I've half-decided take a slightly new approach with this blog: to post longer, more considered pieces less often. Which explains the recent silence. I'm working on something about Chris Petit's film Content - which screened on More4 the other week (it was on 4oD, but I think it's gone now) and may come to cinemas soon - and leftist moroseness (morosity?).
In the meantime, if you're ever thinking there's not enough time to get things done, read this article on David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, who in the last year has written a 672-page book on Obama whilst doing his day-job. Here's a little snippet:
"During the year he spent on “The Bridge,” he rose at 5:30 a.m. to write and often stayed up past midnight, but rarely discussed the book at work. “He got up really early, went back to work after dinner with the kids, and took no weekends off and no vacation for more than a year,” said Esther B. Fein, his wife, in an e-mail message."
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
8.4.10
28.8.09
David Byrne Bike Cam
27.8.09
Vogue Evolution
Thanks to Feministing for introducing us to America's Best Dance Crew. Why don't we have this show?!?! Vogue Evolution are the bee's-knees.
(And in case you ever wondered what Slater from Saved By The Bell is doing now...)
(And in case you ever wondered what Slater from Saved By The Bell is doing now...)
9.6.09
7.6.09
"The Coke and Pepsi of the primate world"
Great interview with Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors in the Guardian today:
"Something of what he set out to achieve, though, might be read into his admiration for the deconstructions of Björk, whom he loved when he first heard her a decade ago because she combined art music and pop music, "as if the entire world doesn't have to believe they're opposed"."
"What was his particular gift as a child, I wonder? "My thing was that when I got into something, I'd obsess about it," he replies, thinking back to the age of nine or 10, when he became deeply fascinated by "gallinaceous birds" - grouse, pheasant, prairie chickens and ptarmigan, a species that, he informs me as if reciting from an encyclopedia, "lives in exclusively alpine regions out west"."
and this, which is my favourite:
""I wasn't into chimpanzees or gorillas, because I kinda felt like they were the Coke and Pepsi of the primate world.""
"Something of what he set out to achieve, though, might be read into his admiration for the deconstructions of Björk, whom he loved when he first heard her a decade ago because she combined art music and pop music, "as if the entire world doesn't have to believe they're opposed"."
"What was his particular gift as a child, I wonder? "My thing was that when I got into something, I'd obsess about it," he replies, thinking back to the age of nine or 10, when he became deeply fascinated by "gallinaceous birds" - grouse, pheasant, prairie chickens and ptarmigan, a species that, he informs me as if reciting from an encyclopedia, "lives in exclusively alpine regions out west"."
and this, which is my favourite:
""I wasn't into chimpanzees or gorillas, because I kinda felt like they were the Coke and Pepsi of the primate world.""
12.5.09
"Isn't the reader smart just for opening a book?"
Great little story about an event at the PEN World Voices Festival, which has just finished in New York.
In a discussion between Paul Auster and Enrique Vila-Matas, the conversation focusses on readers being judged in the same way that authors are:
"Then it was time for questions, and a woman's voice piped up from the front: "Don't you think you were a little hard on the reader?" she said. "Isn't a reader smart just for opening a book?"
"That's what I said," Auster retorted.
"But don't they get what they get?" she said, and went on to say that readers shouldn't have to have any prejudices or expectations about what a book is; that reading should be like sex."
"I agree with you completely," he said, and went on again about the critics.
"You should relax; this is your wife interjecting!" she said, and a gasp went through he crowd. It seemed that, just as a character in one of Auster's books wanders into the life of the author, we had become caught in the middle of a minor domestic dispute! But Auster accepted her comments, as Vila-Mates looked on bemusedly."
The rest is here.
In a discussion between Paul Auster and Enrique Vila-Matas, the conversation focusses on readers being judged in the same way that authors are:
"Then it was time for questions, and a woman's voice piped up from the front: "Don't you think you were a little hard on the reader?" she said. "Isn't a reader smart just for opening a book?"
"That's what I said," Auster retorted.
"But don't they get what they get?" she said, and went on to say that readers shouldn't have to have any prejudices or expectations about what a book is; that reading should be like sex."
"I agree with you completely," he said, and went on again about the critics.
"You should relax; this is your wife interjecting!" she said, and a gasp went through he crowd. It seemed that, just as a character in one of Auster's books wanders into the life of the author, we had become caught in the middle of a minor domestic dispute! But Auster accepted her comments, as Vila-Mates looked on bemusedly."
The rest is here.
