THE BUILDING BRIGADE

u m b r e l l a n e w s p a p e r @ g m a i l . c o mh t t p : / / E A S A N e w s p a p e r . t u m b l r . c o m

Tomorrow are the final presentations. We will all be amazed that we achieved so much! Although it might not have looked like that with late mornings, siestas and hanging out at the beach. 470 people working for two weeks is the same as 27 years of full-time work for one person, that is powerful.

What will you take with you from this experience? New ideas? Any plans for the future? I want to encourage people to take action!

I want to share my experience of a workshop I took part in just before EASA. Hopefully someone can be inspired and think this would be a good format. The second reason I write this is because we are looking for projects to do next year. Contact us if you have any ideas.

In the countryside of Sweden I spent two weeks renovating a traditional log cabin. We were 25 people living and working together. The association is called “the building brigade”. It is a small organisation with roots in youth political party. I think that

part is interesting because they have defined their reasons behind their work.

“We bring together people/organizations that need to have something built with people that want to build something.”

The five basic ideas for the Building Brigade are:

1. Restore the joy of work

Today work is often done following orders. We want to rediscover and restore the truly joyful work, characterized by fun, energy, freedom, creativity, surprise, understanding and a democratic participation.

2. Build equitable communities

In the process of working together new social bonds are developed, and if the group is democratically organized, then equality will be seen as a natural value among all the participants.

3. Build commons & democratic infrastructures

Specifically we want to engage in building resources that can work as infrastructures that help other organizations, activists and artists to do what they want to do.

4. Grow self-confidence

When we become familiar with the how things work, we are also better prepared to change and address he process and do them ourselves next time

5. Break the division between theory and practice

There exists, in modern society, a very destructive division between those who do practical work and those who knows the theory. We believe everyone needs to think practical, and that nothing is as practical as a good theory.

Continued on page 3

EL PARASOL 5 Friday AUGUST

issue 12 · volume 11

• WILDLIFE TUTORS: Please go to the Toolbox as soon as you can!

WorkshopReviewsAvanzada!Construction at this workshop continues at a fast rate with all the participants taking a well deserved break when umbrella arrived. The group is currently still working on the bare frame and they still have to start using the rope for the “weaving” aspect of the pavilion. The roof also still has to be lifted into place, and the workshop will be struggling with the weight of the roof as they don’t have the assistance of any mechanical crane to help them lift the final heavy piece into place.

Participants are also struggling with working in the midday heat (as well as apparently getting set on fire Jenny “burns” UK) and many are taking small break during the day for some respite from the sun. When asked about the prospects of finishing on time tutor Garragh still seemed confident about finishing on time. Whether this is a realistic view Umbrella is unsure, especially as the amount of time available to work on the Workshop is starting to be counted in hours not in day.

The pavilion was originally designed to face up the main street but this view has now been blocked by the unforeseen construction of the snowglobe pavilion.

The workshop has also had a recent visit from the local police resulting from noise they were making during their 2am work session last night.

Some galleries have already expressed interest in using the pavilion in the future for their exhibitions.

OrigádizWhen arriving to the urban sculpture that is the Origadiz workshop, we were greeted by a large shaky construction, not many people seemed to be working on the structure and the tutor was unavailable. While the whole thing looked only moments away from falling but the “dinosaur” managed to keep its balance. Having only erected 4 of the wooden section the work shop are under a lot of pressure especially as this represents only one fifth of it overall.

However the participants seemed eager to commence the heavy duty work, but in the mean time were chilling out in the shadows checking their facebook accounts. The heat is obviously also a heavy hindrance to progress.

SnowglobeWork here is in the final stages and those of you agile enough to enter the pavilion will enjoy the inimate space, which feels quite good when there are less people in it, but a bit claustrophobic when it gets more crowded. Participants have been quite busy setting up some mosquito netting as a safety barrier for the public, but the pavilion still seems quite far from reaching standard safety regulations. Participants are also struggling with the midday heat, but are preparing a “forest” comprised of all the card tubes painted blue in one of the metal arches near by.

