Tag: guy mannes-abbott

response to masterplan pt one; did somebody say trees? evidently, we did…

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CAVAT Southwark piloted CAVAT in 2008, but massively undervalued the Forest at £700,000 [and held to that figure in to Summer 2011, post Phase 1 demolition and destruction of trees] a figure which only emerged after long campaigning for it and the completion of a People’s CAVAT through winter 2010-11. The latter was directly inspired by a proto Forest School talk by Jim Smith of the Forestry Commission at Balfour Street in October 2010. The People’s CAVAT valued the entire Forest at 18 million, the part valued in the document above [‘the Heygate’] at about £15 million. Urbanforesters do not make cheap points!
Download LL’s CAVAT here;
http://www.elephantandcastle.org.uk/pages/consultation_dialogue/90/elephant_c…
Download Masterplan imagery/boards [caution most of the green around the park is private, two-storey podia; so look hard at and for detail!] here;
http://www.elephantandcastle.org.uk/pages/consultation_dialogue/88/elephant_c…

NB: reposted from original ECUF site [now defunct, content archived] 3 November 2011 with permission of its author. Continue reading “response to masterplan pt one; did somebody say trees? evidently, we did…” →

on a hand made dummy of in ramallah, running -pre design meet

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My hand-made and -cut rough mock-up of In Ramallah, Running this night…

I can’t  resist sharing my pleasure at having assembled all the elements of In Ramallah, Running in hard form for the first time tonight in preparation for a big design and layout meeting tomorrow. It’s very strange to materialise something that has existed in my mind as a project and proposal, then a place and people as well as a piece of my own inevitably elliptical work, before becoming a project once more with a range of very special people responding to and contributing work to the book, for all of that to eventually come together from all over the world and now to have a dummy of it in my fingers and see that it is pretty much as conceived -albeit only held together by a single bulldog clip- except that it’s so much better in actuality! Continue reading “on a hand made dummy of in ramallah, running -pre design meet” →

on mamma courage and the brecht house, 1. lövstigen, lidingö

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Brecht House 1 Lövstigen, Lidingö, Stockholm 1939-40 Ph GMA

In a wintery Stockholm [exquisitely lit but otherwise painful] a week ago, I managed finally to take self and camera to what turns out to be the site of the house that Brecht stayed in during 1939-40 -and where he wrote Mother Courage and Her Children- until Sweden lost its nerve before an apparently irresistible Hitler, and Brecht -the persecuted and fugitive leftist- had to move on… Continue reading “on mamma courage and the brecht house, 1. lövstigen, lidingö” →

on whit stillman, back with another film on the fly [& more thoughts on filming dance steps…]

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Barcelona  by Whit Stillman – let’s choo choo!

Let’s hope that Whit Stillman’s new film Damsels in Distress is actually distributed in the UK. It’s true that he makes films with lots of words in them when that is almost a capital offence… Stillman’s films are literate and digressive [not theatrical, as in filmed theatrical dialogue] in ways that makes him a radical in contemporary English-language cinema. Yes, he films people actually talking, even discussing things; insane!

I love Whit Stillman, Continue reading “on whit stillman, back with another film on the fly [& more thoughts on filming dance steps…]” →

HAZARDS writing back #54

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Amherst 1874

Emily,

You write of and incarnate an “elegy of integrity” dear friend. It’s true that when death comes to “our own” all we can do, as you write, is remember them. Of course we make up or discover those whose integrity we identify with, don’t we? I know you mean it that way. The man you address will die soon and you may repeat yourself. The best, those who fill our lungs with their elegies, usually die first. Gil, for instance, only recently. It’s a truth from my younger days, of which I find no trace in my clear conviction now. Every year confirms a duty to burn ourselves up if we aspire to anything worthy of song. You did, I know I must too. First, I wonder if enough of “our own” will remain to sing for us! Then, do you know, I’m so vulgarly optimistic that I hear distant voices now! And so I hasten on, with something left to gamble!

g.

