Seeing Differently

A couple of days ago I went to see the Assembling Bodies exhibition - rather reluctantly as I didn't really think it would tell me much I didn't already know. It turned out that wasn't the point. It was a lot of fun. Mixing anthropology, art, technology and science to look at our bodies from all different angles. Here's just a couple of things that made me laugh.

It's the eyes that caught my attention. The Papuan funerary statue has incredibly realistic snail shell eyes - his gaze is unsettling. The Head of the Blue Chip has two different eyes: one a small camera, the other a large blue eye under which is a video of a real eye, moving and blinking. The camera eye really works: you can see youself on a little screen on the right side of the 'brain'. The blue eye is realistic because it moves, blinks and seems to look at you. But the statue's eyes have a blurred quality that feels to me like the way we look into people's eyes every day - we don't usually stare fixedly at someone's eyes, we just get an impression of them. They are different versions of reality. 

Mariam's holding the cast of a hug! It is the empty space inside of a hug. Such a brilliant idea. We both played around with it, holding it in different positions, trying to find the right 'fit'. It feels cold initially, and rough, and quite heavy. Then it warms up with you, and once you relax and stop feeling idiotic hugging this thing, you can get it into a good position. It feels like it's comforting you.

It made me think of the way that in traditional Iranian towns, the Friday mosque is a space inside the bazaar - it's  not a building with an outside wall and an ornate portal, it's the inside empty courtyard that is important. Where there is silence and stillness and room for prayer.

Open Cambridge

Last week was Open Cambridge - two days in the year when some of the libraries, buildings and gardens in the University and around town, are open to the public. It's an opportunity to see some of the treasures of the town that are normally hidden away.


In Mill Road Cemetery, there are some interesting graves. The 'Friends of Mill Road Cemetery' gave us a tour. They try to keep a balance between keeping areas of wilderness for the wild life, and keeping the graves in good condition and the cemetery a place of beauty and order. The brambles, ivy and self seeding trees do almost as much damage as the kids who take pleasure in pushing over headstones and crosses, and the drug users who leave needles lying around in hidden corners. I was intrigued by this pair of graves built like a Ziggurat. The first headmistress of The Perse Girls School is buried nearby. Her grave is rather untidy, but it is remarkable in that it is the only gravestone for a woman that tells us her occupation (other women's graves just say 'wife of...' or 'daughter of...'). She's buried with her (female) partner.

Iran homecoming

Two weeks in Iran. It felt like months - renewing old friendships, seeing family we'd not seen for 4 years, and being bombarded with the sights and sounds of a city of 20 million people. A long way from Cambridge!

What's new? Motorways through the city centre, air conditioned buses, bus lanes, metro from north to south Tehran, electronic number queuing system in banks, supermarket deliveries to your door, top of the range safe playgrounds in every park, paintings and tiles on kilometers of motorway walls, and tight mini roopoushes (Islamic coats)on young women .

What's the same? Taxi drivers complaining about the government; family warm and welcoming; people unwillingly observing Ramadan; zoolbia and bamieh; every market trader and acquaintance remembers you. This is a city that doesn't need surveillance cameras: there is always someone watching you.

What's surprising? Water fountains working during Ramadan; women actors performing and reciting poetry in a public park; the price of bread and virtually everything else, has more than tripled in 3 years.

It was a wonderful, intense, 12 days.

Now back to the slugs and weeds on the allotment.

Protest march with Stephen Hawking

How cool is it to go on a protest march with Stephen Hawking?

About 30 of us (average age 70+) marched along the river bank, rather embarrassed to be chanting "Save our river!" for the benefit of the Anglia news cameraman who turned up for 10 minutes with a large video camera and a plastic mac. Someone made sure that Professor Hawking was in front. The rain let up long enough for umbrellas to be put away and placards held up rather apologetically in their place. Two young policemen stood by the river watching, with an air of making sure that their elderly charges didn't come to any harm.

This is the Cambridge Evening News version of the event.

And today we heard that the planning application for a large extension to the riverside hotel has been turned down. So 30 years after the LSE marches against higher fees for overseas students, I've now been involved in a march that wasn't futile. The Planning Committee, though, didn't give us the credit. They cited breach of "...policies 3/4, 3/7, 3/14, 4/1, and 4/11 of the Cambridge Local Plan 2006 and guidance provided by PPG2 Greent Belts and PPS5 Planning and the Historic Environment." and more along those lines. But I'd rather think it was Hawking and me that did it.

Cambridge to London

Just got back from London - it was a good day with an old friend but it is always good to be back in the quiet of Cambridge.

