Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1 från White Paper by - English

Pedro Almodóvar’s favourite film composer began this year of uncertainity being internationally awarded by his score for Pain And Glory and is about to close it with two new works: the soundtrack of the much awaited The Human Voice, which marks his eleventh collaboration with the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker, and a record that explores his musical universe beyond cinema. It’s called A Song, and it’s an album –a four LP’s one– that has nothing to do with his work in cinema. Here, the Basque musician (1955, San Sebastian) stays away from joints with the same old atmosphere to take the path of the virtuoso. The recording gathers together nine performances of some of his compositions for ballet from the 90’s, an opera, the quartet commissioned by the Tokyo Quartet and…

season of the witch so how would i disempower myself Careful, woman: if you’re going to relinquish your power for the sake of love (for a man), you will end up dressed like a housewife. Submission (also) by virtue of clothing. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, an instantaneous best seller that has remained in the annals as the text that spurred the second wave of feminism in the United States. Examining the role of the woman in popular mass culture after the Second World War, the author, journalist and activist for equal rights concluded that between 1947 and 1958 society (the masculine powers that be, that is) definitively confined women to the restricted domain of home and family by appealing to the so-called feminine mystique, a repressive…

“as a romantic, i wanted to transmit emotions and, beyond that, to display physical movement in my photos” “I AM REALLY HAPPY TO HAVE LIVED AND WORKED IN THE ANALOGUE TIMES” With a career spanning six decades, René Groebli has gained the well-deserved reputation of being a leading light (an a kind of cult figure) in international photography. ‘Experimental’ is, without a doubt, the adjective that best defines this Swiss photographer (1927, Zurich) whose work runs the gamut from the poetic to the scandalous –his emphasis on the female nude marked a certain period in his career– but always in the name of innovation, which he raised to new heights in industrial and advertising iconography in the middle of the last century. The annals contain his techniques and processes of…

toto bergamo rossi “IT’S NECESSARY TO RETHINK THE NEGATIVE STEREOTYPE OF THE MUSEUM-CITY” Before MOSE, there was this philanthropic organization whose mission (not impossible) is to preserve the lovely but fragile historical and cultural legacy of Venice. Because as Dostoyevsky said, beauty will save the world. Established in New York in 1999, Venetian Heritage Foundation began as a personal crusade of the American philanthropist Lawrence Lovett (heir to Piggly Wiggly, the popular supermarket chain), intent upon rescuing and vouchsafing the vast heritage of the city of canals and the abroad territories that once made up the Most Serene Republic of Venice. A living museum, Venice has been able to rise above plunder, catastrophic flooding and the no less destructive inundation of present-day tourists. “In 2019, we received nearly 30 million…

what goes into the dough: 500 grams of hard flour 200 grams of spinach purée 4 eggs 10 grams salt what goes into the sauce: 200 grams of cherry tomatoes 2 cloves of garlic half onion 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil salt black pepper 1 teaspoon of butter grated cheese In order to prepare the spinach purée we will have to cook the spinach in an abundance of water with salt and afterwards mash it up well. It doesn’t matter if the spinach are fresh or frozen. We let it cool completely down. We then shape the flour into a volcano and keep adding ingredients, mixing everything by hand. Once the ingredients are mixed, we proceed to knead the dough. It takes a while to get it as thin…

They are known as passive houses (passivhaus, in its original German form) and they are the livable dream of a society that has discovered a sustainable way to construct the future by examining the past. In a world that depletes its natural resources by the second, the architecture of tomorrow will be bio or not be. The two little pigs that built their houses out of straw and wood were not led astray. Yes, the big bad wolf blew and blew till he blew them down, but only because it was convenient to the capitalist moral of the story to do that: the business of brick and mortar, exalted through the values of the effort of labor at the dawn of industrialized society. But it is certainly the case that,…

