jumping from Narva to Nairobi

FEAR

One of this feelings that we have when we go...and.... we are passing the bridge... and we don't know what is from the other side...

one of those times when i was lucky enough to actually be on the bridge, not just looking at it from the distance....

Xform

over and under

somewhere in
japan
1946-ish
taken by my grandparents

Flag not red nor orange

Russe verliert Pass und schwimmt nach Hause

Erschienen am 29. Juli 2008

Weil er seinen Pass beim Besuch in der alten russischen Heimat verloren hat, ist ein in Estland lebender Russe auf dem Heimweg einfach über die Grenze geschwommen. Durchnässt und betrunken fischten estnische Grenzbeamte der Stadt Narva ihn in der Nacht zum 16. Juli aus dem gleichnamigen Grenzfluss zwischen Estland und Russland.

Juristisch werde dies zwar kein Nachspiel haben, da der Mann aber schwimmend in die Europäische Union eindrang und dabei die Schengengrenze verletzte, drohe ihm nun ein Bußgeld. Der Russe habe sich wahrlich für einen "bizarren Heimweg" entschieden, kommentierte ein Grenzschutzbeamter.

Shell

Eventually we found my father's house... now a kindergarten

More Bridges

A letter my grandfather wrote from Philadelphia, 1970, to cousins in Paris he had reconnected with after 40+ years. Found in my father's belongings recently - until which time I hadn't known it existed.

I wonder who kept the stamps?

Some lovely DIY shop signs in Mauritius. "Art should belong to People' (Lenin) comes to mind...!

Door from the Main Place in Yerewan, 03.07.2008

Doors 

looking

as 

bridges

one more bridge, in Ida Virumaa, a few decades ago

clear politics: the leader stands in the first row

Close by the Television Tower

I 've got this rings as present 2 weeks ago in the little market
by the S-Bahn Hackischer Markt.

Fussball wie noch nie....Kino wie noch nie...Kinder wie noch nie oder neue Helden, new heroes

From the same 'report'. Works: Georgy Ostretsov

Hello from Art Moscow. Works: Georgy Ostretsov

http://gazeta.ru/social/2008/05/20/2729419.shtml

Emily...you spotted exactly the sentence i chose as an exhibition title when I presented Minu Maja in Berlin for the first time, it was 2002. The precise translation would be: "I would cry tears of blood". A few years latter though, presenting this film once more in an exhibition context, I will use this sentence: "Ici, je resterai certainement jusqu'à ma mort" ("i would most probably stay here until my death")...don't ask me why

From Silvina for Tanya

'If I had to sell my apartment for financial reasons, I would cry my heart out'

...is a comment from Eléonore's film Minu maja on minu maa (Home my sweet home), which I have just been watching, in a hotel room in Pennsylvania - my 'home sweet displaced home' for the time being. I am thinking about the people in the film, and wondering.

i am very fond of anniversaries...s'rry, i have to get back to this topic...all the more since by chance, yesterday in trendy Berlin-Mitte, i saw this man, writing "NEW LIES" on the posters hanging all over the place. I was with my son, the man told us in English with a strong German accent, that it was important that the children knew the truth, my son speaks good French, German, Estonian, but no English and even if he did, he would not have understood why it is such a lie, since his mother's country was indeed liberated by American troops. He would definitely not have understood why it is so new, since it all happened more than 60 years ago and today we are all living in Germany and happy to do so. Finally, he did not quite understand where the truth hides and i could not help him.

to february, love may

un an après, a year later, les énergies de lutte et de résistance ont la mémoire courte, comme nous tous, je suis toujours et encore fascinée par la force d'érosion du temps, chronos, chronology, in 6 weeks, the sun has erased our winter shivers, a year and a week later, i wish to recall last year's events in Tallinn (removal of the bronze soldier), we all know how complex the issue is, anything but binary, i am so far away, that i don't pretend having the answer, i can only sadly note the change of attitudes of my Russian friends in Estonia, they were proud to live here, they are now more deeply wounded, silently.

and AFTER /yesterday

On the weather: BEFORE /6 weeks ago/

Cohesion

Cohesion (chemistry): the intermolecular attraction between like-molecules. Cohesion (social policy): the bonds or "glue" between members of a community or society. Cohesion (linguistics): the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent. Cohesion (structural): the sociological and graph theoretical conception and measurement for maximal group or graphical boundaries where related elements cannot be disconnected except by removal of a certain minimal number of other nodes.
Cohesion (military): the bonding together of members of an organization/unit in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, their unit, and the mission (Cohesion the Human Element in Combat, William Henderson, 1985).

Community cohesion refers to the aspect of togetherness and bonding exhibited by members of a community, the "glue" that holds a community together. This might include features such as a sense of common belonging or cultural similarity

Telehäuschen

More on Cohesion in action: 

Shop window: not sure most people living in this country would know what the sign on the top means and nobody is bothered. We know it's open. I like that.

Integration /or rather 'Cohesion' in the UK/ in action: 

I got this box with 2 different sorts of hot (meaning-temperature) rice dishes in the night before Good Friday, when popped out for some milk to a local shop. An Aisian lady gave them out to passing by people, getting them from her car boot and insisted I would stop and accept it. I thanked her, of course, automatically assumed: well, yes, it's Easter. Than thought:not sure there is a connection between the christian Easter and Aisian (most likely: Pakistani, the majority of whom are muslims) holidays. Went back to ask the lady what was the reason for giving out the food, but she had disappeared already. Than decided to Google my question: so, it was Mawlid-al-Nabi (Muhammad's Birthday) that Thursday.

/On the photo the food is frozen, and unfortunately i'd ruined the relief before putting it into the freezer - was curious to do a research on the ingredients.

but also, a very nice example of bilingualism...a shop i love in Narva (the Estonian border city with Russia)

After having been working there for a couple of years in 2005-2006, i went back to Sillamäe (Estonia) last february. There were these huge billboards everywhere, none of my friends in Sillamäe understood what was written!....."my own state, my happiness (chance), my joy" and below "Estonia", celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the Republic of Estonia. These posters made me smile, sadly though, in Sillamäe live 97% Russian speakers, the whole region is in a very critical economical situation..and it was me, with my poor Estonian, my Estonian passport in my pocket, although i was not born in Estonia as they were, who explained to my hosts in Sillamäe what was written in the billboards all around their city.

snow

These are strange english guys in Tallinn in the end of March 2008 (two days ago actually). Strange... because there were wearing a light spring clothes and... they looked really very happy and surprised at the same time by snow and huge snowdrifts snow in the middle of spring. They littered with snow as saw a snow for the first time.

And I remember my winter in London without snow three years ago. I wore very warm down parka and mittens and I looked very strange in London... maybe similar to the Eskimos:) but I was still cold.

this poster gives us also good opportunities, written in Estonian, for Estonians, but basically: if you make (Estonian) children, you get a cheap loan to buy a bright new house and for the fast ones, the real estate firm offers you (once the kid was born though) a Kamasutra book...FOR FREE, so.... (photo credits: alessandro volpin)

as it is a dyptich, here is another photo: that's one of the Opportunities mentioned on a poster below, I bet ;-) 

/the sign on a banner is: 'Gynecology', in Russian/

in St Petersburg few months ago /the sign on a poster is: 'Russia is the country of opportunities/; it's not me in the photo though

this time i went right under the border bridge

Welcome!