So,
We ended up having a lab again. And a Gallery space. And a space to talk and meet people and make experiments. What would be a good name?
Leo wrote a book, some years ago, titled in tree languadges: “улица”, the street and still had this address: ulitza.com. A coincidence? After a bit of fiddling with the idea of a name for this endaevour we are trying to make it work.
In the title of the book, that collects Leo’s photos from the turbulent times of the fall of the Soviet Union, the street was intended already in more than one language and in more than one meaning. The street in the photo, from the provinces to the center, from Prague to East Berlin, to Krakow, to Grozny or Kiev, is full of people, of passion, of looks and questions, trades, offers, faces.
A world used by a poet is never neutral. In ucrainian is, Українська, in polish ulicy, in Pessoa’s portughese it is “la rua“. In Italian “La Strada” a Fellini’s film. Not a written poem but a visual one. As a poet once said “noi italiani non sappiamo più vedere” (we don’t know anymore how to see) if not with the eyes of our poets and storytellers. So “La Strada” would be the italian name of the lab.
And so why translate it? Why not compose poetry with any language that has to give a meaning to the seam research, the one you can only do going outside, put you in public, on the street, not necessarily as a romantic “on the road” generational hero, but as a more prosaic fellow, artisan, seller of potatoes, of books, of a laughter or of his own body, per strada, in the street, were (human) life flows.
So the name is different whoever language you chose to read this site. And if you want to discuss the translation let’s talk about it
So time has passed since my first lab. Who cares, we might be still around for a while. What are we searching? What are the Gordian riddles we try to dissect with our swords made of imagination, tongues and sweat? And yours?
To write this piece of text I learned about a poem from a Aleksandr Blok, who died of starvation and despair in 1921, age 40. Describes a walk in the night, stuff you expect to find on the street, a lamp, a pharmacy. You die, he said, and everything starts again, the same, the lamp, the pharmacy, the street. I find it telling, as a poem and as a coincidence.
Leo and myself, opening this space, don’t aim to such highs. But still we have curiosity and capability that we put there “in the street”. We have got a space, last resources and some time to share. Maybe you have as well. If you have passions to show on the street drop by and make kin.
federico “il cane” bonelli
How the world sounds in slavic languages.
Russian у́лица (úlica) inherited
Ukrainian ву́лиця (vúlytsia) inherited
Belarusian ву́ліца (vúlica) inherited
Bulgarian у́лица (úlica) inherited
Macedonian улица (ulica) inherited
Serbo-Croatian у̏лица (ȕlica) inherited
Slovene úlica inherited
Czech ulice inherited
Slovak ulica inherited
Polish ulica inherited
Silesian ulica inherited
Carpathian Rusyn у́лиця (úlycja) inherited
Pannonian Rusyn улїца (uljica) inherited
Hungarian utca borrowing (l→u vocalization)
Romanian uliță borrowing
Aromanian ulitsã borrowing
Lithuanian ulyčia, ūlyčia borrowing
Samogitian ulīčė borrowing
Caló ulicha borrowing
Why is the street the right place to bring the work of artists? Who do you find in the streets? Can we do work (labor) in a place that is by definition public, other, open, uncertain, maybe unsafe as the street?
Is history something that happens in the street? Sulla strada? Is there a prosaic Tao for the streets of the cities and villages of the world? With the encounters, the synchronicity, the cruelty and the solidarity of the outside spaces. Hard light, darkness, shadows, side streets, desert streets…
Night, street, lamp, pharmacy —
A meaningless, dim light.
Live another quarter century —
It will all be the same. There’s no way out.You’ll die — and start all over again,
And everything will repeat, as before:
Night, the icy ripple of the canal,
Pharmacy, street, lamp.Aleksandr Blok