The combination of these two elements should be quite interesting. We at umbrella are looking forward to the final presentation.

Cloud After ten days of exploding around the campus they finally blew themselves up. And they did it good. The cloud lifted steadily and it transformed the little plaza by each meter it went up. At first there were just a bunch of balloons, and seconds later there was a living shadow performance across the floor. The air connected with the ground while the anchor strings filled the middle. They didn’t just make a cloud. They made the feeling of excitement that moved thru everybody that passed by.

EL PARASOL 2 5 Friday AUGUST

• Getting shit done in your own country

The log cabin is on a farm which is going to be transformed into a educational institute for ecological building. The village we were in has a strong community who welcomed us; they had us sleep in their kindergarten, cook in their school and provided all of us with bikes collected in the village.

Everyday started with a morning meeting going through and divide the different tasks of the day. We took turns doing the cooking, coming up with a menu, shop and cook. Since everyone wanted to be the best cook we had very tasty food.

We had people coming and giving lectures related to the theme: ecological building. Some also had small workshops so we could learn the different tasks in the project like plaster and traditional timber work.

Participating in this brigade were people with all kinds of backgrounds, including architects, architecture students, carpenters, students of engineering and artists.

Experience of the building brigade was that everything went so smooth. I would never exchange EASA for anything but I really

recommend everyone to arrange small scale events like this if you want to learn how to build and complete useful and interesting projects.

So, to you who made it to the end of this article, well done. If you have a project and want to collaborate with the building brigade, or are just interested and want to know more, maybe start your own. Contact either me, Kajsa Börjesson (swe NC): kajsaborjesson@hotmail.com or Eric Berg, one of the guys in charge of the brigade: erik.berg@byggbrigaden.se

/KB

The Building Brigade continued from front page

EL PARASOL5 Friday AUGUST

QUESTION OF THE DAYAre you satisfied with your workshop? What have been the good/

bad points?

“I think this is the worst possible time to ask us this question” Maria (CYP)

Yeah the participants are great, they are just big kids and they get to build a thousand kites in a week Alkistis (GR) Martin (GER)

“my tutors came and woke me up this morning after I had a bottle of Vodka last night” Jack (UK)

“its been great, lifting pallets” Brian Jordan (IRL)

“No Comment” Martina (FL)

“I’ve been working like a dog, but its going to come out fine” Adina (RO)

“yes I am, I like working with tools” Maya (MCD)

“yes very Satisfied with workshop tutors and people i met” Teja (SL)

“it’s too much to think about at this time of the morning (3:15)..... ehh...... ammm...... trying to work in the midday sun was hard but build-ing something was great” Barry (IRL)

“yes very satisfying. Having started to build late, in the second week and during the hot sun, is a low point and also the high point. James (UK)

No response Orestis (UK)

EL PARASOL 4 5 Friday AUGUST

• La Cometa will be showing off some of their kite skills today, from 8.30 on the way to the beach. Go check it out after dinner!

Who are you?Mar Vicens

Where are you from?Valencia

What are you thinking of right now?Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

What is your proudest achievement in life?I haven't done it yet.

Who is your favourite Spanish Archi-tect?Andrés Jaque

What is your favourite building in Spain?Not a building, but the street. The spaces between the buildings.

Can you recommend a novel, poem or music that has changed your out-look on life?Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Main-tenance.

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?I can't take this decision on my own. I would take a survey.

What is the best thing about EASA for you?Learning things in surprising places

Beer or Sangria?Clarita de limon

Boxers or Briefs?Boxers

Moist or used??

