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Zhenya in Detroit

Jun 21, ’11 1:02 PM

I met Gene (AKA Zhenya, Euvgene) in 2005 when we both worked at the Paramount in Wellington. We were fast friends and collaborated on a few projects together. (Maybe you remember this?) We’ve been in intermittent contact since I moved off the Long White Cloud.

Gene’s visited the U.S. a few times since then, but every time he’s been stateside I’ve either been too far away or too broke to see him. But a few weeks ago Gene ventured outside of New York City and went on an impromptu tour of some great American cities, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago.

I jumped on the chance to meet Gene in Detroit, a city that looked close enough on the map to justify jumping in without much of a game plan. I meant to spend a day with him but we ended up spending the long weekend together.

THE SPIRAL

Gene filled me in on what he’s been up to for the past few years. Back in Wellington he had been performing a little, collaborating on a few shows, he started a theater company, produced some plays and even flew a director in from New York out for a production. But he told me, “I made a hundred bucks man, it just wasn’t worth it.” He swore theater off and focused on making music.

After several months of producing music and DJing in Wellington, Gene found himself in a Commedia del’Arte workshop given by this mad man. The work was powerful enough to inspire taking a significant risk, so after talking it over with Giovanni (the mad man) and Gene’s long time partner Erin, he took the plunge and for the past six months has been studying at Helikos, a small physical theater program in Florence, Italy.

As it turns out, the woman who gives the amazing red nose workshops I’ve been taking in Chicago, Paola Coletto worked with Giovanni to develop the previous incarnation of the school in the early 2000s. Small world right?

 

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The Republic of Rose Island

Jul 23, ’10 12:19 PM

In 1967, while Florence was on the verge of bursting on the national and international scene for being a hot bed of radical literature, design, art, and architecture, there was a minuscule nation being built off the coast of Rimini, Italy.

Engineer Giorgio Rosa began constructing a platform 500 meters outside of the Italian territorial waters and on June 24, 1968, this platform became a sovereign nation known as Rose Island. Soon a post office was established and a national currency, the mill, was decreed. One month prior to this moment student riots had broken out at the 14th Triennial. These protests were a part of a larger student uprising at the time—a rebellion against mass consumption and the loss of individuality. There was a fear of personal identity disappearing behind the machine of capitalism and government.


Ironically the island seems to have been a place of consumption and elitism as the respubliko de la insulo de la rozo became a place of tax free shopping, a place to simply grab a drink, and a place to watch ships in the Adriatic pass by. Anyone with a boat could make it out to the island republic. Unfortunately Rose Island quickly attracted the (negative) attention of the Italian government, regardless of the fact the nation was formed lawfully. Italy cared little for this fact and set out to squash this outpost—first severing its trade routes and then preventing visitors from accessing the platform. By January 22, of 1969, the republic disappeared as the platform was demolished. Rose Island exists no more, its remnants washed out to sea by a storm.

First Seen via the always great archphoto.it

-Via ROLU

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