Still on holiday but …

Some happenings during silly season have to be reported for posterity’s sake. I had thought that we had seen it all for summer of oh-nine with Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici (lifelong bachelor and no children) claiming lower birthrates in Europe are thanks to the EU promoting contraceptives and the post-Communist Żminijietna protesting the ban on barbeques in Għadira presumably because the workers will have nowhere were to grill their proletarian sausages.

I was wrong. A letter in today’s Times, which forms part of an ongoing silly season debate on whether we should remove the George Cross from the flag and, if we do, what will we have in its stead:

Both the above-mentioned regimes [the British and their George Cross and the Knights and their eight-pointed cross] represent only a few years of our history and are not Maltese. Let us have a real Maltese emblem, one that is unique and over 5,000 years old, namely, the Neolithic temples. We already use this on our euros.

Er, the Neolitic temples? Every single stone of them? For accuracy’s sake, what’s represented on the Maltese euro coins is only the main altar of the complex. But the writer probably did intend all of the temples (Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra and Tarxien, presumably). After all this country suffers seriously from horror vacui (anyone remembers the first official photo of the President?).

So we could have the temples. And while we’re at it why not a ġbejna? Zalzett and a ħobża tal-Malti anyone? And a dollop of bigilla please. With a galletta sticking in it. I could go on and on but I’m waiting for the Times‘ commenters to see what they can come up with.

On holiday

This blog goes on holiday until further notice. Readers shouldn’t worry as the silly season, probably because there are no immigrant boats to report, this year looks like it will be seriously silly.

So far my favourite stories have been Karmenu Mifsud-Bonnici claiming that low birthrates are caused by the EU “spending large amounts of money promoting the use of contraceptives” and Communist Party paper Żminijietna criticising the barbeque ban in Mellieħa Bay as it gives the public “less space for recreation, especially in times of increasing cost of living”. Barbequers of the world, unite!

So I pack my blogging bags reassured in the knowledge that there is still much to read and that I will not need or feel the need to blog about it. Some news items do not need any commentary or elaboration, they stand on their own.

So have a smashin’ summer and, remember, you can still enjoy ħobż biż-żejt at Għadira.

What is and what isn’t

From maltastar.com:

The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts decided to exclude a Maltese artists’ exhibition of 16 photographs which put together images of politicians, including ministers, and “representations of strangely erotic acts”, claiming that the artworks were “libelous”.

Thankfully, what the Council did was not described as “censorship” — which it is not. Censorship is a categorical ban states do (which, after all, is the only institution which can impose a categorical ban). Thus, Stitching was censored and it cannot, unless the decision is reversed, be staged anywhere in Malta. This exhibition can still be held in the curator’s garage while he waits for sixteen court summons to come in.

But the fact that no mention was made of the “c” word does not mean that it was not implied:

When contacted by maltastar.com, the artist, Raphael Vella, 42, said that foreign artists are comparing the situation of the arts in Malta with that of the Soviet Union and Germany before the war.

They could have compared us to France 2008 when French magazines felt they had to airbrush Sarkozy’s love handles in a real photograph not a photo montage as is in this case. Or Germany in 2002 when then-Chancellor Schröder sued a German news agency over allegations that he dyes his hair.

On matters of freedom of expression Malta gets more punishment that it’s due. The Stitching ban was unfortunate. While it reminded us that the Board of Film and Stage Classification has powers it shouldn’t have it gave the wrong impression that in recent years they have deprived Maltese audiences of much. Some of the criticism on the prohibition to insult religion, a legal provision applied earlier this year at the Nadur carnival, may have been justified. But let us not forget that, for the sake of not insulting Islam quite a few European governments have been mulling the idea.

Which leaves us with libel. Yes, Malta’s libel laws may be somewhat punitive (and they have been relaxed in recent years) but even there, I get the impression there’s much freedom of interpretation for the presiding Magistrate. What is certainly not unique is having libel laws.

Which brings us to this case in question. Is it grounds for libel? Here’s more:

The excluded artwork was to be part of a collective exhibition, “The Life Model,” curated by Patrick Fenech, which opened this week, as part of the Malta Arts Festival. Yet, the Council argued that the images are “potentially libellious” because some Maltese individuals in the images were still recognisable, despite the artist having “blurred them partially.”

Partially, understandably. Or how would viewers have realised that they were politicians “including ministers”?

But why politicians? Is it just because they happen to be the category of people we love to hate, a bit like Americans and their lawyers. There is a bit of explanation from the artist:

Dr Vella made it clear that the content of his work is not pornographic. “I am not interested in cheap pornography as an ‘art form’, but I am very much interested in the fact that politics has become a bit like pornography.”

