@giuviv
Freelance translator (RU+IT to ENG), beginning work on a project that have entitled The Errant Kraeved. Now writing on Liguria (and nearby localities) for a book provisionally entitled The Red Riviera. Occasionally post about other stuff.
Russia's deeply unsuccessful Matryoshka fake news campaign has now started using Cameo videos to deepfake the voices of celebrities, here's a few examples featuring Bruce Boxleitner, Dolph Lundgren, David Yost, and Neil Newborn.
Admissions that the UK government knows that Israel has committed war crimes. It needs now to publish its full assessment and then be held to account for its support for Israel.
A rather nostalgic substack post on Moscow's Musei Kino in the Krasnopresnenskaya District. Closed down in late 2005, I try to share some of my memories of this legendary place. Its closure, alas, provoked no 1968 unlike in France. giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/musei-kino...
It's quite something to see EU bankers begin to say the same sorts of things about Visa and Mastercard and payment processing that Russian bankers were saying from about 2010 onwards www.ft.com/content/fcc2...
Several nights ago I watched Chantal Akerman's D'Est. A strange culmination of a period in my life watching Russian and Post-Soviet cinema almost exclusively. Here are some thoughts on the film's partly Moscow topography and its filming of crowds: giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/watching-c...
A new substack post on my fascination for the Mordvin sculptor Stepan Erzia who I keep discovering and rediscovering. He turns up everywhere in my mythical topography (Saransk, Moscow, Buenos Aires & Levanto). I even translated a film script about him. giulianovivaldi1.substack.com/p/my-discove...
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...
Here are some brief preliminary thoughts on this larger project which as I say has the risk of being over solipsistic: elektrichkalandreloaded.blogspot.com/2026/01/subs...
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...
19 January Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov Memorial Day
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...
