Ayserin

Moving!

2011-07-27T02:26:00.001+02:00

My dear readers, I have neglected you for too long now! (I still cannot believe my last post dates back from April 2011!). This doesn't mean I haven't done anything in between... Those who follow me on twitter will know.

This summer comes with a major change in my life: that I have finally decided to start working independently on my literature, film and comics projects. I will also continue blogging, in English, in French and sometimes in Turkish.

You can find all about my new plans and continue following my work on my brand new website http://cananmarasligil.com which will also host a blog section.

Thank you all for reading me so far and I hope to see you in my new web home!

Translating Literature, Reviewing Translated Literature

2011-04-14T17:01:00.000+02:00

The online magazine for international literature, Words Without Borders, has launched a series to explore the ways that book reviews handle translation. As it is explained on the WWB website:

Reviewers and translators each have varied opinions on how translations should be discussed, and on who should be doing the discussing. At a recent panel on the future of book reviewing, review editors stressed the importance of translation coverage, though one admitted that he would rather pass on a translated book than assign it to a reviewer who might not “get it right.” (Getting it right, according to him, means finding a reviewer with the ability to determine whether the translator has been faithful to the original language, and whether or not the translation “sounds” anything like the original text.) The issue came up again the following week, at a subsequent panel of book review editors. One made the point that there are essentially two kinds of reviews for translations, one for books that are appearing in the language for the first time, and another for books that have been translated before. Another editor said he expects an overall level of expertise from his reviewers on both the writer and the language, and a third said that a reviewer does not need to be a specialist in the language the book was written in, in fact she encouraged people to cover works from languages outside of their knowledge to follow their interest in contemporary literature.

So far, Word Without Borders has published five articles from literary translators such as Edith Grossman, Daniel Hahn, Lorraine Adams and more. You can find a list of the published articles here.

One major problem, especially in the English speaking book market, is the ridiculously small amount of translations (only 3%!). Edith Grossman also tackles this issue in her essay Why Translation Matters (you can read a review of her book in the New York Times Sunday Book Review of 8 April 2010).

I met one editor at a major UK publishing house who mentioned the ignorance and laziness of anglo-saxon editors (including himself) on the matter. It is good that they are aware of the issue, but it is really bothering that not much is done from their side about changing attitudes towards literary translation.

Another interesting publication that came out recently is the Diversity Report 2010: Literary Translation in Current European Book Markets. An analysis of authors, languages, and flows, written by market researcher and consultants Rüdiger Wischenbart. The report looks into who gets translated in European fiction and who is not through a survey of 200 well renowned authors of contemporary fiction across 12 European languages.

Call for Entries: Sarajevo Talent Campus 2011

2011-03-16T21:28:00.007+01:00

You may remember that I had the wonderful opportunity to participate as a screenwriter to last year's Sarajevo Talent Campus, and that I posted articles about some of the lectures and sessions we had, like ones with Semih Kaplanoglu, Samuel Maoz, Gaspar Noé ... On top of these great filmmakers, we also had the chance to have a full session with Morgan Freeman (that was an unforgettable experience!). The whole week was extremely productive and useful, a very rich professional and personal experience. I haven't been as productive as I would have wished to since I got back home and to my day job, but I did work on - and still am developing- some projects. And the Talent Campus definitely boosted me to have faith in my writing and my ideas.

If you are a filmmaker, producer, screenwriter or actor from Southeast Europe, check out the Sarajevo Talent Campus website to apply for the 5th Sarajevo Talent Campus. The theme this year is Our Time, My Point of View. For more info visit the STC 2011 website.

Readers, Authors, Librarians, Publishers... All Against DRM!

2011-03-15T09:26:00.000+01:00

If you're against DRM's (Digital Restrictions Management), there is a way to show it. Check the Readers Bill of Rights for digital books and gather the logo's from their website. I have to say I'm extremely tired of restrictions that are forced upon digital books. One recent example of misusing the digital medium to apply absolutely ridiculous restrictions - that aren't even relevant for the print version of a book! - is the 26 check-out policy on digital books HarperCollins has suggested to libraries. Cory Doctorow makes a very good criticism of this in his Guardian article Ebooks: durability is a feature not a bug.

A French version of the logo's and the Reader's Bill of Rights exist on the e-bouquin website. Thanks to Clément Monjou for spreading the news on twitter.

Logo's in English on readersbillofrights.info
Logo's in French on ebouquin.fr

"Au Rendez-vous des poètes" Picasso's Art and Literary Contacts

2011-03-07T00:50:00.001+01:00

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is currently showing Picasso in Paris (1900-1907), an exhibition tracing Picasso's artistic development while in Paris in the beginning of the 20th century. As part of this really nice exhibition and the Museum's Sunday Lectures, Peter Read (professor of modern French literature and visual arts at the University of Kent, Canterbury) gave a talk about Picasso's Art and Literary contacts: "Au Rendez-vous des poètes".

Je pense à toi

au riz de

l'autre soir à te lignes logiques

Moïse et Stendhal

(Picasso, poem to Max Jacob, 1905)

When he came to Paris, Picasso was 19, had no money and no contact in the Parisian art world other than his Spanish friends, artists and anarchists closely watched by the police at the time. By the age of 26, Picasso established himself as a leading avant-garde artist in France and internationally, as explains Peter Read "He was a man with a plan". Picasso showed his determinism and professionalism by working with art dealer and collector Ambroise Vollard for his first parisian solo show.

Literature and theatre affected Picasso's work. Through his first exhibition in Paris, he met French poet Max Jacob, with whom he later shared a room on the Boulevard Voltaire. Max Jacob was Picasso's first French friend. Jacob used to take him to the theatre - they saw La Boheme twice - and also became Picasso's language tutor. Picasso didn't know French and Max Jacob didn't know Spanish but Jacob would read 19th century French poetry to his friend: Alfred de Vigny would "move them both to tears" writes Jacob in his memoirs. One can see de Vigny's impact on Picasso's work through mentions the painter would make on his painting or drawings. Picasso's first poem in French, explains Read, was to thank Max Jacob "pour te remercier pour ton dessin", and in which he mentions de Vigny's poem "Moïse". In de Vigny's poem, Moses is presented as tragically aware he may not reach his destination. Picasso could identify with this sentiment of exile, explains Read, "he knew his genius but could also identify with the romantic visionary outsider". Max Jacob would also read him Verlaine; the poem Cortège appears in one of Picasso's sketchbooks in which he made drawings inspired by the poem.

In 1904, Picasso moves to the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre where he would receive more and more artist friends like Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon, Max Jacob and others. Picasso had painted "Au rendez-vous des poètes" on his door. He had fully integrated Parisian cultural life. "The studio became a poetic laboratory and had a really theatrical atmosphere" explains Read.

In Paris, Picasso has been moving from painting the poor and the beggar from the Blue Period, to artistic achievement as seen in many paintings depicting theatre figures like Arlequin, Pierrot and more. His life in the Bateau Lavoir has also influenced his work showing a new sense of group identity and community. He has also produced hundreds of caricatures which, according to Read "contributed to the cubism period". Guillaume Apollinaire also said that caricatures were key to the development of modern art; Picasso has produced many caricatures of his friend Apollinaire (more about Picasso and Apollinaire on this blog post on the Art Blog by Bob).

Peter Read concluded his lecture by saying that Picasso's progress from the Blue to the Pink period and to Cubism was definitely influenced by his literary sensibility, his interest in theatre, in Iberian and African sculptures, his talent as a cartoonist, and by his artistic and poetically rich entourage.

The exhibition, Picasso in Paris is on show at the Van Gogh Museum until 29 May 2011, then at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona from 1 July to 16 October 2011.

Letters and Manuscripts

2011-01-23T13:23:00.001+01:00

There's a hidden gem in Paris, well, not so hidden as it is since April 2010 located in a beautiful Haussmannian building on the Bd Saint-Germain: the Musée des Lettres et des Manuscrits.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Autograph manuscript illustrated with aquarelle from the author, April 1943-May 1944

I still cannot believe I never heard of this beautiful museum until very recently. The Museum was established in 2004 in a townhouse rue de Nesle and moved to its current location last April. It was founded by Gérard Lhéritier, a collector, investor, writer passionate about history and manuscripts. Lhéritier explains in an interview for the newsletter of the Aidac how it all started: "Very early, I've grown an interest in the arts in general and more particularly in old documents. But my encounter with Autographed Letter Signed has been by chance. My son used to collect stamps and I wanted to offer him the first French stamp, the 20 cents black stamp from 1849, for his birthday. While looking for it, I saw in a window at rue Drouot a small letter with the inscription "par Ballon Monté" and I asked the owner of the shop what it meant." It referred to Balloon Mail, used to transport mail during the Siege of Paris of 1870. "A nice Jules Verne like story that seduced me" says Lhéritier, explaining that he bought this letter and that's how his passion started. Within the 'History' section of the Museum, there is a whole window dedicated to the Paris Siege including letters from Victor Hugo to a journalist of Courrier de l'Europe in London and from Edouard Manet to young artist and Manet's student Eva Gonzales, both letters including information about the Siege. Lhéritier's interest in the Paris Siege grew into a passion of letters and manuscripts and the founding of this museum in 2004.

Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Edition of the Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences; des arts et des métiers, Genève, Pellet, 1777-1779, in 39 volumes.

The museum has some 70,000 pieces in its collection, from which around 250 are on display in its permanent collection, and other pieces are shown in various temporary exhibition (one about Romain Gary is currently on show until 3 April 2011).

Jacques Brel's Cahier a spirales vert, 1964

The permanent collection is divided into thematic sections: History, Sciences and Discoveries, Music, Arts, and Literature. By clicking on each of the thematic sections' links, you can explore some of the pieces of the collection. Going from section to section the visitor will have the chance to discover a wide range of original letters and manuscripts, like documents from the Second World War -including letters from Charles de the Gaulle or the cease-fire order signed by Eisenhower, Einstein's notes on the Theory of Relativity, a letter from Charles Darwin, an original partition by Beethoven, notes and letters by Chanson Francaise artists Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg, and last but not least, letters by the greatest writers of French literature including Balzac, Zola, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Hugo, and many many more. One of my personal highlights was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's window including a letter he wrote to a young female officer he met in Algeria and was in love with, and the movingly beautiful drawings with words of Le Petit Prince.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Autograph manuscripts illustrated with aquarelles from the author, April 1943-May 1944

Although this museum is of high interest to French and non French visitors alike, there is absolutely no information available in any other language than French, even on the website. This is of course a pity as the heritage shown here isn't just relevant to the French of French speaking people and I hope that the museum is working on a multilingual communication for the near future. However, this shouldn't stop you from visiting, especially if you manage to do a little preparation before. Also, you won't need to understand every single word to be moved by Edith Piaf's writing, Saint-Exupery's drawings of Le Petit Prince, or by the formulas of Einstein.

A catalogue of the permanent exhibition is also available (in French); Lettres et manuscrits. Petits et grands secrets. Edited by the Museum and Flammarion (2010).

Photos without flash are allowed in the museum. The museum website has much better pictures than the one I took with my iPhone (and are of poor quality I admit but still useful to illustrate this post).

Juggling on Bach

2011-01-18T11:34:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday was Bach Day at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, organized by the wonderful Early Music Festival I mentioned a few months earlier on this blog. One of the events was "Le Chant des Balles", a magical show by Eric Bellocq and Vincent de Lavenère, both musicians and jugglers.

Le Chant des Balles (c)Philippe Cibille

de Lavenère explains his artistic commitment at lenght on his website. "The roots of my universe stand in the heart of our cultural and musical heritage" says the artist, explaining that his interest for traditional arts has a central place in his work. Each of the performances are inspired by various traditions, the inspiration for "Le Chant des Balles" was medieval and baroque, including Middle Ages jugglers and poetry. "Tradition isn't only a source of inspiration" explains de Lavenère, "but a real actor in the performance enabling to nurture, enrich but also to develop this very particular language that is jonglerie musicale".

Le Chant des Balles (c)Philippe Cibille

"Le Chant des Balles" was the first such performance they developed with lutenist Eric Bellocq, therefore being at the very origin of this "jonglerie musicale" concept. After receiving many questions about this particular language using juggling and music, they have decided to publish a book that not only translates the various gestures and language of their show but also explains their artistic commitment. In "Le Chant de Balles", de Lavenère and Bellocq present an Early Music repertoire. The programme at the Muziekgebouw included Lute suites by J.S. Bach, a prelude from the Chants d'Espagne by Isaac Albéniz and traditional German and Japanese folk songs.

Le Chant des Balles (c)Philippe Cibille

I really enjoyed the way both artists mastered their art, juggling and playing the lute, and were able to share their passion for "jonglerie musicale". There was a great energy between the two, and the show was very well balanced between comical and more sober scenes. There were a few kids in the audience but I believe all the adults were even more mesmerized by the music and the jonglerie, dancing in a beautiful mise-en-scene.

The duo is now touring the Netherlands with "Le Chant des Balles" and will end in Belgium this weekend. They will perform other shows starting from March in France, Spain and Italy. Check their calendar for more information.

Catching up with some pictures

2011-01-15T17:43:00.000+01:00

This blog has been awfully quiet for the last couple of months. It isn't out of laziness, I promise. On the contrary, I have been busy working on various projects (documentary film, literature and comics mainly) and have learned many interesting things I will share at great length with you on this blog.

In the meantime, I'll start by sharing some pictures from last week's trip to Portugal, hoping you'll forgive my silence!

Cats in a bin, Lisbon

A friendly sign in Lisbon

Faculty of Letters, Coimbra

Club Fluvial Portuense, Porto

Biblioteca Joanina, Coimbra

Literature seminar: “Faultlines, Fictions and Futures”

2010-11-11T17:01:00.000+01:00

As part of my role within the British Council Benelux, I will have the chance to attend the Our Shared Europe Literature seminar that will take place in Berlin this weekend, from 12 to 14 November 2010. I will mostly blog on the British Council Culture:Log blog about the sessions throughout the weekend.
I have to say that I am really excited about meeting Ahdaf Soueif, a writer I've been admiring for a long time (and who was also praised by the late Edward Said). She will chair the seminar, and other speakers will include writers Inaam Kachachi, Jamal Mahjoub and Robin Yassin-Kassab. There will be a wide range of participants coming from the UK, Germany, Malta, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, Portugal, Turkey, France, Greece and Belgium.

If you want to follow the seminar, watch the Culture:Log blog and my twitter account.

"Cap ou pas Clap?"

2010-10-19T19:00:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago, I participated to a competition organized by Cinepocket and took the Cap ou pas Clap challenge... The title of the competition comes from Cap ou pas cap in French, which literally translates as "Capable or not capable" and means "do you dare?"

The challenge was to make a 2-minute movie with a mobile phone within 72 hours. The theme and the rules were revealed on the Friday and deadline to compete was Monday. The theme was "anniversary" and one main directive was that a French component needed to appear in the movie.

I've chosen an anniversary that is dear to me, the 10th anniversary of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake. You may remember that I had written a post on that day. I've also finalized a screenplay for a short movie (in English) and a short story (in French) around this particular theme. This competition gave me the opportunity to explore another way to tell a story. My "pocket film" is entitled Zelzele, which means "earthquake" in Turkish and comes from Arabic, it is also the title of a Surat of the Qur'an.

The film was shown with the 10 other selected films at the FIFF (Festival International du Film Francophone, in Namur). The public voted and three films won a prize. Zelzele didn't win any formal prize but it did gather some nice responses from the audience. I'm really happy it could be shown and is now available on different online platforms, and finally on my own blog.

Fethiye Çetin presents “Anneannem” in Amsterdam

2010-10-06T13:28:00.000+02:00

On Monday evening, the cultural and literary venue SPUI25 was full almost over capacity, with people waiting outside glimpsing through the glass door in the hope of spotting an empty seat. They were all there to listen to Fethiye Çetin, lawyer, writer and human rights activist from Turkey, who was in Amsterdam for the launch of the Dutch translation of her book Anneannem (My Grandmother, a Memoir published in English by Verso in 2008). She was just back from a visit to Australia as an invited guest of the Melbourne Writers' Festival.

Fethiye Çetin was born in the small town of Maden in Turkey. In Anneannem she recounts the 1915 Armenian genocide through the story of her maternal grandmother. Taken from her family, Christian-born Heranus was rescued from death by a Muslim military man who brought her up as the Muslim girl Seher.

The evening was moderated Bernard Bouwman journalist and former correspondent to the NRC and NOS in Turkey, with the support of Hanneke van der Heijden, Dutch translator of the book, who has interpreted Ms Çetin’s words to an audience mixed with Turkish and Dutch speakers. “A small book with big themes” is how Bouwman started his presentation of My Grandmother, a Memoir. Not that the number of pages of a book should ever reflect its content, he was trying to emphasize on the importance of the subject matter. When asked why she has written this book, Fethiye Çetin explained that “whenever the Armenian issue is discussed in Turkey, facts and numbers are always given in a very cold manner. The name we should give to the issue is being discussed constantly; the number of death varies from 1.5 million to 400,000 and even dropped down to 50,000! I remember a columnist who wrote ‘where do they get these number from, it can’t be more than 300,000’ as if it were no big deal, as if we were talking about things and not people.” Ms Çetin’s story is but one step to fight towards this dehumanization. “Everybody can identify with the grandmother” says Çetin, and she describes the grandmother’s daily life, how she cooks or washes the laundry, things we can all relate to. When Anneannem came out in Turkey, heavy discussions were going on in the country about the massacres of 1915, but fortunately, Çetin hasn’t been trialed for her book. “I was very cautious not to use any censurable words in the book I have to admit” says the writer. One also has to remember that Çetin is first of all a lawyer, “but I was ready to go on trial if this would have happened, I prepared myself for it when writing.”

