Why Physics Won’t Change The Way You Look At The Creation of Adam

Rising up from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, The Creation of Adam gives off an otherworldly appearance. The fresco is undoubtedly among the most iconic of the Sistine Chapel, and has ever since been reproduced in countless imitations and parodies.The Creation has imprinted itself in our collective consciousness as a metaphor of humanity in all its – our– potential and flaws.

The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel draws millions of tourists  each year with its multicoloured, jaw-dropping frescoes – since they were first revealed more than five hundred years ago. But what is the secret to their enduring popularity?

When asked by Pope Julius II to take up the project, Michelangelo was initially very sceptical as he considered himself to be more of a sculptor than a painter. To conquer his initial reluctance, the Pope offered him to paint biblical scenes of his own choice

Michelangelo then did as he pleased, ending up by painting nine stories from the Book of Genesis over the course of four years. During this time, he’s said to have read and re-read the Old Testament.

The Creation is a painting that never fails to inspire. It portrays God as an elderly white-bearded Caucasian man wrapped up in a magenta-coloured mantel. His right arm is outstretched towards that of Adam, their index fingers mirroring each other. A reminder that man is created in the image and likeness of God.

Plenty of scholarly interpretations have dug into why Adam’s finger and God’s finger aren’t touching.

One suggests that God and Adam are not “on the same level,” as would be two humans shaking hands, and therefore can’t touch. This is logical, but it doesn’t add much to our understanding of Michelangelo’s masterpiece!

The nearly-touching hands of God and Adam can be seen through a different lens. The interpretation I am talking about entails a leap from the History of Art into the domain of Physics.

The domain of Newtonian physics teaches us that in nature every action has a reaction – every cause has an effect.

If the Florentine artist had envisioned the creation of man as something that took place on the plane of causality, then in his fresco he would have probably represented two fingers actually touching each other – with God’s finger touching Adam’s, that is imparting a spark of life in him by way of direct contact, just like an electrical current spreads across contacting bodies.

In reality, this is not what is represented in the mesmerising fresco. As we know, in the bright-coloured masterpiece, we can see that God only aims with his finger at Adam’s one.

I like to speculate that another way of looking at Michelangelo’s aesthetic choice is by invoking the power of non-local intelligence. 

What is non local-intelligence? Whenever I think of non-local intelligence, I am reminded of that kind of mysterious intelligence that allows startlings to move across the sky without the birds moving inside it crushing with each other, or fish in a school to dance synchronically by forming harmonious shapes. The birds that move as a flock are interrelated without apparent reason of cause and effect, although they do not seem to be communicating with each other in a conventional sense. But one thing we all have experienced by wondering at the twilight’s sky is this:  birds in a flock never collide!

I like to think that the deep significance of Michelangelo’s artistic representation alludes to the artist’s take on the Book of Genesis itself, and to his own understanding of the Creation of Man – as an event that didn’t happen on the plane of pure causality, but on the same mysterious, non-local plane that, in nature, rules the movement of birds in a flock, or that in the human body allows the smooth coordination between complex bodily functions such as respiration and blood circulation.

For decades physicists have been working to discover the properties that oversee the movements of birds, although, so far, each attempt has been unsuccessful. The complexity and perfection of the birds’ conduct continues to puzzle physical science.

 If the cues we can get from Michelangelo’s painting is that there isn’t a direct communication between God and Adam, it is because each awe-struck observer staring at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is invited to take a quantum leap and contemplate that the creation of the forefather of the human race at the hands of God must have happened non-locally, or at what some call the ‘spiritual’ level. The result of this non-local communication is often very mysterious, as we witness in nature as we stare at beings as they dance with the rhythm of the cosmos.

Let’s take this quantum leap and argue that It must be on the same plane that life, every single time, is created in a mother’s womb – and is taken away after each creature’s last breath.These unexpected connections between beings and phenomena is evident in the natural world. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung has firstly introduced this concept in the late fifties, naming it ‘synchronicity.’ Birds, fish – and perhaps Michelangelo’s Creation – provide the most startling examples of this ground-breaking principle that explains the meaningful relationship between events and phenomena that are not related by causality.

Leading scientists are nowadays arguing that all animals and social creatures show evidence of such communication, a non-local one.Scientist Rupert Sheldrake has conducted a fascinating study on what seem to be cases of nonlocal communication between dogs and their human owners. Sheldrake has documented cases in which dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home. From ten minutes to two hours before the owner arrives, the dog will sit at the front door and wait, anticipating the owner’s return.

Sceptics have argued that this was simply a case of habit. To disprove them, it has been shown that these dogs are able to predict their owners’ arrival when he or she comes home at unexpected times, or by a different car, or on foot, so that there seems to be no possible way that the owner’s scent could reach the house.

Far from being a passive speculative principle, synchronicity is a form of uncaused connectedness that allows phenomena to be inter-related at this mysterious level of being, to be in some way correlated, as we have seen happening between dogs and their human owners, or among birds of a flock.

Spiritual author Deepak Chopra, in his book, Synchrodestiny invites us to re-attune with this deeper level of reality if we want to experience increased synchronicities in our lives, that is, to grasp the opportunities that arise from coincidence, and to be true to our inner callings. I like to think that it is through this type of connectedness – an ‘uncaused’ connectedness – that God gives life to statuesque Adam in Michelangelo’s masterpiece. God doesn’t touch Adam, although the spark of life is somehow ignited in him. 