“Cheap” pornography as opposed to what? Pity the description cuts off there. I would have been equally interested to hear how politics has become “a bit” like pornography. Hmm, sitting through budget speeches might be more interesting than I thought.

Update: It turns out that Raphael Vella, the artist in question, is more level-headed that one would have initially imagined. Here’s his reaction to the original maltastar.com article:

Maltese art is often excessively ‘heavy’ with metaphysical ideas about life and death, the ‘sacred’, and so on, and I felt that a piece that could invert the seriousness with which we still approach subjects like the nude in art by linking it, teasingly, to an even more taboo subject – politics – was necessary in this exhibition.

The curator of ‘The Life Model’ liked this perspective too, and I will venture to add that I think he appreciated it because he is an important Maltese contemporary artist with international experiences, with whom I have had the pleasure to work on other occasions.

This was also the attitude of the ‘foreign artist’ quoted in the article, who jokingly reminisced about the ex-Soviet Union. My reference to this artist’s opinion was not meant as a factual statement about Malta – artists and writers here do not end up in gulags, of course – but it was a way of saying that my work might have been taken too seriously.

There is one point which I note with sadness, however: it’s no longer a case of similarity between “cheap pornography” and politics as we we told in the first article. It’s merely a link between the seriousness — presumably undeserved — of artworks and politicians and their nudity.

But if that’s the case then the link could have been established with just about anyone, the nudity taboo being pretty strong in Malta.

Why politicians then? I get the impression it’s really a question of someone drawing in a moustache and an Elvis forelock on the photo of someone important and feeling happy he can get away with it. Or maybe even get away with plaudits like this (complete with a feeble attempt at sarcasm):

Dear Raphael, how dare you try and criticise the political class? Don’t you know that our lives depend on these kind and hard-working persons who dedicate their lives to us, to give us jobs, food, shelter, entertainment, I would say, even spice up the air we breathe to make it healthier (sometimes with their small cars, sometimes with the effects of their bigger Delimara decisions)? You definitely cannot be allowed to criticise the political class.

Criticise? Hint: the target, remember, is “seriousness”. How about mockery? Not that our politicians are above it but, then, should anyone?

Propologia

Yesterday we had Victor Ragonesi telling us to keep our hands off the “original” entrance of Valletta which nobody has a right to “desecrate”. Ragonesi was Borg-Olivier’s Private Secretary in the 1960s. Which begs the question: did his former political master have any right to desecrate the city entrance the way he did?

Today, Kenneth Zammit-Tabona writes on the Piano plans in Times:

Meanwhile, the government, with pennants flying and trumpets blowing, announced Renzo Piano’s blueprint for Valletta and, if their perennial apologists are anything to go by, are in a right royal miff because it was not received with the right amount of adulation. What on earth did they expect? After waiting for 67 years for something to happen on the opera house site, the government’s brief to Mr Piano was devoid of any thought, sensitivity and without reflection as to what the long-term consequences of this open-air theatre that we need like a hole in the head will mean with regard to Maltese culture or the lack of it.

I don’t know what government’s brief to Piano was and if it said “make the old Opera House into an open-air theatre”. If anything, Piano, it seems, dissuaded the government from constructing a parliament on the theatre’s site. And as I have pointed out elsewhere, Piano is not a starving architect waiting for some commission to come in. I’m sure he has enough artistic and professional dignity to tell the government to find someone else if he felt the “brief” he was given was below him.

But Zammit-Tabona seems to know something the rest of us don’t. He was one of the plans’ first critics:

Art and theatre critic Kenneth Zammit Tabona was not at all amused: “I have never felt so insulted in my life. This is another confirmation of the poor attitude this government has shown towards culture. We’re going to have a roofless theatre which can only be used when the weather permits. But they’re not going to be roofless in Parliament, are they?”

That, by the way, was soon after it was announced that it would be an open-air theatre but before the plans were unveiled. And notice the criticism was directed at the government: Zammit-Tabona, unlike the paTRioTs wIth a caPs loCK prOBlem who comment on the Times, is not so philisitine to accuse Piano of philistinism. Such charges work better with Austin Gatt so that’s were he directs it.

But then Zammit-Tabona goes on:

Last Tuesday, La Traviata, starring Renee Fleming and our own Joseph Calleja, was transmitted live from Covent Garden to an enthusiastic and numerous paying audience at Argotti Gardens. A son of Malta has really made it to the top echelons and will, any minute now, reach iconic status. A suggestion, which, I hope, the ministry will take up should this lovely event happen again, is that it should be shown free of charge in all the towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space.