Reactions in Turkey were quite positive, because of the character of the grandmother but also because many people had a similar hidden story within their families “Many readers started to share their own stories with me, telling me about their own grandmothers being Armenians too.” But how does it feel to discover such a secret years after, as an adult (Çetin was told the story in the beginning of the 70’s)? “It used to be more difficult in the past” says Çetin, “but nowadays, more and more people want to research their family history.” The issue was silenced until not so long ago in Turkey, and getting information isn’t always easy. “Data isn’t accessible or ‘lost’ –some are said to have burnt.” This is why, Çetin says over and over again, it is essential to tell the stories, “we need to hear the stories of our grandparents and families.” However, we can do better in learning about Turkey’s historical past, and denial is one road we can’t take anymore. Among the reasons of this national policy of “forgetting” lies the nationalism built upon the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. “The population is silenced and remains silent altogether, and that is something I’ve been trying to understand throughout the story too.”

When asked if she feels a victim of history, Fethiye Çetin responds with plain honesty, “my grandmother was a victim, but I am not. I feel responsible for these events of history. I am responsible for today’s denial of 1915.” And she adds, “when I learned about my family’s past, I felt liberated from the chains of nationalism. I looked around me and saw things differently.” Through this book, Fethiye Çetin wishes we build a better future, together: “If we want to laugh together” she says, “we first need to cry together.”

Anneannem has also been published in French and Dutch
Le Livre de ma grand-mère, Éditions de l’Aube.
Het geheim van mijn grootmoeder, Uitgeverij Van Gennep.

Editing the World: an evening with Granta editor John Freeman

2010-09-30T00:02:00.000+02:00

John Freeman and Maarten Asscher at Spui25, Amsterdam

John Freeman, editor of literary magazine Granta, was invited to give a talk at Spui25, the literary-cultural centre of the University of Amsterdam, on 29 September. The event was moderated by Maarten Asscher, the director of the Athenaeum Boekhandel, an excellent pluridisciplinary, multilingual bookshop in the centre of Amsterdam.

Freeman is a journalist, book critic and writer from the US, and has written a.o. for the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. Freeman became editor of Granta in 2008, after six years on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. He is also the author of The Tyranny of e-mail published in 2009, a book about the challenges of over information and a plea for slow communication.

Maarten Asscher announced in his introduction that the event was, next to a presentation of the magazine's history and its editor's vision, a celebration of issue 112: Pakistan.

"It's weird to be here as a guy born in Ohio, who grew up in California, speaking in the Netherlands about a British literary magazine on an issue about Pakistan!" says Freeman, adding how wonderful he finds that the windows of the Athenaeum Boekhandel are full of Granta magazines.

The first issue after its rebirth in 1979 (Granta was founded in 1889 by Cambridge students) was on New American Writing. Since then, explains Freeman, Granta has been a cultural space where writers can explore, "We want to publish a piece that doesn't fit elsewhere." When asked why Pakistan? He simply answers "why not?" Granta has already focused on places in past issues: London, Russia, Australia, Chicago... "We are looking for new writers all the time" says Freeman, "and there are many in Pakistan at the moment."

The cover of the Pakistan issue was painted by bus and truck artist Islam Gull from Karachi. His work was commissioned with the assistance of the local British Council office in Karachi (well done colleagues).

Freeman very much believes in the magical experience of reading a book, and this experience, he explains, is even stronger today that we are constantly connected to a machine: cell phone, e-reader, computer, TV... But he also mentions that having a print edition actually isn't commercially profitable, "we lose money." Freeman very much acknowledges the necessity of online communication tools to engage with their readers, but seems a strong advocate for print, "bringing an e-reader to bed is just like bringing any electronic appliance to the bedroom, it just doesn't feel right to me. But if people like it, I'm not going to argue against it of course."

Freeman has a clear vision of what he wants Granta to be: "We need to expand the idea of what a magazine is," he says, "Granta isn't about culture, it is about creating culture." He emphasizes on the important role of editors as advocates for writers and the existence of Granta "to capture the world and present writers who have something to write, a story that only they can write and that rips blood to get published."

When asked about writing his own book, Freeman confesses "I do miss the research and writing," telling anecdotes about his researches at the New York Public Library. Would he write for Granta? "No, I want to find the best writers in the world" he says passionately, "I don't even write introductions. I want the magazine to sound like a score, with no prelude."

Economically, Granta can exist thanks to publisher and philanthropist Sigrid Rausing who bought Granta Publications in 2005. When talking about sustainability, Freeman gives marketing strategies as examples, "if it will help us get readers, we do need to think about ads too." However, Asscher does point out that, when compared to Dutch literary magazines that circulate between 300 and 1100 copies, Granta's 55000 is an astronomical number.

What about the future? Will the digital beat the print version of Granta? "The most likely scenario is that it will be hybrid; some will read the print version and some will read the digital one." Today is a celebration of the print version with its beautiful cover and printed on a quality grained paper, but above all, it is the celebration of good writing. And it is inspiring to listen to such an enthused editor, who is more concerned about the quality of writing than of the format or tools on which we will read good writing now or in the future.

In the next issues, Granta will have a focus on several themes including: feminism today, the best Spanish speaking writing, aliens, ten years after (9/11),...

I Value the Arts: a National Campaign in the UK

2010-09-14T17:42:00.000+02:00

I may not live in the UK, but I do work for a UK organisation and I do manage projects to enable artists from the UK and the Benelux to present their work, and I do facilitate relationships between arts professionals working in these countries and sometimes beyond. And above all this, I love the arts and I believe in the importance of the arts in our lives. I therefore strongly support the Campaign "I Value the Arts", which is run by The National Campaign for the Arts. As it is explained on their website: "The National Campaign for the Arts decided to run this campaign after being approached by members who were concerned that the public had no way to make their views on support for the arts heard." You can find all the necessary information here.

Cuts in the arts is not only a huge issue in the UK at the moment but in many other countries including the Netherlands and Belgium. This campaign may be a good example we should all start copying if we do value the arts. This is one way of making one's voice heard, if you have other examples, please do share them.

Early Music Festival in Utrecht

2010-09-05T21:32:00.005+02:00

Utrecht

Utrecht just had an intensive ten days festival of French Baroque music during the OudeMuziek Festival. A most wonderful experience if you like early music especially in such an authentic city as Utrecht. Stepping out of a church/concert hall you still feel in the 17th century walking among the canal houses and on the cobbled roads. The music still in your head, you just ignore all the cars and all the modern day things that surround you (yes, okay, you ignore it all and just daydream basically, but the setting helps enormously).

At the head of this beautiful and the world's largest Early Music Festival is Xavier Vandamme. I know Xavier from BOZAR, when I used to work there a press officer and Xavier was deputy director of BOZAR MUSIC. His programme was already most ambitious and original back then, and I could only but trust his choices for Utrecht. He explains in the introduction to the year programme that the Utrecht Early Music Festival "holds the ambition and the responsibility to be the premier stage for research and creativity in [the] field". He also tells about his focus on French Baroque: "The case of French repertoire - still undervalued or even unknown outside its native country - and its many talented performers is one that Utrecht takes on his pride".

Pandhof, Utrecht

I had the chance to listen to four concerts last Saturday.

I started the day with La lanterne magique de M. Couperin, a performance by harpsichord player Bertrand Cullier, accompanied by images drawn by stage director and actress Louise Moaty and projected with a magic lantern. Lighted by a few candles, Cullier plays François Couperin under a screen shaped as a moon where Moaty projects her stories: Les Tours de passe-passe, L'Arlequine, Tic-toc-choc, Les Ombres errantes... and together they created a wonderful dialogue between music and images.

Jacobiekerk, Utrecht.

This most dreamlike performance was followed by a concert at the Jacobiekerk with Les Agréments, in a programme of opera arias directed by Guy Van Waas and sung by baritone Pierre-Yves Pruvot.

Later in the evening was the highlight of the day, with Jean-Marc Andrieu leading his choir and orchestra, Les Passions & Les Eléments, in Gilles' Requiem, inside the Utrecht Dom.

Outside the Dom, Utrecht

The night ended in the Pieterskerk with Swedish soprano Susanne Rydén performing Lalande's Leçons de ténèbres with Paulina van Laarhoven on viola and Karl Nyhlin on lute. They ended their performance most unusually with a contemporary creation. Unfortunately, the programme didn't mention this new work so I can't write its title or even the composer's name (if you happen to know, please leave a comment).

More Early Music throughout the year

The Festival has ended today, but the concert season of the yearly programme will start in October and run through May 2011, with Early Music concerts in churches, castles and concert halls across the Netherlands and Belgium. My personal highlights are Les Ombres Errantes in November with Ensemble Ausonia, J.S. Bach: Kunst der Fuge in January with Il suonar parlante, including Lorenzo Ghielmi and Fahmi Alqhai, The harpsichord players of Louis XIV with Aurélien Delage in Februari, the Trio Hantaï in March and Gustav Leonhardt in April.

More information can be found on www.oudemuziek.nl

Edinburgh Book Festival

2010-08-19T08:37:00.002+02:00

A very short post to let you know that I will participate to the British Council Edinburgh Bookcase from 19 to 23 August. For all of you interested in literature from the UK, you can follow the Bookcase through "My Edinburgh Bookcase Blog" http://myedinburghbookcase.wordpress.com

Hope you'll enjoy!

My week at the Sarajevo Talent Campus

2010-08-11T11:40:00.004+02:00

It's been more than a week since I'm back from the Sarajevo Talent Campus. Being part of such a great international film festival like the Sarajevo Film Festival was definitely a wonderful experience both at the personal and professional levels. More than 60 participants were selected as "Talents" in the following fields: directing, producing, screenwriting and acting. I was one of the selected screenwriters. I'm still not very comfortable being called a "talent", but I got used to accept the term within the frame of the programme.

The one week programme was extremely busy and productive, including lectures, workshops, meetings, screenings followed by Q&As, with experts in different fields of the film industry. Memorable moments include lectures of Semih Kaplanoglu, Samuel Maoz and Gaspar Noé, that I reported back on this blog. One most memorable moment was the one hour conversation with Morgan Freeman, who came to see the Talent Campus participants. He spoke about his early career, shared some anecdotes from his years on Broadway, talked about his collaborations with Clint Eastwood, pretty general stuff you would say, but it is quite something to hear it from the man in real, sitting in front of you.

We had the opportunity to meet with young german producers to share ideas and look for potential projects to apply for the Robert Bosch Stiftung Co-production Prize. Frank Albers, director of the Robert Bosh Stiftung (partner of the Talent Campus), was present at most of the Talent Campus events and really encouraged participants to look closely at this opportunity. Also present during the whole programme were organisers of the Berlinale Talent Campus, also partner of the Sarajevo Talent Campus. Both organisations hosted special sessions about their own programmes and the opportunities they offer to young film makers at the national and international level.

Within the general programme, each area of work had its own workshop sessions. Screenwriters had the chance to work with Licia Eminenti, script analyst and director. We had a two day session during which we analysed two movies: Flanders by Bruno Dumont and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu. The format wasn't really that of a workshop, as intended, but the focus of our analysis was "From the particular to the universal" and to see how these writers/directors managed or tried to tell a universal story from a very particular situation. Another very fruitful session for screenwriters was a one to one feedback session with an expert. Mine was with Miroslav Mandic, screenwriter and director. It was incredibly refreshing to have someone sit in front of you and tell you straight what was good, less good, to be developed or simply to trash within your script. The script I gave for analysis is the one I have written about the 1999 earthquake that took place in the Marmara region in Turkey. A difficult one I must admit as it poses many production problems. But after this session, I can now re-work on the script and develop the relationship between the characters rather than the chaos that surrounds them.

Among the many other interesting sessions you can read about on the online programme, was a session with Bosnian animator and director Ivan Ramadan. In a session entitled "Animation in a nutshell" Ivan Ramadan talked about his work and how he came to start animation short films - you can also see him explain it himself in this video interview. Ramadan has worked on two short movies, one of which, Tolerantia, was awarded the best short film award at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2008, and Wondermilk, presented at this year's Children Programme of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

This week has given me the opportunity to develop some ideas by talking to fellow "talents", get inspired by major artists and experts from the industry and receive some very valuable feedback about my work as a screenwriter and the possibilities that are out there to further develop myself.

Gaspar Noé at the Sarajevo Talent Campus

2010-08-03T17:26:00.000+02:00

One of the last directors to visit the Talent Campus was Gaspar Noé, in a session following his latest movie "Enter the Void". This was Gaspar Noé's fourth visit to the Sarajevo Film Festival where a tribute was paid to his work in a previous edition.

Gaspar Noé explains that with "Enter the Void" he wanted to get inside the head of someone who is doing mushrooms. He thought of making "Enter the Void" for almost twenty years. When selling the film to potential producers, he explains that he kept giving successful films as examples to illustrate his film, one of them being "Trainspotting". But he also explains that financing was made possible because he had previously made "Irreversible", a commercial success starring Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci.

In the beginning of "Enter the Void" you see reality through the eyes of a character, Oscar, until a shift happens when he gets shot. The viewer doesn't really know what is happening, says Noé, is it a dream, an hallucination? But Noé adds that trips and dreams are far more experimental than what we can experience watching "Enter the Void". Music and colours were really important to render the mushroom trip experience. The film takes place in Tokyo and is very visual, therefore the script needed to describe the locations in details explains Noé. Some scenes were very short in the script but really long in the movie. Gaspar Noé adds that for him scripts are made to finance the film and that the real film starts when you start shooting. The film is full of very vivid colours but no blue, because blue isn't a mental colour, explains the director. They avoided using blue in the film because dreams are most of the time in black and white, maybe on acid you can see some colours, but never blue. He adds that the music in the film is also messy, like a mushroom trip.

Within the powerful visual and sound effects are the main characters, a brother and sister who were seperated in their childhood because they lost their parents in a car accident. Both are craving for affection and want to produce the family they lost. There's an incestual energy in their relationship, which wasn't in the initial script, explains Noé. The characters are complex because, says the director, he doesn't like films where you're told who is good or bad. We are all complex, he adds.

Making a feature film takes at least a year, explains Gaspar Noé, and an extra year for promotion. Some directors like to shoot a film a year, like Woody Allen, but Noé explains that he prefers to shoot a short film in between two features. Working on a short film acts like a rehearsal for the next feature, says the director. Gaspar Noé also worked on documentaries, commercials and music videos. He filmed a documentary in Africa about people dying from AIDS and explains that he watches much more documentary films than fiction. Sometimes he also shoots commercials but says he doesn't enjoy that process as it leaves very litlle freedom to the director. He also shot video clips for Placebo. Gaspar Noé is now working on a new project: an erotic love story.

You can see the pictures of this talk on the following webpage: http://www.sff.ba/image_gallery/show/id/330

Location:Sarajevo

Samuel Maoz at the Sarajevo Talent Campus

2010-08-02T16:13:00.000+02:00

Within the Talent Campus programme, participants had the opportunity to see Golden Lion winning movie "Lebanon" by Israeli director Samuel Maoz, and to attend a session entitled "From Personal Experience of Director to the Golden Lion" in the presence of Samuel Maoz, David Silber (producer) and Katriel Schory (executive director of the Israel Film Fund).

"Lebanon" is the personal story of Samuel Maoz and was a necessity to make, explains the director, a need to find some understanding. It took Maoz twenty five years to deal with the issues he experienced as a soldier during the first Lebanon war. When he first tried to write the script in 1988, Maoz explains that the first memory that came to his mind was the burn of flesh, which made him back off. Maoz felt the need to process the story almost in a mathematical way and told himself that as long as he could smell it, he wasn't ready to write his film. It's in 2006, during the second Lebanon war, that he decided he was ready: he tried to smell again but couldn't.

The only way to deliver war, according to Maoz, is through a very strong experience, and that's how he decided to set his film inside the tank. The aim of Maoz was to make the audience feel the war, to see the victims staring back at us. That's where the text becomes an ennemy, says Maoz: how to write such extreme feelings? He therefore decided to trust the body language, the eye. After twenty five years, Maoz wrote the script in four weeks.

Samuel Maoz went to Rotterdam to sell his story to producers. After having told it twenty, forty times, he would look at himself in the mirror and think: "you're a whore!" but then, laughing, Maoz adds,"at least I'm a whore who likes his job!"

Reactions to the film differed between older and younger generations in Israel. Some older generation people would say not to show this movie or mothers won't send their children to war. But reviews were good in Israel, although the audience feelings were rather mixed. According to Maoz, "Lebanon" appeals to the human and this why it works.

Location:Sarajevo

Semih Kaplanoglu at the Sarajevo Talent Campus

2010-08-01T13:22:00.000+02:00

On the first day of the Sarajevo Talent Campus, participants had the chance to attend a lecture entitled "Tradition vs Modern: Ebb and Flow of Cinema between Center and Periphery" by Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu, who was awarded the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale for his film "Bal" (Honey).

Kaplanoglu started his talk by giving literature as an example of the struggle between modern and tradition. He explained that the most powerful liteature in Turkey dealing with such struggle started bursting after the thirties - i.e. right after the creation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 - with authors such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar who has been a model for future works of literature in Turkey. This conflict between modern and tradition still goes on today, says Kaplanoglu, between the culture in which we were born and the one we've been educated in. He adds that Orhan Pamuk, for instance, is an author who is in between these worlds.

Kaplanoglu says that he experiences this conflict every day and presents "Bal" as an example. Yusuf for instance, the main character of "Bal", is a poet who experiences things in a passionate way. Kaplanoglu has chosen a poet to be his main character because he comes himself from a culture full of poetry, as he explains. Because it takes so much effort in today's world to be a poet, Kaplanoglu has chosen to show his own struggle through the eyes of a poet, Yusuf in his film.

The basic questions one aks oneself within this struggle is "Who am I? What am I doing here? Why am I here?", but Kaplanoglu says that we tend to forget these questions in our life journeys. He adds that he believes we come to life with a feeling of loss, and that we come to the world with a certain knowledge that opens up to a spiritual or non material understanding. Our experiences are not only about this world and material things and Kaplanoglu says that art is the struggle to try to explain and feel what's beyond our material world. We were all born into a culture and caught into something different within the environment in which we live. But beyond all this, there is something we give to the world. Kaplanoglu's work represents this searching and exploration of the loss.

When Kaplanoglu first presented his trilogy at the Rotterdam film festival, producers told he was crazy and that it would be impossible to make three movies when even producing one can be extremely difficult. Fortunately, Kaplanoglu's Greek partner believed in the project. Following that, Kaplanoglu was in Cannes with two projects, found new partners and could work further on finalizing his trilogy made of : "Yumurta" (Egg), "Süt" (Milk) and "Bal" (Honey).

Kaplanoglu was 36 when he finalized his first movie, which means that he struggled for fifteen years to find producers and professionals interested in his project. In the end, he became himself a producer and learned to perform many other roles within the film industry. It took a long time for Kaplanoglu to achieve success with his films, but not all filmmakers need to experience the same process, says Kaplanoglu. Every artist, every filmmaker has its own story, its own path. Kaplanoglu ended his lecture in a very positive note reminding talent campus participants that no matter how long it can take, "never give up, believe in your project and work hard. Someone at some point will show interest in what you are doing. There are good people out there".

You can see the photo gallery of this lecture on the following webpage: http://www.sff.ba/image_gallery/show/id/249

Location:Sarajevo

Sarajevo Film Festival

2010-07-29T13:49:00.000+02:00

I've been im Sarajevo for 6 days now and couldn't find a minute to write a post. The festival programme is so rich and of course, the Talent Campus I am participating to has a very rich programme on its own. So far I've seen some very good movies, including "Cirkus Columbia" by Danis Tanovic, "Bibliotheque Pascal" by Szabols Hajdu, and "Red White & Blue" by Simon Rumley.

Within the Talent Campus programme, I've had the chance to listen to some great artists and experts like Semih Kaplanoglu, Frederic Boyer (Cannes Film Festival, prorammer shorts), Maike Mia Hoehne (Berlinale, programmer shorts), some I don't especially agree with but were really worth listening to, like Bruno Dumont or Licia Eminenti, and there will be more until Saturday, including Samuel Maoz, Gaspar Noé and Morgan Freeman.

If you want to see the whole programme and see some pictures, visit the festival website at www.sff.ba but I will also try to write about certain talks and sessions in seperate posts.

Location:Sarajevo

Become a Global Changemaker

2010-07-19T16:08:00.006+02:00

If you are aged between 16 and 19 years old, care about this world's issues and want to do something about it, have a look at this wonderful opportunity to become a Global Changemaker and attend the Global Youth Summit in London from 21 to 27 November.
The call for applications is now live on www.global-changemakers.net and will run until Friday, 6 August.

Some criterias to apply:

- Applicants should be social entrepreneurs, community activists and/or volunteers aged 16-19 during the event.
- Applicants have to demonstrate their communicative abilities, track record and motivation to join the network and take their work further.
- A full application consists of a written application form detailing the applicants' personal details and previous work as well as a 2-minute YouTube video in English.

For the 60 selected participants, all costs involved in taking part in the summit (travel, visas, accommodation, meals, activities during the summit) will be covered by the British Council.

About Global Changemakers
Global Changemakers is a global and growing network currently consisting of 375 young social entrepreneurs and community activists from 91 countries around the world who have demonstrated a significant track record of achievement in their local communities. The mission of the programme is to empower youth worldwide to work together to catalyse positive social change and is built on 3 pillars - action on the ground (Community Action Projects), personal knowledge & growth (the sharing of best practices + exposure to and interaction with experienced activists), and giving youth a voice (at key global events such as the Global Humanitarian Forum, World Economic Forum & Clinton Global Initiative).

For more information and to apply, visit the global changemakers website on: http://www.global-changemakers.net/

And do spread the word!

Photo (c)Christopher Tribble

Sarajevo Talent Campus 2010

2010-06-22T13:03:00.004+02:00

I woke up to very good news this morning, receiving an e-mail from the Sarajevo Talent Campus team. "We would like to announce that we have selected 64 participants for the 4th Sarajevo Talent Campus. Our selection committee has thoroughly viewed all the applications and we are happy to inform you that you have been accepted to take part in this year`s Talent Campus. " Aaa those magical words "You have been accepted", it does feel good indeed.

The Talent Campus is organised in the frame of the Sarajevo Film Festival which will take place from 23 to 31 July. I've been willing to go to this festival for quite some time now but always missed it.

The Talent Campus is a one week event that will give the opportunity to young artists to exchange views and ideas among themselves and with film professionals from across the world, through a programme of workshops, lectures, inter-festival excursions, panels and practical tutorials.

I am especially excited that I will be able to share my project about post 1980 Turkey. I have been working on a script, that I am still developing, to explore the repercussions of the military take-over of 1980 on people who live in and outside of Turkey today. Being a Turkish woman living in Europe I am mostly interested in the effects, if any, on the lives of the "exiles" and the "immigrants", and how do we, Turkish/Belgian or Turkish/German or Turkish/Dutch... feel about it and deal with it. Sharing ideas and receiving feedback from other young artists and professionals will definitely be a great experience for me and it will certainly help me develop my writing. And of course I will see plenty of films, which is afterall the best part of a film festival!

I will definitely post as much as I can from Sarajevo, so keep an eye here!

For more information about the Sarajevo Film Festival check: http://www.sff.ba/.

Words in the clouds

2010-06-20T13:18:00.004+02:00

I have been thinking since a long time about a way of sharing my writings online. I had posted my short stories on issuu, received some positive comments from readers there, which motivated me to rework on my stories and put them together into a short story collection. I have sent it to about ten publishers in Belgium and in France. I knew from the start that I was going to be rejected by most (so far I have received eight rejection letters and am waiting for the last two), but why did I still want to send out my work the "traditional" way, I am not sure. Of course, even if tiny, I still had hope that a professional from the sector would put an "approval seal" on my work. But rejection after rejection (being called Mister in various letters!), having explored what was published out there, seeing the reality of the publishing world at the moment and the very low chances to get short stories published in French... I believed that I still had stories to tell and that I had access to amazing tools to do so.

What I care about is writing, writing more, failing maybe, failing again to hopefully get better at it (failing and writing), and most of all, I care about sharing. What matters in the end? Being read, it's as simple as that. So I have created a brand new website called Des mots dans les nuages where I host my short stories and make these available for download to all, under a creative commons licence. Most importantly, I left a comments section open because I care about what readers would think and I'd like to read their feedback.

Because I write fiction in French and all my short stories are in French so far, the website, as the title "Des mots dans les nuages" (Words in the Clouds") suggests, is also in French and aimed at readers who speak the language. But I still thought it useful to share my experience of "self publishing" here, and I will certainly evaluate and share the process in the months to come.

1Blog, 1Tree

2010-06-16T11:30:00.005+02:00

I first read the info on Nicolas Quentin's blog OuiLeO.cOm and found this an amazing initiative.

The idea is pretty simple and efficient. You only need to write a short blog post about the programme “My blog is carbon neutral” and include one of their proposed buttons below on your site (see mine on the side bar). Then you send the link to your blog to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de and they plant a tree for you, neutralising the carbon dioxide emissions of your blog. The trees will be planted in the spring of 2010 by the Arbor Day Foundation.

For more information about how and where the trees are planted, visit http://www.kaufda.de/umwelt/carbon-neutral/what-we-do/

It's easy and really worth it... so spread the word!

Open for all: Het Concertgebouw Open

2010-06-05T15:13:00.004+02:00

On 12 June 2010, the prestigious Concertgebouw opens its doors to all for this second edition of Het Concertgebouw Open. From 12 to 17h, the Concertgebouw will welcome all for free and not only to visit their wonderful halls... but to listen to amateur musicians and artists from Amsterdam: soloists, bands, chorals... Visitors will also be able to participate to this festive event by showing their talent on the Open Zang Podium, where a pianist will accompany anyone who wants to sing, by dancing in the Tango Salon and by participating to one of the many workshops. Events will be spread throughout 10 rooms, from the Groote Zaal to the Cafe, with hundreds of artists, and a royal opening at 12h12 (it says so on the programme!) with Princess Maxima.

Some performances that have caught my attention:

Yim Kwan Fong: Cantonese opera from the Pijp.
Viola Viola orkest & Esther Apituley: a spectacular performance with 100 musicians and dancers.
Trio Wahnsinn: three friends improvising jazz.
Klezmagic: Klezmermusic from Turkey, Egypt ... by a young band lead by Emirhan Tuga.

You can see the complete programme here (in Dutch)

Symposium on Graphic Design

2010-06-01T19:47:00.004+02:00

The Breda Graphic Design Museum, which organized the excellent symposium about curating in the digital age I wrote about back in December, are presenting their second symposium: What are the concepts of the world's leading designers?

The symposium is organized in the frame of the current exhibition INFODECODATA exploring the place and role of data visualization in graphic design. The list of speakers is not as international as the first symposium's but it does include a great number of Dutch professionals who are experts in the field of graphic design and visual arts.

All the graphic designers out there who live in the Netherlands or in Belgium (Breda is a border town and is actually closer to Brussels than to Amsterdam), have a look at the INFODECODATA symposium page on the museum's website and don't be demotivated by the location or the date (13 June... it's a Sunday ...and my birthday). This museum is worth the trip if you're into graphic design, even more if there's a symposium during your visit.

Date & time: Sunday 13 June 2010 - 14:00 to 17:00
Language: English.
More info

INDIE Brussels Conference

2010-05-11T12:04:00.004+02:00

I haven't blogged for a while, but for those of you who have followed my tweets, you know about the status of the literature projects and book fairs I've mentioned in the previous post. I will get back to these later, but for now I am in Brussels, working on the INDIE (Inclusion and Diversity in Education) conference. You can follow my posts about the event on the INDIE tree website

For more information about the INDIE project you can also visit the British Council INDIE website: http://www.britishcouncil.org/indie

Literature Projects and Book Fairs

2010-02-28T19:45:00.006+01:00

This blog has been too silent for quite some time... but if you follow me on twitter, you may have seen that I'm still active. Next to my daily job focusing on cultural relations through arts and education, I have been concentrating a lot on my literature projects.

I have finalized my short story collection in French and have managed to send it - the old-fashioned way, by post! - to a dozen Francophone publishers in Belgium and in France last week. Those of you who have been reading my short stories online (and I thank you for that) may have seen that I have deleted all my online publications recently. The reason is that I have made a lot of editing to these stories and have presented them differently in the form of a collection I called Mouvements (Movements). I am still exploring ways to publish the whole collection in a digital format. More soon...

I have also been focusing on some translation work from three very different authors and languages, two of which are now in the hands of their authors' literary agents.

While waiting for some answers from these various publishers, I have started some research on different projects focusing on contemporary Turkish Literature by women writers and on Turkish History. I hope to tell you more about these when it takes a more concrete shape.

On the more concrete side of my literary life, I will visit the Brussels Book Fair on Saturday 6 March, and the London Book Fair next month and will definitely do some posting about the different events I am planning to attend. These will include discussions about online publishing and writing in the digital space.

To be continued...

The Art of Curating in the Digital Age

2009-12-20T16:24:00.015+01:00

"By our own very nature we filter, forget, hear and see selectively, but that doesn't mean that we have to agree with all the filtering has to be done on our behalf" writes Geert Lovink in his essay "Post-canon or the joy of self-curation" published in the journal of the symposium Me you and everyone we know is a curator (Myaewkiac) organized by the Breda Graphic Design Museum on 19 December in Amsterdam.

Mieke Gerriken, director of the Breda Graphic Design Museum, explains in her introductory speech -and essay that you can read in the very good Myaewkiac journal, that museums will need "to cooperate structurally with digital initiatives." Together with graphic designer Sophie Krier, they have organized this one day programme focused on "quality in an age of visual overload." The title of the symposium, as Krier explains is a tribute to Miranda July's Learningtoloveyoumore blog. Speakers included Bruce Sterling, Andrew Keen, Rick Poynor, Sarah Cook, Aram Bartholl, Julia Noordegraaf, Willem Veethoven and Dagan Cohen.

Instead of analyzing all the speeches and sometimes frighteningly populist ideas I heard at the symposium, like Andrew Keen's obsession with authority and slogans "Curators are gate keepers, they have earned the right to say no!" or "Everything is free [on the internet] because it's what it's worth!" and the audience's enthusiastic response to these, I would focus on the experiences shared by some of the speakers to demonstrate the possibilities and wide range of opportunities digital tools can offer when you find a structured and intelligent way to use it.

In "Performing archival material online," Julia Noordegraaf -assistant Prof and Programme Director of the Master of Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, dept of Media Studies at UvA, has focused on the digital reproductions of analog objects. She gave as an example celluloidremix.nl, an online film remix competition organized by the Film Museum. Professionals and amateurs were asked to remix cinematographic material from the period between 1917 and 1932 into a new short film with their own soundtrack. This competition took place between April and September 2009. Noordegraaf showed the winning movie as an example, which Keen later called no less than "crap"! Winner Jata Haan explains on the celluloidremix website that "This virtual reflection of Amsterdam not only shows some of the literal changes that have taken place in the city during the last century - but also demonstrates the vast amount of material available online to artists and filmmakers today. Digitisation projects such as "Beelden voor de Toekomst", and Creative Commons endorsing websites such as Flickr and The Freesound Project, have all contributed towards a cultural shift of producing more easily accessible and reusable digital media. As this type of collaborative project becomes more popular, we should see an increasing amount of resources made available in the future."

Willem Velthoven from Mediamatic has presented an exciting online project called "Mediamatic Travel" as an example of how to explore evolutionary ways to build new structures to create quality content online. This travel project is a network of people working in the arts who are willing to introduce visitors to their local network. At the moment there are 81 cities available on the website (and I'm very happy to see that Istanbul is among these). A good way to monitor quality in this case, explains Velthoven, is with feedback and comment. And for those who are really scared that internet is giving away all expertise for free, therefore killing real expertise (?!), Mediamatic Travel offers the possibility for tailored advice at a fee. For the first hour of a face-to-face consultation with a guide, Mediamatic proposes a basic fee of 45 € . After that, any further relation is to be negotiated between both parties.

Berlin based artist Aram Bartholl has been exploring online visual culture in physical spaces throughout his work. "In which form does the network data world manifest itself in our everyday life? What returns from cyberspace into physical space? How do digital innovations influence our everyday actions?" are among the many questions his art work is based on and it includes online video games, social networking sites, google maps and more. "Reality is everything we experience," says Bartholl "We shouldn't describe it as digital versus analog."

And last but not least is Dagan Cohen's Upload Cinema: "Bringing web films to the big screen." Cohen says that 25% of online search is film related and that we are living in the culture of the moving image. Upload Cinema is a film club that takes the best web films to the big screen. Every first Monday of the month they present a fresh program of inspiring and entertaining short movies from the internet. There is a new theme every month and the audience can submit films. The selection is made by an editorial team who then compiles a 90 minutes program to be screened in movie theaters and special venues. In Amsterdam, Upload Cinema has been showing their selection at the wonderful Uitkijk cinema and they are seeking for more spaces in every town they can. This initiative is a great example of bringing the internet to the "real" life, and even giving new life to sometimes forgotten small venues.

So I am definitely one who believes in the indefinite opportunities offered by the internet and the digital tools. Of course there will always be loads of "crap" -to quote Andrew Keen again, but at least I can choose not to watch or read it freely, and I can even share my opinion about it being "crap" if I want to, using the many feedback opportunities. Moreover, I can learn and build myself some expertise I may otherwise have never had. And this by no means excludes the possibilities and the necessity of having people with expertise supporting the makers and the audiences all along the way.

