hard to decide

just take them all

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in berlin

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. Mobilising Communities .

Yesterday was the event Mobilising Communities. It took place at Betahaus, a co-working space in Berlin, and 6 projects were presented: Dawanda, Pfandtastisch helfen, wheelmap.org, Mundraub, Stadtgarten and the Craftivist Collective.

I found everything very inspirational and some key ideas discussed were: open-source, commons, the relation with others online but, more important, offline, the just do it atitude together with the diy, “small” changes, urban spaces, accessibility, and back to craft, this slow way of life, with much more quality.

I was very happy to hear from Justin, from Stadtgarten and Mundraub, that he had never gardening before the project   : ) Well, I still have chances. Also liked when Sarah Corbett, from Craftivist Collective said that she always wondered what to do, how to help, while being so introverted (although I muss say she was speaking pretty confident there). It was very interesting to see some of the history behind Craftivism (craft +activism), when she showed a picture made by women during Pinochet´s dictatorship (which reminded me the documentary Nostalgia de la Luz).

Unfortunately, I didn´t find anyplace in my hometown Belo Horizonte, Brazil at the Wheelmap, so… Amigos de Belo Horizonte, todo mundo contribuindo para o Wheelmap!

At the end, there were some delicious food and drinks, and I got to know, through a guy who was wearing a t-shirt with “hack human kindness”* (I guess it was it) about an event, also held at Betahaus, called Random Hacks of Kindness, which is “a global community of innovators building practical open technology to make the world a better place”. Cool! The next one will take place on June 2nd, at Betahaus and you can register here.

A lot of inputs!

* actually the t-shirt was saying “Hacking for humanity”. Thanks, Christoph!

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The Center for Missed Connections

“You have had a Missed Connection.

And there is a whole world of people just like you, and a venue in which you and these other lost souls can collect these moments like rosary beads, communing over these simple pleas for the possibility of closeness.

The concept of a Missed Connection has its beginnings in the places where such moments often happen: public space. Bulletin boards, street posts, and other public platforms were once used to seek out these missed connections.

…

The Center for Missed Connections (CMC) began as a project simply to identify where the most missed connections happen in a given city. New York City is home to the pilot program, chosen for its high traffic and for the propensity of posters to include specific cross-streets or location information. Since then, the analysis has developed a thorough taxonomy of the Missed Connection and a method for identifying whether one has, in fact, had a Missed Connection. The CMC seeks to understand the longing, both poetic and banal, within public spaces”.

:: http://centerformissedconnections.info/

Ben Slow _ Charlie Burns

idee/inspiration für das “Ergebnis”

 

” Charlie Burns is 95 years old. He can be seen sitting in his car on Bacon Street watching the world go by pretty much every day. He has been here since 1915 and has never left. their business is very much a family run business and is still here today, run by his daughter Carol. He is a very well known and respected man in the area, having spent time with the likes of the Kray twins, Libererace… …and Judy Garland during his time as president of The Repton Boxing Club, aswell as running The Bethnal Green Mens Club. He even had a private audience with the Pope due to all the charity work he done in the area”.

London

via Unurth

A Short Detour in Mongkok

“Mongkok might be one of the world’s most crowded places, but sometimes all you need to do to escape is to make a right turn down a quiet alleyway. That’s what I discovered when I was walking from home to the Flower Market the other day. Instead of taking the usual route along Sai Yee Street, I ducked into the laneway that runs behind it and discovered a kind of parallel university of greenery, graffiti and informal living space.

(…) Halfway down the alley is a Chinese altar, some cupboards and a rack of clothes. I’m guessing it’s used by the street sweepers who work around here. Inside the altar are cards representing the various Chinese gods; several lottery tickets are taped to the side. Ash from spent joss sticks covers the altar floor”.

Cas Oorthuys – Station Square, Central Station, Amsterdam, 1965

Michael Dax Iacovone

“Fuller´s Dymaxion Airocean World Map of 1943 cuts the earth into triangular facets that are then unfold as a flat polyhedron. Both the north and south poles are presented frontally and equally, with little distortion, although the typical viewer is at first likely to be disoriented by this unusual, poly-directional arrangement of countries. Only the graphic graticule of latitude and longitude allows the reader to comprehend the relative orientation of any one location.

Interestingly, the Dymaxion structure can be unfolded and re-oriented in any number of different ways, depending on the thematics of one´s point of view. The polyhedral geometry provides a remarkably flexible and adaptive system wherein different locations and regions can be placed into significantly different sets of relationship. Precisely where the map is cut and folded determines how the parts are seen in relationship to each other, each time in radically altered, yet equally true, configurations. Potentially at least, each arrangement possesses great efficacy with regard to certain socio-political, strategic and imaginative possibilities”.

James Corner, The Agency of Mapping.