Organic culture and urban spaces
Probably the best outcome from Valletta’s nomination as the 2018 European Capital of Culture is the fact that the whole country is speaking about the city; its past, present, and future. Only a few years back Valletta was a dormant place, quite dirty, and an unsuitable choice for a dwelling space. The positive aspect of Valletta’s current ongoing gentrification is however very different to that experienced by cities such as London and Berlin, wherein the rate and nature of construction has completely redefined certain areas of these cities, and of course led to an exponential increase in the overall cost of living. We are seeing similar developments in Sliema today, with historic buildings left to die a slow death and the prospect of monstrous high rises and car parks annihilating the beauty of this seaside town, as well as its idiosyncratic social outdoor life.
Valletta’s properties have also become rather pricey. But the crucial difference between this city and other burgeoning European urban spaces is that Valletta’s skeleton has retained its presence. By its skeleton I am referring to its fundamental urban planning layout. It has proved itself resilient, as structural changes have been very few since its birth. Modern traffic has accommodated itself to Valletta rather than the inverse.
Does this continued link to its historical beginnings mean that Valletta could never be a modern city released from its past? The absolute opposite. It seems that Valletta has a special quality of transmutable non-transmutability. What this means is that the city has managed to change and adapt itself to a diversity of historical, social and economic conditions without ever losing its primary essential form and even, to a certain extent, its spirit. The names of its streets have been altered several times to reflect political dominance: Strada San Giorgio, Strada delle Corse, Rue Nationale, Strada Reale, Kingsway, Triq ir-Reppublika. We are privileged enough today to be witnessing its 21st century transformation.
I have come to look upon Valletta as a signifier of Malta’s cultural plurality. It was multicultural and multilingual from birth. And a very important element which is tendentiously, and dangerously, overlooked by many, is that such plurality was not only embodied by the Knights of the Order but equally by the numerous Maltese sailors and tradesmen who travelled beyond Malta’s shores, importing new languages and customs, ideas and fashions. The entire Harbour region and not just Valletta was constituted of cultural diversity in all forms, yet the insistence of Maltese identity as rural, a very broad and contentious topic which I will not enter into here, has shoved a whole sphere of history into obscurity. Carmel Cassar and Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci are striving to rethink this cosmopolitan-rural epistemological divide in the research fields of history and history of art respectively.
Valletta’s more recent history is also intensely polychromatic. Looking beyond official culture and the major events which unfolded on Republic Street, I would like to focus on another street which acted as a dialectical alternative to the city’s main arterial road. Professor Conrad Thake brought my attention to an interesting quote by architectural historian Quentin Hughes: ‘Other needs were also catered for in the long, steep, narrow street called by generation of sailors ‘The Gut’. As long ago as 1554 an Italian writer had realsitically pointed to the need for streets such as Strada Stretta. ‘The brothel’, he wrote , and ‘similar taverns should be in places as near as possible to the main square but carefully camouflaged.’
The contemporary character of Strait Street is being widely discussed, and has even become a somewhat polemical topic led by nostalgic rhetoric and talks on its potential future as a popular entertainment district. Last year I published an article on the trouble of mimetic revivalist or reconstructionist philosophies as methods of cultural regeneration (‘The future of Strada Stretta’, The Malta Independent on Sunday, Sunday 20th September 2015). The façade of the past is easily recreated but it cannot transcend the threshold of appearance. Once lost, time is never regained (with apologies to Marcel Proust).
The main problem which I find with the general direction which the Strait Street discourse has taken is that the cultural development of the street is not being looked at holistically. A street which is both camouflaged yet central, as Hughes points out, is that it exists in multiple realms. It embodies multiple temporalities, past as well as present, without distinction. Old and new cultural forms comfortably coexist in a street such as Strait Street, as do diverse languages, nationalities, ways of life. Valletta is itself infused with anachronistic (a positive attribute) and contemporary elements.
Reading Geogre Cini’s two volumes on the people and life of Strait Street will expose readers to an unimagined world of creativity and freedom paradoxically laced with religious life and the San Duminku community. People made money, fulfilled moral and parental obligations, and experienced the dynamism of urban existence; both the good and the ugly. Strait Street had no rigid infrastructure, and should not have one imposed on it today. It was created and transformed by its inhabitants and visitors.
Clare Ghigo, a mezzo soprano who has performed in Strait Street in events organised by the Strada Stretta Concept, which is under the artistic direction of Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, has described the street as space for experimentation. All of her performances to date have taken her outside of the boundaries of her training and of the theatre stage to explore new skills and new audiences, as well as the creative potential of the street as an artistic space. In her own words; ‘I believe that nowadays the artist can’t just stick to his comfort zone, but needs to experiment with genre and style, and this is part of the charm of Strada Stretta. It allows the artist to be close to the audience, experiment with diverse genres and expand their ability to become a well-rounded performer.’
Art and culture are about technical and intellectual growth and maturity. Strait Street is a space which brings together high and low art forms, or popular and traditional forms. Nostalgic ideas of the street have placed its past on a pedestal, transforming its artistic life into high art and consequently negating its organic link with the street and its inhabitants. It is important that institutional structures aid alternative cultural spaces such as Strait Street but do not overshadow them. Otherwise they will be turned into a museum piece to be viewed behind the pristine reflection of a carefully manufactured glass cabinet.