Image: Metahaven

Melody Gardot's Journey to Amsterdam

2009-11-17T00:03:00.004+01:00

I'd been waiting to see Melody Gardot for two years. I missed her when she came to North Sea Festival twice. So waiting for Gardot one hour more standing in front of closed doors at the Melkweg because of technical issues that needed to be dealt with was not enough to discourage me. Yes it was a bit annoying to hear that even after the standing hour, Melody Gardot needed a bit more time to get ready "to give a good concert" as one of the organizers said, booed on the stage. But again, that wasn't enough to make me unhappy. I was too enthusiastic to let anything spoil the moment, and I have to say that my expectations were far more than met.

She was (and looked) wonderful tonight, la Gardot. She entered the music hall from the back, walked down the stairs, through the impatient audience and stepped on the stage, apologizing for her delay. In front of the huge white curtain, she knelt down and patiently spread sand on the stage floor. The ritual seemed surrealistic under the red spot light. Standing up she started singing a cappella, using her high heels as drums creating a little sand storm under her feet. Then she moved behind the curtain and, together with her amazing band, started an ombres chinoises show. It was the most original concert opening I had seen in a long time. After this enchanting introduction, I was even eager to discover more of Gardot's live music. I was mesmerized until the end, and I laughed a lot in-between songs, because she has some sense of humor la Gardot, and it feels so good! Just like her music, and as her interludes show, Melody Gardot is sincere. It was a delight spending the evening with her. And just a personal note for you Melody, if you ever read this post: we can go on my bicycle every day together, through my white little earphones you will sing to me and we'll take each other along on our different journeys.

Melody Gardot performed at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, 16 November 2009.
For more tour dates check: http://www.myspace.com/melody

Photo: A white photo of Melody Gardot by Shervin Lainez (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0)

Storybird: Create your Digital Stories

2009-10-29T22:17:00.004+01:00

Thanks to the Free Technology for Teachers blog, I have discovered a great collaborative storytelling website called Storybird.

Storybird allows anyone to create picture book stories using existing templates. You can chose from a very wide variety of art works. This is of course a perfect tool to work with children but even for adults. I very much enjoyed writing my little story, Home (see below), and I intend to write some more. Mainly to exercise myself, as I'm seriously considering working with an illustrator/artist when I will have a clearer idea of what I'd like to write for this kind of medium. However, I am not ready yet for such an adventure so I will start with these "storybirds," because that will be one way of learning, but also sharing. So I would urge you to try it out, alone or with your kid, and if you don't have children -like me- get the one living inside of you. Enjoy!

Home on Storybird

Stranger Festival in Amsterdam

2009-10-16T22:53:00.006+02:00

Some 50 young people and 25 teachers from the schools I am working with on the INDIE project are now here in Amsterdam and actively participating to the Stranger Festival organised by the European Cultural Foundation. I've been working on this partnership for months and I am really happy to see how productive, dynamic and hard working our young people are.
If you are interested in video have a look at the Stranger Festival website and don't miss the Stranger Award Show Live broadcast tomorrow at 20:30.

Elif Shafak's Journey Between Languages bis

2009-10-10T11:54:00.007+02:00

Remember I had written about Elif Shafak's autobiographical novel Siyah Süt some time ago on this blog (see post An Ode to Women). The novel has now been translated into French at the Phebus Publishing House, the editor Daniel Arsand talks about Lait Noir on a Fnac Live video on You Tube. I wonder if it will be translated into English as well.

For the non French speakers among you, Shafak's novel Ask (which I didn't enjoy reading but was a huge success in Turkey) will be out in English under the title The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi). The most interesting about this latest novel is the journey Shafak is doing between languages (see my previous post about her love of languages). Ask and The Forty Rules of Love show yet another crazy journey for the writer. Shafak has first written the novel in English, then it has been translated into Turkish by a translator. Shafak then took the translation and rewrote the novel. When the Turkish version was ready, she went back to the English version and rewrote it with a new spirit. She explains in an interview to Today's Zaman that she has "built two parallel books in the same span of time" She adds: "It is a bit insane, I have to admit. It is a crazy amount of work. I do this because language is my passion." And this is why, despite the fact that I don't always enjoy all her writings, I think Elif Shafak is an amazingly productive writer who can cross a lot of boundaries using languages.

Edinburgh Showcase 2009

2009-08-25T00:58:00.004+02:00

I'm in Edinburgh the whole week and I will be blogging about performances and events I will attend from 24 to 29 August. Follow My Week at the Edinburgh Showcase blog if you are interested in performing arts!

Remember 17 August 1999

2009-08-17T09:46:00.007+02:00

Ten years ago Turkey was living a tragedy. Official figures say 17,480 died, 23,781 were wounded and 285,211 residences were damaged (see the earthquake's wikipedia page in Turkish). Unofficial sources talk about 50,000 deaths and more than 100,000 wounded. Whichever are the right figures, the reality was that hundreds of thousands people lost way too much during the big Marmara Earthquake on 17 August 1999: their lives, their loved ones, their homes, parts of their body, their work, their trust...

Another big earthquake is expected in the same region, it can happen today, tomorrow or any time within the next decades. Yes, it is a natural disaster human beings cannot fight against. But we should be prepared. We should start by not building houses made of sand (shells were found in the building wreck at the time!!!). Government regulations on building need to be stronger and more importantly, it needs to be followed. Rescue teams should be ready at any time. Hospitals should be ready to host everyone. It is too easy to say that nature or God had its say and that there is nothing we can do about it. That's just too easy. We cannot stop an earthquake, but we can make sure that we don't lose hundreds of thousands of lives when one comes our way. And we must not forget the tragedy of ten years ago, not to cry our souls out and feel good about it, but to make sure every single citizen remembers when time comes to vote that they choose the ones that will care about their citizens' well being. And if you wonder what might happen next time, read Mine G. Kirikkanat's novel Bir gün, gece (translated into French as La malédiction de Constantin). Because reality can be scary doesn't mean we don't have to face it.

A Novel that Waxes Off Stereotypes

2009-08-11T21:32:00.011+02:00

Three young women are meeting once a month to get their legs (and other parts of their body) waxed. They live in the Netherlands, they have a strong friendship and they talk freely about their choices in life: about their career, their lifestyle, their fears, their love stories and about sex. No, it's not the story of Carrie and her friends teleported to the land of the wooden shoes, and it's not an orientalist depiction of an escape from the Harem. De Harsclub, translating literally as "The Wax Club" is the story of Bahar -single girl living with her parents, Arzu -independent flight attendant living alone, and Yelda -married to the "perfect" husband. Stereotypes? No.

Senay Özdemir's novel goes far beyond its "Mediterranean Chick lit" label and its unoriginal cover. De Harsclub is a sincere novel and it is why it's such a pleasure to read. The author doesn't try to manipulate your thoughts about a certain community. In this novel, like in real life, Mediterranean/Turkish/Muslim women do care about and have a life full of fun, love, success and sex, and that is just ... natural. No stereotypical depiction of the "non Western" woman caught in the terrible-web-of-her-so-thought-doomed-culture. Being herself of Turkish descent, Senay Özdemir has a legitimate voice to tell the story of these three young women of Turkish origin living in the Netherlands. Because indeed, having Turkish roots does influence their thoughts and action, and it does shape their identity. But it does not ipso facto imply that they are trying to escape from an-OTHER world. These women are perfectly feeling in harmony with their identity, because it is composed by more than just nationality or tradition. Arzu, Bahar and Yelda are before everything else women, and Özdemir does not feel she needs to justify their needs, their passions, their stories, in any way. She doesn't have to and it feels so good. I recognized myself in these characters, I also recognized my mother, my aunt and my girlfriends, all with their own backgrounds, all with their own identities, all sharing stories of life as women, in their own way. I enjoyed their company and moreover, I enjoyed not having been put in a box again.

De Harsclub, by Senay Özdemir (Archipel Amsterdam - Antwerpen, 185 pages). In Dutch.
Senay Özdemir's blog: http://senayozdemir.blogspot.com/

The Power of Storytelling

2009-07-24T20:50:00.005+02:00

For those of you who understand French, I would urge you to listen to Le Monde's "Ma première nuit en France" series. The title means "My first night in France" and on each recording, one person is telling his or her own first night in France. Whether they came to France to settle or just to visit, they all have something to say, and they are all worth listening to.

Abdellah tells about his "rêve de pauvre" (dream of the poor) to become a writer, a filmmaker, "all these activities which are not serious things when you are poor", he says, "they don't feed you". Jenny, a British teacher coming from Greece, arrives at 24 and finds herself sheltered on her first-almost-homeless-night by a colleague she just meets. Mikaël comes from the USA and explains how he voiced "Messieurs Dames je vous aime" in the middle of a café, the only sentence he could say in French at the time. His story gets funnier when he tells about how he and his friend released exotic birds from cages on his landlord's balcony at 4am. Angelika tells about her experience as a 16 year old tourist seeing Paris for the first time with her boyfriend -and whose parents have arranged them to stay in separate bedrooms at a small hotel in the romantic city. She has been drawing her vision of Paris from the literature of Simone de Beauvoir and Victor Hugo, and spent her first night wondering about the all night screaming cat she thought was a tortured baby. Margani arrives to France from Somalia to study. He tells how anxious he was to fail "because I didn't know any French". The street where he lived in Mogadishu was so full of life he thought Paris would be even livelier, but on his first night he saw the city empty and thought "Morgani, you are dead!", then he tells how he slept on top of the bed with his clothes on because he didn't realise he could get inside the bed and sleep comfortably wrapped in the blanket.

There is something so powerful in telling stories. Even the simplest, most anecdotal ones, when told with sincerity, can deeply touch. So far you can listen online to the stories of Abdellah, Jenny, Mikaël, Angelika and Margani. Each of them funny, poignant, passionate, they all, in their own way, tell the story of a discovery.

More stories will be told throughout the summer on Le Monde's "Ma première nuit en France" series.

Young People, Get your Mobile Phones!

2009-06-04T17:46:00.009+02:00

I have been heavily involved in the creation of a competition for young people within the project I am currently working on, called Inclusion and Diversity in Education (INDIE). Getting ideas from my previous job experience and having seen what great things come out of films made with a mobile phone... I have thought that it would be great to ask the young people in secondary schools to make films with their mobile phones about diversity in their school, home and everyday life. Luckily the people I am working with on this project loved the idea and we developed it together: INDIE goes Mobile is now launched! The competition info and rules exist in several languages as it is open to all secondary school students in 9 European countries. So young people, get your mobile phones and show us how you see diversity!

Literary Boston and New York

2009-05-30T15:55:00.008+02:00

I've been willing to write about my trip to Boston and New York City a while ago. It's been a month now that I'm back but it's not too late to share some great literary moments I had there.

Bookshop on the corner of Bleecker and 11th Street, New York City

First let me start with Boston, a city full of culture and history where I was to attend the Media in Transition conference at MIT. I've attended several panels on different topics.
The first panel was about Digital Classrooms and Digital Curricula, there's been very fruitful and necessary discussions about collaborative education and teacher training on new technologies. Students may be digital natives, but most of the teachers aren't. A clear emphasis on knowing rather than knowledge (don't think knowledge is only in your brain) has been put forward so to go towards a more participatory culture. "Classrooms don't have walls anymore" was one of the messages about the possibilities given by new media & technologies to use in education. The second panel I've been to was Race, Nationality and the Digital Technologies with 4 very interesting papers that I would suggest you have a look if interested in the topic. The use of the internet has been analysed from Black communities in the USA to Aboriginal communities in Canada. One paper has also presented how hate speech, which was mostly spread through underground media (flyers, meetings...) in the recent past, has been reaching a much wider audience, expanding globally, being very active on social networking and in the cyberspace. The Databases, Encyclopedias, Archives panel has been focusing a lot on history, on digital approaches to history, and on the evolution of the encyclopedia and the emergence of wikipedia. The last panel I've been to was Fiction and Media Change. Since the last few months, I've been more and more interested in the emergence of a "new" literature, with authors not afraid of using new technologies in their narratives, or even to write for different types of media than the printed book (the Penguin project "We Tell Stories" is one great example of the possibilities offered by new media to tell stories). These various possibilities haven't been really discussed in the panel, staying more focused on literary theory and other comparisons between the novel and the cinema for example. There is thus still a lot more to share and to explore, so do have a look at the titles of the papers, most of them available online (see the list and links at the end of this post). After MIT, a visit to Harvard was of course compulsory, and so to the wonderful bookstores all around Cambridge. The Boston Public Library was stunning, and the lovely Boston Athanaeum has been a great discovery.

Boston Public Library

New York has also its load of culture and literature. It's the fourth time I went to New York and never really took the opportunity to enter the Public Library, which I did this time and couldn't understand why I didn't put such a great place in my list together with the MET, MOMA and other landmarks (seeing it from outside is not enough). I've been quite moved seeing the Gutenberg Bible.

One of the 48 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, New York Public Library

And last but not least, I could enjoy the PEN World Voices Festival in New York, which I wanted to go to for such a long time. I've had the chance to meet and listen to authors I really like, among them Laila Lalami, Neil Gaiman and Shaun Tan. I've also discovered many wonderful authors, and I had to come to New York to discover a Dutch author of children book from Amsterdam, Marieken Jongman. I told her I would attend events she will be in when back in Amsterdam.

Neil Gaiman, Marieken Jongman and Shaun Tan at the PEN Voices

And here are the signed books, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami and Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan, both wonderful books:

You can read all the papers of the panelists on the MIT6 website. Here are the panels I've referred to above:
Digital Classrooms and Digital Curricula

Jami Carlacio, Lance Heidig, Teaching Digital Literacy Digitally Julio Gonzalez-Appling, Technology as a Bridge in the 21st-Century Classroom Bernadette Longo, Using Social Networks and Mobile Technologies to Enhance the Classroom Space Alice Robison, New Media Literacies by Design: The Game School
Race, Nationality and Digital Technologies
John Edward Campbell, From Barbershop to BlackPlanet: The Construction of Hush Harbors in Cyberspace
Kate Hennessy, Repatriation, Digital Cultural Heritage, and the (Re)Production of Meaning in a Canadian Aboriginal Community
Adam Klein, A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation in Cyberspace
Nancy van Leuven, The New Mediated Environment of American Indians
Databases, Encyclopedias, Archives
Paul Arthur, History in Motion: Digital Approaches to the Past
Erinc Salor, Encyclopedic Endeavor and the Internet
Peter Walsh, The Uses of Catastrophe: Ninveh, Layard, and the Future of Knowledge
Fiction and Media Change
Jonathan Butler, Novel Obligations: The Future of Fiction in the Digital Age
Staffan Ericson, Death at Broadcasting House
Joanne McNeil, New Media in Fiction: Why the Novel’s Protagonist Never Plays with his iPhone
Annika Olsson, Narratives of Literature in Print and Cyberspace

Perihan Mağden's Two Girls

2009-04-12T12:54:00.004+02:00

I've been deeply touched by a very strong novel: İki Genç Kızın Romanı ("The novel of two girls", translated by Brendan Freely and published as Two Girls in English), by Turkish author and columnist Perihan Mağden. The novel has also been adapted to the cinema by Kutluğ Ataman. I like Mağden because she speaks/writes her mind, and in Turkey, this is not an easy task. She is of course criticized by many and has even been prosecuted by the Turkish government because of the views she expressed on mandatory military service. In this novel, Mağden depicts the lives of two teenage girls in Istanbul. The polar tone of the novel strengthens the feeling of oppression, especially for a girl in a male dominant environment. The force of Mağ den's third person omniscient narration also lies in the encounter of these two characters, the angry Behiye and the naive Handan. Both girls are coming from very distinct backgrounds: Behiye is the sister of an older brother and the daughter of a conservative family she hates, and Handan is the unique daughter of a prostitute she loves. Since the very moment they meet, Behiye sees Handan as her saviour: the beautiful girl who will save her from her life, her brother, her mother who cries all the time... Behiye hates life, she doesn't like herself much either, until she finds Handan and grabs her to the core. Their bond is beyond friendship and sisterhood, it is almost amorous. The murders of boys happening all around Istanbul together with Behiye's unreasonable attitude and open hatred against the world (especially towards men) intensify the sense of danger and threat. This impossible relationship is told in an incredibly honest and down to earth language. The word plays are brilliant (and I guess a real challenge to translate). This is an excellent work of contemporary literature and I believe quite original in the current Turkish literary scene.