It’s heartening to note that on this occasion — end of June — it was a case of “weather permits” in an “roofless” venue as was the Argotti Garden. And why does Zammit-Tabona suggest that the screening be held in “towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space”?

No fear of wind, rain and hail? Adrian Buckle, who had been one of the most vociferous opponents of having parliament built on the old opera house site, spoke in favour of an open air theatre because, bar the ludicrous venue at Ta’ Qali, there is no such thing in Malta. Both Buckle and Zammit-Tabona seem to be aware that the performing arts have stiff competition in the summer and both realise that an open venue is the answer.

But while Buckle’s reaction is the obvious reaction of someone who got something he could have wished for, Zammit-Tabona persists in criticising the plan and the government (not Piano). Why? Is it the cheap and easy way to sophistication?

Coda: Another point in Zammit-Tabona’s op-ed is worth addressing:

This [foreign governments' attempts to popularise opera] was an exercise that took up the trend set by Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo when they performed together in that unforgettable Three Tenors Concert in Rome 19 years ago and which I had the unforgettable privilege of attending. In those days one could hear men attempting to sing Nessun Dorma in the shower as they lathered themselves: so much for the irrelevance and mustiness of opera Lou Bondì.

That’s a hypothesis. Here’s another: Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma (one of the worst renditions of the piece, one should add) was the theme song used for the BBC’s coverage of the 1990 World Cup finals. Most people learnt of the piece (and its existence) thanks to that, not the Three Tenors concert. Which might explain why it was men attempting to sing it in the shower.

Was the BBC’s then attempt a laudable case of “popularising”? Yes. But as “propologia” is pig-Greek so is Puccini-before-a-football-match “pig-opera”.

Open spaces we don’t really want

To my surprise, the greatest objections to Piano’s plans are being made to his plans for Freedom Square. Not to the Parliament building as such. There were objections to that, of course, from people who cannot see that it fully complements the military architecture of Valletta (St James Cavalier in the back and the new city gate at the side) or people who fail to appreciate the role of a parliament in democratic life.

No, I mean the ones who lament the loss of “much needed open space”. But before we move to that let me remind the “traditionalist purists” (“give us the old opera house!”) that until the late 1960s that space was built. No walled city in the world would have placed a square next to the main gate. The gate tends to be the weakest spot in the wall, the point where the enemy would be most likely to breach and having a tight space would have given defenders a last-ditch opportunity to fight back from close quarters (if not confuse the infiltrators as they make their way in). Mdina is a great example: the “civilian” square is in the centre and the “military” square is at the point furthest from the main entrance.

And of course calling Freedom Square a “square” is an excessively generous description of what’s little more than empty space. No, it’s not simply the victim of that Maltese habit of using space either for parking or to clutter with plastic chairs and umbrellas. A square is a focal point (which is why they tend to host markets) and Freedom Square is simply space on the side of the route people usually take moving in and out of the city. Indeed, the Square is, in my view, the point which needs most urgent addressing. The ruins are a monument to our failure to act and the gate a monument to our sense of aesthetics but it’s Freedom Square the real mutilation to the architectural and urban structure of the city.

But back to the main subject. Alfred Mifsud wrote in today’s Indy. He’s generally positive about the entire project, by the way, and the point he makes about pedestrian access from Floriana to Valletta, imperiled as it is with the buses that go by is valid. Here’s Mifsud on the Piano’s proposal for Freedom Square:

I am sorry but this is just crazy. Not because there is anything wrong in having a parliament building in the City entrance; but because Valletta needs more not less open spaces. Freedom Square should be a people’s parliament not a representative’s parliament. It should be where people meet, talk, discuss, argue, demonstrate and do whatever is democratically allowed in the pursuit of freedom of expression. And this can be done in a pleasant environment with full view of St James Bastions by redeveloping exactly as Piano has suggested but without parliament dual building, which should be replaced by landscaped gardens instead of the present car park cum shopping complex.

Let’s put aside the silly (and communist-sounding) distinction between “people’s parliament” and “representative parliament”. Let’s also put aside the fact that a landscaped garden and a space where people demonstrate are hardly compatible ends. Why does Valletta need more open spaces, whatever they are?

Readers will hopefully forgive me for having to rely, once more, on the excellent writings of Mark-Anthony Falzon. Some months ago he wrote about communities, largely imagined, in whose name political agendas on the use of public space are being pushed. And since the rhetoric is so compelling, government (and opposition) buy in. Here’s Falzon on the “desires” of these “communities”:

There are three main types of desire. First, a perceived need for specialised — and sanitised — spaces of recreation (this is the speciality of the local councils). Second, desires that have to do with practices (festi, for example, or Good Friday processions) linked to local church/parish ‘communities’. Third, things like local facilities for team sports, which may be read as collective celebrations of the ancestral attachments I mentioned earlier.