Of course, all creativity and creative expressions are based on quantum leaps and uncertainty, but what would humanity be without them? What would it feel like to stroll around Camden Town without seeing a teenager wearing a T-Shirt of The Creation?Doesn’t a simple and common encounter such as this remind us that, in the realm of non-local intelligence, anything is possible? 

Zeitgeist Of A Nation

The quarantine in which most Italian citizens have been forced into by the government since 8th of March can really go two ways. Either it’s like another, and deeply unusual, spiritual retreat where we’re removed from the pressures of socializing, attending happy hours, entertaining and being entertained by our usual social circle, which might open the door to a more open and unexpected relationship with who and what lies in our immediate surroundings – making us instantly more interested in our neighbour, his dog, or kinder to the grocer – or it is another occasion to grow deeply suspicious of each other.

This means that we are likely to sink our head into our scarf or in our protective mask as we cross our neighbour on the street and we are forced to share with him the same sidewalk on our way to the supermarket.

 I headed to the grocery store yesterday afternoon, and all I could see were empty streets, shops in lock-down, notices on the public boat’s piers of Venice warning people to keep a social distancing of at least one metre, obituaries, colourful drawings affixed to the walls of many homes where a child has drawn a joyful face and his candid wishes: ‘Everything will be fine.’

But pics can’t really do much to render the Zeitgeist in which the nation has fallen on 31st of January, when COVID-19 cluster-one was firstly discovered in a hospital in Rome, as two Chinese tourists tested positive to the deadly disease. Since then, the spread of the virus has quickly risen making of Italy the worst-affected country in the whole of Europe, numbering more than 100,000 confirmed cases and almost 12,000 deaths in the time span of less than two months.

The pressures on the country’s sanitary system have soon become overwhelming, as citizens affected by the ferocious disease compete for intensive care beds in the local hospitals. Brussels has promised a maxi-loan of more than €150 billion to our country, but we already know that the numbers of this economic rescue package may be nowhere near enough to normalise the situation we find ourselves in.

Speaking to friends who have grown up in Venice in the seventies, they say that over the last few weeks the city has reminded them of that of their youth, a city full of silence, a place where the narrow streets (‘calli’) felt at night like creepy places to traverse, as they could hear the steps of somebody approaching them behind their backs.

 When you’re used to elbow your way to the supermarket amid crowds of tourists, and you suddenly find yourself in this unusual, surreal stillness, you might realise that this scenario might be an invitation to explore our city beyond the monoculture of tourism, of great crowds, of polluting cruise ships. Now, it might be the time to envision a new dimension of living in this special city, in a way that pays attention to the fragile eco-system of our environment, perhaps by finally implementing much talked of policies that have not yet come to life (such as a limited number of daily/annual visitors).

 If all those things that gave us plenty to keep us entertained with are not going to be in place for indefinite time (!), we could choose to pay attention once again to those activities that once were symbols of our cultural authenticity, before the mass-culture of (fake) Murano glass and cheap industrial-made masks wiped them out in a single bout of high tide. Think shoemakers (calegheri), bricklayers (muratori), lace artisans (merlettai), woodworkers (forcolai).

More than anything, it is astonishing to see how even our dogs have become suspicious of this profound silence broken only by a seagull’s cry. However, there is life beyond our carefully considered walls. It is only us, and our pets, who are deeply scared. Nature is gracefully blooming, as the air, earth, water, seem to be doing exceptionally well with us caged.

Written by: Ambra Guarnieri

Forget About Total Noise. Silence Is All We need.

Our contemporary felt reality is constantly threatened by the abysses of what writer David Foster Wallace defined as Total Noise.

If this is the universal landscape in which the lives of most humans in the 21st century dwell, a partial  escape to this impasse could be reached if we could genuinely choose, at any given moment, what to pay attention to and what to ignore, preserving our sanity vis à vis the ‘glut’ of information with which we have to constantly battle!

To remind us the prophetic genius of Foster Wallace, if our reality is overwhelmingly huge and complex, then the dilemma opens of how are we bound to make sense of our perceived reality when the astonishing quantity of information (and its contradictory quality) we have at our disposal at any given moment appears to completely inhibit the capacity that each one of us has of framing reality in a narrative that has coherence and sense.

I believe that this is an existential condition that we might be able to overcome, by actively and consistently seeking, searching for, and even consciously creating for ourselves a space for silence, like an energetic well to dive into when the overstimulation of the physical and energetic environment surrounding us has taken its toll on our nervous systems and souls. However, creating this sacred well is less easy than we might think, and not only for those of us living in metropolitan environments.

Unless we are as brave as Norwegian explorer Erling Kragge, who spent 50 days in complete silence skiing to the Antarctic at minus fifty degrees below freezing – on a journey that more than a century before Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott endured – or fortunate enough to fly off to the other side of the globe to enjoy a silent retreat in luscious tropical surroundings, we need to come to terms with the fact that creating silence in an otherwise noisy and distracting environment requires a conscious act of disengagement from a broad field of visual and auditory attractions that we are constantly seduced into.