The cover of the Turkish edition of the novel published by Merkez Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık (Istanbul, June 2006, 255 pages)

Elif Shafak's Journey between Languages

2009-03-24T20:20:00.004+01:00

Most of you might know how strongly I always objected to people saying that one can only write in his or her own native or first language. I am now so relieved to read Elif Shafak's column of 17 March. For those of you who cannot read Turkish, I would like to share some of her views here. Shafak starts her article explaining how people like to ask her why she is writing in English, and even sometimes argue that by writing in English, she becomes a writer of English language literature. "It isn't so!" she says and argues that today, when so many people are living and growing up and get educated in different languages, live in different countries, move so much, we shouldn't put people into such narrow categories. Elif Shafak is writing both in English and in Turkish, not only is this important for the author, but it is for the reader. I don't feel the same when I read her work when the original version is English (like The Bastard of Istanbul or The Saint of Incipient Insanities) or Turkish (like Mahrem or Bit Palas). I always prefer to read books in their original written language, the same goes when I watch movies. Whenever possible, I prefer the original version. And in case of Elif Shafak's work, I can join her in the journey between languages because luckily, I understand both Turkish and English. I sometimes have more trouble understanding Shafak's work in Turkish because she uses a very elaborate vocabulary with many ancient Turkish words (I love to learn by the way!). And this is what I love about her work, this "journey between languages" as she likes to put it. It is also a journey for her readers, at least it is for me.

Her last novel published in Turkey and in Turkish, Ask (pronounced "Ashk", meaning "Love") is the example of such an adventurous and passionate journey. Shafak has written the novel in English and had it translated into Turkish by Kadir Yiğit Uz. Then she reworked on the Turkish version, so in a sense, Ask "has been written again". In her column, Shafak also fairly explains that it isn't an easy task for a writer to express him or herself in a different language and that it would simply be madness if one wouldn't simply love working like that. She offers a wide range of examples of writers who have been writing in different languages and in languages which aren't their first, like Nabokov, Beckett, or Conrad (whose English Virginia Woolf heavily criticized). Well yes, they are all among the best writers of the 20th century so no doubt that were successful.

I am fascinated by languages and I myself speak five. I do certainly not master them all the same way but all of them open different doors of the world to me, make me experience different cultures, teach me different visions and ways of life, and offer me such a wide range of possibilities to express myself. So I think I do know what Elif Shafak is sharing with her readers and I do applaud her for the way she shakes herself, her readers and literature to its very core.

Elif Shafak's column in the Newspaper Zaman appears twice a week.

Birmingham

2009-03-14T12:21:00.029+01:00

I've been to Birmingham for a couple of days last week and was quite impressed by the city. I've only heard very negative things about it, not less than "Birmingham sucks" "It's boring!" or more simply: "There's nothing in Birmingham!" So maybe I was impressed because I had very low expectations, but still, I do think it's a pretty city.

Birmingham has been through great changes in the last few years. And having such a young and diverse population must help the city being dynamic and full of creativity.

If you ever go to Birmingham, try to wander around and look at the nice buildings and definitely stop by the Waterstones bookstore on 128 New Street, whether it's for the books or the building itself.

Photos: Statue on Victoria Square, inside Waterstones, Facade of Waterstones on 123 New Street

Inspired by Amy Güth

2009-03-12T00:05:00.007+01:00

American author, editor, festival founder Amy Güth has posted a very fun video on her blog: "About my Shoes" I love reading her posts and if I could find her novel Three Fallen Women (out of print) I would certainly read that too. If I go to Chicago, I'll sure try to attend one of her events. This post is to tell Amy that I also like taking pictures of my shoes everywhere! Here are some:

My shoes in Lubeck:
My shoes in Sevilla:

My shoe in Granada:
Vive les shoes!

What's in a name?

2009-03-11T23:16:00.003+01:00

Is one's whole identity in a name? What does it say about where one comes from? Does it say anything about where one goes? Would one be different if named differently? Does one try to escape their identity by using a pen name? I'm sure you all would have different answers to these questions. I have some I'd like to share. Many people who know me as Canan ask me where the name Ayse come from? Well... Ayse is actually my first name and it appears on my passport , driver's licence, identity card, my diplomas, and therefore on my plane tickets, bank cards, on my door bell. Canan has been amputated by officials and only appears as a C. on all these documents. Most people call me Canan because it's how my parents and friends have been calling me for the last 29 years. And for 29 years my name has been transformed to Conan, Chanan, Shanan, Kanaan and so on. I always felt I had a different name outside Turkey. The pronunciation was changing with the geography where it was spoken. The closest to the Turkish pronounciation would be Janan or even Jaanan. I only bother correcting people when they pronounce K, but I don't mind if the J becomes CH or SH. Some friends and colleagues call me Ayse, and most people only need to pronounce my name once, so I never correct the latter bunch. The correct pronounciation would sound Ayshe.... so if you chose to call me Ayse...
Does my name cover my whole identity? Thank God no! It helps understanding my history, it says where my name comes from, and one can guess where I or my family might come from too. As for where I go and how I'd be going if I had another name, I cannot say. I am just happy I have two names I love and that belong to me, because both have been offered to me by my parents.
Since I moved to the Netherlands, it got even easier to avoid the confusion: on all official paperwork you're only asked to write down your "Hoofdletter", the first letter of your surnames. Happy me, I'm now A.C.! My name journey will never end, fortunately.

Books & Brussels

2009-03-08T09:18:00.013+01:00

One of my favorite activities when in Brussels is to wander in bookstores. Not that there are none in Amsterdam (there are plenty and very high quality bookstores like Athenaeum Boekhandel), it's just that I miss being surrounded by books written in French when I enter a bookstore. Athenaeum has a fairly good section of French speaking books and I can always order online. But I still love going to a bookstore, seeing what's new, discovering some jewel of a book chosen by the employees that month, or just touching the hard and paper back covers, opening and going through the pages. So last week I've been to Tropismes for the wide choice of fiction, theatre and poetry, to Brüsel for the graphic novels and comic books but also the very nice gallery, and although impersonal and too big I've been to FNAC (avoid the place on Saturday!) because of the wide space. Here are some titles I've bought during my visits:

"Entre les murs" by François Bégaudeau (you will certainly know the adaptation to cinema from Laurent Cantet: "The Class"), "De cendres et de fumées" by Philippe Blasband and "Pyongyang" by Quebecois graphic novelist Guy Delisle. Other acquisitions are translated works: "Le Dieu Manchot" by José Saramago, "Le voyage dans le passé" by Stefan Zweig and two mangas: "The Outsider" by Gou Tanaber and"Le Champ de l'arc-en-ciel/Nijigahara Holograph" by Inio Asano.

My hunger for books has been satiated during my stay in Brussels. The Brussels Book Fair began when I was still there! I've spoken to some authors, discovered new publishing houses, listened to Enki Bilal talk about his new work ANIMAL'Z , lied to Joseph Joffo about willing to buy one of his books but claiming I needed to go to the ATM (I have read "A Bag of Marbles" in high school and didn't want to buy old fashioned editions of his books - but there's no excuse, I feel bad, I shouldn't lie!), discovered the work of Karin Tuil during her talk and listened to interviews of authors on the radio on my way back home to Amsterdam, a bag full of publisher catalogs, promotional bookmarks and books on the passenger seat.

Visit Amsterdam!

2009-01-28T00:15:00.006+01:00

I've been preparing a short virtual visit of Amsterdam for the Virtourist website the last few weeks, and finally it is ready and online! You can visit this wonderful city which has been my home for more than a year now by clicking here. Enjoy!

Photo: Klovenierburgswal by Erinc Salor

Blank...

2009-01-24T01:03:00.007+01:00

I haven't got the opportunity to post anything for a while. I have also been really lazy these last weeks (except during my trip in South Korea which was a delightful experience!). I haven't written a line for weeks now, my short stories are still waiting on my hard drive and somewhere in my mind. Ideas are still alive but structure is nowhere around! I will give myself some time, not too long though, but just enough to get back to work and being productive! Feels good even to write about it now!

Me upside down at the Film Museum in Mole Antonelliana , Torino, Dec 2007 (photo by Erinc Salor)

Hopeful Apology

2008-12-15T21:08:00.008+01:00

Academics Prof. Ahmet İnsel, Prof. Baskın Oran, Dr. Cengiz Aktar and journalist Ali Bayramoğlu have started an online petition aimed at all Turkish people to sign and affirm their feelings of injustice about the negation of the Armenian massacres of 1915.

Here is a translation of the statement that you can read in Turkish on the homepage of the website www.ozurdiliyoruz.com ("özür diliyoruz" means "we apologize"):
My conscience does not allow me to deny and be insensitive to the Great Catastrophe experienced by the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. I reject this injustice, for my own part share my fellow Armenian brothers and sisters' feelings and pain, and apologize from them.
After you enter your name and other relevant details, you have to click on "özür diliyorum" (I apoligize) to sign the petition.

Among the supporters of this hopeful initiative are famous writers, activists, artists and more like Cem Özdemir, Nilüfer Göle, Murathan Mungan, Nedim Gürsel, Perihan Magden ...(see the complete list under "Destekleyenler" on the homepage of Ozur Diliyorum).
I can only applaud such an initiative but do acknowledge that the way to reach real understanding and reconciliation between the two nations has been extremely slow and full of denials during the last 90 years. There is still a lot to do, and if signing the online petition can help taking a step forward, I have no other choice than taking action and start with an apology.

Also read Sarah Rainsford article on BBC news and the Turkish newspaper Radikal's short report.

Sinterklaas arrives to Amsterdam!

2008-11-16T14:50:00.011+01:00

I was sitting in my living room on this nice and quiet Sunday morning, when I suddenly heard boat horns and music arriving from far. The entertaining sounds started approaching quickly, and I couldn't let my curiosity sleep and jumped out of the comfy couch to have a look out from the window. Loads of boats with people dancing on it were passing on the "Nieuwe Herengracht" canal next to my apartment, with excited kids and adults on the street hailing at them. On the boats (dancing) and in the streets (running, dancing and cycling), there were plenty of people with their faces painted in black and wearing colorfoul costumes who were distributing candies to the kids: these were Zwarte Pieten! Only then had I finally understood what was happening: "Sinterklaas is coming!", have I shouted in the living room. My partner gave a suprising glance at me: "Sinter who?" "Look at the Zwarte Pieten! Sinterklaas is coming!" My excitement wasn't convincing to him: "What Pitt?".
I remember celebrations of Saint-Nicholas when I was living in Belgium. As a kid, I loved the fact that we could eat loads of marzipan (I even thought we could only find marzipan at this time of the year, which fortunately isn't true), I never really believed in Saint-Nicholas (or in Santa Claus), but I still liked the celebrations (what kind of kid wouldn't like receiving gifts and candies?). Every year on 6 December, the Dutch and the Belgian celebrate Sinterklaas in honour of Saint-Nicholas (klaas is a nickname for Nicolaas), the patron saint of children, sailors, merchants, pawnbrokers and Amsterdam, which I honestly didn't know until I read it in the Lonely Planet Amsterdam. The white-bearded man dressed as a bishop arrives to Amsterdam every year in mid-November (I didn't know it would be today) by ship from "Spain" and enters the city on a horse to receive the keys of the city from the mayor (Mayor Cohen did it in front of the Scheepvaartmuseum today).

He is of course followed by his Zwarte Pieten who, apart from throwing candies to the kids are also carrying sacks to take the naughty ones away (which they of course never do during the parade). The idea is that well-behaved kids receive gifts in a shoe they've placed next to the chimney with a carrot for the patron's horse. One Zwarte Piet climbs down the chimney and puts the gift in the shoe, and I suppose takes the carrot away for the horse, since I cannot imagine the horse climbing down the chimney (as if I could imagine a man with a face painted in black doing the same!). The North American Santa Claus evolved from the Sinterklaas celebrations at the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (today's New York).
I've seen Amsterdammers going crazy celebrating New Year and the Queen's Birthday on 30 April, and today the arrival of Sinterklaas to their city. I have been amazed again by their capacity of getting together and celebrate. Today's party goers were the kids, the young ones and old ones!
Photos taken on the Prins Hendrikkade, Amsterdam

Literature and Identities

2008-10-31T19:05:00.005+01:00

I was just reading an article about contemporary German literature in the French newspaper Le Monde. It basically explains how much richness and diversity immigrants living in Germany and writing in German have brought to contemporary German literature. In addition to talking about immigrants, I would have added that many writers whose parents were immigrants and whose first language might be other than German, have now chosen to write in German. Anyway, I must admit that I am a bit difficult about the use of terminologies like "immigrant" or "mother tongue", so let's say it's fair enough to use it broadly in this case. But what I don't understand is the parenthesis in the following sentence, where the author reports from the Frankfurt international book fair, in which Turkey was the guest country of honor this year:

...au-delà des écrivains turcs invités, bien d'autres, qui vivent en Allemagne et ont choisi d'écrire en allemand (le pays compte 3,4 millions de musulmans dont une majorité de Turcs), occupent désormais une place de choix dans le paysage littéraire : Feridun Zaimoglu, Emine Sevgi Ozdamar ou Hatice Akyün, notamment, ont enrichi ces dernières années la littérature germanophone de leur imaginaire et de leurs trouvailles stylistiques.

When talking about the Turkish authors living in Germany and who have chosen to write in German, she feels the need to tell us that Germany counts 3.4 million Muslims, from which a majority are Turkish. Can someone explain to me what this information has to do with writing in German or being Turkish? What does it add to our understanding of contemporary writing in Germany? It doesn't even tell us how many people from Turkish origin live in the country, so it doesn't add any relevant information, except that the author is making a serious amalgam here between country of origin and religion! Personally, I don't mind being called "Turkish", because among many others, it's one of the adjectives that indeed adds relevant information to who I am. I would accept "Muslim" to some extend, but even there I might find it odd to chose it as a first way of describing myself. As for "immigrant", it is a word that certainly wouldn't help describing me. It could even be misleading because I haven't really emigrated from anywhere, my parents did. They didn't ask for my opinion when I was in my mother's belly. The only thing that being called an immigrant would do to me is, alienating me from my parents country (because I have supposedly left it) and from the place where I live, and where I am supposed to feel home. How would you like to be called then, will you say? Don't call me one thing, I am from Turkish descent, yes, and I am a Turkish citizen. I am also a Belgian citizen and a resident of the Netherlands. I am speaking five languages, and mastering writing in at least three. So no, if I am going to be published one day, supposedly in French, I would not like to be called an immigrant writer! I had enough of that. Everyday life is narrow enough to put people into boxes, so I do believe we can do better in the literary, and in any artistic and creative domains for that matter. Of course ethnic, religious and cultural frameworks can influence creativity, and it does add a lot to the overall picture, but literature gives so much more space to writers and their readers. It's an immense area where we can move beyond frontiers, go much further than everyday life.

I would like to end with a quote from 2000 Nobel Laureate for Literature Gao Xingjian, from a speech given at the inauguration of the last edition of Kosmopolis, an international Literature festival held from 22 to 26 October in Barcelona:

"When literature becomes a hymn of praise for a country, the flag of a nation, the voice of a political party or mouthpiece of a class or group, it can be used as a powerful and crushing instrument of propaganda, but it loses its intrinsic nature ..."

Love story between a Fairy and a Wizard

2008-09-24T20:06:00.009+02:00

Author Laurel Snyder asked of the blogosphere, "What is your favorite book from childhood?", and following Amy Guth's post on her blog I am now telling you about one of my favorite childhood books: L'Enchanteur by René Barjavel. I think I must have read that book four times. It was one of our French class reading assignment and it luckily came in during my I'm-crazy-about-Arthurian-legend period. I would definitely suggest it to anyone who reads French (I'm afraid it has never been translated into English, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Written in 1984, L'Enchanteur could be seen as yet another novel based on the Arthurian legend, but Barjavel manages to make much more of it. He freely transforms the story into a romance: one between Merlin the Wizard (L'Enchanteur) and the Lady of the Lake Vivian. I still vividly remember the tenderness that links both characters (I can still hear Viviane's soft voice in my head). The main theme remains of course the quest for the Graal, and many other well known heroes appear in the novel: King Arthur, Perceval, Queen Guenièvre and Lancelot, whose love story is also quite powerful in Barjavel's narrative. The author plays a lot with conventions through voluntary anacronysms as well, introducing for instance tin cans and an electric chimney into the medieval story. Nevertheless, the main theme of this magical novel remains LOVE. The love story between kings and queens, knights and queens, between Vivian and Merlin, the Fairy who could see the human in the Wizard.

Photo: Cover of the Paperback edition - Collection FOLIO

The Sincerity of Margo Rabb

2008-09-13T13:50:00.004+02:00

Remember I wrote about Margo Rabb and her essay about Young Adult literature in the New York Times this summer. I have finally had the chance to read her latest novel “Cures for Heartbreak” (better later than never!). I had searched for it in several bookshops in Amsterdam and in Brussels, and since I couldn’t find it I simply ordered it online. After being away for a month, I was back home and “Cures for Heartbreak” was waiting for me…

The only family grief I have ever experienced was the loss of my grandfather four years ago. It was sad but in no way comparable to loosing one’s parent. So I had absolutely no idea how it must be like to lose one’s mum at the age of 15. I still don’t have a clue of course and I will never; because I am 29 and my mother is still alive and in good health. The day she will be gone, I will experience grief, but not like a 15 year old girl. I have been deeply touched by Margo Rabb’s narrative. I am not going to discuss why it is a YA novel or why it should or shouldn’t be, simply because I am no specialist in the field and also because no matter on what shelve the book has been placed, I am only interested in sharing my feelings about its content and not about its label. But the subject in itself is quite fascinating and really interesting. Many writers and reviewers have discussed the subject of YA literature on the blogosphere (check Colleen Mondor’s blog Chasing Ray among many others and of course Margo Rabb's essay on the NYT).

