Santa's real workshop: the town in China that makes the world's Christmas decorations

Santa’s workshop … 19-year-old Wei works in a factory in Yiwu, China, coating polystyrene snowflakes with red powder. Photograph: Imaginechina/Rex

Text by Oliver Wainwright

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/19/santas-real-workshop-the-town-in-china-that-makes-the-worlds-christmas-decorations 

The embracing Sky Father and Mother Earth and the Heavenly Ropevine

Meotoiwa, "husband and wife cliff", Futami, Mie, Japan 夫婦岩、三重県二見町

http://japanesemythology.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-embracing-sky-father-and-mother-earth-and-the-heavenly-ropevine/

Cosmology

The river moves beneath the sheet ice. 

The wind is a grand hall of records. 

In the recipe box above the refrigerator, 

the deathbed photos of four generations — 

somewhere, their hands have turned

to prime numbers. Somewhere, 

a voice that smells like a well bucket 

has arranged the vowels of my name 

like three glass pill bottles. Mother of wet rope 

and cordwood, Father with your pant-cuffs

of smoke, I feel myself spinning back

to the first hour of the universe 

to rest within a singular shade of carbon. 

Michael McGriff, 2014

Graham Harman: Art Without Relations

In an exclusive essay, one of the philosophers at the forefront of Speculative Realism makes some connections

By Graham Harman

http://artreview.com/features/september_2014_graham_harman_relations/

A Project for the Wind

Sigurdur Gudmundsson, A Project for the Wind-Drawing /Sculpture, 1971-75, 2 b/w offsetprints

Mrs. Cavendish and the General Malaise

Like a boxer at a pre-fight weigh-in, defiant,

no sign of acceptance, Mrs. Cavendish began

to stare meaninglessness in the eye.

The difference: no one, nothing, stared back.

Mrs. Cavendish, I said, it’s impossible to win.

As we consider today, it’s almost tomorrow.

As we admire the flowers, how easily they’re ravaged

by wind and rain. The best we can hope for

is a big, fat novel, slowing down the course of time.

Several tomorrows always linger in the margins,

which means until the very last page

you’ll choose to live with the raw evidence

of how someone else sees and makes a world.

Mrs. Cavendish, I’m also sorry to report

the maps are missing from the office of

How to Get Where You Want to Go—
just one more symptom of the general malaise.

I have little hope that they can be found,

at least not in our lifetime. At the risk of telling you

what you already know, Mrs. Cavendish, here’s

something merely true: the insufficiency of the moon

has been replaced by the lantern, the lantern by

the light bulb, but what won’t go away is the promise

of salvation out there in the bright beyond.

There will always be people who think suffering

leads to enlightenment, who place themselves

on the verge of what’s about to break, or go

dangerously wrong. Let’s resist them

and their thinking, you and I. Let’s not rush

toward that sure thing that awaits us,

which can dumb us into nonsense and pain.

My dog keeps one eye open when he sleeps.

My cat prefers your house where the mice are.

Stare ahead, my friend. The whole world is on alert.

Mrs. Cavendish, every day is old news.

Stephen Dunn

Iberic

Carmen Herrera, Iberic, 1951, acrylic on canvas on board,101.6 cm diameter

Maison Erne

Maison Erne (model), autriche, architects: Gert-Michael Mayr-Kleber

Inusable et perfectible

Photograph of a sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi

Nigel Henderson, photograph of a sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi, 1950. The photograph was taken at the 'Kenneth King, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull' exhibition held at the Hanover Gallery, 32A George Street, London.