Sociologist Jonathan Crary explained in his book, Suspension of perceptions, that Western modernity since the 19th century has demanded that individuals define and shape themselves in terms of their capacity to ‘pay attention,’  labelling as dysfunctional or even abnormal the personalities of those individuals who are unable to properly pay attention to the world around them. It was in the late 1960s that Attention Deficit was formally diagnosed as a neurological disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.

But what might happen if we could consciously choose not to pay attention to the many seductions of the information age and decide to simply to cut off from the narratives that we are often paid to be participants of and simply keep silent, unengaged for some time? Will we face the risk of being labelled as abnormal, or simply detached, distant and indifferent?

In his publishing sensation, Silence in the age of noise, Kagge tells of having taken a long sailing trip as a youngster across West Africa, the Atlantic ocean, the Caribbean and then back again over the same ocean. This was in the 1980s, before the invention and expansion of the internet, therefore in the old days. Kagge recalls that, having got back home to Norway, after 8 months spent without any communication input from the outside world, he came to realize that the news and debate programmes in his native country were broadcasting almost exactly the same content as they did when he had set sail the previous autumn. ‘Politicians were almost debating the same questions with one another. Even the arguments were the same,’ he comments.

But this was in the 1980s, before the advent of the internet, but I guess if any of us could live through a similar experience, unlikely as this might be, we would be induced to reflect on the necessity vs. superfluity of many of our common behaviours.

Beyond all the ‘noisy’ narratives and dramas in which most of us keep our time and lives continuously engaged in, an often untapped, and overlooked, dimension of experience opens: silence. And the good news is: you can get this silence for free.

Kagge talks in a hearfelt way about the blessings that cultivating silence has brought to his own life, as an explorer, a father, a writer and a publisher. Silence, he explains, is where questions and answers are interrupted, judgment is suspended, and we are  catapulted back in time to our younger, freer, still unconditioned self, a time when we used to genuinely wonder, be curious and question the world around us, without being caught up in narratives of like and dislike, agreeing and disagreeing, consuming and producing.

From a materialistic perspective, silence is ‘nothing,’ so perhaps, not very interesting, especially if we are constantly on the lookout to be entertained or to get something ‘out’ from our activities. According to a purely economic grammar, silence might be called an ‘austerity measure,’ because indulging in it – as in an almost luxurious activity or in-activity  –  we refuse to take part to our too familiar role as observers, consumers, or producers of information and stimula. This, for some people, is scary and de-stabilizing, as it opens a new, less comfortable and familiar dimension of experience.

As his deep and touching personal exploration of silence unfolds, Kagge enters the domain of Buddhism.

Within Zen Buddhism, he explains, ‘one goal is to challenge what you see, the visible world. The most well-known practice, a koan, is to sit quietly and imagine the sound of a single hand clappling. The point is to imagine the one-armed clapping– which is impossible – and to dwell on what it means to move beyond that which is logical and sensible.’

Moving beyond that which is logical means moving beyond the conceptual mind, which for sure tells us that ‘a single hand can’t clap’ or that ‘not to think of an elephant’ is impossible.  Overcoming the boundaries of the conceptual mind is something that silence deeply encourages us to do when we dive into it through the practice of meditation. Meditation teaches us to simply be present, to simply be awake.

In Buddhism, Plain and Simple, Steve Hagen explains that, if you want to awaken, you have to forget about the outcomes, in other words,  you have to resist the narratives of the purely economic drama that contemporary marketing and cognitive psychology teach us that we are constantly forced to buy into. You have to resist boredom, to resist thinking, to resist overstimulation, and, instead, simply ‘observe your own inclination of mind.’ The effort to awaken is like aiming at a ‘reverse’ target. We all would like to hit the bull’s eye, we know that! We all expect a direct outcome for our activities, and, if this is economically negotiable, then, all the better. But, in the case of awakening, we can’t aim towards it with the same leaning, calculating mind that we would use for more worldly pursuits.

The teachings that the Buddha transmitted 2,500 years ago are well represented by the metaphor of the horse who is being led to water by the awakened. The awakened points to the horse the way, but it is then up to the horse who, relying on his own power and resources, has to make the conscious effort of drinking from the river. ‘Our ignorance is that most of us don’t realize that we’re thirsty. Or, if we realize we’re thirsty, we look for water in the wrong place.’

A similar argument could be applied to our need for silence, which could be equated to the water in the metaphor of the horse in the buddha-dharma. Silence might be exactly what we are most in need of, although it might be not so easy to recognize, especially when we are kept in the dopamine loop in which the information age keeps our minds strongly tied.

Dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters that is responsible for transmitting signals in between the nerve cells of the brain. As this chemical ‘does what you desire, seek and crave,’ it is the answer in terms of modern neuroscience to the working of what the Buddha over two millennia ago called the ordinary mind, that is the mind of craving, wanting, discerning, fixing.  The problem is that ‘dopamine is not programmed to release a feeling of fulfilment, even if you have achieved what you sought: as a result, you are never satisfied.’ The problem about dopamine is that this chemical – just like noise as overstimulation – is addictive, therefore the more we are inundated with it, the more we wish to be.

Silence, on the other hand, works differently. Silence is not about feeding, it is rather about taking something away. It is a means of creating coherence and sense in an otherwise chaotic world, just as the able sculptor needs to remove the excessive material from his piece to create something that has beauty and harmony. ‘It’s about getting inside what you are doing. Experiencing rather than over-thinking. Allowing each moment to be big enough. Not living through other people and things.’

