Materatown asks about some waste controversy

I just received email saying:

"Elf Hello, I am one of the leaders of the satirical website

www.materatown.net. <http://www.materatown.net/> As perhaps you know, in

Matera there are some controversies related to the disposal of waste that

many of you in the group un-monastery stored during the days of stay in

Matera. Some waste products were found in the cave near the one where you

lived and we’d like to ask you some questions about it. What do you think?

Thank You"

I will just ask this person, who BTW didn’t sign email with ones own name, to continue this conversation here!

Responding to ‘allegations’…

Hi Elf.

Can you, please, write back to the enquirer and ask them to write to ‘finance@edgeryders.eu’ with their questions.

This can, potentially, become a legal matter and needs to be responded to carefully and by the communities legal trustees (the directors of the company).

Thanks for raising the matter on the website.

materatown possibly stepped out of conversation

Last sentence I received from Materatown Fuorisede via facebook private message:

“How I choose to spend my time should not interest you. If between us there’s a person little “serious” that’s not me! My conversation with you ends here.”

In reply to mine:

“I really don’t have time to argue. Once again, If you would like to clarify this misunderstanding I would happily dedicate my time to that while discussing it in open. If you look for some scandals and arguments, I can’t dedicate my time to that and I hope you will find something more serious and useful to do with your life…”

article + video

@Dorotea just pointed me to this article with video

I don’t know who recorded it and what they say. While unMon Matera “Junk room” looked messy one can see on a video recyclables separated (glass, metal, plastics) and I even noticed a crate with wine corks collected for upcycling. Connecting it with mess someone did outside looks to me like possible provocation. Does this video have dates when they recorded it?

other rooms not inside of unMon perimeters!

also I don’t know where they shot those other messy rooms but they don’t look like anything located inside of former unMonastery Matera perimeters!

meeting face to face

Since I will stay in Matera Feb 9th - 22nd, I can happily meet with everyone interested in former unMonastery Matera ZeroWaste program, to discuss this aspect of our practices!

@K do you still have this video which you recorded with your mobile when Rocco Rivelli visited us?

Waste issue

Hi Elf

We are ALL well aware of these blog postings and other wild allegations which have been online for at least 10 days now.

We have plenty of records that show that

  1. these were not our rooms and
  2. that they were in that condition before Edgeryders arrived and 
  3. that we managed our premises responsibly and in a 'green' manner

Since the allegations are against the whole community I would ask that you wait until the whole of the community (unMonastery and Edgeryders) formulates a response before undertaking any solo efforts of your own.

There are several issues to be considered not least regarding why we are coming under ‘attack’ at this late stage and what is the best response that we can make.

I would ask you to have regard for the fact that your candid and honest approach to dialogue has, in the past, been regarded as inflammatory by some in the wider Materan community and to wait until the unMon/ER community has an agreed response to this before you do anything.

Forwarded email exchange

Hope it gives Elf some context as to what exactly was in that room and how the space was managed during Lote4 which he missed. Natalia, Katalin, Ben, all agree that the unMonasterians took care of those materials and by no means would have dumped them illegally, 3 months after the event.

A thought for future action, when you arrive at any site that you will be using, whether it’s a new flat, a field for a festival, a railway arch for a workshop, the first thing you should do is survey the site, and take photo’s, so you have a record of the original state of the place when you arrived.

Then log what changes you made, and the improvements you installed while you were using the space.

And after the take-down-and-clear-up, record and photograph the state of the site afterwards.

Make this part of the transparency that you apply to the running of the project, and you’ll avoid this problem in future.

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+1

i think we should even add it to unMonastery in-a-box

Update coming up

It seems Ben did take photos of the place when they arrived, and the situation is under control: Alberto has been in touch with the Matera folks and will update us all in a post. Probably no sooner than a week, since him and Nadia are currently offline on holidays.

Hang in there…

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Just talked about it with Luisa who’s visiting me in Paris - she says the first rooms they show are in another building (do you remember, there was this building downstairs, with a roof/terrace where kids used to smoke and play? it’s there) - the one comitato never finished. It’s a real bullshit story they try to put together there.

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Hopefully case closed

I have written a documented comment of the whole thing. Here is an English version intended more for ourselves (what can we learn?). An Italian version, aimed more at Matera, is on my blog. I have agreed this line of conduct with Matera2019.

There will likely be some more bad blood from the local bloggers, but they will have to back off in the end. wink

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maybe open discussion during our stay in Matera?

I would still like to consider inviting everyone interested for open discussion while we stay in Matera. I think meeting in real life has many advantages over publishing counter posts online. Even if no one of the people who made up this affair would like to come, we still make a nice gesture by posting such open invitation. Possibly still people who believed in those accusations would like to come over and have their questions answered.

Also I know very well how we used this ‘junk’ room and how ZeroWaste setup in unMonastery Matera functioned. I could easily explain it in depth to everyone interested.

We have plenty of other things to do in those two weeks, but I can still make myself available one of the weekday evenings!

I agree

Generous gesture, @elf_Pavlik – though I considered we do need a public post for several reasons of presence in the public discourse. Let’s do it. Can you pick a date right now?

Also: I will be with you to help, at least on Friday 13th. Shall we make a post about the whole dev sprint, too, in case people want to help out? @mstn, what do you think?

any weekday evening works for me!

@Alberto, you please go ahead and pick the date! If Friday 13th works for you let’s just do it then!

+1 post about the public transport dev sprint, please let’s keep conversations about that on appropriate thread