Ukraine, Refugees, Economy and others interconnected things #1

March 16, 2022

It is just under three months since the start of 2022 and my last newsletter. In it, I imagined new resolutions for the coming year and wished myself - and wished you - a happy new year and a timid exit from two years of Covid pandemic that has marked us deeply.

Hopes for a social, human, economic recovery seem to have been swept away on the night of 24 February 2022. Indeed they have been swept away for the Ukrainian people brutally attacked by the anachronistic madness of an autocrat turned warmongering dictator.

"Meet The Puteens": Snapchat, Soundtrack, Making of.

March 17, 2018

While working on the multimedia project "Meet The Puteens" together with The Economist correspondent Noah Sneider, we collected some extra materials besides the interviews and portraits. It was important to work on the project thinking out of the box and to challenge the traditional journalistic approach. If you are interested to know more about it, you can follow the links in this post. And if you are curious about how we met our heroes, here is the story behind our multimedia project on young Russians.

Imperium - Chapter 1/a: "Rendering the empire's capital"

May 23, 2015

From The Guardian - May 2015: "In 2012, as the Russian government announced the formation of a new “greater Moscow”, Marat Khusnullin, the deputy mayor, headed up an international competition that invited plans for the newly expanded city region. There is talk of a grand urban vision: new jobs, homes, infrastructure and city-wide improvements. In the meantime, Moscow is already transforming. From plans for Zaryadye Park – Moscow’s first new park in 50 years – to burgeoning creative industries, rapid gentrification and a food revolution, the fabric of the city is being reworked. Plans involve pedestrianised embankments along a transformed riverfront, high-speed water transport and brand-new cycling infrastructure. But how much has life really changed for Moscow’s residents? Has the transformation been for the benefit of everyone or just a select few? And what of the future of this new Moscow?"

Rendering Moscow - imperium, ©Davide Monteleone, 2015

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may...

The day after

May 11, 2015

Note from "Time second-hand" by Svetlana Aleksievich" : "Mio figlio...mia madre...io...viviamo in paesi diversi, anche se si chiamano tutti Russia. Il nostro legame ha qualcosa di assurdo. Ci sentiamo tutti traditi".

Lenin's Mausoleum, Red Square, the day after the parade. ©Davide Monteleone 2015.

Parks and Parade...

May 10, 2015

I found this interesting series of article about parks in Moscow. There is an interesting sentence in the introduction that may be worth to explore with pictures:

"Parks in Moscow reflect the influence of historic ideas on urban landscapes. There are elements of feudalism, socialism, and capitalism. There is monarchy, anarchy, religion, modernism, and post-modernism."

In the mean time, yesterday I wanted to see it from the "citizen" perspective and not from the VIP tribune on the Red Square. I wanted to have a picture from Sofiyaskaya nabereshnaya, the river side in front of the Kremlin, but, unfortunately, the street was closed for "security" reason. This is the best I got: