✦ “Place-writing” Contributor Spotlight ✦
As @_seed130 gallery wraps up its 10-month programme, we’re revisiting the story behind it through a conversation between Alessandra Grignaschi (@eghi28 ), Futurecity Associate and gallery manager, and George Kekatos (@g.kek ), our Cultural Director.
Together, they reflect on how Seed130 came to life, from the shared trust built over years of collaboration, to the hands-on delivery of a space that welcomed over 5,100 visitors, hosted workshops for local schools, and earned award nominations and praise for its care-driven approach.
Alessandra sees producing not just as a job of managing details, but as a way to create spaces that feel considered and inviting. This piece is a reminder of what’s possible when creative vision and solid delivery meet.
📖 Read the full conversation in Place-writing: The Associate Edit (pp. 6–7) – link in bio.
“Place-writing” is a new Futurecity publication series spotlighting cultural ideas, reflections, and placemaking stories from across our Associates network.
______________
Images by Graham Fudger and @dogahandesign
It was 2001 I think. Just before he died.
It was one of my first trips to Palestine with my partner Oliver Chanarin.
We were invited to the first Palestinian film festival alongside @nickbroomfield and @eghi28 and the head of channel 4 I can’t remember her name.
It was a wonderful and shocking time. Arafat received us warmly in his compound. He would die shortly after.
We took a picture of him with our 5x4 inch film camera. It wa a lousy image.
On the way out of Ben Gurion airport they scanned our films maybe 30 or 40 times. So as to damage it.
The portrait was lousy but the yellow mark that was branded on it from the x-ray damage was what made it interesting.
You see they partly narrated the image by damaging it. It’s what they always do.
Control or twist the narrative.
Arafat was warm. A warm womanizer stuck in a concrete compound.
We met with the mother of Waffa Idris the first female Palestinian suicide Bomber. I will never forget that.
That prick who writes for the @nytopinion wrote about her in his book “war of the roses” Thomas Friedland. He never got it old Thomas he’s a pernicious Zionist narrator.
Wafa’s mother was stoic. Her house was wallpapered with martyr images of her daughter. Can you imagine?
Cat Woman (La Grande Dame) 1951, by Leonora Carrington, completed in collaboration with José Horna.
The sculpture recalls Bastet, feline Egyptian goddess of the home, women’s secrets, fertility and childbirth. Covered with hieroglyph-like imagery, enigmatic symbolism invoking the Egyptian Book of the Dead - a collection of spells intended to assist the dead in their journey through the underworld and into the afterlife ✨
“A shower fell in the night and now dark clouds drift across the sky, occasionally sprinkling a fine film of rain. I stand under an apple-tree in blossom and I breathe. Not only the apple-tree but the grass round it glistens with moisture; words cannot describe the sweet fragrance that pervades the air. Inhaling as deeply as I can, the aroma invades my whole being; I breathe with my eyes open, I breathe with my eyes closed – I cannot say which gives me the greater pleasure.
This I believe, is the single most precious freedom that prison takes away from us: the freedom to breathe freely, as I now can. No food on earth, no wine, not even a woman’s kiss is sweeter to me than this air steeped in the fragrance of flowers, of moisture and freshness.
No matter that this is only a tiny garden, hemmed in by five storey houses like cages in a zoo. I cease to hear the motorcycles backfiring, the radios whining, the burble of loudspeakers. As long as there is fresh air to breathe under an apple-tree after a shower, we may survive a little longer.” Freedom to Breathe by #AlexanderSolzhenitsyn
.
.
.
#stayhomesavelives #staysafe #supportthenhs #protectlives #stayhomestaysafe #stayhome #iorestoacasa #readathome
#stayhomesavelives #staysafe #supportthenhs #protectlives #stayhomestaysafe #stayhome #iorestoacasa .
.
. ‘The same sea in us all’ by #jaankaplinski #readathome