"Cures for Heartbreak" starts with Mia, her sister Alex and their father choosing a coffin for their mother’s funeral. “We’re in a play in which the funeral is the last act” says the father for the fifth time in two days. It all indeed looks so surreal: one day, Mia’s mother is diagnosed with cancer, “If she dies, I’ll die” writes the young 15 year old girl in her diary, and twelve days later, she dies But Mia doesn’t. She carries her grief everywhere, because this kind of love never dies but it hurts deeply. Throughout the novel, I was immersed in Mia’s world, in her fears, her doubts, her wishes, her friendships, her laughs and even her grief. Michael Chabon puts it absolutely right when he writes that the novel is “(…) sad, funny, smart, (and) endlessly poignant (…)” As she explains in the afterword, Margo Rabb has based herself on her own experience to write this novel. However, what makes the book magical and real is not that it contains autobiographical elements, but the sincerity of the narrative voice. Mia is not Margo, she is a fictional character and she has a life on her own, she is free from any psychological therapy many authors are unfortunately producing throughout their characters. This why I loved “Cures for Heartbreak” and I strongly recommend it to everyone, no matter how old. The still unconvinced ones can start having a look at Margo Rabb’s original and really enriching blog Books, Chocolate, Sundries where you will meet plenty of other fascinating authors presented through Margo's eyes. Again, always in a very sincere way.

Erykah Badu The Enchantress

2008-07-23T23:57:00.004+02:00

Erykah Badu is unique. She has proved it once again tonight on the stage of Paradiso in Amsterdam. I had the chance to see her perform at the Cactus Festival in Bruges two years ago and there already I was amazed. But tonight's concert was divine. Paradiso is of course a great place to listen to good music, it's not too big (it has a capacity of just over thousand people) and is one of Amsterdam's most beautiful concert venues. Right from her entrée, Ms Badu set the atmosphere: it was going to be an explosive night. Erykah Badu has the allure, the voice, the charisma, the humility, the talent, the humour, the beauty, the humanity... and I believe a lot more. Erykah Badu is a Diva. Erykah Badu is an Enchantress. Dressed to kill, super sexy yet classy, Ms Badu sang to us from her last album "New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)" without forgetting some songs from her beautiful "Mama's Gun", "Baduizm" or "World Wide Underground". Two hours and a half of outstanding vibes made the whole audience rise. At one point, Ms Badu stepped down of the stage to walk among the crowd. The Diva is close to the people, "not black people, not white people, not latinos, not asian... not blue, not green, not purple, all people!", constantly inviting it to rise higher and higher. So we all did, and I myself got so high that I can't get down yet. Some little voice inside me says I will stay under the enchantment for quite a long time.

Margo Rabb, she's YA and she's OK!

2008-07-22T20:57:00.006+02:00

Thanks to a very well written essay about Young Adult literature published in the New York Times Books Update of 21 July, I have discovered an even nicer author. Her name is Margo Rabb, she is a writer of YA books ... and more (she also writes for adults). If you want to know more about YA and her work, read her essay entitled "I'm Y.A., and I'm OK" and visit her website. She also has a blog called "Books, Chocolate, Sundries" (it's about books and food... a delight!). She has only started blogging in the end of June, so it's not too late to catch up! Her last book Cures for Heartbreak (pictured above) has received praise from Michael Chabon (you can read it on Margo Rabb's homepage), and I hope to review it on this blog soon.

Cuento Illustrado

2008-07-15T20:04:00.002+02:00

Here's a very nice illustrated story I found today. The author of the work is Angela Davila and you can follow her on Issuu. Enjoy!

Festival of Early Music in Utrecht

2008-07-15T19:02:00.008+02:00

From 29 August to 7 September the Oudemuziek Festival will take place in Utrecht. Check their website to see the full programme. Great ensembles like Le Poème Harmonique, Huelgas Ensemble and Capilla Flamenca will enchant the festival.

When the Rivers of the World lead to the North Sea...

2008-07-13T10:07:00.018+02:00

... they gather almost 70,000 jazz lovers to their shores. The marathonesque programme of this year's North Sea Jazz Festival has been almost perfect, despite the badly controlled heat (not a single artist could get on stage without pointing out the almost unbearable heat in the different rooms!). This is not such a small detail of course but not big enough to spoil the high quality of this internationally reknown festival. Held since 2006 at the Ahoy complex in Rotterdam, it had its home in The Hague during 30 years. A bigger venue was indeed necessary to host the hundreds of artists performing for 3 days in the different rooms named after the world's most impressive rivers.

The main focus of this year's North Sea Jazz Festival has been on vocal interpretation, with Bobby McFerrin (photo above) as artist in residence. My Friday evening started with a nice performance by Cassandra Wilson on the DARLING, followed by a not-so-jazz-but-still-able-to-be-jazz illustration of Fink's amazing talent on the YUKON and ended with an energetic Angie Stone on the NILE. I was in the meantime swimming on other rivers discovering new sounds, like the very surprising Esra Dalfidan who also gave an interview and acoustic performance in the NRC Media Café.

"We're not really a jazz band" says Fink (photo above) sitting on his chair, guitar in hand, looking at his bassist and laughing, "but we'll do our best to be jazz tonight". I'd discovered Fink through his album Biscuits for Breakfast in a small restaurant in Brussels called La Cuisine -which is unfortunately closed now. Its owner, inviting up to 18 guests in his kitchen, was listening to Fink every time I was eating there. "I'm going to ask him a percentage on his album sales" he was saying "everyone eating here wants to get his album!" Whenever I listen to Fink, I think of the nice and cosy Cuisine. So Fink at the North Sea Jazz was kind of unmissable for me and it reminded me of some nice and warm Foccacia's plenty of good Bresaola... (speaking of food, the catering at the Festival was really something). It was an amazing concert with an incredibly open and generous audience, which made Fink feel even more at ease and generous. Altogether with his drummer and bassist, they've interpreted songs from Biscuits for Breakfast and some new I still have to discover. Friday night ended with some dancing on Angie Stone's good vibes.

I have started my Saturday jazz parcours, again at the DARLING, with Bobby McFerrin, Richard Bona and Cyro Baptista, three monsters of improvisation gathered for a one hour performance! That concert was the kind that shakes you to the core. I could feel the tears running on my cheeks! McFerrin even stepped down the stage to get closer to his audience and make three women sing with him. An unforgettable experience! Leaving that river full of emotions has been hard, but the next musician who was waiting for us in the HUDSON was also one of a kind... Michel Camilo (photo above)! What a piano master! I cannot say anything more here, just look at his hands on the photo above and judge for yourself. Together with his trio, they have delivered one terrific music moment. After such an apocalyptic jazz exploit, I could only afford myself to take short glimpses of Chaka Khan and Toto Bona Lokua and hit the road back to Amsterdam.
Sunday, the last day of the festival had arrived. But no mourning, it has been a greatly enjoyable adventure, starting with Yael Naim, getting some Brad Meldhau in-between and ending with a kingly Youssou n'Dour (photo below).

I must say that I have been impressed by Yael Naim's performance in the very cosy MURRAY room. Luckily, I found myself a seat one hour before the concert even started, and the room quickly got full (and too warm, again). She might have been on the American charts thanks to her song that appears on the MacBook Air commercial, together with her friendly band, she proved that she could do some more. A talented new soul! Brad Meldhau has been a completely different experience, which I will certainly renew (especially if they decide to come to the Bimhuis very soon). The festival marathon has ended on a musically rich tone with Mr Youssou n'Dour: "Africa is not only about AIDS or poverty, Africa is also about happiness and joy!" he said while making the thousands of people gathered on the NILE dancing like crazy. For that night, and during the whole festival, it was all about great rhythm, good food, a lot of dancing, unexpected discoveries and true emotions.

All photos taken during the North Sea Jazz Festival (c)Erinç Salor

North Sea Jazz Festival took place from 11 to 13 July 2008 at the Ahoy in Rotterdam
Next Year's festival will take place from 10 to 12 July 2009
www.northseajazz.com

Le Petit Parachutiste

2008-07-06T18:58:00.003+02:00

For those of you who can read French, here's my prize winning short story "Le Petit Parachutiste"
I hope you'll enjoy it!

Inclusion and Diversity in Education

2008-07-04T18:21:00.002+02:00

No Visa for You!

2008-06-28T17:06:00.004+02:00

What a shame... it happened again! Great artists have been denied a Schengen visa and are forced to cancel their European tour. Konono nr 1, headliners of the Couleur Café Festival, will stay in Kinshasa and no one in Brussels will have the chance to hear their great music. What an irony when you know what values Couleur Café stands for! A Belga article in La Libre explains that their new passports not being ready (thank you oh bureaucray!), they've been allocated diplomatic passports so they could ask for visas to travel... but even with that, they've been refused entry to the oh so magnificient European soil! As if it weren't enough that people get humiliated waiting in front of unwelcoming consulates so proudly treating people like shit. Sharing my life with a non EU citizen, we now choose our leisure/holiday destinations according to visa requirements. That's how we will prefer to spend our summer in Andalucia, Spain rather than Scotland, UK. And that's how one great friend of mine living in Sarajevo, also an artist by the way (what could happen if artists were invading Europe?!), cannot come and visit me whenever she likes -she's been denied a visa twice despite the fact that she lived in Belgium and Japan for many years. Go on like that dear EU states, but don't forget that the world does not belong to you!

Sex and the City: too many unfair reviews for a very much enjoyable movie

2008-06-22T23:26:00.005+02:00

Like most of the series lovers, I've been waiting for "Sex and the City: the Movie" for quite some time. There's been the whole talk about it, then the shooting gossips and finally the reviews. Too many people, including cinema critics I like to read in different newspapers from different countries, almost made me want not to spend 10 euros to go and see the movie in a cinema and wait for it until it gets out on DVD- which by the way shows I still wanted to see it. Then I heard some of my very good friends talking about it in a much better way than the so-called professionals. So I thought, I liked the series and even my boyfriend wanted to see it! So we jumped on our bikes at 8.10pm to get to the 8.30pm show. 2 hours later I can tell you... we had a great time! The four NYC gals were there making me laugh and happy. They were all good, faithful to themselves and not boring at all. I enjoyed watching them, and when I got out of the cinema I just thought of the different reviews I read and they all made nonsense to me -not to say crap. Well, I will sound cliché but it's much better to listen to your friends' advice, at least when it comes to "Sex and the City". It may also be because I absolutely love the series (I got the Shoe Box edition!!). If you still hesitate to go and see the movie, just go. Even if you're not as enthusiastic as I was, you will still spend a nice time with four fabulous girls and a magnificent city! So don't bother waiting for what's not there and just enjoy!

Le Petit Parachutiste is a Winner!

2008-06-03T19:16:00.006+02:00

I must admit that I was really excited about receiving this prize at la Maison de la Francité last Friday. For the first time in my life, my writing was going to be acknowledge by professional people. Not that my friends' opinions don't count - it really does, especially Lise's who's always helping me doing better every time - but being rewarded is always a pleasure. My "Petit Parachutiste" is a winner and I am quite proud of him. He was stuck in that tree right in front of my current apartment in Amsterdam since New Year. He's free now!

Jazzy Rotterdam

2008-05-11T12:40:00.007+02:00

North Sea Jazz Festival Programme is now known. I had bought my tickets already at a lower price, not a drastic difference with current sales but with the guarantee of having a three-days ticket in my possession before it gets sold out. After having meticulously checked the programme, I am really happy I did so... but still, there is one thing that I find really unfair and quite a shame actually: all headliner artists like Paul Simon, Diana Krall and Alicia Keys necessitate an extra fee of 15 to 30 euros per person. Well, I could understand when it's some of them, but all is a bit too much- especially when all communication had been focused on them the last months. Fortunately, I am not going to this internationally renown festival to listen to popular jazz and soul "stars" but to experience strong live musical moments from artists like Herbie Hancock, Michel Camilo, Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Victor Wooten, Bobby McFerrin and many more to discover. So in the end I am satisfied with my purchase and can't wait for the experience, without Alicia Keys, Paul Simon and Diana Krall.

One Ordinary Travel Anecdote

2008-05-03T00:31:00.000+02:00

- Have you ordered a special meal? asked the stewardess
- …. (Listening to music through my iPod)
- Miss?
- Sorry, what?
- Have you ordered a Moslem meal?
- …
- ???
- Oh, yes, thank you.

She said the word “Moslem” so loud, I felt like everybody in the plane was looking at me. Nine hours and twenty minutes… how far was I going to manage not to see all those eyes staring at me? I’ve always loved to put my cultural and religious identity forward, although I didn’t practice most of what my given faith told me to. Not eating pork was one way to affirm one of my identities. You don’t chose where you come from, but you can learn to live with it and even enjoy your differences with others. Being the “other” had never been problematic for me since I’ve been lucky to grow up in a quite nice, even if not fancy, environment, with educated parents and friends. I suppose it was a luxury to affirm my Moslem identity out loud while still living like a Westerner. My “special” meal had arrived, and there is no need to be a gourmet to see that it wasn’t special at all. Chicken, potato and carrots… “Mmmmm… I hope the carrots are halal” I thought I was joking with myself when I figured out that my neighbor began to observe my apparently strange behavior. I smiled at him and took a bite of my supposedly halal chicken. I never eat halal at home, I don’t pray either, only when I got scared, like everyone I suppose. It’s my best friend who’s working at a travel agency who booked the special meal for me. He always does so. A very sensitive gesture, especially when you know that I myself wouldn’t even think of it. Anyway, I had to spend the next nine hours and sixteen minutes on this flight to the United States, having already accepted the fact that every other passenger around had tagged me as “THE MOSLEM”. Maybe I was getting paranoid, but believe me, even five years after 9/11, with all the new security rules in airports and Islamophobia in the international air, you follow the way of paranoia, Moslem or not.
After seven hours of uncomfortable flight, the same question rose again from a different stewardess, only this time, I was ready to answer.

- Have you ordered a special meal?
- Yes, yes, I did! Why all the fuss about it?
- Well, no fuss Miss. Just wanted to let you know that it’s the same meal for everyone, only that you get an extra bar of cereals.
- Hmm ‘hanks

Let’s hope it’s a halal one! This time, I didn’t say it out loud, but I could feel my neighbor hearing it anyway.

Writers who get close to you

2008-04-30T21:10:00.004+02:00

Not so long ago, and thanks to my dear espresso bean, I have discovered a great author: Neil Gaiman. I am now religiously following his journal, checking everyday (my life is easier thanks to Google reader!) whether he has posted anything new on his blog. The man is really brilliant and still very humble. Another author's blog I really like following is French writer and philosopher Pierre Assouline's La république des livres. I'd never read any of their books, and reading their blogs makes me want to know more about their work. I wish more authors would do the same. I really applaud those who make the time to stay close to their readers and be able to write about anything they like to talk about. Thanks to their blogs, I also know where these authors are, it isn't that important to me to know that Neil Gaiman is in Tasmania now -although it is interesting- but knowing that Pierre Assouline is now in Amsterdam until 20 May is clearly relevant information. I can now catch any opportunity to go and listen to one of his lecture here in the city where I live.

MONOCLE

2008-04-27T22:54:00.005+02:00

While enjoying a sunny Amsterdam Sunday cycling near the canals, I've stopped at the Athenaeum Boekhandel and the American Book Center to check some travel guides for this summer and I found a magazine -nothing to do with travel, although its writers move all around the world- called MONOCLE. The atypical, chic and easy layout just made me wanted to take it, but I also found the title of the magazine in itself attractive: MONOCLE. A Briefing on Global Affairs, Business, Culture & Design. Then I read the headline: MONOCLE reports from Ashrafieh: home to Beirut's most resilient residents and their curious community that just won't quit. I had a quick look inside and just bought the magazine. I think I'm going to follow it every month. It also has a quite complete website: www.monocle.com with articles and video programmes. Also in this month's issue are articles about Art Dubai, the Faroe Islands and the North Cyprus Turkish Republic. Oh, and at the end of the magazine is a Japanese comic/manga Kita Koga exclusively produced for MONOCLE in a modest studio of Tokyo. The making-of pictures of the manga are quite nice. I think a found the almost perfect monthly for me!

Online Shopping

2008-04-05T21:02:00.015+02:00

I am not really a shopping addict and I usually like to see and touch what I am buying, but I have just discovered two online shops that are really worth looking at: etsy and foof (this came from our friend Bijan who always finds out what's best on the web!).

Etsy - "Your place to buy and sell all hand made" - proposes a wide range of very nice accessories, all handmade by people from all around the world (check Morelle for Amsterdam based designer for instance). I fell in love with a flower brooch made by Monda (I collect broochs) and a very nice every day use bag by Morelle (I have too many but it's never enough).

