april
sotto voce
'To delight in the aspects of sentient ruin might appear a heartless pastime, and the pleasure, I confess, shows the note of perversity. The sombre and the hard are as common an influence from southern things as the soft and the bright, I think; sadness rarely fails to assault a northern observer when he misses what he takes for comfort. Beauty is no compensation for the loss, only making it more poignant'
Henry James, Italian Hours
‘Writing at the dawn of the nineteenth century, von Kleist’s musings remind us that questions of human intent and action, the ability to know, the role of the social in understanding the world, and the specter of automatism; these have painted the modern age with an ambiguous brush, its hues never fully perceptible but vivid.
Arguably, the conditions of uncertainty around knowing ourselves and our world aren't confined to modernity. But von Kleist’s attempt—in the essay “On the Marionette Theater,” written a year before the writer’s untimely death in 1811—to grapple with the inherent contradiction between self-awareness and total knowledge shows a heightened anxiety around the notion of selfhood in the modern age.
Von Kleist used the marionette to work through what he saw as a problem inherent to Enlightenment thinking, which privileged rational individualism as a framework for understanding the world. The role of a moveable but insensate object in his text seems no accident in an age that saw the constant invention and proliferation of artificial but kinetic objects that acted as extensions of the human body’
read:
- ‘Translating’ the Lost Scottish Renaissance, R. D. S. Jack
-What does falsehood give to knowledge within the framework of logic and ecstacy truth? A study of veracity within Myths, Fables and Tales, Ned Pooler
- Seen, Known, Danced and Spoken: Heinrich von Kleist and the Limits of Being Human,
Jessica D. Brier
- Eric Rohmer’s Opressive Summers, John Fawell
- Ruins in Ireland, Ireland in Ruins: Symbols and Semiotics in Visual Art, Yvonne Scott
- W.B. Yeats and the Creative Process: The Example of ‘Her Triumph’, Phillip L. Marcus
- Refiguring the Archive, collection of essays
- Time out of Joint; Looking at Caravaggio in the 21st century 🔗
- Melting moguls: life-size Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch candles burn in Melbourne installation 🔗
- Tamara De Lempicka: a radical, bohemian, bisexual artist loved by Madonna, Emily Dinsdale
- The Disappearance of Westwood House 🔗
reading:
- Butter, Asako Yuzuki
- Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating, edited by Paul O’Neill
watched:
- Ed Hall on the history and craft of union banners, Southbank Centre
- Mr Burton, Marc Evans
- Small Axe, Steve McQueen
Sutton Hoo Ship: Rebuilding a Legend, Part 1 with Tony Robinson, 2024 🔗
- In the Loop, Armando Iannucci
- La Collectionneuse, Eric Rohmer
- La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher
- Jeremy Deller: Middle Class Hero 🔗
- Matt and Mara, Kazik Radwanski
- Letters to Max, Eric Baudelaire
- Silvia Prieto, Martin Rejtman
- Grand Tour, Miguel Gomes
march
watched:
- The real story behind the Backrooms, Kendra Gaylord 🔗
- Alice Austen, the 1880s photographer: her house, her photos, her love life, Kendra Gaylord 🔗
- How to See an Exquisite Corpse | Surrealism at 100, The Museum of Modern Art 🔗
- Art, Scandal and Survival: The Scandalous Life of Tamara de Lempicka 🔗
- Grenfell, Steve McQueen
- Super Happy Forever, Kohei Igarashi
- The End, Joshua Oppenheimer
read:
- The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-Francis Lyotard
- Donna Dennis; re-imagining an American Vernacular, Jan Riley
- Wonder, the Rainbow, and the aesthetics of pure experiences, Philip Fisher
- Anderson’s Utopia, Partha Chatterjee
- Bound Transcendance and the Invisible: On Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of painting, Véronique M. Foti
- Otakuology: A Dialogue, Patrick W. Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre
- Giving Voice to a Building: A Critical Analysis of Adolf Loos’s Landhaus Khuner, Eva Branscome
