferred into German by Susanne Lange:

"He knew about the blood and even saw it, his was different. Just like the man filled the room, as calmly as if he knew everything, as if he was woven of finer yarn. Of different blood."

Threatened identity, threatened life

The street musicians Lobo, who yearns for recognition, meets a drug boss and attaches  himself to him, sining him songs of praise, and very soon is in danger of loosing his own identity and even his life, in Herrera's first novel "swan song of the King" .

Yuri Herrera has arrived in Pachuca, takes a taxi to his parents' house at the foot of a slope. Pachuca, the former mining town has inspired Herrera to "signs that bear witness to the end of the world", his second novel. In this Makina, a young woman who illegally immigrate to the neighboring country, wants to seek her brother. The journey, however, even before its beginning is in danger to fail due to a disaster:

"[...] Under his feet found the ground. He devoured all around the man, a car, a dog, all of the oxygen, even the cries of the passers-by. I'm dead, Makina said, but no sooner had she said that she struggled with her whole body against the judgment, desperately stomping their feet backwards, each step a foot behind the landslide, till the abyss rounded to a flawless circle, and Makina was safe.Damned, treacherous city, she said, constantly about to take leave in the basement. "

Stunningly well written

Yuri Herrera walked in Pachuca with his dogs Gordo and Simba up a steep slope to calm them down. So unruly they rejoice when he is like now come from Mexico City or New Orleans, where the qualified scholar of political scienc and literature teaches and does research.
"We are here at the bottom of San Cristóbal mountain. There are sill scattered houses., But a bit further up you cannot build houses to build anymore. Located in the mountain, there are still old shafts, in danger of collapsing . Since people have for long time looked for silver. The points of access have been closed only makeshiftly. Sometimes here a house collapses . Or a man falls into a hole. And for some time criminal gangs use shafts as secret grave spots. So they dispose of their dead enemies. "
Between two warring bands the so-called Alfaki  has to organised the exchange of hostages, in "Body Walk", the last part of the stunningly well-written trilogy Herrera. Actually Alfaki wants to stay at home. But outside there is a feeling of end of the world, rages a devastating epidemic. And inside his neighbor finally resists no longer against his advances:
"He saw that she was peeling herself. [...] With the other hand he turned her a little to him and  pulled slowly shed withered skin. Whee how good it feels, she said. Go on. He went on, internally faster, outwardly always devoted, with a slight tremor that he tamed by fixingthe next skin crown. then he ate thme. He took a rag and put it in her mouth. She turned a slightly her head, looked at him from the corner of her eye, and said: Pretty crazy,huh? He said:. Hhmm, and continued. "

Aphrodite in Gaza

translation from http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/archaeologie-und-nationalgefuehl-aphrodite-in-gaza.2165.de.html?dram:article_id=295094

Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks - they were all and left their mark in today's Gaza. That's why the area is one of the richest archeological sites in the Middle East. Astill young museum  on the beach could also serve the peace process.
The Geneva archaeologist Marc-André Haldimann is considered one of the greatest experts in Gaza. He has been eight times on site.
"Gaza is a beautiful place, one of the most beautiful places along this coast, from Syria to Egypt. The sand is very fine, and it is a place where you have water, which has been very important. That's why Gaza has always been an important hub for Egypt as a starting point for the Sinai. And from 3500 BC to the present day it has always been densely populated. "
Hardly anyone knows anything of Gaza's glorious history. But right about archeology there is a dispute between Israel and Palestine - a battle for the history and the historical claim to the land that raise both sides - and whose reckoning is to prove the quasi scientific archeology. This even brought to a military intervention from the Israeli side.
"Until the withdrawal of the army in 2005 was basically the archeology a thing of the Israeli army."
You have to know that Israel has a military-archaeological Corps that also digs out. If something is found, then move the military archaeologists on the field.
The University of Tel Aviv dug in 1984 in Gaza an ancient Egyptian necropolis,  more than 50 sensational clay sarcophagus  in human form have been brought to light. They are all currently in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan said to have been a particularly avid "collector" - some call it also art theft.
"There are more than 32,000 objects that have been found in Palestine by Israeli excavations and brought to Israel."
The Palestinian side hadn't for long nothing against it. What to do with found objects? There has been no museum in Gaza until recently.
Coins from sunken ships
Then in  2008  the Mathaf was founded - a museum that was conceived and financed by the contractor Jawdat Khoudary. He and his construction crews had repeatedly found vases and statues, Fischer brought coin hoards from sunken ships in the harbor. So the Gaza's first museum was founded through private initiative.
Jawdat Khowdary is - like all his countrymen - still trapped in Gaza. On the phone he says:
"Our faith in the country, our identity are here. We Palestinians have been in this land for thousands and thousands of years. We used to think always, our grandfathers would have created this nation, but the story of Gaza began many thousands years before. I have created here a small but, I hope, good museum. I wish we had  dozens of museums in Gaza."
However the sand-colored museum right on the beach was bombed one year after its opening by the Israelis and damaged, some works of art were broken. Meanwhile, the damage is fixed. The private citizen Khowdary thus connects it with a greater mission. It's not just a piece of heritage, but about presence, awareness, identity - and a positive image of the city.
Marc-André Haldimann: "Since August 2008, finally, the population of Gaza has the opportunity to see their own past, and this is particularly important. Archeology is always part of the process of national sentiment..."
However a culturally self-confident Palestine is also important for the peace process. Only those who may devolop safely the  consciousness of their own identity, may also be a partner for peace.

