Friday, December 26, 2014

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 

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

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/

Monday, December 8, 2014

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has been replaced by the lantern, the lantern by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

Friday, December 5, 2014

Maison Erne

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

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

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.