Silence helps us to unlock new ways of thinking, to find unexpected solutions to problems and dilemmas, or even to experience spiritual epiphanies. It is the water we, as thirsty horses, long to immerse our dry manes into from the buzz of the information age. We can use it as a tool to turn up and down the ample volume of our lives without being passively subject to it.

Written by: Ambra Guarnieri

Venetians Call On (MOSE)S To Save Them From Drowning

On 12 November, the city of Venice suffered the worst flood in more than half a century.  Water rose to 187 cm, inundating streets and squares, causing unprecedented damage to historical landmarks such as St Mark’s Basilica, local businesses, residential buildings and warehouses.

And when you live on a ground floor of any kind – whether of a modest residential building or of a Venetian palazzo – and several feet of salty water rush through your living room and kitchen, permanently damaging floors and furniture, and you need to stay up until 2am in the morning to clean up the mess with buckets and electrical water pumps, knowing that all of this might happen again and again, in a day, in a week, or in a month time, you realise that this is not funny at all.

On that night, and on the following days, Venetians of my generation, alongside those of younger and older ones, have all massively called on Facebook to express their anger and puzzlement via messages, videos, pictures and updates of the urgent situation of having their homes, offices, restaurants, shops, flooded by water, in an almost post-apocalyptic scenario. We aimed to express solidarity with each other for something we cannot really put our finger on… and as the world watched powerlessly while the ‘jewel’ of Venice was being put to the test by the worst acqua alta since 1966, a feeling of sadness and anger invaded our hearts.

Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, firstly blamed ‘climate change’ for the disaster that caused damages for hundreds of millions of euros, and forced the Italian government to declare a state of national emergency.

Scrolling the news on various international newspapers, I am saddened to see how the the city of Venice is presented in this latest Italian drama. An article from the New York Times ‘discourages’ tourists from visiting the city during the months of November and December, to avoid catching acqua alta, with all the nuisances that this climatic condition entails for travelers.

With all due respect to tourism – a great source of prosperity for Venice and its economy – what can be said about its residents, who don’t have the luxury of taking ‘a break’ from the city over the winter months, and who   have to live the city day by day, and to coexist with the threat of ever-higher tides, day after day, year after year?

Yes! We, Venetians, exist. We are real.

And, it’s true, we have thigh-high rubber boots in the closet, ready to be extracted from under a shelf and promptly worn, as soon as the unsettling sound of a siren announcing acqua alta pierces through the unusually silent, almost padded, winterly venetian atmosphere.

And, yes! Most of us have piled up in the storage room a few bulkheads made of robust metal, ready to be affixed to doors and windows, when the forecast says that high tide is on its way. Sadly, bulkheads weren’t enough on Tuesday 12th of November, as the small streets – the Venetian calli – turned into canals, and the water overflowed from the lovely paratie, inundating the ground floors of houses, hotels, shops and restaurants.

Residents of Venice are puzzled, outraged and angry because the engineering project that has started to be built over fifteen years ago hasn’t yet come to life – in spite of the enormous public financing that the Italian government has rendered available for it.

What happened to MOSE – literally the Experimental Electromechanical Module – the system of retractable dams that should protect the city from the long-standing and ever-present menace of high tides?

The construction of the complex system of mobile steel barriers, for which the Italian government has promised resources for a total of more of € 5billion, isn’t yet complete. Private consortium Venezia Nuova began working on it back in 2003, after having been assigned the task of realising the innovative, previously untested project of a system of retractable barriers that should, when not in use, lay on the lagoon’s seabed.

The likely reasons for the delay in its realization are as predictable as you might expect: corruption, bureaucracy, alongside technical difficulties.

 In 2014, a corruption scandal internal to the consortium consistently slowed down the works, forcing the central government to take control of the project, while the heads of the consortium were being substituted.  Since then, progress has been made, however, the 78 steel barriers that should protect Venice from flooding, are still helplessly lying down on the lagoon’s seabed and should become operational only by 2022.

I decided to sit down Giovanni Cecconi. Mr Cecconi is a Venetian engineer who has worked on MOSE as senior hydraulic until 2015, and  now directs WIGMAN, a Local Community Association that aims to protect and safeguard the exceptional ecological environment of Venice and its lagoon, by intensifying its interconnection with the social and cultural identity of the city and its residents.

Mr Cecconi is of the opinion that the only way to work around issues of corruption, fraud and  bureaucracy that have consistently slowed down the construction of the crucial infrastructure over the last 15 years, and damaged the image of Italy internationally,  is to entrust the management of MOSE to ALMA, a new private – but publicly funded – body where the best specialists and  commissioners from the previous superintendence, local and regional authorities, can work together with the citizens to speed up the works and complete the construction of the barriers by 2021.

 On November 24, Mr Cecconi created a petition that asks the Italian government to constitute this new local government body – Agenzia Lagunare Magistrato alle Acque – to operationalise MOSE as soon as possible, regenerate Venice and its territory, reconnecting the citizens with the implementation of land policy.

If you’d like to save Venice from drowning… please join the residents in signing WIGMAN Resilience Lab’s petition on Change.org:

 https://www.change.org/p/comitato-interministeriale-per-la-salvaguardia-di-venezia-il-comitato-per-la-salvaguardia-di-venezia-ordini-la-gestione-operativa-del-mose

 Written by: Ambra Guarnieri

Photo Credit: Alessandro Mazzola

Are We Really Free To Say What We Want To Say?