The lure of Caños de Meca

Caños de Meca

This summer I spent three weeks in Caños de Meca to visit a friend of mine and relax by the sea, getting away from the town, where I feel very often overwhelmed by the many things happening around, both positive and negative. 

I was impressed by the sweetness and simple beauty of the landscape there. Green hills of pine trees scent the air, fields of sunflowers and olive trees, cows grazing slow in the wide fields, the ocean shakes your thoughts and fills you with his many shades of blue, the sun shines fiercely from the morning up to the sunset  into the ocean.

Unlike many other parts of Spain where speculation has disfigured the landscape, here the low and white buildings or countryside houses are still in harmony with the sorroundings and there is a sense of harmony between man and landscape. You can have some food or drinks in chiringuitos on the beach or in a venta, a small restaurant where the family that usually runs it also cultivate the ingredients used for preparing it and stroll in the many artisan markets with creative pattern and design.

There is still some poetry there that I cannot find in the fast-paced life in the cities today. I woke up with the rooster and the birds singing and I went to bed when the stars where lighting a starlit sky. In the night you could also the something I had never seen before that is the moonset in the ocean.

I visited also Cadiz, the main city of the area and many villages around  like Vejer de la Frontera, Conil  with their white little houses, Barbate, a tuna fishing village,Bolonia, an old Roman town which riuns can be seen directly on the beach.

The horizon opens up
the tip of Africa on the other side
waves come and go
bring me to a place I don't know
clear, clear ocean
I fell for you
since I met you
under this sky so blue and bright
sunflower fields
following the sun
cows grazing and eating wheat
when the sunset comes
we go to the lighthouse
the sky tinges with orange and pink
until the sun sets its last rays in the ocean
and tomorrow it will come back
in its full strenght
clear, clear ocean
 I fell for you
since I met you
like this sun
that always shines on you

 

Exhibition Forsaken
Farcry productions
Gerard Mannix Flynn and Maeghbh Mc Mahon
Dollard House, Wellington Quay Dublin 2
16th July-December

The exhibition Forsaken reveals the identity of the ten thusands of Irish children abandoned in Mother and baby home from the mid 19th up to the 20th century. Through prints,requiem plates, baby vests, maps of the some of the institutions on broideries and books on the child report's abuses in some very bright white rooms, full of empty buskets and brooms for scrubbing the floor shows a dark past that the Irish Church still denies.

Women whose children were born with deformities or outisde the wedlock and lived often in poor conditions, gave or were persuaded by the Church to give their children to many institutions all over the country. Many suffered from psycological problems after the separation and were also internalised in mental hospitals.These children often were sexually and physically abused.Woman children were kept in the istitutions all their lives in a state of incarceration,while boys once they were sixteen went to work in the fields or other did other hard labour. Some of their children brought up by these parents who were themselves abusived or tried to numb their pains with alcohol or drugs committed suicide or have developped themselves drug or alcoholic problems. Some were sent to UK, the States, Canada or Australia and where adopted by rich families there.

