I was not thinking of anything
I was creating a vision of the sounds of the streets
Skateboarders, discos, the far distant, rhythms of Buskers
And the rhythms of the moving London
Potent smells and acrid tastes
Soft touches and lightning movement
A two line poem I had previously composed
Found rhythm and shape
On these beats of London
John Sheehy
The Dellow Centre’s art group is producing a special commission for ten feet away internation. International Voices is an installation telling the stories of London’s internationalised homeless community. This is an excerpt, with Dellow Centre artist David Mills talking about arriving in London penniless. Click here to listen
Well I sure ain’t alone in the dormitory anymore and things sure haven’t changed for the better either. I am writing this after a day of emotional ups and downs and it has ended with me feeling a little sick. Last night 3 hard looking young Russian fellas moved in to the same room. I went to bed early and read a few essays from an Index on Censorship book, one on the Russian condition and went to sleep around 12 o’clock. Around 12.30 2 of the young Russians came banging in to the dorm, just switched the lights on, dressed themselves up, messed around in their bags not giving
A damn who else was in the dorm. When they were finished whatever it was they were doing they left staring me down, leaving the lights on. I went to my bag and took out my knife and brought it to bed with me. Sometime later I heard several bangs in the distance, at that time of night god knows what they were. 15 minutes later the 2 youth came bouncing back in to the room, switched on the lights, noisily changed their clothes and left. For the night thank god.
Went to the offices of New Social Solutions to teach Alexis how to use Adobe Audition with the recording I had asked him to make a couple of days ago. We actually did no work in the morning but rather spent it getting to know each other using Goggles’ translation software. This is interesting in itself because often you have to translate the translations. Once it translated my Saturday as Friday and another time as Sunday. Alexis himself is a descent and interesting guy. He told me he thinks Russians are very aggressive and I’m afraid I have to agree. Just read my rant about traveling around St. Petersburg.
Alexis himself as well as working for New Social Solutions is an artist. His art I think is very innovative. It is all about fabrication of the image, marketing and the media. To be honest the media is mainly a fabrication anyway. His website is www.varsopko.narod.ru. On it you will find fabricated images. One of which is of an unused power station with smoke coming from the stacks. There are promotional posters with real Russian performers but their names have been changed to, for example Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez. There are fabricated tickets stubs on the site for fabricated shows. There is also a completely fabricated newspaper article for a fabricated artist and his fabricated exhibition. This article includes a picture of Alexis as the artist. Please look at his website as well as that of the street newspaper Putdo Moi www.putdomoi.ru. This website has an article produced about the visit of ‘ten feet away’. Use Babel Fish to translate these websites www.babelfish.altavista.com.
After spending a few hours swapping social views and creative stories we got on with the job in hand. I taught him as much as I could using the translation software but I think we will have to go over it again at some point..
Later I met Victor who came in to the office. He is a photographer with a very good digital SLR and he is also a programmer. He looked at my website and complimented me on the design. I’m afraid I have to disagree, I am not a website designer and what I have is the best I could come up with. We both swapped some information using the language translator and hopefully I will be able to see some of his photographs soon.
Later I went walking around St. Petersburg looking to change some money at a reasonable rate. You wouldn’t believe but the rates range from 45 to 52 rubles to the pound, being the tight arse I am I went walking and walking some more, shopping for the best rate. All these placse have hefty, stout security who look as they may well be armed and have all watched the same American shows on what Russian bodyguards should look like.
Since I have been here I have seen no black people and today I saw 5 although 3 of them were outside some hotel and looked as if they were in positions of power in some human rights abusing African nation.
Most of what I am seeing here is ugly. Most people who visit St. Petersburg will see beauty, swanky dressed women, wearing the latest fashions, caked in makeup, drinking out of straws and looking coy. Well built, good looking men, in top shelf clothing, holding their women gently, staring at you with a power look. Phone shops everywhere and everyone on their mobile phones. High class exclusive hotels, restaurants with over priced, crap food that wouldn’t feed a mouse. Black four wheel drives with tinted windows and heavy set men standing by them wearing tights suits, with plastic in their ears. Fur shops, jewelry stores and electronic boutiques with bored pretty men and women working there not caring whether you are there or not.
As I said I am writing about this day here on this bench, ready to go to bed feeling a little sick.