The cultural phenomena that proliferate today on the online platform are the flags that our society exhibits to prove to all citizens of this world that we live in a democratic society. Blogs, social media and the like are here to remind us that we live in a society that guarantees to each one of us, regardless of provenance, status, class and gender, to express and exchange our opinions and views of the world. 

The traffic of information on Twitter and Facebook has at times facilitated communication among the participants of political protests. In the Arab spring, the web played a significant role in the disintegration of autocratic regimes. In Tunisia and Egypt, it has encouraged freedom and the lengthy process of democratisation.

Other times, social media work as invaluable platforms of propaganda for terrorist organizations, as we know the so-called Islamic State to be one of its most potent users.

Whatever the case, if we turn closer to the broad experiential context in which language is exchanged online in the ‘realm’ of everyday life, we will find that the relation between distinct voices that takes place here often hides the existence of strong power inequalities. The media are not so genuinely or naively 'polyvocal'!

Working on his theory of the novel in the 1920s, Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) identified dialogism as a certain relation between voices in a narrative text. By looking at the ways in which these related to each other, Bakhtin argued that the novel was the most ‘progressive’ among literary genres. In the novel, he explained, each voice takes shape as a conscious reaction to the ideological position of 'The Other.' 

Almost a century after Bakhtin worked on the novel, we could approach with the same curiosity other cultural practices that are highly innovative in providing its many ‘authors’ with complex discursive spaces of expression.  The online platform is definitely the place where each one of us can express his point of view, make his opinion heard. But how ‘polyphonic’ is the web? And what type of relationship is in place between the voices that interact with each other on its many platforms? Are we really free to say what we want say, and how we want to say it?

At a closer look, the cultural phenomena that circulate today on the internet represent only the ‘new generation’ of those kind of expressions that have started flourishing with ‘mass culture’ in the industrial West of the late nineteenth century.

In the late eighties, American academic Ken Hirschkop suggested that critical theorists could apply Bakhtin's notion of dialogism to cultural contexts such as newspapers, magazines, radios and televisions, and to the arena of political debates. Hirschkop found that raising arguments about polyvocality in these contexts was of great potential, in the measure in which these arguments are ‘arguments about democracy, and the kind of linguistic and cultural life democracy implies.’

What if we could approach with the same toolkit the practices that flourish and circulate in the information age? Instead of seeing the cultural phenomena that proliferate on the web as simple forms of cultural expression, we could actually read them as cultural ‘products,’ as they employ language as a form of social exchange. The accumulation and circulation of this material in today’s mass culture allows to these expressions to acquire tremendous power in the culture at large. What digital marketing and its many strategies teaches us is that that words, far from being naive expressions of individual souls, are monetised, they are golden coins.

How do social media reflect the voices and points of view of the citizens of this world? What is the web of relationships that govern their circulation?  The online platform is nothing but a gigantic and rhizomorphic structure made of long and intricate chains of what Bakhtin once called ‘speech acts,’ not unlike those circulating in an earlier phase of mass culture on newspapers, magazines and televisions.

Is the relationship between the ‘voices’ on the web paratactic or do we always and undoubtedly need to negotiate with an invisible but omnipresent author that watches over us and decides what we can say and how we are going to say it? 

Isabel Thottam from Paste Magazine has recently argued that the power of censorship has shifted nowadays from governments to the hands of private social media companies. Twitter, the online social networking service with over 330 monthly users, has been caught removing tweets and deleting hashtags from its digital history over the years.

It was the case in 2016 when, a couple of months ahead of the US Democratic Party’s primaries, Twitter was accused of censoring thousands of tweets under the hashtag‘#DNCLeak.’ The leaked emails scandal involved the leak of almost 20.000 mails from the Democratic National Committee – the governing body of the US Democratic party – subsequently published by Wikileaks, that aimed at sabotaging Sander’s presidential campaign.

The scandal is thought to have had a significant impact on the Democratic Party’s internal cohesion, and to have influenced the public perception and image of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just a few months away from the US general elections.  Similarly, social media companies apply censorship to keep us with a perception of sexuality that is comfortable, or manoeuvring data so that particular hashtags are not allowed to trend. 

 Just like Twitter, other major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, apply a subtle or less so censorship on the messages that its users are trying to get across.

We are often reminded that the dynamics that preside the circulation of cultural and aesthetic phenomena in today’s ‘mass culture’ is less democratic than we might think at a first glance.

All About Dyslexia: Cutting Edge Techniques To Cope With A Royal Syndrome

I have recently visited some of London leading centres for dyslexia to hear more about the syndrome that affected King George VI.

 If the monarch would be living today, he could have certainly benefited from great improvements in treating the syndrome that hits today around two million of people in the UK alone, with all due respect to the healing techniques that speech therapist Lionel Logue employed for him.

Dyslexia, the disorder that affects the ability to read, write and speak properly, is a disability that hits around 4 to 5 per cent of the general population.

According to the British Dyslexia Association, in the UK alone around 375.000 pupils suffer from this learning disadvantage. Aside from the young population, there is a conspicuous number of adults who suffer from the syndrome of Queen’s Elizabeth grandfather. Most of them have been struggling with some of its symptoms for years, before taking guts to address themselves to a specialist.  

