A substack piece on a citation returning to one's mind after decades, the topography of my fascination with Roberto Arlt and the difficulty of writing about a topos one has been cut off from, remembering the host of a Triestine osteria. Disparate notes: giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/let-the-eu...

Flowers as Remembrance, Flowers as Resistance or Flowers as Renunciation. Reading yesterday on the laying of flowers at 1 Prechistenka Street, I tried to write some words on/towards 'political floral topography' in contemporary Russia: giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/flowers-as...

A new post: The Slow Death of Patriarch's Ponds, or how influencers enshitified a neighbourhood open.substack.com/pub/kotelnay...

A Russian neo-Nazi group has claimed responsibility for the destruction of a memorial plaque honoring Anna Politkovskaya, the Novaya Gazeta journalist who was assassinated in 2006. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

Several thoughts on events in Moscow commemorating Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova since 2009. It is part of a new blog on memories and places. I am trying to write something on the topography of the marches that take place annually on January 19. open.substack.com/pub/giuliano...

Have decided to post some things on Substack. It aims to be where I will post my thoughts on places and both real and immaginary accounts in these locations: giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/places-enc...

I have started to think about how I can somehow transform an old project into something else. My rather solipsistic idea is to somehow subsume it under a larger project on places which have had some effect upon me. I call it my Automythopsychogeography (apologies to Enrico Baj).

Please join us Thurs 20 Nov, 7pm, to launch this book: English translations of speeches in court by anti-war protesters in Russia. We want to ensure their voices are heard more widely in the English-speaking world. At Pelican House in London, also livestreamed. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/try-me-for...

Great to see our book, Voices Against Putin's War, in the front window at @housmansbookshop.bsky.social. @ensu-resu.bsky.social @ukrainesol.bsky.social

This is a great favourite of mine &, I am pleased to say, it is a view that Elwin Hawthorne would still recognise to this day! This is "Reconstruction at Saltdean" by him from 1934. #ElwinHawthorne #Saltdean #Sussex #EastLondonGroup #MondayMorning

What I said at the Solidarity With Ukraine event in Brussels on Wednesday.

"What challenges does the war present to Ukrainian society & the EU? What tensions & contradictions has it exposed? What changed in the symbolic opposition between the pro-Russian east & pro-European west?" Interview with Daria Saburova & Denys Gorbach. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/03/18/u...

Russian anarchist Ruslan Siddiqi's own account of his lonely attempt to interfere with the genocidal Russian war machine and his torture at the hands of the FSB.

I have reposted my translation of Ruslan Siddiqi's words on my old Afoniya blog. I would really welcome other websites to repost this important testimony on their sites. It also gives advice on how people can support one of Russia's bravest partisans: afoniya.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/y...

Ruslan Siddiki's words have appeared in my translation for the People and Nature website.We must not forget the brave resisters in Russia who have used direct action to sabotage the war. For me Siddiki is a noble heir of European partisans of the 1940s: peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/y...

E' vitale che Ruslan Sidiqi un italo-russo venga appoggiato con una grande campagna di solidarietà in Italia. Si è parlato (e giustamente) di Cecilia Sala e di Ilaria Salas e grazie a diverse forme di pressione sono state liberate. Anche il partigiano anarchico Ruslan Sidiqi è degna di solidarietà.

Yesterday, exiled Petersburg artist, activist and Russian language teacher Daria Apahonchich was placed on Russia's wanted list. Here she reflects on this decision's impact on her, and in a story published last summer, she recalls how teaching Russian to migrant workers got her in trouble.

In memory of Odesa's satirist, Valeriy Khait, who I met in 2011 at the city's Literature Festival and who passed away yesterday.

A personal favourite item on the Walking Museum to the Spanish Civil War. 1938 fundraising stamp from Denmark: Milk for the Spanish Children, issued by social democratic foundation set up to aid political refugees from fascism, named after Italian socialist Giacomo Matteotti murdered in 1924

Skobov, twice incarcerated in Soviet times as a socialist dissident, behind bars again. Of the Kremlin's rulers, he told the judge: "Murdering hundreds of 000s of people is how they bolster their self-esteem. They are degenerates, scum, Nazi riffraff." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/01/21/a...

16 years ago, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was defending political activists, including members of the antifascist movement, were shot dead in the centre of Moscow on Prechistenka Street.

Another (eclectic) post in my Santon's Notebook blog on walks through Genoa, urban and rural Liguria, finding a new idea of the 'Rodina' in Pasolini's Versuta and discovering a strange statue in Genoa's Foce district after travelling East for two decades: santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2025/01/of-o...

Books can save lives. Images from 2012 exhibition in Madrid on "wounded" books used by Republican and International Brigade defenders as barricades in the Facility of Philosophy and Letters during the 1936 siege of Madrid.

Walking in Genoa's Foce district (which I hadn't been to for over 20 years) I discovered what seemed like the long-lost brother of Ivan Shadr's 'Girl with an Oar' statue. A younger brother given that this statue was inaugurated in 1938 (Shadr's statue was from 1935).

graniru.org/Culture/essa... Just discovered this old piece by Lev Rubinstein on a late night encounter at an elektrichka station. Pure joy at reading it. One among many beautiful texts on elektrichkas and their spaces that I've read. Sad to recall that Lev Rubinstein is no longer with us.

The introduction to a new series - which will run alongside other posts - Detours on the Diameters, or The МЦД Project: an exploration of the areas on Moscow's outskirts, serviced by the new МЦД lines. From Lobnya to Podolsk, Odintsovo to Zheleznodorozhniy kotelnaya.substack.com/p/detours-on...

A hell of an interview with Maksym Butkevich, the Ukrainian human rights activist recently released from a Russian prison. (At the bottom of each page, click "nachste seite" to read more.) www.zeit.de/politik/ausl...

Beginning to read Leonardo Lippolis' La Città Livida, his psychogegographical counter-history of Genoa. Fascinated by his suggestion that Ivan Chtcheglov's invention of the concept of derive was heavily influenced by his time in Genoa in 1950.

What if we were to consider July 19th-21st 2001 as the beginning of the 21st Century, rather than September 11th of that year. The silence of Genoa and a proposal for an exhibition on the 25th anniversary in 2026. santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-...

A fascinating short perestroika era doc on the Ukrainian Shevchenko Division in the Spanish Civil War. In Russian (voice over) and Ukrainian (live interviews).

Two more blogposts on trying to considerations regarding Walter Benjamin in Liguria (focused on his frequent trips to San Remo-a fact I've only recently discovered): santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/12/thin... santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/12/thin...

Another blog post. Again explaining connections with a previous project and how I found useful leads in the works of Paolo Pagani (on Benjamin and the place of place in biography) and Patrick Wright's book on Uwe Johnson in Sheerness (which I loved). santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/12/biog...

In Russia, where censorship has gutted the remaining independent media outlets, and all protests are nipped in the bud, trials have paradoxically become the best venue for free speech.

Some more notes about the Red Riviera idea: santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-...

Starting another blog, an introduction. santonsnotebook.blogspot.com/2024/11/an-e...

A concert to pay tribute to the late Russian pianist and anti-war resister Pavel Kushnir took place in Paris on November 18. The concert benefited Atelier des artistes en exil (Agency of Artists in Exile), whose director spoke to Radio Svoboda.

Started reading Mirko Capozzoli's biography of Gian Maria Volonté. Fascinated by the fact that in 1959 he played and directed the very first production in Italy (at Trieste's La Cantina club) of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Dearly wish I could find video material of Volonté as Krapp.