3.5.09
Younger Than Jesus
Ambling through old Click Opera posts, I noticed one I'd missed. New York's New Museum, which I've come across before through its association with Rhizome, is currently mounting a show it calls The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.
The Generational is the name for the museum's new "signature Triennial", and this year it focusses on artists born since 1976. They're all younger than 33, which was when Jesus died. This intentionally attention-grabbing title is to draw attention to an exhibition that surveys a generation; my generation, in fact.
"Known to demographers, marketers, sociologists, and pundits variously as the Millennials, Generation Y, iGeneration, and Generation Me, this age group has yet to be described in any way beyond their habits of consumption. “Younger Than Jesus” will begin to examine the visual culture this generation has created to date", says the website.
Now, I have a bit of an interest in definitions of my generation. Whilst I feel a little uncomfortably partisan at times, as if I were cheering on a team, underneath is a real fascination with how narratives of generations are created.
Questions like: How does this generation contrast with previous ones? How much "better" is it? How much "worse"? How do we measure better or worse? Which is another way of asking what is important to us. And also, of course, what isn't. What do we want? How are we going about it? Who is doing it?
On the whole, I feel quite confident about us, the partisan-ness coming out in pride, even. I'm happy that homophobia and racism are increasingly things of the past, almost banal, I'm happy with an apparent growth in political engagement, I'm happy with our post-materialist aspirations. (Despite being portrayed, as the New Museum notes, as a generation that defines itself through consumption, I actually think this generation is aiming to define itself through ideas and actions, rather than purchases. Consumption - not just of material goods but of natural resources, is becoming ugly as well as unsustainable).
Of course this is my angle on my section of my generation. It's actually incredibly difficult to narratise a whole group of people, although big world events help. If the World Wars and May 68 were defining moments for previous generations, I'm pretty sure 9/11 will be seen as the moment that defined ours. That inevitability is rather depressing, eliciting a wry, resigned smile from those younger than Jesus.
So it will be interesting to see how the Younger Than Jesus exhibition tackles these slippery problems. How will it mediate its choices to its visitors? Will it step back and hope the art does its talking for it, or will it guide the viewer through the show with a heavy dose of "this is us" narratology? In the end, one exhibition -- no matter how much it is defined post-event as such -- can never define a generation, and the interesting part will be to pick out themes and preoccupations despite the exhibition's intentions.
The Generational is the name for the museum's new "signature Triennial", and this year it focusses on artists born since 1976. They're all younger than 33, which was when Jesus died. This intentionally attention-grabbing title is to draw attention to an exhibition that surveys a generation; my generation, in fact.
"Known to demographers, marketers, sociologists, and pundits variously as the Millennials, Generation Y, iGeneration, and Generation Me, this age group has yet to be described in any way beyond their habits of consumption. “Younger Than Jesus” will begin to examine the visual culture this generation has created to date", says the website.
Now, I have a bit of an interest in definitions of my generation. Whilst I feel a little uncomfortably partisan at times, as if I were cheering on a team, underneath is a real fascination with how narratives of generations are created.
Questions like: How does this generation contrast with previous ones? How much "better" is it? How much "worse"? How do we measure better or worse? Which is another way of asking what is important to us. And also, of course, what isn't. What do we want? How are we going about it? Who is doing it?
On the whole, I feel quite confident about us, the partisan-ness coming out in pride, even. I'm happy that homophobia and racism are increasingly things of the past, almost banal, I'm happy with an apparent growth in political engagement, I'm happy with our post-materialist aspirations. (Despite being portrayed, as the New Museum notes, as a generation that defines itself through consumption, I actually think this generation is aiming to define itself through ideas and actions, rather than purchases. Consumption - not just of material goods but of natural resources, is becoming ugly as well as unsustainable).
Of course this is my angle on my section of my generation. It's actually incredibly difficult to narratise a whole group of people, although big world events help. If the World Wars and May 68 were defining moments for previous generations, I'm pretty sure 9/11 will be seen as the moment that defined ours. That inevitability is rather depressing, eliciting a wry, resigned smile from those younger than Jesus.
So it will be interesting to see how the Younger Than Jesus exhibition tackles these slippery problems. How will it mediate its choices to its visitors? Will it step back and hope the art does its talking for it, or will it guide the viewer through the show with a heavy dose of "this is us" narratology? In the end, one exhibition -- no matter how much it is defined post-event as such -- can never define a generation, and the interesting part will be to pick out themes and preoccupations despite the exhibition's intentions.
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Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.