- On Paintings, Douglas Crimp
- What about Postmodern? The concept of the Postmodern in the work of Lyotard, Niels Brügger
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Three deaths, David Eagleman
‘There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time’
Dutch angle
‘(known as a Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle) a type of camera shot that has a noticeable tilt on the camera’s ‘x-axis.’ It’s a camera technique that was used by the German Expressionists in the 1920s — so it’s not actually Dutch. Directors often use a Dutch angle to signal to the viewer that something is wrong, disorienting, or unsettling’
february
veridis quoread:
- Eric Rohmer's Oppressive Summers, John Fawell 🔗
- Kobby Adi: The Logic of the Shift, Stephanie Bailey
- A World That One Can Be Enveloped Into and Meditate Upon: Isaac Julien – Curatorial Leadership Summit, The Armory Show 2024, New York: Isaac Julien in conversation with Lauren Cornell
- The World’s Fair That Ignored More Than Half the World, Rachel B. Tiven 🔗
- The Trouble with Art Biennials Today, Joshua Segan-Lean 🔗
- Allegory vs Realism; Female vs Male Depictions 🔗
watched:
- Richard Ayoade on his writing style, creative processes and The Unfinished Harauld Hughes
- Lacan - Mirror Stage, Desire, Imaginary and Symbolic "I"
- Igby Goes Down
- We need to talk about the National Portrait Gallery.
- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus"
- Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Inside, Video
I am Martin Parr, Lee Shulman
‘Since the 1970s, English photographer Martin Parr has held up a sometimes tender, sometimes critical and always mischievous mirror to our times, forcing us to take a hard look at how consumer society has shaped our lives. Discover the maverick behind some of the most iconic images of the past century on an intimate and exclusive road trip across England with the uncompromising Parr, whose subjects, frames and colours have revolutionised contemporary photography’
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january
reading:
- The Lighted Window, Evening walks remembered, Peter Davidson
read:
- Everyday Camouflage in the City, Rafael Gomez-Moriana
- On the Natural History of Destruction’ and Cultural Memory, W.G. Sebald
- Conservation and Regeneration: Complementary or Conflicting Processes? The Case of Grainger Town, Newcastle Upon Tyne, John Pendlebury
- Wencun Village, China, by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s Amateur Architecture Studio, Yiping Dong Today
- Dream Works, newly published translations of the work of two overlooked design prophets, Frieze
- ‘Erase the traces’: urban experiance in Walter Benjamin’s commentary on Brecht’s lyric poetry, Luciano Gatti
- Dasein, authenticity, and choice in Heidegger’s ‘Being and time’, Anna M. Rowan
- Adaptive Modernism and beyond: towards a poetics of new Scotland, Ullrich Kockel
- Pierre Bourdieu’s Toolbox: Fields, Power, Practices, and Habitus in the Analysis of Peacebuilding, Catherine Goetze
- John Grierson’s ‘First principles’ as origin and beginning: the emergence of the documentary tradition in the field of nonfiction film, Martin Stollery
- Adaptive modernism and beyond: Towards a poetics of a new Scotland, Ullrich Kockel
articles:
Frieze, October 2024:
- Ring Cycle, Daisy Lafarge on Tacita Dean’s 2003 work Crowhurst
- Interview: Jack O’Brien on queer erotics and the stories of surfaces
- The Excerpt: The Use of Photography, Annie Erneux
- Missive: A Ramble along the River Ravensbourne, Angela Lambo
documentaries:
- Joyce, Yeats and Wilde 🔗
- Willa Cather documentary 🔗
- Yours, Willa Cather 🔗
- WB Yeats 🔗
- Why England erased this Welsh village 🔗
- Sir Walter Scott documentary🔗
- Robert Louis Stevenson documentary 🔗
- 1972: The curious case of the blocked window, BBC Archive 🔗
- Electric Paris - Electricity at the Turn of the Century 🔗
- Sears Houses-- Kit Houses Sold by Sears, Roebuck, 1908-1940. From Two on Two, WBBM-TV Chicago 🔗
- Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Inside, Video documentation, 2022, Kunsthalle Osnabrück 🔗
notes
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‘In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict are terms for various types of property lost or abandoned at sea’
‘Since the 1970s, English photographer Martin Parr has held up a sometimes tender, sometimes critical and always mischievous mirror to our times, forcing us to take a hard look at how consumer society has shaped our lives. Discover the maverick behind some of the most iconic images of the past century on an intimate and exclusive road trip across England with the uncompromising Parr, whose subjects, frames and colours have revolutionised contemporary photography’
january
2025
reading:
- The Lighted Window, Evening walks remembered, Peter Davidson
read:
- Everyday Camouflage in the City, Rafael Gomez-Moriana
- On the Natural History of Destruction’ and Cultural Memory, W.G. Sebald
- Conservation and Regeneration: Complementary or Conflicting Processes? The Case of Grainger Town, Newcastle Upon Tyne, John Pendlebury
- Wencun Village, China, by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s Amateur Architecture Studio, Yiping Dong Today
- Dream Works, newly published translations of the work of two overlooked design prophets, Frieze
- ‘Erase the traces’: urban experiance in Walter Benjamin’s commentary on Brecht’s lyric poetry, Luciano Gatti
- Dasein, authenticity, and choice in Heidegger’s ‘Being and time’, Anna M. Rowan
- Adaptive Modernism and beyond: towards a poetics of new Scotland, Ullrich Kockel
- Pierre Bourdieu’s Toolbox: Fields, Power, Practices, and Habitus in the Analysis of Peacebuilding, Catherine Goetze
- John Grierson’s ‘First principles’ as origin and beginning: the emergence of the documentary tradition in the field of nonfiction film, Martin Stollery
- Adaptive modernism and beyond: Towards a poetics of a new Scotland, Ullrich Kockel
articles:
Frieze, October 2024:
- Ring Cycle, Daisy Lafarge on Tacita Dean’s 2003 work Crowhurst
- Interview: Jack O’Brien on queer erotics and the stories of surfaces
- The Excerpt: The Use of Photography, Annie Erneux
- Missive: A Ramble along the River Ravensbourne, Angela Lambo
documentaries:
- Joyce, Yeats and Wilde 🔗
- Willa Cather documentary 🔗
- Yours, Willa Cather 🔗
- WB Yeats 🔗
- Why England erased this Welsh village 🔗
- Sir Walter Scott documentary🔗
- Robert Louis Stevenson documentary 🔗
- 1972: The curious case of the blocked window, BBC Archive 🔗
- Electric Paris - Electricity at the Turn of the Century 🔗
- Sears Houses-- Kit Houses Sold by Sears, Roebuck, 1908-1940. From Two on Two, WBBM-TV Chicago 🔗
- Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Inside, Video documentation, 2022, Kunsthalle Osnabrück 🔗
notes
‘In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict are terms for various types of property lost or abandoned at sea’
Lacan’s three principles;
The Imaginary- the world of immediate sensory perceptions
The Symbolic- based on language and gives meaning to everything around us
The Real- a deliberately ambiguous term that suggests both material reality and that which cannot be symbolized
generation upon
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Edwin Morgan, Archive
Conversation with Nathan Coley at The Common Guild, 24th April Diet coke stand (transactional versus non-linear pursuits), Martin Boyce conversation around the voice of doubt and holding fast (past postcard interaction)
‘April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.’
T.S Elliot, The Waste Land
Emil Tabakov, Motivity
“Writing transforms the things seen or heard 'into tissue and blood'” (in vires et in sanguinem)
Foucault
Retrospective causality
In psychoanalytic theory, Freud's concept of "retrospective causality" or "Nachträglichkeit" (meaning "afterwards-ness") suggests that the present can influence our understanding and interpretation of the past, rather than the past solely determining the present.