We saw the Henry Moore exhibition at the Tate. I liked the innocence and exploration of the early sculptures best - especially two called 'Girl'. At the Photographer's gallery, Sally Mann was showing some of her photos of her children, beautiful but also vaguely unsettling in their rather self-conscious innocence. One room had photos called 'What Remains' - pictures of decomposing human bodies.

Also had dim sum in Soho, rode the bus, explored fabric shops in Berwick St and ate Thai durian from a chinese supermarket.

London was very crowded - especially Picadilly Circus when we were going home. I was caught in a heavy downpour at Kings Cross.

By the time we got to Cambridge the sky had cleared and the air felt fresh and earthy. There was a rainbow over the Addenbrooke's building site for the LMB. On my bike it felt good to be free of the traffic. I headed straight for the allotment - the sky above the cricket field was streaked with red and pink cirrus clouds. It was quiet there. Just the distant sound of traffic from the M11 - the wind is in the west, so it should be good weather tomorrow.

Allotment

I've got an allotment. It's not an official one - so there are few rules, and no water supply at all. The rules are things like 'Always ask T. before you start a bonfine'; 'Don't lock your shed, it will only get broken in to'; 'Just mark the land you want with posts and string - that means it's yours'.

There is some amazing recycling going on. Plastic water bottles and pallets are used everywhere in various forms. Tennis nets are used to protect courgettes and squash from insatiable muntjac deer; green beans grow up goal netting; broken ladders are cucumber frames; old metal sport lockers are ivy-covered tool stores; cast iron baths store precious rain water; and blue plastic lime-juice barrels now serve as water butts.

My ambition is to have a few vegetables surrounded by a picnic area, a barbequeue pit, a hammock, and a beach-hut/shed worthy of Southwold with tea facilities, wicker chairs, and a front porch. I'm thinking of painting it blue and white. Hopefully I'll get the paint from Freecycle, where I got the corrugated iron sheets for the roof.

Fellow gardeners in neighbouring plots have been helpful with good advice. My favourite so far is: "You can never have enough chicken wire."

Latitude and Refugees

My first time at Latitude, in fact my first time at any festival. It was overwhelming - so much to do and see, and so many other people there.

There is a lot to say about it, but I'd like to reflect on one particular aspect. It brought to mind very powerfully the years I spent working in refugee camps.

Except of course that there are huge differences in my experience as one of 35,000 campers at Latitude, and that of a refugee - even in a much smaller camp.

At Latitude, I was a single mother responsible for my daughter and two other teenage girls. Unlike refugees, we were there because we wanted to; we had paid to be there so we felt we had the right to expect a certain standard of basic services (water, toilets, washing facilities, food availability, security); and we knew it would only last for 4 days.

Even so, I found meeting all the basic necessities took up a surprising amount of time and energy - walking to and from the washing/toilet areas and queuing for food and water. The proximity of other people was unsettling. We could hear every conversation including whispers in the next door tents. We dreaded another family arriving and setting up their tent in the tiny area that we'd left between us and the next tent, where we could sit, cook and eat.

It struck me that we were very exposed to the huge range of different standards of behaviour, noise, littering, and social interaction which are normal everywhere. In our communities and homes, we are protected by solid walls, customs, and our networks of neighbours. But here, there was little we could do if another family chose to stay up and chat late into the night, if a group of teenagers spent 4 days piling rubbish around their tents which then blew into ours, or if hundreds of people chose to use the path past our tent as a short-cut to the toilets.

But my biggest worry was the safety of the three 14 year old girls entrusted to me. Our elaborate system of walkie-talkies, phone-ins, meeting-up times, curfew time, and always-stay-together-all-the-time, was fragile. As the week-end wore on, the girls spent more time out of my direct range, and at the same time the batteries on our gadgets failed one after the other, we had to improvise, and we were lulled into a feeling that everything was 'cool'. We were shocked to hear the news that an 18 year old woman was raped on the Friday, and another on Saturday.

So what would I do differently if I was working once more in a refugee camp? Firstly I'd make much more effort to think of people as individuals not just as an amorphous mass of refugees, even women/men/young/old are just labels that hide a huge diversity of needs and capacities. Secondly, I'd be far more aware of how vulnerable women and girls are, and I'd design every aspect of camp life around reducing that vulnerability. I'd also make sure there were different channels open to refugees for asserting their rights and reporting abuses or crimes. And I'd be far more understanding of the fatigue and stress involved in the daily struggle to meet basic needs. Its surprising that it's taken me so long for these ideas to crystallize, and all because of a festival.