All MacBook and iPod users should check foofshop ASAP! The cable turtles are really a must have, together with great MacBook and iPod sleeves. And if you still hesitate, here's another good reason to purchase from them: foof products are all ethically hand made in Australia.

So what are you still waiting for? Go shopping!

New!

2008-04-05T16:09:00.002+02:00

I hope you will like the blog's new layout. I thought I should get rid of the black background, not because I didn't like it -I love black!- but mostly because it isn't so easy to read light gray letter fonts on black. And the photograph called "Rotterdam Wind" - it was taken on Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam on a very very windy evening late fall 2006 (photo by Erinc Salor) - is now fully part of the blog's title.

Enjoy!

Baba

2008-04-04T21:37:00.005+02:00

Imagine a man surrounded by three laptops and one extra monitor in front of him, one earphone linked to his cellphone, one hand on the land line phone and the other hand ready to grasp his blackberry at any time. What a horrible view of a workaholic drowned in modern technology you might say. Well don't go that fast presuming, because when you look at the man's face, you can see an enormous smile, eyes shining with creativity and brightness and energy bursting out of his whole body. I see much more in this man: hope, ambition, passion, love and tuns of respect. That man is my father and I am deeply touched by the way he handles his life. He didn't always take the right decisions and made a lot of mistakes towards his ex-wife and his children, but it has also been the other way around. He is 54 years old and has a quite sensitive and weak health, but he goes on no matter what. He runs after his dreams, even if sometimes I think he goes a bit too fast. I can't tell him to slow down but I just keep on hoping he never forgets to put on his safety belt.

Seni Seviyorum Babacim

Polar Fox

2008-04-02T19:10:00.012+02:00

I was doing some research about whales when I dropped into this magnificent animal on google. It is an Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus), also known as the White Fox, and lives in the cold Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It makes you say "I want one!" So these pictures are just for consolation... But after all, it is sure happier in its environment and therefore even more beautiful.

I'm an Entertainer!

2008-04-01T20:27:00.004+02:00

This test has qualified me as "Entertainer".

"Radiates attractive warmth and optimism. Smooth, witty, charming, clever. Fun to be with. Very generous. 8.5% of the total population."

I usually don't like tests but here strongly tend to agree!

An Ode to Women

2008-03-28T00:06:00.009+01:00

After her internationally acclaimed The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak is back in the book shelves since the end of November 2007 with a new work in Turkish: Siyah Süt. It has not been translated yet but I am sure it will in a short while. And if no editor has already thought about publishing an English or French version, I can hereby state that I am very much open to work on it in French.

Siyah Süt -Turkish for "Black Milk"- is Shafak's first autobiographical novel, as clearly stated on the cover (see right side bottom). It subtitle says: "Yeni baslayanlar için Postpartum depresyon" -Postpartum depression for beginners. At first view, it wasn't a book for me I thought. I am not a mother and I have no wish to be one, even though I stay open to change my current vision on my life is baby-less. But then I really like Elif Shafak's work, especially her English written novels The Saint of Incipient Insanities and The Bastard of Istanbul - I have to be honest, I have difficulty reading the language she uses in her Turkish novels. I wanted to know more about this writer, because I was sure, no matter what, that she was going to tell her readers about her writing and not about her baby splitting on her nightgown only. And I have been impressed, even more than expected. Black Milk is a brilliant work. During 200 pages and even more, Shafak specifically writes about herself and the many voices inside of her before her pregnancy, enabling her readers to really understand the postnatal depression she went through. Inviting her readers to reflection, Shafak tells about her fears, her wishes, her doubts and moves to the wider theme of being a woman in society. She describes women writer's lives and vision on motherhood and feminism, making parallels with her own states of mind. She gives voice to the different women within her, and talks to herself through these six different characters throughout her story. Artist Latif Demirci's drawings also add another dimension to her storytelling, allowing an outside eye to draw the author's experience.

Shafak thought that she could never write again, but she intelligently and movingly transforms her black-turned maternity milk into ink. However, she wants this ink to be ephemeral as she tells her readers right from the beginning that this book has been written so it could be forgotten as soon as it has been read. "Suya yazi yazar gibi..." - as if you would write on water.
I don't know if it had been designed on purpose, but the ink of the title on the cover of my book has vanished after I read the novel... No matter what, I will not forget this book because for me, it is above all an ode to women.

Elif Safak
Siyah Süt
Dogan Kitapçilik
303 pages
Published November 2007 in Turkish

After winter comes...

2008-03-21T16:28:00.008+01:00

...festival season!

Spring might have started with snow this year but the sun has not waited very long to show its rays. As I am typing now, it warms my Amsterdam apartment through the large windows of my living room, where I was watching the snow covering the streets not as long as an hour ago.

Snow or not, winter is now giving its place to spring, and for me, spring goes along with the start of a very long and rich festival season. After the launch of the Iceland on the Edge Festival, going on at BOZAR until 15 June, starts Ars Musica, again in Brussels, celebrating contemporary music. Those of you who are in Brussels in April, I would suggest you to go listen to Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven, a magnificent pianist who also happens to be the husband of a precious friend of mine and the father of a beautiful Antoinette, on 19 April at Flagey. You can also hear his Boulez recording in the exhibition around Paul Klee at BOZAR: Theatre here, there and everywhere.

More theatre and dance in two performing arts festival in Brussels and Amsterdam: kunstenFestivaldesArts and Holland Festival, both offering a very rich international programme. I've spotted several performances: Aydin Teker's HarS and Zan Yamashita's It is written there at the kunstenFestivaldesArts, Amir Reza Koohestani's Quartet: A Journey to North both at the kunstenFestivaldesArts and Holland Festival, Samuel Becket's Happy Days with Fiona Shaw, William Forsythe's Kammer/Kammer and Decreation, the latter based on Anne Carson's eponymous work and Calliope Tsoupaki's brand new oratorio presented in World Premiere at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, all at the Holland Festival.

After Spring comes Summer... and with it even more festivals... But for the moment, let's enjoy Spring, it's only the beginning!

LOST?

2008-03-16T18:11:00.007+01:00

One rainy Sunday afternoon, with no will to go out even to get some groceries, ordering food in and watching Kate, Sawyer and Jack's adventures on a faraway island. It sounds silly right? Well, that's what I thought, enough of these silly stories, what the f... is that black smoke on the island, and why the hell are these "Others" treating our nice heroes so badly? So I just stopped the DVD of the third season of LOST to get something to eat and to read some news... and guess what, the real world sounds even sillier! EL PAIS and The Guardian are writing about the possibility to make primary school children eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behavior indicating they may become criminals in later life. If that's the way it was working in Belgium when I was a kid, my parents would for sure be in serious trouble since I had a kind of hobby knocking guys out in the schoolyard (I stopped soon enough, don't worry, I loved to play the fearless garçon manqué). Anyway, I thought I might read about what was happening in my native country and moved to Turkish paper Radikal where I read a short article entitled: "Alkolsüz türkü üretildi!". It can be translated as: Alcohol free türkü (a type of Turkish folk song) has been created and it explains how during the celebration of "Health/Medicine Day" the members of the Choir, coordinated by the Ministry of Health, have avoided the words "alcohol" or "drunk" in all the türkü's they sang, replacing them by the word "doctor". So the line 'Sarhoşlar geliyor eli şişeli'/ "The drunk are coming bottles in hand" have turned into 'Doktorlar geliyor eli şişeli' / "The doctors are coming bottles in hand".
I'm just going to leave my international-online-newspaper-tour to watch some tattooed doc' kept prisoner on a faraway island.
Some people really don't need to get drunk to get LOST.

Stay switched on

2008-02-27T19:12:00.004+01:00

Since the last 3 years, I have been living without a television. My parents both have TVs home and I used to live with its sound when I was sharing their house. I must say that I even enjoyed watching it a lot... all the series, cultural programmes, news broadcast, documentaries, movies... But let's face it, most of what's on TV is... JUNK. And now that I am spending the week in a TV friendly environment, I just feel I get more headaches. Only the sound of it is disturbing me. I feel like my head is full of unnecessary noises, no matter what they are. Music, commercials, series... I don't need the television to know about what's happening in the world or to watch a good movie. Here I have experienced once again how happy I am not to have a television. It's a personal choice, one that gives me more space to read, write, enjoy the company of my lover, converse, go out, meet people, discover the world. I'm glad I can do it all without having a TV. I intend to keep it that way. And I don't feel I know less about the world. I'm always switched on so I can better see what's around me and far beyond.

Angels in Amsterdam

2008-02-20T22:32:00.006+01:00

The beautiful play by Tony Kushner, Angels in America, has moved the whole world already. I had missed the French version, with the music of genius composer and conductor Peter Eötvös, staged in Paris in November 2004, which I still cannot forgive myself for! So I thought I would get some consolation with the TV version on DVD, which has actually been a revelation (I agree that with actors like Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, it can hardly not be good). So I kept on dreaming about someday when I could experience the stage performance of the stunning play. I would never have thought I would be so motivated to see a 5 hour play in Dutch! Indeed, toneelgroepamsterdam is preparing to tour Angels, starting from the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. You can either go for a marathon performance or split it into two parts, which I will certainly do since my Dutch will not permit me to focus on 5 hours of strong text in a row. First thing tomorrow, I will head to the Leidseplein and buy my tickets. I will go on dreaming until I see it for real... the Angels will soon be in Amsterdam.

From 1 to 8 March and from 26 to 29 March 2008 in Amsterdam
More tour dates on toneelgroepamsterdam.nl

Images Moving

2008-02-18T22:50:00.009+01:00

I have been deeply moved by a work of art a few minutes ago. A book of drawings, images talking to me without using a single printed word, except for its title: The Arrival, and the name of its author: Shaun Tan. One artist to discover for certain. The Arrival has won the prize for best comic book of the year at the Angoûleme Comics Festival. One immigration story among billions one might say, so what makes Shaun Tan's story so original? Without spoiling your pleasure to discover the book by yourself, I will just tell you how I felt when I started to watch and read the images one frame after the other. The absence of written language just made me feel as lost as the central character of the story, I could follow and experience each one of his feelings: the arrival to the foreign land, the tasting of new food, the meeting with people, the search for a job, the loneliness... And the awkward need to belong. Frame after frame, I was trying to decipher each drawing as the character tried to decipher his new environment. I could write pages and pages about the technique Shaun Tan uses, comparing his work with other graphic novels... But I will not break the spell: I have been deeply moved by the story of a man who leaves his daughter and wife to search for a better life on an unknown land. Nothing new, same old story for hundreds of years. And I am still moved by the humanity in it, only this time was the feeling even stronger.

Photo: 'Four Seasons' Shaun Tan, pencil on paper

Flying up on an Air Balloon, bis

2008-02-12T18:28:00.001+01:00

The 'bis' part of a concert is usually one of the best moments of it, I think. It is sometimes the case in everyday life too, when you see something for a second time, especially when you didn't expect it. Well... today, on my way back from Zutphen to Amsterdam, I saw the air balloon with the purple and green stripes again. And this time, it was flying even higher...

Flying up on an Air Balloon

2008-02-11T18:16:00.001+01:00

Today, I have become a Japanese, Israeli, Polish, Romanian and even Russian young woman in the mind of several young people involved in a training about diversity. During an exercise about prejudices, I have experienced others' perception of me. Yes, I have an unusual name, and yes, it isn't clear rightaway where it comes from, and yes, I have quite a pale skin, eventhough I can easily get tanned under the sun. And to make it more confusing, I speak good English, and Dutch, my Spanish is correct and my mother tongues are French and Turkish. But these kids didn't have all that information (they just knew I spoke English and Dutch and they knew my name), so they thought of me as everything but Turkish or Belgian. I understand it pretty well, and furthermore I don't like to identify myself with a nation in the first place- it is part of my identity, not my whole self to be a Turkish-Belgian. But I still couldn't understand why suddenly I have become Japanese or Israeli? I thought of it a bit, and on my way back home to Amsterdam from this little town where the training was held, I saw a huge air balloon with green and purple stripes starting its ascendancy to the bright blue sky. I forgot about being Polish, Romanian, Japanese, Belgian, Turkish... I just thought how beautiful it was to be a free human being.

Do you know Iceland?

2008-02-06T23:39:00.001+01:00

You will say that you know Björk and maybe also 1955's Literature Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness. You might even know about the Hofdi House, built in 1909, one of the most beautiful buildings in Reykjavik, best known as the location for the 1986 summit meeting of presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbatsjov, that effectively marked the end of the Cold War. And of course, you might have heard about the Sagas, the trolls, the harsh and breathtaking nature, the geysers and the blue lagoon... And if none of these ring any bell to you, don't worry, it's never late to learn! And if you live in Brussels or not too far from the city, don't miss the Iceland on the Edge festival that will take place at BOZAR from 15 February to 15 June. They also have a blog where artists and Iceland lovers (including me) write everyday: www.bozar.be/blog
I will make the trip from Amsterdam, at least for the opening AIRWAVES concerts on 15 February. I admit that I am not only go for that event only, but while around, there's no reason why I should miss it.

John Eliot, Nick and Beth

2008-02-06T00:04:00.002+01:00

What do the Monteverdi Choir, Bach, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and Portishead have in common?

PASSION!

And moreover, they are all coming to Amsterdam in the following months and I will be there, from the Concertgebouw to the Heineken Music Hall.

So they will also have me in common, at least in Amsterdam!

Check their websites for additional tour dates:
http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com/
http://www.portishead.co.uk/news.php

Stuck between two scenes

2008-02-04T20:39:00.001+01:00

I'm literally stuck between two scenes in my play. I shouldn't think of it now but I just can't help it. It's just words on paper for the moment (and might stay so if no one gets any interest in what I'm writing), but I can't stop thinking "what if"... What if it takes too long to move from one background to the other, will the play lose its dynamic right from the start? What if I move the first scene to the second part, would it then lose its impact and strength? What if I can't get the rights to use any music I want... and it goes on.
I should stop, really... I'm gonna try something new: what if I could just go on writing and then I'll see. If any director gets interested in my text... then only will we see.
Well, it feels good to talk sometimes, just talk, even if it's nonsense to most of the people hearing or reading about it. Even to me it sounds like nonsense, put I'm gonna post it anyway.

Enjoying Amsterdam

2008-01-26T22:37:00.001+01:00

This is my first post of the year 2008. Not that I've been sleeping, lazy or didn't have anything interesting to say, I've just been busy changing my life! Some great changes actually, new city, new job and new apartment... All have gone so fast that I didn't even realize the huge step I made in such a short time, and moreover, I am really happy about all these changes. Ok, I admit it, Amsterdam is not so far from Brussels, I moved from a 38M2 studio to a 80M2 real apartment, and I didn't leave BOZAR for an unknown association but for the British Council... and, last but not least, I'm here with the love of my life, so nothing really difficult when you see it from this side... Still, in order to get all this, I had to make up my mind before I knew all this would work out. Life on a bycicle is actually great, the canals just make everything look more beautiful. So yes, I'm happy here. Amsterdam is the city where I belong for now. I don't know where I will go in the future, but for the moment, I'm here and I will let you know about life, concerts, expos, people and more here...

The No Way to Forest National

2007-11-24T12:25:00.001+01:00

New York band INTERPOL was in Brussels last night. After having seen them in Werchter last summer, I was quite excited to renew the experience at Forest National. And for once, we've decided with my sweetheart to take the bus to go there, because it's more ecological but also because there's a serious parking problem near the venue. So we've naively waited for the bus 54 near My Campagne, the bus arrived with 15 minutes delay, and it was completely full (even a mouse couldn't find a place in). It was already 8pm, so we went back home to pick up the car. The way from Saint-Gilles to Forest wasn't good either... closed routes, working fields, one ways... as if someone was trying to prevent us from going to Forest National. After half an hour, we have finally managed to find a spot to park the car and walked 10 minutes to finally be there... on time. The gig was great, I forgot about all this stupid transport issue for one hour and a half. But I don't want anyone telling me that public transportation is more practical, it can be more respectful of the environment and I'm using it everyday, but believe me, there's NO WAY I'm going to Forest National again by public transport, and maybe not ever again, only if Dave Matthews comes back there of course. Can't wait for the new Brussels venue to open its doors... but that will be only in a few years

One Step Further

2007-11-05T15:49:00.001+01:00

It's done! I have finally sent my project proposal to the Fondation belge de la vocation, and not within the best conditions ever. With a terrible ear-ache that put me in bed the last two days (I still went to work for 3 hours for Saturday evening's concert), I finalized the copy and printing-work yesterday, a bit "last minute", but I did it. I don't really care about the results, what matters here is that I've been able to send something (I'm quite proud of actually), and it helped me structuring my work done so far. Still, results will come out in February, you're allowed to cross fingers :-)

I felt the same for the "Fureur de lire" short story competition, to which I participated in 2005 and 2007, it didn't really matter if I would win anything, I just wanted to finish and send a text. Even though I still think that it's quite unfair to have a "young talented" writer to preside the jury, especially when his main promotion motor is his uneducated background: "he left school at 17 and never read a book until then"... waow! What a talented writer. This is quite another topic actually, and it makes me want to read more, and study more, and write even more.

Well, I think I'm ready now to go another step further...