Fruitstore 12.6.11

on odes to mud, utopian dust and insurrectionary trees

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Francis Ponge [still taken from http://www.OnlineProductions.fr whose link is dead in 2022]

Primarily, this is a brief advertisement for CB Editions‘ irresistible bi-lingual edition of the great Francis Ponge; Unfinished Ode to Mud, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic in 2008. It’s a selection from what she has translated as The Defence of Things and Pieces, some of the latter being their first appearances in English…

So, firstly, please get hold of a copy of the book from the publishing miracle that is CB Editions whom, it’s worth knowing, work on very short print runs. I have no links etc., but urge you to take up their current offer here, while getting hold of this beautiful selection and give copies to people that you wish loved you…

‘Unfinished Ode to Mud’ itself, is also an ode to the Resistance Continue reading “on odes to mud, utopian dust and insurrectionary trees” →

on elias khoury’s ‘as though she were sleeping’ in today’s independent

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Looking like Yaffa in ’48…

Screenshot 2018-03-12 10.30.56

As Though She Were Sleeping, By Elias Khoury

Reviewed by Guy Mannes-Abbott

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Journeying towards Mount Ararat, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote of cultivating a sixth sense, “the sense of attraction to a mountain”. Writing about food, American novelist James Salter quoted Brillat-Savarin approvingly on his notion of a sixth sense, “physical desire”. The other five senses, he wrote, are optimised only in “sexual union”.

The Lebanese writer Elias Khoury belongs in such exalted company in literary terms. His new novel also pivots on mountains – in Lebanon – and appreciations of sexual union. Indeed, it was one of many books banned by the Mubarak regime for its explicitness. Khoury writes about the scent of words, which take on such immaterial qualities that writing itself works like a sixth sense in his fiction.

Read more here or Continue reading “on elias khoury’s ‘as though she were sleeping’ in today’s independent” →

on hosni, why change always involves force…

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I’ll keep it brief, but isn’t it nice to see Hosni!

It seems so long now and I for one have been missing him. Of course his ‘former’ colleagues remain largely in place and there’s a long way to go to even begin to consolidate the revolution. But the break with the past is good, the rest we know will take blood, resolve and time…

Of course, the regime has been pushed to get this far, almost week by week, and that will go on until real change is achieved. Change only ever happens like this. When someone tells you that shouting, anger, protest, rebellion even defensive or strategic acts of violence never gets anyone anywhere, as autocrats large and small always waste their breath saying, well; laugh in their faces and press on…

I’m sure Fruit Store regulars know from your own experience that tired, jaded, reactionary, conservative, No-sayers always only ever respond to force -or anyway forcefulness- however boring it is to have to resort to it. In that respect there are continuities between Tahrir’s very expensively acquired and yet only partial freedoms and much less dramatic ones closer to home -and yes, I’m writing as an urbanforester  when I make that point [not that the extrapolation necessarily works the other way around, of course].

Anyway, hooray-hello-Hosni; lets see much more of you and yours in future and work painstakingly through your crimes to ensure that justice is seen to be done and change is institutionalised.

Meanwhile, check the current issue of Bidoun and it’s programme of summery Seminars at the Serpentine here.

on ‘in ramallah, running’ -it’s official; publication is [NOT!] february 2012 [UPDATED]

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‘In Ramallah, Running 2010′ by Guy Mannes-Abbott

Manuscript in first draft, 5 of 14 scrolls/parts

In Ramallah, Running is now contracted to appear in February/March 2012 with Black Dog, more details/announcements to follow [24.04.2012 UPDATE: publication pushed back into summer 2012, watch for update very soon].

I’m very happy because the book was conceived and developed independently and will appear within the kind of urgent time frame that is appropriate to its subject and hard to achieve without compromise -or at all. I finished my 20,000 word series of e.things -a unique conjuring of place as well as the people of Ramallah and almost the whole open-air camp that is Ramallah District- in mid-September 2010 [after my Residency at al Qattan Foundation in Ramallah]. The series is made up of fourteen parts, alternating running within the limits of the city and walking out from it to, along, beyond and off limits, discovering how mobile they are. How they really work.

e.things as a form were crucial to this project because they’re the only way I could say what needed to be said. Often exhibited or published in a visual art context [with the best visual minds of my generation!], they’ve grown into a highly singular body of texts; the shortest of which is a single line called ‘go’ from 1997, the longest is this series; In Ramallah, Running. Continue reading “on ‘in ramallah, running’ -it’s official; publication is [NOT!] february 2012 [UPDATED]” →