Dyslexia Action is one of the leading organizations in the UK providing help and support for those with the condition. A charity with 26 centres in the UK, one of them in Grosvenor Gardens, central London. “Many adults come to our centre to have assessments,” says Ms. Renoo, Office Manager at the Grosvenor centre. “They have been struggling with this type of problems for years, and they want to get tested,” she adds. “They had to overcome a lot of fears and prejudices in order to come here.”

The symptoms that adults affected by dyslexia experience, she explains, are most commonly the difficulty to read a text, to spell a word, or to carry out instructions in sequence. Often dyslexia is associated with other developmental conditions, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Dyspraxia, which causes sensory integration dysfunction.  “Most of the people affected by dyslexia can read better on a yellow background than on a white one,” says Ms Renoo. She explains that people with the condition are generally more reactive to certain colours than to others, as they are more likely to integrate a certain type of sensory information. 

Children and adults who are treated in the London centres can benefit from the multi-sensory technique, which involves experiencing an object through integrating what they see, listen and touch in the same learning experience. “The multisensory technique entails experiencing the process of learning using as many senses as possible,” says Sylvia, teacher at the North London Dyslexia Centre in Mill Hill. “In this way people with this condition can learn to use as many senses as possible in their experience of an object, so that their stronger senses can help the weaker ones.” “They also have a chance to read, so that their vocalizing and what they see can be integrated through the use of colours, so that certain words or sounds are reinforced.” 

Written by: Ambra Guarnieri

Many Projects To Heal The Niger Delta

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer and the eighth biggest exporter of black gold in the world, accounting for 8% of US oil imports. 

The paradox of the Niger Delta is exactly this: a state of acute poverty in the midst of plenty. What is going on in the area is a “continuing economic, political and environmental disaster,” says Chris Cragg, an independent oil and gas expert who regularly visits the area. Although billions of dollars of oil wealth flow every year from the region, the majority of communities live there for less than $1 a day.

Stakeholder Democracy Network is a respected rights group that works in collaboration with local communities and civil society groups and in coordination with Amnesty International. Their aim is to support the population living in the area. The charity works to empower the locals by promoting non-violent projects and encouraging them to stand up for their own rights.

As little has been done so far to improve the lives of millions of people living in poverty in this region of the world – and as corruption thrives at all levels of government and the civil war continues – SDN supports those who have chosen non-violence as a route to collectivise their bargaining power. Their belief is that peaceful action is the best source for a prosperous and stable environment.

Nigeria has one of the most dysfunctional oil pipelines networks in the world. A broad debate is that revolving around oil spills, as these are one of the most prominent environmental hazards of the region. In the decade from 1999 to 2009, official figures stated the number of breaks and leaks in these pipelines to be at an average of 1,598 per year. The 'Feed Response’ project by Stakeholder Democracy Network aims at giving immediate response to oil spill emergencies, stopping them before their impact on the environment becomes too severe.

“The pipelines in Nigeria are far too old,” says Celestine Akpobari, a human rights activist based in Port Harcourt who collaborates with SDN and Amnesty International. “The problem about these multinational oil companies is that they don't respect the international standards they should respect.” He adds: “What the oil companies aren’t allowed to do in Norway, they shouldn't be in Niger Delta, whereas they seem to use two different standards depending on the country. Oil spills in Nigeria are left for over two months sometimes, and this obviously has negative consequences on the environment. Major corporations such as Shell should be able to provide a prompt response to such accidents and don't allow them to happen.”

Mr. Akpobari is a lead of the Environmental Impact Assessment project which enables the local people to monitor their environment directly and independently. “The multinational oil companies didn't expect that this was going to happen. We are bringing awareness and power in the people, and we are helping them to monitor their environment independently.”

 “The situation in Nigeria can't be changed overnight,” claims Gaia Sprocati, International Programme Coordinator at Stakeholder Democracy Network. “Working with developing countries nowadays requires a huge amount of patience, and the sharp quality of trying to make lots of different activities converge.” “We are actually of the idea that more democracy in the developing countries would mean for them a better future,” she adds. “The real aim of an NGO is not just to report injustices, but to find concrete solutions. To improve the conditions of the people and build more democracy is one of our main goals.”

The philosophy at the core of SDN and other NGOs is that in order ensure Nigeria a better future, a necessary first step is working directly with the local people by helping them to develop the skills necessary to change the status quo. Their STAND project empowers and trains local communities to directly approach local and state government to fulfil their duty and to address their core developmental needs. The program's abbreviation stands for “Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in the Niger Delta,” and it believes that the civilian government of Nigeria has resources at its disposal to make significant contributions to the reduction of poverty in the area, but these are not being spent where they should be. SDN has built over the last few years several STAND centres across three Niger Delta states, although its network reaches far beyond. 

The Niger Delta

An Interview With Human Rights Activist Celestine Akpobari

Celestine Akpobari is a Program Officer Coordinator at Social Action, an NGO that monitors the impact that oil exploitation has on human rights in the Niger Delta. “Shell and the other multinationals oil companies have made some promises here in the Niger Delta but have never respected,” says Akpobari. “They managed to do all of these things with the collaboration of the government officials. They have destroyed our environment, our livelihood,” he opens up. “We don't have any tap water in the Niger Delta. There are very strange things happening in the area, and they have been going on for decades.” 