My point is that ‘local communities’ tend to be formulaic. They also have depressingly unimaginative ideas about what they ought to look like. A couple of years ago, for example, Cospicua council in conjunction with the government (there, dialogue) embarked on a project to create a new recreational space for the area. Hundreds of thousands of euros on, we have the ghastly — and utterly useless — ‘Cottonera Garden’. The (good but misguided) intention of the council was to provide the people of Cospicua with a recreational space, irrespective of the indigenous patterns of leisure of the place. The mistake of the government was that it listened.

Falzon’s choice of example is salutary in the “Freedom Square as garden” debate. I don’t know how many more rehailitated gardens it will take before government, central and local, realise that, in effect people are not really interested. Oh, they might pay lip service but they vote with their feet and public gardens end up as places for teenagers to get sloshed or junkies to get high, if we’re so lucky to have them used. Which is why many local authorities abroad are transforming gardens into centres for community gardening (privatisation, in a way, of public space). Which is why the part I find most suspect about Piano’s plans is the garden in the ditch.

As someone who’s worked in Valletta for many years I cannot fathom why any office worker should want to spend time in a garden with high buildings all around. For, if there was something my colleagues and I were on the lookout for — as an alternative to the many hidden watering holes in the city — was vistas. That of the Grand Harour from the Upper Barracca. Of Marsamxett from il-Mandraġġ. And of the open sea from near Fort St Elmo which gives you a greater sense of freedom than any grotty garden would.

And Valletta residents? Don’t worry they have their open recreational spaces, away from spaces where “outsiders” hang out. They won’t be enjoying the fresh air in Freedom Square Garden.

Heard in the Times

The discussion following the presentation of Piano’s plans for Valletta’s entrance continues. As they say, it’s generating more heat than light. Here’s a sample:

I hope I am not the only one by suggesting that the parliament looks like an alien super UFO who has just landed from its journey from Mars … lets take this opportunity and turn Freedom Square into a typical European city square, paved in the same manner like Republic Street and in the middle, a grand monument to the knights of Malta depicting their victory over the Ottomans (aka lord Nelson type monument in Trafalgar Square but with our La Vallette towering over the city with his famous sword by his side).

Spaceships come in various shapes and sizes but this would be the first one that’s “very squarish” as someone else called it. And a “typical European city square”, whatever that is, is usually found at the centre of the city not at the entrance to the side.

But if you think the La Vallette on a column was tacky (with his “famous sword”, the one with which he cut off Dragut’s head, by his side) here’s more:

I wish the Prime Minister read my Recommendations in my Dissertation, which includes the whole area. I recommended the Opera House re-built with a touch of modern architecture, the arches changed into round marble with Designer shops underneath and the Square, with a beautiful large Romanesque Fountain with Dolceria and coffee businesses around the square. I also suggested auditioned Street theatre. Now that is what Valletta needs and it also compliments the rest of the city. As far as City Gate is concerned, I made that entrance into a modern Tri Glass Pyramids where Art Exhibitions and other that can utilize the space in line with our Cultured mindset.

An Opera House in neo-classical (19th century) with “a touch of modern” (21st century), a large Romanesque (circa 10th to 13th century) fountain and tri-glass pyramids (20th century Louvre?). Sublime.

Burying Barry

I remember a tongue-in-cheek argument which went something like this: assume you are the voice of the people, assume the voice of the people is the voice of God (“Vox Popoli, Vox Dei”, no?), ergo your voice is the voice of God.

The argument is logically sound, it’s the premises that are fatuous. Not that that ever served to hold back commenters on the Times from making claims on behalf of the people, with one letter today going as far as to claim that the people “have voted” just by commenting online. Oddly enough these opinions are often accompanied with the tired quote that Valletta is a city “built by gentlemen for gentlemen” — when “gentleman” obviously signified a class distinction to show detachment from the hoi polloi.

Renzo Piano is not some poor, starving architect desperate to get some sort of commission. He has a long track record, a reputation and admiration to go with it and, I’m pretty sure, a long list of potential clients in his waiting room. You may not like his Centre Pompidou (which, it is worth reminding, houses a museum of modern art and a research centre for acoustics). But that is definitely not enough grounds to dismiss him considering his portfolio is long and extensive.

