The last years of Glen Sweeney's life.

Before he "pacefully died" (Carolyn Looker's words) on 17 August, 2005, Glen Sweeney lived his last years at the Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond (London), a place founded in 1916 "devoted to the care of disabled sailors and soldiers". As we know, Glen was an airman of the RAF and he was involved in WWII as a fighter in Egypt, where it seems he had been fascinated by the view of pyramids.(1)

After two heart attacks and a stroke, in Spring 1999 Carolyn admitted Glen to the very expensive Garter Home where he lived until his death and where I got to visit him in 2004. In his single room, in bed, he listened mainly to Indian music, as one would expect. 

What follows is the House's official flyer outlining the services and activities also followed by Glen.

 

Notes

(1) Manager Andrew King's amusing recollection, published by "Uncut" magazine in 2019 (#261, February 2019), concerning the possibility that Glen defected after parachuting into the swimming pool of an Egyptian bourgeois home, where he was to be host until the end of the war, has never been confirmed by Carolyn or others, and appears to be one of Glen's many mythomaniacal tales.

no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

The Ferlaina Archive and unpublished photos of the Third Ear Band in Hyde Park 1969 free concert - part two.

Here is the second part of the extraordinary accidental discovery (read the first part here).

2.

On 1st June I took the train and went to meet in Milan, Lambrate area. There, a stone's throw from the station, is the photographic archive where many treasures unknown to most are kept. So many photos that tell the story of 20th century Italian culture through the world of entertainment, especially live concerts and television appearances. Portraits of Italian cultural personalities such as Pasolini or Moravia, singers such as Modugno or Dalla, directors such as Fellini... mostly unpublished or rarely circulated shots (which may have appeared in a magazine or newspaper article).  

Giuseppe Ferlaina (June 1st, 2022).

Giuseppe Ferlaina himself turned out to be a character with an important story to tell, strong passions (Erik Satie), great ambitions (writing, between art and philosophy). Speaking of "Vexations", Satie's composition-paradox, he says, for example: "Even today Satie is an undefeated master, because he dilutes the music, at a certain point you don't hear it any more, entering the mechanism of compositional praxis... you don't hear it any more, he liquefies it, which with "4'33"" Cage evokes it, he only represents it. Satie doesn't make a representation... No one else succeeded in obviating the work like Satie... All the avant-garde, the happenings, Fluxus, where do they come from? They come from there, an absolute master!" 

Born in Naples in 1970, after graduating, he first moved to Milan in 1989, only to return almost immediately to Naples, working in a photography studio as a fashion assistant. In '94 he returned to Milan again and worked for a few agencies doing simple auditions, but was dissatisfied because he had an idea for more creative work and returned to Naples again, before finally moving to Milan in 1997. At that point, 'disappointed with the economic results achieved', he went to work as an agent for the prestigious Treccani publishing house; then as commercial director for Vallecchi. Marriage and the birth of two children forced him 'to put his head down' and accept a more coventional job as an employee in a cooperative. "In the meantime, I still continued to study, particularly philosophy of art... I had to, like it was medicine..."

Once this experience was over, he took up photography again and came up with the idea of the archive, opened around 2012. "I was already buying photographs, I was interested in the 1970s, in artistic research. Everything was born out of love for art, despite the fact that I had graduated without practically opening a book..."

(end of part two - to be continued)

 

Mick Jagger in Hyde Park, July 1969.

Jagger reading the poem for Brian Jones.

 no©2022 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first.