Eyes of the Street is an ongoing international project to provide a view of the streets from people that live there. These were sent to us by Frank Dries of Straatniews (link below) who started the project…. http://www.straatnieuws.nl/Default.aspx
Got up very early today to get to the offices of new social solutions for 10am. Ade packed to leave back for blighty at midday, from today I am on my own. I will miss him but I’m usually much more productive when left to my own devices. To be honest he is great to talk to, he understands what the hell I’m going on about, we are of the same generation & he gets all my references although he has immersed himself much more in western culture and the culture of others so I don’t get all of his. But and there is a but I’m the Jack Lemmon to his Walter Matthau. Lets put it like this I could hang around with him easily but there is no way I could live with him. I’d end up using the rope I tie my hair up with to either hang myself or garrote him. Thinking about it I would probably do the latter.
Anyway I said goodbye and I have already felt a twang of loneliness knowing I’m alone in this sea of a different culture. Took some of the time alone to catch up with some work in the offices of New Social Solutions until I had to leave. This gave me some time to explore some of St. Petersburg alone on this beautiful but windy day (It will be strange going back to the UK and telling people I got a tan in Russia.). It is amazing how much you miss when you spend a lot of time in the company of others, thinking about it not much to miss really. What was I talking about? Oh yeah St. Petersburg.
My assumption of what this place would be like and the reality are almost polar opposites. I arrived with trepidation and really high levels of paranoia and I feel it is like visiting any strange city in Western Europe and my levels of alertness have moved from red, down through orange and in to the yellow zone. My understanding of what is aggressive capitalism has completely changed. I will write further about this in one of my rants.
I am really surprised by the number of young people here. They are everywhere shining brightly with beauty and bloated with consumerism. Mobile telephone shops and fast food outlets are everywhere to feed their hunger for quick fixes and quick communication (The obsession people have with their phone in the UK pisses me off and it is much worse here.). This is a tourist city which mixes old classic European history and low culture for what I am guessing are mostly Eastern Europeans and Russians. Poverty is visible but not at the levels I expected to see. I do see some odd things though, there are some very young children begging for money by themselves and some very old women. Also often you will see soldiers with missing limbs and the physically disabled asking for money. All this make me feel uncomfortable and I do see Russian people give them money but I wonder if they think this is helping or they are making themselves feel better. To really help I believe they would fight for social change. This may sound terse but I saw this a lot in Morocco but the difference was they new the people they were giving money to, there was a relationship there.
Overall despite my personal disgust with the consumerism this is a very beautiful city. It would be a place that most Europeans and Americans would take great delight in visiting. It certainly did not deserve the trepidation I first felt.
Once more we awoke, had our usual breakfast of kebab & coffee & went to the offices of New Social Solutions. Lena, another employee of the office and Arkady’s partner took us to the Podmoi distribution point at the night shelter. To get there we had to take our first bus and I was standing in front of this plump, short middle aged woman who smashed me in the ribs and then slipped past me. I have to say this was a little unexpected and later in the journey she pointed at me telling me (in Russian of course.) that my hair was in some other persons face. Well we all know what to do when our face is in someone’s hair. PULL IT OUT. The wisdom of initiative. Moany old cow.
On the way to the distribution point Lena bought some cakes for the users. The Podmoi distribution space is extremely small and cramped. Many UK charities say they do not have enough space, well try using your cupboard as an art room. Waiting for Lena were 2 of Podmoi’s vendors and I was told they were vendors with some mental problems. I noticed one of them had a severe head injury on the left side of his head.
Out of context, like in a country we may view as being inferior to ours this may reinforce those views but this is just untrue. Back in London many of the users of the homeless charities I myself am a user of have mental illness, head injuries and behavioral difficulties of varying levels. I myself have a severe head injury but am very lucky as my symptoms are mainly invisible (although this is a 2 edged sword.) and manifest themselves in memory problems, concentration and mood swings. None of my cognitive skills have as far as I know been affected. Sadly with many people across the globe this is just not the case and as a result they require some extra attention.
Lena brought out some paints and brushes, made tea and the three vendors there used this time to express themselves through paints and brushes. The whole of St. Petersburg has only 1 night-shelter which can only service 43, people, mental health services are practically non-existent. I am not making a judgment here just stating a fact. Many services are insufficient in the UK while some are over saturated, here they are negligible. You do the judging.
