My heart with the workers on strike at Fiat of Termini Imerese

I was born in the small town of Termini Imerese,
40 km near Palermo Sicily.
When I was a child my father brought me to fish octopus in a clear sea with dream beach. After arrived the Fiat industry with the central electrothermic, my town, where lived farmers and fishermens, is transformed into an industrial center of southern Italy. The city grew as a tumor, with money came the mafia, the sea was polluted by oil discharged from tanker ships, all thought of becoming rich. After all this Fiat decides to lay off 18,000 workers and close and go away. We have become rich? No, we are poor as before but with a natural and social ecosystem in destruction. Fiat NO thanks, we do not give up.

"Workers at Fiat’s Sicilian plant in Termini Imerese on Thursday continued their temporary work stoppages to protest uncertainty over the factory’s future.

Meanwhile, unions at other Fiat factories met to consider other labor actions, including a refusal to work overtime, to draw attention to the fact that they feel left in the dark about Fiat’s global expansion plans and the effect these will have on jobs in Italy.

Fiat has already negotiated a partnership deal to become a controlling partner in the American automaker Chrysler, but it is its proposed merger with Opel, the main marque in General Motors’ European arm, which has unions in Italy and Germany worried.

Plans allegedly drawn up by Fiat, but which CEO Sergio Marchionne has not confirmed, indicated the shutting down or ‘reorientation’ of Termini Imerese and another plant in Italy, which many believe will be Pomigliano d’Arco near Naples, while an Opel engine and parts plant in Germany also risks being shut down or seeing its work force drastically reduced.

According to union sources at Opel, some 18,000 workers risk losing their jobs in Germany and Italy if the merger goes through.

GM must at least find a partner for its European arm, which includes Saab of Sweden, before the end of the month in order to receive federal bail-out funds. Workers at Termini Imerese staged two 90-minute work stoppages on Thursday morning and blocked a local highway to draw attention to their protest."

Cucuzza

Is atypical that an Italian he does not talk about pasta or pizza (I do not love soccer). Then pasta.
In late April along with the seeds that my father sent me from Sicily were the seeds of Cucuzza (lagenaria longissima) and now in my pots on the terrace The Cocuzza grew. So I cooked the pasta with tinnirumi of Cucuzza is a pasta of Sicilian cuisine, I was born in Termini Imerese - Palermo. Young leaves and apexes of Cucuzza I also dice the Cucuzza and cut into small pieces by hand spaghetti, tomato, garlic, basil, olive oil and parmigiano. Recipe








































"Cucuzza Squash Drill Team" Associated Italian Farmers in California
















P.S. For Jim a old Sicilian proverb

Crita= Clay

Cui zappa crita, arricogghi sita.= Whoever cultivates clay, harvests silk.

cultivate the clay-earth receives in return something very precious

MAO BooKShoop

News ! The MAO -Oriental Art Museum of Torino- bookshoop has asked me to permanently display our pottery. This morning I showed the work, here are some photos

P.S. From my garden "OrtoCasa.

The first harvest.

The Unconscious Art of Demolition

Urban Graffiti of Absence or Ghost Houses

Questo privato scoperto, questo mostrare un esistenza sparita, questo non voluto e casuale sguardo su le interiora private, ciò blocca lo sguardo e solo un guardare "estetico" ci salva. Una mattina a Toyota in Giappone sulla strada dal mio albergo al Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, dove lavoravo, enormi ruspe avevano abbattuto la facciata di alcuni edifici. Ricordo che insieme a tanti giapponesi siamo rimasti a guardare per lungo tempo questo osceno stupro di intimità. Adesso chi fotografa queste facciate fa Arte a conferma che l' "Arte" esiste anche per esorcizzare il Presente.

This private discovered, this show a vanished life, that is not wanted and random look at the innards private. This blocks the view and only a aesthetics-look saves us. One morning at Toyota in Japan on the road from my hotel at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I worked, the horrible bulldozers had demolished the facade of some buildings. I remember that with so many Japanese are still looking for a long time this obscene rape of intimacy. Now who photograph these facades makes Art and confirming that the "Art" exists also for exorcize the Present.

Today we started to dismantle the exhibition of Thomas Ruff at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
march 18, 2009 - June 21, 2009. I think it is interesting to see one of the most important museums of Italy, I work at the Castle by 1991.



