Before the tempest

2007-11-01T10:23:00.002+01:00

November 1st, the streets are so quiet you can even hear birds singing. Cars seem to have stopped moving, the atmosphere is gray. A perfect day to go to the cemetery, just that I don't like cemeteries. Nobody's perfect! So I'm keeping it simple for today, a not so early but still not late wake-up, a very simple breakfast with coffee, followed by tea, then head on to BOZAR for a interview afternoon with Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri (Syria's Frank Sinatra they say... we'll see on Saturday evening) and several journalists working for Arabic medias here in Brussels. A preview for this weekend's tempest of concerts and encounters. Looking forward to it!

Better later...

2007-10-29T22:44:00.002+01:00

Some of you might remember my short stories' project I wanted to finish this summer. Well, it didn't go on as I wished, but still, I managed to finalize several stories and I am still working on others. My project did not go as planned, but I don't abandon. I got five short stories done and I'm working on five others, almost finished. I began to lose confidence these last weeks, because of a lack of time and energy due to my present working rhythm, but I have finally decided to face this frustration I actually made up myself, and to go on writing as much as I could, within my current rhythm. So I will continue enjoying festivals, concerts, plays, expo's and more, all linked to both my job and passions, and I will concentrate on my writing in parallel. I feel lucky to be able to work in an environment that allows me to be creative.
Waow! It's so nice to be confident again! And indeed, no matter what one's do, it's better later than never!

Patty Pâtes: enjoy fresh pasta!

2007-10-29T22:22:00.001+01:00

After a 4 hour traffic-jammed-ride from Amsterdam to Brussels, neither me nor my beloved espressoroast could even think of cooking dinner back at home. So we've decided to head to a small restaurant we'd discovered at the end of this summer, and that we really liked for its cosy and welcoming atmosphere, and most of all, for its pasta's. It came out to be a tremendously good idea... we're now back in our bed, enjoying a no-washing-dishes-evening.

Those of you who would happen to be (or live) in Brussels, don't miss that place. It is called "Patty Pâtes", and its specialty is, as its name suggests it quite obviously, pasta! They have a very vast choice of fresh home made tagliatelli, cannelloni... and sauces (chicken, seafood, meat, vegetarian...). The kitchen is right in the middle of the place, you can see the cook and the pasta maker (a very nice girl) at their best beside the glass. Good food and good service for a quite fair price (more or less €10 per dish), that's an equation you don't often get these days.
Second time there, and certainly not the last!
Enjoy!

Patty Pâtes
rue Ernest Solvay, 10
1050 Brussels
Tél 02.514.27.41

Geyser in action, Iceland

2007-10-28T10:39:00.001+01:00

Ils sont fous ces Islandais?

2007-10-24T00:20:00.001+02:00

Crazy nature, crazy music, crazy art scene, crazy outfits... Iceland is a crazily stunning place.

I've spent four days in Reykjavik during the Iceland Airwaves Festival, on a press trip for BOZAR (which is preparing an Iceland Festival in Spring). A good opportunity to visit this incredible but quite expensive country (don't try to go on a low budget there). Our purpose was to see the most possible of the Icelandic artistic scene, so we moved from concerts to plays, meeting with artists like Baltasar Kormakur, Hallgrimur Hellgason, Helena Jonsdottir, Ruri and more. Artists in Iceland don't have any complexes, they do whatever they want and express themselves in the way they like: a writer composes music, a film director plays in several bands, a dancer sings hard rock and so on. The Icelandic art scene boils like a Geyser!

More about Iceland on this blog in the following posts.

White Chalk

2007-10-01T21:51:00.001+02:00

Soft and powerful, beautifully meaningful and realistically dreaming, PJ Harvey's last album "White Chalk" is just stunning. It only lasts half an hour, but what an half! One note, just one sound coming out of her throat, her guts or her piano makes my whole body tremble. So different from what she did previously as an artist and still, so PJ Harvey. Words are quite unnecessary here, so I urge all of you to buy this mind blowing album, and loose yourself in it, starting with "Dear Darkness".

Going on tour?
Dear Polly Jean, dear Polly Jean... when are you coming to Belgium?
This is a less poetical information, PJ Harvey has not announced any tour dates in Europe yet, just one in Paris in November, and the seats are extremely expensive (especially if you need to get a Thalys ticket + one night at the hotel in addition!). Anywhere in Belgium would be fine (or anywhere 2-3hours ride away from Brussels will do too!). We're patiently waiting...

Sands of death

2007-09-04T14:06:00.001+02:00

May I call him a friend? Yes, I sincerely think I can. I’ve known him for two years now, I had first met him during the organisation of a festival around Arabic music and we even had dinner with the great Lebanese musician Marcel Khalifé, just the three of us, an unforgettable evening indeed. Then we crossed through each other in cultural centres, listening to music coming from everywhere in the world, from Morocco to China. In the last few months, we met again more officially to start preparing a festival of Arabic music and performing arts, which will take place from the end of October until mid November in Antwerp and Brussels. As usual, my friend showed an incredible energy and will to share his knowledge and passion, truly believing in the power of arts and on its ability to gather people from different cultures. That is why I’ve always respected him and shared his ideas of communication with people. Today, while getting back to work on our next project, I’ve learned that my friend wasn’t here anymore. He flew away, somewhere between the earth and the sky, in a place where the sand and the wind mingle. On his journey to the endless desert, he didn’t only leave his projects behind, but also his love for them. If life goes on, it does because those who die leave us with a life worth living. And it is what my friend did, giving us his passion, his sincerity, his ideas, so we can pursue what he’d started, so we will go on sharing.

To Addi Yahya who passed away in August 1, 2007

From Istanbul with love

2007-08-10T10:44:00.002+02:00

After a very long month of July spent in very bad Belgian weather (rain rain rain...), I'm finally enjoying summer... in Turkey! Starting with a few days in Istanbul.
I used to hate Istanbul in the summer, imagine New York under 40°C, well, Istanbul is not so different. It is hot, quite unbearable sometimes, but I feel good here. Watching the sunset on the Bosphorus is breathtaking. One quickly forgets about the traffic, the crowded streets, the noise and the heat. Istanbul in the summer, you can both love it and hate it.

My summer in Istanbul begins with some contemporary Turkish literature. I'm discovering new names, good stuff. Not only Orhan Pamuk or Elif Shafak, I am now in search of names unknown to non-Turkish readers. I will work on it, in parallel to my own project (by the way, I've received a confirmation from La fureur de lire competition that they've received my short story... I'm number 549!). I'm already busy with one author. After having read more of his work, I'll be able to know if I could translate it... So many new things to discover, think about, create... I feel like there won't be enough time, even on holiday! I can feel my brain boiling with ideas (and let's be honest, also because of the heat)... Also, enjoying it with an espresso bean is even more delightful!

Face to Face?

2007-07-30T21:36:00.001+02:00

I've never been a real fan of online social networking, and certainly not when I see what kind of horrible pictures people like to post (I won't give any example, just have a look by yourself, it can sometimes be hilarious). I once registered at yonja to find old Turkish friends online, which hasn't been so useful since I'd already managed to keep in touch with friends I really like... Anyway, I started this blog -ok, this isn't social networking but blogging- and still don't know exactly how many people around the world are really interested by my modest posts (I guess people who like to go to gigs?). Still, I like writing so it can't harm anybody and certainly not myself.
Invited by friends, I've finally accepted to register at facebook. I must say I'd never heard of it before, and since the lovely person I happen to share my life with happens to be a new media specialist, I've been able to learn more about it in a very short time. Thanks to facebook, I found very old friends I lost from sight and who now live in Canada and who I might see this summer in Turkey! Only for that, I'm very happy to have discovered this communication tool. It is an incredible tool when you really use it well, that is (for me at least) to communicate, and not to add millions of people you will never want to hear from in normal times just to fill in your list. It will never replace face to face communication, or even voice to voice, or any other physical closeness for that matter, but it certainly works to make the "face to face" go on or happen, and vice versa. The thing is, I guess, to be able not to become the tool but keep on being the user.

Head On

2007-07-24T23:01:00.001+02:00

In order not to get discouraged nor lose my present self confidence that I can actually do it... I'm going to write it on this blog, so you can all witness it. But, honestly, I also need to write it for myself, so I know I would be quite ashamed if I don't keep my promise... not only to those who all believe in me, especially one delicious espresso bean I would never want to disappoint, but most certainly to myself.
I got one and a half week of work left, then I will be flying to Turkey where I will spend time reading, discovering, seeing people I love and writing. With one goal for the time I come back to Brussels: finishing my collection of short stories in order to send it to publishers this fall (I'm still quite cautious not to give you any precise date).
Well, that's it, it's written now and, hopefully, read. I've got no more excuses. It is time now to face up with my writing, whether good or bad, I got to go on.

Long live the festivals!

2007-07-09T20:10:00.001+02:00

Summer is definitely the time of festivals. After Werchter and Couleur Café, Midis-Minimes has begun during the week, offering Brussels dwellers and working people the opportunity to listen to some very nice classical music in the Minimes Church at lunch time for the whole summer. But apart from the festivals, there are also open air concerts everywhere around Europe. On Friday evening, it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers who were on stage at the Parc des Princes in Paris. Stadium not so huge as the Stade de France, it is still impressing to find oneself in the middle of an immense crowd. A great concert from many points of view, from the set list to the amazingly good performance of all the musicians (as a dear espresso bean said, they're technically at least 50 times better than any other equally famous rock band), I couldn't find any weak points... except for the length. How come that a band with such a repertoire could only play for an hour and a half? Indeed, I wouldn't have found anything negative to say until the too short bis. The can-do-better (in time, not in quality) feeling was unfortunately omnipresent... So the best is to focus on the quality of the hour and a half, trying not to think about the missing half.
Same goes for Björk who performed at Westerpark in Amsterdam yesterday evening. She was mesmerizing, the feelings we experienced with her in Werchter were also with us in Amsterdam. Great set list from the opening "Earth Intruders" to the closing "Declare Independence", with powerful vocal moments like in the so right "Pagan Poetry" or "Joga", we felt that she was quite more relaxed than in Werchter... because she surely had more time we thought... but here again, one hour and a half and then... the fairy was gone. Fortunately, despite of the feeling of "not enough", the time we see these artists spend on stage is really worth the journey. And maybe I got too used to some other artists playing at least an hour and forty five, if not even two hours... (sometimes three, but these are really crazy ones, isn't it Dave?). I guess the conclusion here would be, better short and good than long and boring! Because more than good, they certainly were (but still, I don't believe neither the Red Hot's nor Björk could be boring!!)...
It's not yet the end of festivals and there are still several to go... like the Blue Note in Ghent and the North Sea in Rotterdam... Some Jazzy days are behind us! To be continued...

Wings from Tool

2007-07-04T21:55:00.001+02:00

Extraordinarily moving... I have no other words to describe this beautiful song by Tool. It has been written by Keenan Maynard for his mother who was paralyzed for 27 years, that is around 10,000 days... I can't say anything more, just read the lyrics, and if you don't have it yet, get the sound too.

Tool - 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2)

Listen to the tales and romanticize,
How we'd follow the path of the hero.
Boast about the day when the rivers overrun.
How we rise to the height of our halo.

Listen to the tales as we all rationalize
Our way into the arms of the savior,
Feigning all the trials and the tribulations;
None of us have actually been there.
Not like you.

Ignorant siblings in the congregation
Gather around spewing sympathy,
Spare me.
None of them can even hold a candle up to you.
Blinded by choice, these hypocrites won't see.

But, enough about the collective Judas.
Who could deny you were the one who
Illuminated your little piece of the divine?

And this little light of mine, a gift you passed on to me;
I'm gonna let it shine to guide you safely on your way,
Your way home ...

Oh, what are they going to do when the lights go down
Without you to guide them all to Zion?
What are they going to do when the rivers overrun
Other than tremble incessantly?

High is the way, but all eyes are upon the ground.
You were the light and the way they'll only read about.
I only pray, Heaven knows when to lift you out.
Ten thousand days in the fire is long enough;
You're going home.

You're the only one who can hold your head up high,
Shake your fists at the gates saying:
"I've come home now!
Fetch me the spirit, the son, and the father.
Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended.
It's time now!
My time now!
Give me my, give me my wings!"

You are the light and way that they will only read about

Set as I am in my ways and my arrogance,
(With the) burden of proof tossed upon the believers.
You were my witness, my eyes, my evidence,
Judith Marie, unconditional one.

Daylight dims leaving cold fluorescents.
Difficult to see you in this light.
Please forgive this bold suggestion, but
Should you see your Maker's face tonight,
Look Him in the eye, look Him in the eye, and tell Him:
"I never lived a lie, never took a life, but surely saved one.
Hallelujah, it's time for you to bring me home."

Keenan Maynard (From the album 10,000 Days)

Rediscovering Rachel's

2007-07-03T22:04:00.002+02:00

About ten years ago, during one of my usual digging at second hand CD and book shops on the boulevard Lemmonier in Brussels, I've been stopped in my search by a very nice cover. Not only was the paper quality attracting my hand, the title printed on it just couldn't help me leave it there as if nothing would have happened... It said "Music for Egon Shiele". Being a real admirer of the Austrian painter, I just had the reflex to look at the booklet... I saw the drawings, some I recognized, some not. Then there was more about the band "Rachel's". I had no idea who they were, what kind of music they were doing... never heard of them. Thanks to Egon Shiele and the beautiful layout of their cover, I got back home with a CD I surely listened to thousands of times. Fortunately or unfortunately, I lost the habit of going to second hand CD stores because of the current digital world. I still miss the touch of a nice cover, so today, I went back digging in my library and rediscovered Rachel's "Music for Egon Shiele". I remember now why I got so mad about this trio. Emotionally and musically strong, the music had been created for a play about the painter. Ten years ago, I wasn't so used to research online, so I did it today, and learned that the band was working on a new project, that their last album went out on 2003, last toured in 2005... I simply decided to join their mailing list, because I don't want to read ten years later that they came to play in Belgium in a very nice and cosy hall... (Yes, I've missed Jeff Buckley like that... no comment...). Those of you who would like to discover the band, which I strongly recommend, visit their website ... and be patient, I'm sure they will come up with some new great project, album, tour dates or anything... until then you can start by discovering them.

In Love Again!

2007-07-02T19:34:00.001+02:00

First, I got excited when I learned that she was going on a European tour, even more when we got tickets for her Parisian show... then not anymore after it. Tori Amos had disappointed me a lot that evening of June at the Palais des Congrès. Maybe we were sitting too far, maybe we were expecting too much we thought... then Werchter came by. Me and my sweetheart have decided to give her another chance, because she's worth it, also because he saw her in Istanbul in 2005 and was quite amazed by her performance, but also because we simply love her music.

After a quite good Interpol concert on the main stage, we grabbed some fruit salad (yes yes, they're also selling healthy food at Werchter!) and headed on the Pyramid Marquee at around 5.45pm, with one single purpose: get in front to see Tori from the closest place possible. And we did it (after having listened to Frank Black screaming like hell and Damien Rice's fans doing the same in an even worse way... well, I can't decide which was worse, anyway, we deserved to be in front)!

11.30PM, a crazy brunette wearing a flashy green dress with plastic-like black tights arrived on stage with a superbly strong "Cruel", announcing more than a Pipesque but Toriesque gig. After "Teenage Hustling", Pip has spitted her "Fat Slut" and more, then leaving the stage for a few minutes to give more space to our Tori.

Beautifully mastering her Bösendorfer, given the full if not more of herself , Ms Amos has literally amazed her audience. Starting with a dynamic "Big Wheel", going through a mesmerizing "Cornflake Girl", she ended her one hour and ten minutes long festival show with a touchy "Precious Things". A stage goddess, a powerfully sensitive woman, a stunning artist, we got our Tori back. That night, we fell in love again with our dream-like musician, and like every person in love, we can't wait to see her again... and again... and again...

Festival on fire!

2007-07-01T12:25:00.001+02:00

After having seen Marilyn Manson, Björk, Joan as a Policewoman and Oi Va Voi at Werchter on Thursday and Friday, we've decided to move to a slightly different musical atmosphere and went to Couleur Café on Saturday. After an amazing opening concert with Rachid Taha, we went out of the Titan hall to grab some food specialties from around the world. We just had our Burrito and Chili con carne when one of the buildings at Turn and Taxis started burning. It just took a few seconds before the whole roof went on fire. A quite horrible view, especially with people photographing it... (I will never understand this voyeuristic behavior). The festival goers were all asked to leave, and the evacuation went on very softly, without any problem. So we went back home and decided to listen to the radio until there were some broadcast officially saying the festival would open back its doors, which has been the case at 9pm! So we went back to Turn and Taxis, and we weren't the only ones... as thousands of people were entering the festival site quite peaceful and joyfully... well, in the Couleur Café spirit! We ate a little bit more... food is so delicious over there, then we listened to Yuri Buenaventura and watched the fireworks (yes yes, like everybody, we even enjoyed it...). When Ziggy Marley got on stage, we decided it was time for us to move back home and get some sleep to be ready for our fourth festival day back at Werchter. More about Rock Werchter on the next post.