“The change I imagine involves the capacity to reconnect with the deepest reasons that inspired my entry into the fashion realm. I feel the need to renew a bond, purifying the essential by getting rid of the unnecessary. I crave the authentic motive of a choice. The full set of reasons that set me on my way”Alessandro Michele, Gucci creative director ‘Notes from The Silence’…

“Maps of half the world an all the beautiful islands” is the motto of Alicia Estefanía, an artist with a mission: that everyone could find their own paradise through emotion. “A little bit of land and sea to make you happy”, she says. Estefanía’s thing is creativity for daily life, which is reflected in all kinds of decorative objects, made in different supports (though almost always recycled) and under the brand name of United Island Company. From Galician estuaries to the Caribbean, passing through the South China Sea, here’s an odyssey that you know how it begins –with any of her artworks, of course, but you never know where it can take you @unitedislandcompany @aliciaestefania.work…

SOCIAL DISTANCES Moving aroud the city in the middle of a health crisis is also an exercise in civic responsibility. With the spotlight on public transport as a focal point of contagion, solutions are urgently needed. The Island electric tram wishes to be one of them. Much is still needed (in terms of time and money) before it becomes a reality, but the concept for this vehicle presented this past July in Hong Kong points out in the right direction: a tram that guarantees social distancing among passengers. Electric and computerized –an Artificial Intelligence program does the driving–, this tram marks also another enterprise in favor of environmental well-being. Featuring two levels in the style of the classic British double-decker, though with a radically modern look, Island tram is expected…

stargazing In New South Wales, about 200 km northeast of Sidney and below the constellations of Cancer, Leo and Virgo, Bubbletent Australia unveils the cosmos every night. And the landscape doesn’t disappoint at dawn either. Chasing the stars, the real ones, actor and director Sonny Vrebac and actress Mayu Iwasaki docked nearly five years ago in New Zealand. There, on the southernmost island, an International Dark Sky Reserve, they attended a show the likes of which they had never seen, not even in the showbiz. Reality always outdoes fiction, you know. That was how, gazing at the grandeur of the cosmos in the middle of nature, they decided to transfer the experience to their home country and conceived what has become, since the end of 2017, the favorite secret retreat…

When it comes to habitability solutions, the Japanese always seem to have the right answer. The scarcity of space has never been a problem for the architects of the country, capable of creating not only functional but also comfortable, bright and even beautiful dwellings with a few design tricks. Muji’s simple house is their last home. Folding and storage platforms instead of locked rooms, strategically placed windows, glass ceilings to take advantage of the light, fake facades that guard small secret gardens... Little or nothing escapes the Japanese when it comes to building housing that responds to the residential problems of their crowded metropolises. From Hiroyuki Shinozaki’s austere and diaphanous House H to Ryo Yamada’s urban tree house or Sou Fujimoto’s transparent installations, examples have spread over the past five…

“Basketry is a world-wide crafts tradition that can be traced in the popular folklore of different cultures. As a craft form, it functions as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge, facilitating the transfer of symbols, beliefs and rituals from generation to generation within communities where this craft is practiced”Álvaro Catalán de Ocón “We need to ramp up our commitment if we want to meet the global challenge,” proclaimed the Milan Furniture Fair in its Manifiesto for 2018. It was the first time in its history that the grand Italian trade fair ––the leading light in its sector, directly warned its participants and, in the process, its visitors: either we too embrace the circular economy in how we furnish and decorate our homes or our global home will go to…

IN SEARCH OF THE LOCAL SPIRIT “Nature is the foundation of human experience,” sustains Stefano Baccari. Designer of garden sets and botanical engineer, this Italian landscape architect, hailed for projects of international impact at public and private sites, has been admonishing us for some time: we have to reconnect with our vegetable side. Because plants never lie The ancient Romans called it genius loci, the guardian deity of a place or even a community, the local spirit that defined and gave meaning to its particularities. Beyond mere protection, the genius loci could be identified by the special reverberation of the light, the prolongation of a shadow, the environment or the atmosphere of a particular place. Also by its vegetation, by the specific plants that grew here or there; by woods…