 On the 26th January 2010 at a hearing at the Dutch parliament of The Hague, Shell was bombarded with accusations from Amnesty International and other pressure groups of abusing human rights, failing to clean up disastrous environmental  damage and continuing the hazardous practice of burning off gas from about 100 wells in the area of the Niger Delta. Despite the backlash following the hearing at The Hague almost a decade ago, executives from Royal Dutch Shell PLC have ever since defended their operations in the Niger Delta, by blaming the local population and claiming that an overwhelming majority of the environmental damage in the area is directly caused by sabotage.

 Shell's Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, Ian Craig, blamed sabotage for a total amount of 70% of the oil spills that have occurred in the area over the last decades.  Speaking with Mr Akpobari, however, we get a different version of the story: “This is not true.” “Oil spills are not a result of sabotage. What has been called sabotage by the oil-production companies is on the contrary the result of equipment failure.” 

According to a leaked US diplomatic cable exposed in 2010, the oil giant Shell admitted having inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, obtaining full control of the politicians' decisions about oil-rich Niger Delta. Shell's top executive in Nigeria, Ann Pickard, told US diplomats that the company had seconded employees to every relevant department, so she was aware of “everything that was being done in those ministries.”

Ms. Pickard has boasted on several occasions that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration in the country’s political system and was unaware of the extent to which the company knew about its deliberations.        

Pygmalion Replays At Leeds Playhouse

As a new version of Pygmalion radically transformed through video and sound technology by the inventiveness of director Sam Pritchard hits the Courtyard Theatre in Leeds, we have revisited the actors who have played the cantankerous professor of phonetics in one Bernard Shaw’s most celebrated comedies.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses narrates that Pygmalion, a sculptor from Cyprus, managed under Venus blessings to turn an ivory sculpture into a woman. But how did Henry Higgins turn a Cockney ‘flower’ girl – Eliza Doolittle – into a lady fit for high society? Since the play’s debut in 1914, many actors have taken on the role of the talented and life–transforming professor of phonetics.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree – 1914: The actor was the first to play Professor Higgins, and the first who sought to ‘sweeten’ the play’s ending. An incurable sentimentalist, it seemed natural to him that if a play had a hero… he should eventually end up loving and marrying its heroine! The commercially astute actor is reminded to have made this comment amid Shaw’s exasperation: "My ending makes money, you ought to be grateful!" "Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot!," was the playwright’s answer.

Alex McCowen – 1974: The award winning actor co-starred with Diana Rigg in the West End for a more feminist version of the much loved play.

Peter O'Toole – 1984: The star of Lawrence of Arabia played the role of Higgins at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End, opposite Jackie Smith-Wood. When the show moved to New York City, the critics fell for its star at once. “O'Toole ruled this Pygmalion with elegance and talent,” gushed at the time the New York Times. In the amended Val May’s version, the play ends with the fanatical phonetician laughing uncontrollably at the thought of Eliza's decision to marry the ‘hopeless’ Freddy Eynsford.

Tim Pigott-Smith – 2008: When the Warwickshire born actor played Higgins at the Old Vic in London, his performance received mixed reactions. “Tim Piggott-Smith seems almost a perfect Henry Higgins when we first see him in the comfort of his own home,” wrote Peter Brown, reviewer for London Theatre Guide. “But when we next see him at his mother's house, he became almost ridiculously childish – I began to feel the wave of disbelief waft over me,” he added.

Rupert Everett – 2011: Everett is one of the latest in the long line of Higgins's interpretations. The English actor gave an unexpected version of Shaw's prickly but witty professor. The performance however didn’t fully convince the critics, and Everett was described by the press at times as “languid and gruff,” at others as “dark and brooding.” “When he [Everett] emerges from the Covent Garden shadows, he evokes images of Jack the Ripper,” Michael Billington, from The Guardian, commented.

An Afternoon At Sotheby’s Art Auction

More than £30m were raised on Friday at Sotheby’s Art Auction in New Bond street.

Over 40 masterpieces of Contemporary and Italian Art have been sold in total. A collection of artworks from 20th century Italian art, including works by top artists Lucio Fontana, Piero Dorazio, Marino Marini and Massimo Campigli were sold for more than £18m.

The most expensive masterpiece has been a version of Fontana “Concetto spaziale, attese,” sold for £2m, and previously estimated between £1.5m and £2.0m.

Jerry Hall, Ex-wife of Mick Jagger, contributed to Friday’s auction selling off prestigious pieces from her private collection, including portraits by  the likes of Lucian Freud and Francesco Clemente. A version of Andy Warhol’s famous “Dollar Sign” – the artwork that Warhol himself gave to the model as a present for her birthday many years ago – was sold for £180.000. A good way to let go of her past? Hall’s art collection fetched her more than £ 2.3m in one afternoon. The piece that attracted the public’s attention more consistently has been “Eight months gone,” a tiny portrait in which Hall shows naked and heavily pregnant in her porcelain skin tone, while sensuously reclining on a white sofa. The bid for the artwork was finally set at £500.000. 

Scott Nussbaum, Specialist Head of Day Sales at Sotheby’s New York, bought Antony Gormley’s “Contact” – a sculpture made of lead, fibreglass and plaster – for £230.000, estimated to be the minimum price for the work. “I bought it for a client,” he added.