Fran or Jesus?I don't think they exist as different people

MEET THE ORGANISERS

*In football tournament

EASA football cup kicked off yesterday evening in the sports hall next door to EASA HQ. With a total of twelve teams, the competition was fierce. First goal of the tournament was scored in the first minutes by Nikola (Serbia) as Serbia and “The extremely awesome lean grilling machine team” played the first match, with Serbia winning 2-0. Second match of the day, Ireland hammered into the Gay Fairy team for 4-0 victory, although the Gay Fairy team put a good fight and looked fabulous, darling doing it with Adam (UK) sporting particularly fetching rainbow socks. Other highlights included Myles (UK) amazing performance at penalty time. Scoring the Tutor team one goal and saving the attempt from the Dönor Kebab team (Germany/France/Turkey), and the appearance of Las Vikingas (All Female Scandinavian team), who were unfortunately crushed by the British Bulldog team. Maybe next EASA in Finland, there will be an all female football cup for next year.

Espain tackled the future organizers in a fairly rough match, which resulted in one of the worst EASA injuries so far as Ville (FI) breaking his leg. Memories of Italy, when Ger (IRE) broke his leg in a very competitive game of British Bullldog. Calm down boys, it´s only a game!!

The final round resulted in a narrow win for Ireland against Serbia with 3-4 score from penalties. The Tutor Team lost out to The British Bulldog and eeeSpain won against Kamziky. This leaves a three way final between

eeeSpain, Ireland and British Bulldogs this evening. Come along to the gym this evening at 7.30pm to cheer your favorite team and see if eeeSpain will continue to uphold the Spanish Soccer honour from World Cup 2010!

Results –

Round 1

“The extremely awesome lean mean grilling machine” vs Serbia 0-2

Ireland vs Gay Team 4-0

Las Vikingas (Scandinavian Ladies) vs British Bulldog 0-6

Tutor Team vs Dönor Kebab2-1

Austria vs Kamziky 0-1

eeeSpain vs Finland 4-0

Final Round

Ireland vs Serbia 4-3

Tutor team vs British Bulldog 0-1

eeeSpain vs Kamziky 3-0

IRISH BEAT GAYS*

Can Eespain win second year in a row tonight?

EL PARASOL5 Friday AUGUST

• Congratulations to Aet Ader and Mari Rass (EST) on their recent com-petition wins. Everyone at the Umbrella office hopes the projects go smoothly!

I N J U R Y R E P O R T

espain meets its match

Every year there are injuries; some years there are many (Italy) some years there are few (UK). They are usually the result of the physical la-bour shy architecture students actu-ally trying to use power tools instead of a computer mouse or excessive consumption of alcohol. However this year saw a twist in the trend of labour resulted injuries to sports re-lated, with at least 2 major injuries occurring during yesterdays “friend-ly” tournament. While the games kicked off in a friendly fashion, it wasn’t long before people were stretchered to the hospi-tal including Concrete construction tutor Ville Mellin(FI) and an Austrian Girl who we can’t find. Ville however dropped by the um-brella desk for a quick coffee “ya i think its only a minor fracture but they put it all in the cast anyway. Im just going to go straight to the hospital when I get back to Helsinki” the cast itself is what can only be described a sculptural foot beast, with the toe part seeming to engulf the toes. The hospital also neglected to give poor Ville any crutches but thankfully a friendly organiser managed to come up with a spare set. Of course Ville’s injury will be a huge loss to the concrete workshop but they can always propose his cast as one of their creations.

Reporting that last nights party would be a traffic light party was clearly an error on our part as the or-ganisers had a completely different party in mind. “Find your match” was actually last nights theme, but there were still a few people around sporting some red, yellow and green. However eve-ryone was sporting 1-4 different piec-es of cards in an attempt to find their match and receive their free “shot”. Things got off to a slow start but as soon as the first couple Ruth Hynes (IRL) and Miles “lonely heart” Reay-Palmer (UK) had a quick smooch and free shot the rest of the crowd seem to get the idea and next thing you know matching couples could be seen arriv-ing in their droves to the bar. Organ-isers especially seemed to be leading the way with Helen-Rose and Jesus, Joe Frame and Lucia, Cecily and Javier Diaz and even Fran and a mys-terious blonde girl were all seen mak-ing lip contact before having shots.