That evening we did our fist pod-casting teaching session with Alexis of New Social Solutions. The session began with me using lots of extravagant gestures and mouthing words that meant nothing to him on how to use the kit. He messed around for awhile, we showed some of what he could do with the kit, explained about the difference between VOX POPs and interviews (Find out more about pod-casting using the instructions available on this site) and he tried a couple of things himself. I left him a homework task and we will look at editing on Thursday.
That evening we went back to the Egyptian owned restaurant, had a nice filling meal and went back to the hostel early. Tomorrow I am all alone because Ade leaves.
Today we were asked to move to the dorm next to the one we have been staying in. It seems in Russia they don’t really have mixed dorms, for some reason they assumed we did. We were making the woman in the dorm feel uncomfortable. I knew it was to good to last. Good news though we have a dorm to ourselves and that makes it easier to process the material for you lovely people.
Ade and me have began to fall into the roles of ‘The Odd Couple’. I won’t tell you who is Walter Mattheau and who is Jack Lemmon but I will give you a clue, I fold my blankets.
Today has been relatively uneventful. Basically we just worked in the offices of ‘New Social Solutions’, went back to the hostel, had something to eat and went to bed early. I need the sleep.
Sasha has been the Art Director of the excellent ‘Put Domoi’ - St. Petersburg’s Street Paper. In this interview he talks about his journey, and in the second interview (coming soon) he will talk about the famous ‘ Art Squat of Pushkinskaya’ which he helped found in the late 80’s. This is the first time we have attampted simultaneous translation, so your feedback will be much appreciated.
Last night we stayed in a different hostel.Two men in a dorm full of women. This is a better thing to imagine than it is to do. The whole room smells a bit girly and is really girlified. On returning to the center of town after yesterdays debacle with spending too much money on food we found a cheap eats in the form of chicken kebab wraps for a pound. They were smothered in some white yoghurt sauce but hey beggars can’t be choosers! After we returned to the offices of New Social Solutions where we were bouncing off the walls due to a severe caffeine overdose and HOORAY we uploaded our first blog to the ten feet away website. Job well done.
Arkady took us out for a meal at a reasonably priced restaurant and I had bacon and chips, it was ok. Can’t say much for the food here. Today has had many ups and downs and ended with exactly that choice. With Ade and Arkady I felt lost for a long while, felt like a third leg, someone who was just there to take photos at peoples request. My views didn’t feel like they had a place to be expressed I felt overwhelmed by the needs of ten feet away and putdomoi.
Later Arkady started inviting me in to things that interested him personally. This did begin to relax me a bit, but I still have to see if he can see me as someone more than just a person that takes photographs. Today has been very successful as far as getting around has been. We have successfully begun to navigate the St. Petersburg underground system, when we take time to match the symbols that is and ade has become very good at reading the maps in his travel book.
That evening we decided to go for a drink and it was here we had a significant choice. The bar we went to, you could choose to go upstairs to ‘Heaven’ or downstairs to ‘Hell’. Naturally, we choose hell, what a great choice. They serve big stein glasses of beer at very affordable prices. We got quite drunk and then made our way back to the hostel. At one point Ade was so concentrating on photographing the stations he had left his travel book on the bench. We had to go back one stop and I guess Ade is telling the truth as it seems he is a very lucky person, it was still there. On returning to the hostel we had a beer to drink the night out and spoke with a young student Russian couple, Alexi and Olga.
picture taken by Nadezhfida Davydova
The picture shows Arcady Tyurin of St. Petersburg’s Street Paper ‘Journey Home’ in a public performance piece. For Russians, access to social services is dependent on registration at an address. St. Petersburg has at least 54,000 unregistered individuals living in the city. To be registered you have to have proof of past residency, and without this you cannot get access to jobs, healthcare and other necessities to live. If you cannot get a job you cannot get an address. This means you cannot get registered. This is the vicious circle of homelessness in Russia.
In this short podcast interview, Arkady Tyurin of ‘New Social Solutions’ talks about new ’surviving technologies’, solutions to tackling social exclusion within St. Petersburg’s unregistered population.
New Social Solutions also publishes Putdomoi (Journey Home), St. Petersburg’s Street Paper.
Design by Alexander Menus
