Monday, August 27, 2012

The City


"...You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world."
C. Cavafy - The City




Write about Santiago is write about a particular history, my history, but also is write about everyone's history, everyone who live here. When you live in a big city, you can feel identify with your neighbourhood or your commune, but Santiago is more than just a couple of communes. There are differents worlds here, someones says that Santiago is Chile, maybe is more than Chile, it's Southamerica and a history of a "farewell waltz", about emigrate to another country, for better days.

Santiago is "interaction" and you're in or you're out. Your social and geographic position determine big part of your social life, this city include and exclude. And exclusion is first geographical, if you live in periphery you must to cross the city to find almost everything, and the distances become huge.This idea could seems that it's a bad thing about this city, distances and exclusion, but over this i see the good thing about this city. In every travel across this city, i leave a part of me, of my history. When i walk for these differents streets, neighbourhoods, communes, i feel part of this city, i feel that i'm Santiago.


This city will be a better place when people feels like their own history, childhood and future, is this city, because you can't leave the city, the city is not just the gray walls, it's also the people. The city is in everyone's mind.

A message for a visitor could be know the people, share with them. You can know tourist places, but the real city is in the people, in the hide places, the pheriphery. There is a world hide in the city, that you can find, if you know where look for.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Imagology


Sometimes a neologism is correct to express and idea or concept that you can't find on books. "Imagology" is an example of this, Milan Kundera in Immortality, write about journalist and how they are behind advertising agencies, fashion stylist or anything that you can imagine, but also, they are behind political campaigns, political interviews and they manage prized political information. So imagology respond to this study and analysis of public image's people.

This idea is essential to understand the Wikileaks problem. Julian Assange's case, show us an example of a dangerous man for militar campaigns. If a journalist dig into political and militar business of big countries, he will find a dark and blurry true, but also, he will find a violent repression against him. And how we know, violence is not just physical.

Assange is being acussed for a crime with two faces. One is about treason and espionage, and the other is about sexual agressions. I don't know in details the case, but to speculate, don't wonder if a goverment create a staging to kill the "character", the symbol of a journalist that dig in political and militar information.
If this case born like a political crime, i believe that it will die as political staging. You fight journalism, with journalism, and if you can't find a mistake in the journalist that you want wreck, you created one.