Tate New Art Season: When Photography Meets Documentary

Simon Baker, Tate Modern's Curator of Photography and International Art, presented on Monday at Hay Festival the gallery’s new photographic season.

Baker discussed with artist Taryn Simon about the outstanding potential that this form of visual art has of chronicling events, especially when the photographic medium is blended with the photographer's need to document reality. He showed to the audience flocked to the Wales Stage some of the most relevant additions that were made over the last decade to the Tate Collection, that are currently on display on the fifth-floor of the gallery, containing thought-provoking developments of the documentary form. “The work of Luc Delahaye,” – he explained – “is probably the best example of the movement from photojournalism to the walls of galleries and museums.” “Delahaye worked for a news agency and produced images of hard content for newspapers and magazines, after which he changed his way of taking pictures to make them suitable to a museum and its audience.”

The New York born photographer Taryn Simon, is one of the highlights of Tate’s new photographic season. Commenting upon her work, A living man declared dead and other chapters, Simon recalled: “This is a work project that I have been creating over a period of four years, during which I have been travelling around the world recording blood lines and related stories,”  she explained.

‘In each work, I have documented the forces that circumstances, government and religion play in determining the lives of the individual, by colliding with the internal ones, such as psychological or physical inheritances. The result is far away from simply ‘being there’ and ‘telling the truth’, it is rather a creative process.” “Many of the stories that I document in this work are archetypal episodes that the observer can interpret as versions of the past, or of the future, but that are happening now.” 

Simon’s artistic endeavour is concerned with documenting the story of people who have died across the world in wars and poverty. A living man declared dead displays a sequence of pictures in which each person is juxtaposed, on the left side, with the portraits of the relatives who survived her and who are portrayed in a seated position. On the right side are pictures that illustrate the life story of the dead. The subjects of these touching stories range from feuding families in Brazil to victims of genocide in Bosnia, from human 'exhibitions' in the United States to the living dead in India.

La Bell Epoque Unveils Unreleased Bell

Steve Bell private view of La Bell Époque exhibition took place last Wednesday at the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell Square. In the overcrowded ground room of the museum, which hosts some of the work by the most prominent British cartoonists, The Guardian award winning author of comic strips gave a warm welcome to the guests occurred to admire the largest amount of material from his production ever displayed.

 “Becoming a cartoonist was the second right choice of my life – he said – “while the first one was to marry Heather,” – he added giving a hug to his wife. 

 The exhibition hosts a large quantity of works produced by the artist mainly for The Guardian, and for other publications, during the thirty years of his fruitful career as political cartoonist, alongside unreleased material.

 The leader cartoons and comic strips displayed in the cosy room of the museum disclose Bell’s unique gift as a graphic commentator of the major controversies that the British political landscape has faced over the course of more than three decades: Thatcherism, The Iraq war, the ‘war on terror.’ A lighter section is dedicated to the romances of the Royal family, Charles and Camilla, William and Kate.

 There was no career path that brought me to become a cartoonist,” – said Bell. “I studied art... But I didn’t like the idea of being an artist. I founded it somehow risible.” “First of all, I wanted to become a teacher, but I found that job too stressful.” “So – he added – I followed a friend from University, Kipper Williams, into the daunting and exciting world of freelance cartooning. He was definitely the person who inspired me to make it!”

Among the people present at the private view on Wednesday were members of his family, friends, members of the press, graphic novelist Brian Talbot, and the Cartoon museum curator, Anita O’Brien. La Bell Époque is now open to the public until July 24th.

The Imagine Project Sparks

Herbie Hancock has performed on Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall.

One of the most attended events of this year's London Jazz Festival,the improbably 70-year-old maestro unleashed his amazing talents in a two-and-a-half single set.

“You will hear some very difficult music tonight. You might ask yourself: what the hell is going on?” Hancock said, turning to the public. “This is the kind of band that likes to confuse everybody else. That is true, you know, when these guys play” he laughs, “They say, I would like to find a way to throw them off!”

Violinist-vocalist Kristina Train, soul singer-keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, guitarist Lionel Loueke, drummer Trevor Lawrence and bassist James Genus accompanied the stellar musician to cover the world-pop repertoire that comprises his last studio album, Imagine. The project sees the collaboration between dozens of world-famous musicians.

At the end of the first set, the master introduced to the public his project for peace and tolerance. “My father actually avoided being in the arms service in the United States just when I was born. He could do that because he was thirty years old, and he had two children,” he said with a smile. “I had the great opportunity to have my father with me for all the 90 years that he lived,” he added, as a burst of applauses lifts the hall and a tear rippled down from his cheeks.

“It wouldn't be good to play music if it wouldn't be a challenge,” Hancock said. Just as we managed to get a taste of Hancock’s new pop repertoire, the band slid back languorously to performing much loved hits Watermelon Man, Cantaloupe Island and Chameleon. A wave of sublime emotions flooded the hall.

To give the audience a better taste of the new studio album, the band performed “Don't Give Up,” “Imagine,” “A change is gonna come, ” and other tracks.

Lyrical expression and an unbeatable taste for improvisation are the signature of a worldwide project aiming to promote peace, humanity and tolerance through the poetics of music.