You Belong Here
Anti-immigration poster, Zurich rest stop. August, 2011.
For more, see Popular Culture in Switzerland.
Latest Entries
Bibi’s War
The Israeli government has passed legislation clamping down on leftwing NGOs. What does it mean? Yours truly, in conversation with Anna Momigliano, in Tuesday’s edition of Panorama. (In Italian)
He’ll Be Back
Brussels is doing its best to guarantee his return to office. “Berlusconi in exile.” Via Beroldo, Milano. August, 2011.
All About Home
Romania-themed Sunday service advert, Porta Palazzo. Torino, November.
African refugee demonstration, Piazza Castello. Torino, October.
World of Kebab (Reference Version)
Since we first launched Souciant in March, I’ve used my near-weekly contributions to generate copy for my new book. On a good month, I’ll crank out four thousand words of final draft copy, or 1K a week. It’s been a good deadline-driven framework. Though I can write that much in a day, I wouldn’t bank on it being the best material. Given a week, it’s a totally different story.
Hence today’s piece, World of Kebab. Named after a Turkish fast food delivery van I used to run into in Stuttgart, the article traffics in one of my favorite themes, food’s centrality to cultural identity. As I pushed the topic in my last book, Israel vs. Utopia, food is a reasonable, if not desirable alternative to religion. Its sensuality is just about the most secular thing I can think of.
Gig Flyer City
It won’t win any awards for complexity. But it’s a great gig advert. Borgo Po, Torino. August, 2011.
Sound Travels
For the last month, I’ve indulged myself in a bit of music writing. For those who know my professional background, it’s in my blood. I co-edited a well-regarded music and politics magazine in the US for nearly eight years, which The Washington Post once called “The New Yorker of punk magazines.” I also served as the label manager of a now-defunct electronic music imprint, for whom I wrote all of the marketing and media copy.
Publishing these pieces anonymously, in Souciant’s new Boombox column, has allowed me the breathing room I’ve needed to resume my former passion. Avoiding traditional music criticism, I’ve used the opportunity to experiment. The first column deals with Italian hip-hop, something near and dear to my heart. The second covers leftists bemoaning the lack of decent music at demonstrations, while the third takes on a bedroom recording about being made an orphan by the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This week’s column is the most formally written of the lot. It’s a dissection of several recordings of Tokyo Rose-style broadcasts, made by NATO forces, during the Libyan War. Posted to Soundcloud, these noisy, Marine band announcements help document the cultural dimension of the struggle against Gadaffi. I go out of my way to brand them field recordings, as they constitute their own ‘found sounds’, captured in the so-called ‘field’.
A field recording enthusiast myself, who has used numerous similar recordings in their own music – the Christal Methodists sampled Christian radio, for example, while the Elders of Zion use live recordings of just about everything – it was a way of tying together my musical interests as a journalist. Here’s to more such explorations. It’s a welcome relief from covering race. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy doing that. I just miss writing about sound.
Massiv CD photographed at Media Markt, Neukölln.
On The Economist
One part media criticism, the other, a photo essay. Discussing media coverage of Occupy Wall Street, in Tuesday’s Souciant.