Which also means that the “money motive” was hardly the strongest in this case. This point is worth making for no other reason that the commenters on the Times, think they smell a rat. Architects’ fees in Malta, by the way, are fixed by law and it has already been made clear that the law will be applied and Piano will be paid as much as any other architect would have been paid for a project of that size.

Now to the main changes proposed. First, the characterless Freedom Square is to go. The attempt to redesign Valletta’s entrance in a monumental style in the late 1960s was not only lamentable, it was thwarted to render any sense of “monumentality” the design concept might have had into sheer blandness. Loss of open space, somebody complained, in a city that’s surrounded on three sides by sea. A walled city which can afford some extra space for … parking cars. Oh, and Carnival, although for some four centuries before the space was cleared, space or perceived lack thereof did not seem to be a constraint on the revelry.

Second, city gate. No longer to be a gate just a breach in the wall, say some others, oblivious to the fact — probably due to the fact that it’s convenient — that that’s what Glormu Cassar Avenue already is. The Turks might even considering staging another siege. If they do they will presumably not take note of what the Germans did in the last one rendering the military value of the walls to nil. The bastions may be “firm” and “high” as they are praised in the ludicrous song “Viva Malta” but the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica seemed unimpressed. And they got to the Opera House without the need to breach walls. Piano’s proposal gives Valletta a more welcoming and open look while, at the same time, retaining and emphasising the austere and sparse geometric feel of the rest of the city’s military architecture.

Which brings me to the third element of the design, the site of the Royal Opera House. I had previously noted that the calls to rebuild it “as it was” had died down. Well, not on the Times comment pages, I regretfully note. Just as a reminder to those who lament Government commissioning a foreigner that Edward Middleton Barry was British. Piano is manifestly a man interested, if not in love, with Valletta having had a keen interest for some twenty five years. Barry did not even visit Malta let alone the site which, at first, he thought was flat. When informed of the slight slope he simply added a “platform” which, thankfully, alleviated the nauseating effect of the colonnade.

Barry’s achievement is that he managed to combine an attitude of condescension (include here the neo-classical features, so favoured by the British colonial authorities) with the Maltese love for over-wrought lavur. The result was something which, incredibly, few seem to have found at odds in the “baroque city” — that catch-all category which somehow could include the elaborate faced of the Auberge de Castille, the military geometry of St James Cavalier, the “libertine” style of Palazzo Ferreria and Barry’s ħamallata.

Or maybe they did. In the immediate post-War we almost got something that was not Barry, a design by Italian architects (yeah, foreigners … unlike Barry) which only got shelved because of other pressing priorities. And it would not have been unique. None of the significant Valletta buildings that came down during the War were rebuilt like the original. Well, almost. The facade of the old Auberge d’Auvergne Provence was reproduced in the case of the Law Courts with the unfortunate addition of … wait for it … a colonnade! A homage to Barry and all things neo-classical? Don’t know but that should have been enough warning.

A final point on the open air theatre. A poor man’s version of a theatre is has been said. Exposing possible operaic performances to the elements. They stage open air opera in the Verona Arena but — if we’ll ever afford to stage an operaic performance — the exception maltaise applies. Here’s Joseph Vella-Bondin, Malta’s “acknowledged leading bass singer”:

A project cannot be justified on the rationale that open-air venues in historical ruins like the Terme di Caracalla do well. Malta is a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean and consequently, with its specific climatic conditions and its particular demographical, religious and social situations. In the context of a permanent open-air theatre, these factors may require a careful assessment before scarce resources are committed to such a project.

Now somebody please tell me why being a “small island in the middle of the Mediterranean” should give you any specific climatic, demographical, religious and social conditions which are not the case in Rome.

Wont of something sensible on the subject and can’t find it? May I suggest Mark-Anthony Falzon’s column last Sunday. Here’s a lengthy extract:

For my part, I choose to belong to that community which will most likely win the competition (provided the project actually materialises – I have said before that I will only believe it when I put my finger into the wet cement). Let’s call it the ‘let Piano do as he pleases’ community. Just as well it will win, for the following reason.

An architect is a bit like a judge. A judge presides over court proceedings and listens to a number (at least two unless the defendant pleads guilty) of interpretations. At some point, however, the judge must perform the violence of stopping the ping-pong process in favour of one interpretation.

Likewise, an architect has a number of options available, each of which usually expresses the desires of a particular community. Because they must at some point build, however, the architect performs the violence of ‘freezing’ a community and representing it in brick and mortar.

That is why we need such a great architect for such a great space. The skateboarding and melitensia boffins simply wouldn’t do. Whatever Piano chooses to freeze will very likely be worth the trouble, because he is Renzo Piano.