The abused have longely being forced to shut up, labeled as disabled and when Marxim Flynn talked about it openely and wrote his autobiographical novel Nothing to Say in 1983 he was not believed.The exhbition was supposed to run only until August 20th but now it has been extended till December and the space will organised conferences and eventually also show Marxim Flynn's play  James X  following the life of a boy from the intenalisation up to the moment when he is going to face the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse.

A group of Americans that had been sent there and adopted came to see the exhibition, like also some old women nowin their seventies whose babies were taken from them, without even signing any permission papers, but the Church still doesn't want to acknowledge having committed these horrors.Yesterday a priest came to the exhibition and he said with arrogance that he had been in one of those istitutions and the women that worked there were happy- reveals Maedhbh, one of the organisers of the exhibition.

Forsaken makes you think about the role of the Catholic Church founded by the State  for what were supposed to be charitale acts of helping the poors and the forsaken, concerned in getting rid of any stains of sins in the Irish society and commiting themselves crimes far worst. It shades light into a dark past that still bears his witness in the many prisoners and addicted that are in the Irish prisons, in homeless institution and reabilitation centers  today and hopes that they raise from the pit of shame in which they have been made fallen and get their sense of dignity crucial to any man to move on.

Review of El Pliegue by Sònia Sánchez

I was struck by the amazing performance of the Catalan dancer Sònia Sánchez at the Project Art Center as part of the 10th Dublin Dance Festival which runs from the 20th to the 31st May. When she dances, the floor trembles and your heart and body are shaken by the harrowing force of her steps, hands and deep voice. The fierce sound of them urges you to feel and it fills your soul with strength to face life, turning fear into courage.

You feel an ancestral force of life coming back to you from a remote place you didn't know existed, because you have never experienced it before. In her piece El Pliegue, The fold, the Catalan dancer has turned her reading of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze into a splendid embodied experience. Steps of the Spanish flamenco meet the Japanese butoh dance, creating a poem of corporal expression that shows the infinite possibility of movements of the muscles and folds of our bodies from head to toe.

In the beginning, the dancer, wrapped in complete darkness and silence, hits the ground like a warrior spearing against them. A diagonal light enlightens while she starts stepping forward towards the light with strong determination, opening her arms with her body bent on her knees in a position ready for attacking or fending. She steps forth, first left then right, with her hands following her steps then her hands move together in and out while she hits the floor. She stretches with her hands towards the light while walking towards it. The hands and steps then move back in long movements and come back towards the light; she touches her upper legs, as if to get rid of something that lies on them. She clicks with her fingers as if they were castanets, her body straightening slowly up, her arms reaching up and moving around on her wrists sinuously. Then she goes back, the intensity of her steps and hands increases.

Afterwards she dances laterally where another light opens up, showing her a new way that she opens with her fierce steps. I have seen her in two out the three performances in Dublin and I have noticed how she improvises, introducing each time some changes and dedicating time on different elements of her piece. On the first night, she focused on twisting movements of her upper body and hands while she is with her head down and hair covering her face, while in the final performance she gives more time to the songs. She comes back to the stage for the applause and then sings a song of tribute while clapping her hands together and also on her body.

In both performances, her body changes with vigorous movements, releasing sometimes the tension in circular turns with her hands and hips full of erotic charge. You feel her physical presence when drops of her sweat fall to the ground, she pulls slowly her hair and makes sounds with her tongue. She also gazes at the audience with her piercing blue eyes, as if asking: "Why don't you look into your own folds, your own energy inside?"

She sings two beautiful Spanish songs that reach straight to the heart, showing her gift for singing. At the end, she moves right in front of the audience, opening her arms while a spotlight is on her body as she sings a sweet Flamenco lullaby whilst moving her hands in butoh movements, playing with the light until her hand leaves it. She still sings while she walks offstage, then the song finishes and the lights go down. The audience applauds and whoops, mesmerised by such a strong and energetic performance. She has danced as if it was the last dance putting all in all her heart and body.

Her dance makes the body alive and frees it from the steps of the traditional dance of Flamenco, opening it towards oriental influences, reawakening the passion and the rebel force from which it started, the fight for the affirmation of the individual in a society full of constraints of convenience. She does it with sensual valour and furore as a warrior fighting for love and determined to triumph.