Lewis Chessmen
‘In 1831 Malcolm MacLeod (Calum an Sprot) was tending cattle on the rich farming land of Ardroil on the west coast of Lewis, when one of his animals wondered out onto the sands of Uig Bay. As he followed the cow onto the beach to retrieve it, Malcolm noticed a small stone chamber. In the chamber was a wooden box. And in the box were 78 elaborately carved chess pieces (along with 14 other gaming pieces and a belt buckle). The treasure Malcolm uncovered, carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth, may well have been in its hiding place for over 500 years, having been carved most likely in Trondheim in Norway sometime in the 12th century’
‘In 1831 Malcolm MacLeod (Calum an Sprot) was tending cattle on the rich farming land of Ardroil on the west coast of Lewis, when one of his animals wondered out onto the sands of Uig Bay. As he followed the cow onto the beach to retrieve it, Malcolm noticed a small stone chamber. In the chamber was a wooden box. And in the box were 78 elaborately carved chess pieces (along with 14 other gaming pieces and a belt buckle). The treasure Malcolm uncovered, carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth, may well have been in its hiding place for over 500 years, having been carved most likely in Trondheim in Norway sometime in the 12th century’
Callendar House
‘Callendar House is a mansion set within the grounds of Callendar Park in Falkirk, central Scotland. During the 19th century, it was redesigned and extended in the style of a French Renaissance château fused with elements of Scottish baronial architecture’
The Antonine Wall
(Vallum Antonini) was a turf fortification on stone foundations, built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Built some twenty years after Hadrian's Wall to the south, and intended to supersede it, while it was garrisoned it was the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire
‘Callendar House is a mansion set within the grounds of Callendar Park in Falkirk, central Scotland. During the 19th century, it was redesigned and extended in the style of a French Renaissance château fused with elements of Scottish baronial architecture’
The Antonine Wall
(Vallum Antonini) was a turf fortification on stone foundations, built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Built some twenty years after Hadrian's Wall to the south, and intended to supersede it, while it was garrisoned it was the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire
The Use of Photography, Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie
‘Lined up next to each other, these snapshots are like a diary to me. A diary of 2003. Love and death. The decision to exhibit them, make a book of them, is to put the seal on a part of our history.
I don't know what these photos are. I know what they embody, but I don't know what they're for.know what they are not: images in frames on a mantel-piece, next to a father, chubby babies and a great-uncle in uniform’
‘Lined up next to each other, these snapshots are like a diary to me. A diary of 2003. Love and death. The decision to exhibit them, make a book of them, is to put the seal on a part of our history.
I don't know what these photos are. I know what they embody, but I don't know what they're for.know what they are not: images in frames on a mantel-piece, next to a father, chubby babies and a great-uncle in uniform’
Sears’ houses
‘Sears, Roebuck & Co., based in Chicago, sold "mail order houses" from 1908-1940. In this story, the "Two on Two" news magazine visits the Sears archives to learn more about these unique homes...and also goes on a "house tour" to some of the Sears homes in the Chicago area. Produced in the 1980s, WBBM-TV’
‘Sears, Roebuck & Co., based in Chicago, sold "mail order houses" from 1908-1940. In this story, the "Two on Two" news magazine visits the Sears archives to learn more about these unique homes...and also goes on a "house tour" to some of the Sears homes in the Chicago area. Produced in the 1980s, WBBM-TV’
God knows where I am
‘The body of a homeless woman is found in an abandoned New Hampshire farmhouse. Beside the body, lies a diary that documents a journey of starvation and the loss of sanity, but told with poignance, beauty, humor, and spirituality. For nearly four months, Linda Bishop, a prisoner of her own mind, survived on apples and rain water, waiting for God to save her, during one of the coldest winters on record. As her story unfolds from different perspectives, including her own, we learn about our systemic failure to protect those who cannot protect themselves’