In the late 1980s, Thomas Ruff (born in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany, 1958, currently lives and works in Düsseldorf) was among the first artists working with photography as an artistic medium to be fully recognized within the contemporary art world. In 1992 he took part in Documenta Kassel, and in 1995 he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. Yet Ruff has always treated the medium of photography with skepticism: for him, the photographic surface is a thin foil which tricks the viewer with its illusion of extreme realism and at the same time reveals the fundamental impossibility of experiencing the world in our digital age. Ruff’s images seem emphatically to deny photography’s main attribute – that is, the offer of a reliable record of reality. Instead, through his mute images devoid of all emotion, Ruff presents us with a contemporary subjectivity defined by amnesia.



Rivoli is a city 30 km from Turin. In Rivoli There is the studio of my friend Andrea Mastro a ceramist, http://www.mastroandrea.it/ ,and today arrived the truck with the clay that comes from the quarries of the region of Piedmont-Piemonte. Is a red clay with lots of calcium carbonate.

cerca

At the end of the day return to my studio where I'm working on a group of 4 pots as more sculptural sound installation . The idea is to put the compressed air jets tangential to the edges of the vases to create sounds. Three of the four are finished, the fourth perhaps it will be a high tube.

















Other finished

diameter 41 cm

Whistles antistress

This week was tiring, Happy weekend to all. I am going to do some whistle in studio.

P.S.
I built a bed for my melon and I wanted to show it. Now it can grow quiet.

The other my work

http://www.maotorino.it/



Our Company ATTITUDINE FORMA , in 2008, worked for 5 months to the opening of the Museo d'Arte Orientale di Torino MAO. has been a long work of creating supports for exhibition and the installation of the works for the permanent collection . For me it was interesting to be able to touch and valuable ancient pottery from all over the East.
The Museum has seven sections

click on photos to enter inside the individual collections

-Gandhara, the geographical sense of the term Gandhara define an area between Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. The same word means the production of artistic inspiration Buddhist flourished in the area between the second century B.C. and the fifth century. A.D.

-India, are included under this item works of Hindu and Buddhist inspiration from Kashmir, India itself, from East Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Stone, bronze, terracotta and paintings on cotton cover a range that goes from the second century. A.D. the nineteenth century.

-Southeast Asia, the artistic production of which includes Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, while reflecting a strong Indian influence, manifested iconographic conventions and stylistic characteristics that depend on the cultural history of these different countries.

-China, the millennial history of China and the vast extension of its domain has generated a multitude of artistic events. The centralized nature of its political structures and its cultural models, however, give a unitary representation broadly.


-Japan, the artistic production in Japan reveals the originality of the results arising from a fine tradition and an almost religious respect for the inherent qualities of materials, with a willingness to accept the fruits from the most sophisticated cultural development.

-Himalaya, the art of the Himalayan (Ladakh, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan) as the common unifying stretch version of tantric Buddhism from which emerges a vision of the world that invests himself architectures, statues, paintings, books and ritual instruments.


-Islam, the Islamic section of the museum exhibits works from the Middle East, Persia, Turkey and former Soviet republics of Central Asia. The collections include bronzes, ceramics and manuscripts, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic of calligraphy.

After only uploading images and trialing our first blog, letʼs explain who we are and what DOKS POTTERY is.
Three years ago Raffaella Giorcelli and I (Filippo Di Giovanni), thanks to a common interest in ceramics, created a ceramic workshop in the Docks Dora of Torino (see photo)
It all started when we found an old potterʼs wheel in a friendʼs fatherʼs basement.
After several modifications and some repairs we began teaching ourselves, and got to work.
Recently we have aquired a new electric wheel and we even built our own electric kilns.
I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino after studying Agricultural Botany at the University of Palermo. This gave me a sound knowledge of inorganic chemistry that has been very useful in developing our ceramic glazes.
In 1996 some friends and I founded the Cooperative "ATTITUDE FORMA S.C. - Technical Services for Art" and are appointed by various museums and galleries in Italy and abroad.
Raffaella studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin and went on to become a practicing artist and teacher.
After a long period of experimentation and testing at DOCKS POTTERY weʼd like to show our ceramic work. The works we produce come from the use of local red and white clay as well as semigres like the earth of Castellamonte.
We make all our own glazes from formulae we found in an old ceramics manual, many of which we have modified after extensive testing and experimentation.
All our glazes are lead free and contain no toxic substances.
We hope you enjoy our work.

Many thanks to my Australian friend Michael for help me with my bad English