June 29, 2008

"Te engañas, no has vivido", de Enrique González Martínez

Te engañas, no has vivido... No basta que tus ojos
se abran como dos fuentes de piedad, que tus manos
se posen sobre todos los dolores humanos
ni que tus plantas crucen por todos los abrojos.

Te engañas, no has vivido mientras tu paso incierto
surque las lobregueces de tu interior a tientas;
mientras en un impulso de sembrador no sientas
fecundado tu espíritu, florecido tu huerto.

Hay que labrar tu campo, divinizar la vida,
tener con mano firme la lámpara encendida
sobre la eterna sombra, sobre el eterno abismo...

Y callar... mas tan hondo, con tan profunda calma,
que absorto en la infinita soledad de ti mismo,
no escuches sino el vasto silencio de tu alma.

June 28, 2008

Ironman x 20

Old pal Michael attemps to run this year 20 different Ironman competitions all around the world. Next week he's coming to Frankfurt, and the week after that he's being running as well in Austria.

His purpose: draw attention to sick babies with trisomy.



I'm looking forward to meet you, old Dude, in Frankfurt next week!

June 26, 2008

No to the lourdesation of Ronchamp!


Architecht Renzo Piano plans to build a monastery for Clarisses and facilities for visitors next to Le Corbusier's Ronchamp. The main project is called La Porterie (Une nouvelle construction pour accueillir. Une bâtiment pour les contemplatives).

Obviously it is a shame!

The Fondation Le Corbusier has undestood the problem quite well: facilities are indeed needed, but Piano's project would interfere with the original plans of Le Corbusier. The trees and the hill should be conserved.


In March 1959, the priest René Bolle-Reddat ask Le Corbusier about building a small hotel for the visitors. Of course not! He just replied: «Vous voulez refaire Lourdes». And he explained: «Laissez-moi vous dire, cher ami, que je ne suis pas d’accord et que je ne peux prendre part à une telle initiative. Ronchamp était un lieu de pèlerinage séculaire. Il y avait les « sous-sous » des « Vendeurs du temple ». Vous allez faire un caravansérail organisé, une chose épouvantable de carottes-pommes de terre-prières-draps de lit ? etc... C’est de la folie ! Laissez donc Ronchamp tel qu’il est avec les pèlerinages et l’église qui convient aux pèlerinages. Ne laissez pas perdre toutes vos énergies dans la carotte et la pomme de terre alors que vous êtes fait pour autre chose».

Hopefully Le Corbusier's work will be soon included in the Unesco's heritage list, in order to protect it better from some stupid ideas...

I strongly recomend Gilles Ragot approach to the situation: La colline et la chapelle (unfortunately I wasn't able to access the pdf format, and the html lacks of the graphics).

June 23, 2008

Writing, reading and thinking...

[Fragment of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", by Nicholas Carr.]


Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

June 10, 2008

Tuileries (1951), Comitán del Corzo (2007)

Un petit hommage à Doisneau...

Dionisio Pulido by Walter Reuter

Some weeks ago I discovered in the university's library of old & used books the catalogue of an exhibition about Walter Reuter (Berlin 1906-Cuernavaca 2005), the guy who revolutionized the photo-journalism in Mexico.

The adventures of his life are worth a reading, and his pictures are amazing. He used to work with the Magnum photographers and with Manuel Álvarez Bravo, among many others. Like Dr. Atl, we also worked several years on the Paricutín volcano. He also was the cameraman of the film "Raíces", which won a prize in Cannes (1955).

By the way: this is the best portrait of Dionisio Pulido I have ever seen. Since it was not on the internet, I scanned it (
Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kust e.V., "Walter Reuter. Berlin, Madrid, Mexiko. 60 Jahre. Fotografie und Film (1930-1990)", Argon, 1990, p.52.).

Visitors