The Serbian teams sausage and raw onion tapas was delicious but might have been a questionable choice for people hoping for a fresh breath with their hook up, and music saw the re-turn of a certain veteran DJ Marten Dashorst, who banged out some top (not cheesy) tunes. While the base-ment area has seen a couple of good parties during this EASA nothing compared to the mayhem that was last night. What was the secret ingre-dient to last nights success, well we here at Umbrella think having the bar in the party space might have helped the excessive alcohol consumption and the impending feeling that EASA will soon be ending also placed a cer-tain hunger of love in the air. As for the end of the night, well hav-ing consumed many drinks this re-porter saw fit to send herself to bed. Expect a follow up story about the rest of the nights shenanigan as soon as those intrepid reporters who at-tended wake up!

Part One

EL PARASOL 6 5 Friday AUGUST

• The party situation has been resolved, just in time for the final parties

Part Two

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? He is needed at infopoint, the

workshop tent and the bar area.

Shots were knocked back, people were paired off, the dance floor was alive and well. In the middle of all the flailing limbs, rolling heads and tongue exchanging Sam "buca" Pat-terson (UK) upped the tempo with some fiery shots of Sambuca. Sum-marising his antics in four words, he reports “sambuca-fire-puke-bed”. Sam managed to get a motherly shower before bed by the caring Hugo (FR). The crowds thinned as couples were united and took the party elsewhere, those still in search of their other half occupied the dance floor until the break of dawn when the final strag-glers came to the realisation that their love was lost, or at least dropped somewhere in the corridor.There was a change in tempo pro-duced by the repeated switching of DJs, after repeated requests for Be-yonce the more Spanish taste in tra-ditional (read commercial) DJing, re-sulted in a drunken attempt of DJing by some girl whos´ version of fading in and out songs was a 30 second si-lence between each song. With the crowd expressing their dissatisfac-

tion by heading to bed, some of the German tutors pumped out some German techno which got the few re-maining party people going, shortly before the cleaning crew arrived to clear up last nights´ mayhem.Mischief also found its way from the dance floor to the organizers room where Jesus “death slumber” Diaz arose this morning to discover he had been given a “permanent” marker-over. It seems a lot of locks went un-opened last night despite a large number of people sporting numerous halves of cards to up their chances of finding at least one love. For the lucky people who did find their other half last night their triumph was celebrat-ed with shots of orange juice. Despite the thinning crowds how-ever certain members of the Irish and Belgian team were rumoured to have braved the dawn with the usual crew of late night party animals also known as “the organizers” All in all the ”find your match” party was a success. Stronger shots next time please.

EL PARASOL5 Friday AUGUST

“I hope our workshop will finish in time!”

¡Espero que nuestra workshop termina a tiempo! «S·pero ke noo·ess·tra werk·shop terr·me·na ah ty·m·po»

LOST...

FOUND...

• Monica (GER) lost her Nikon D40 after flamenco night. It is in a black/grey camera case.

• Many mobile phones. They won't work in your country so give them back!

• Yellow handbag left at the Um-brella office when you took a chair. Bring the chair back when you come to collect it

BIRTHDAYSChris Maloney (UK) · Jan Fiser (CZ)

That's right thanks to our fantastic new EASA calender, we can now tell when everyone's birthday is how to celebrate it is another question. We suggest beer hugs and slaps on the back.

On another note though the news that Chris Maloney has made a “mistake” on his EASA application has just ar-

EASA'S NEXT TOP MODEL

• Today's perfect 10s are Miguel Setas (PO) and Nathalie Abela (MT)

rived to the Umbrella Desk, it is not actually his birthday today. “I mean you can change you name, hair, face, home why not your date of birth”. Chris claims that he dislikes having his actually birthday celebrations on his actually birthday on the 5th of February due to the “bad weather”. Well Chris apart from the legal issues of changing you age, we should prob-ably just mention that the weather is not especially good during the sum-mer in Manchester either.

Happy Birthday Jan Fiser!

Tomorrow’s Weather Phrase of the Day

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