Articles
Ray Materson
December 6, 2019
Ray Materson’s works are all little tapestries stitched out of threads from socks. He was in jail for some 15 years and used socks were, apparently, the only fabric he had access to.
Read articleRead articleBen Hickling
December 6, 2019
n an age of virtually ubiquitous mental illness, with ecological and political collapse just around the corner, Outsider Art deserves a second look. What once appeared most peculiar about the genre—its despairing creators, its blunt interfaces with the political, its pyromaniacal relationship to official culture—now belongs more to the center of modern life than its margin. Originally meant to provide establishment with a static frontier, Outsider Art today seems proof that borders everywhere are on the move, that the periphery is pushing in on the heart of our shared intellectual and artistic life.
Read articleRead articleShock of the new
November 25, 2019
On January 2, 1911, German painter Franz Marc took his new friend Wassily Kandinsky to a concert by Arnold Schoenberg. On this fateful evening, the Viennese composer stunned the crowd with a strange new music in which tonality had been completely suspended. The crowd was confused if not dismayed, but Marc and Kandinsky – they were riveted.
Read articleRead articleNever go
November 22, 2019
Never go to art school. Never go to New York. Never rent a loft. Dump your font folder. Forget symmetry and colour coordination. Stop taking text from editorial that you don’t read and packaging it in eye-catching ways. Walk away from your computer.
Read articleRead articleWhat is the sound of extinction?
November 21, 2019
With apt gravity, artist-activists Crystelle Vu and Julian Oliver have chosen the solemn timbre of a traditional Chau Gong. Bearing “the stark neo-primitivist image” of the Extinction Symbol — an hourglass (for time, swiftly depleting) within a circle (for the planet) — their automated instrument is called “The Extinction Gong.”
Read articleRead articleShame
November 19, 2019
We’ve hit upon a frank new mode of rhetoric amid this mounting ecological crisis. It is no longer acceptable to claim that installing solar panels on our roofs, riding our bikes to work, diligently recycling, or shopping locally are strong enough measures to stop it.
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Friends, comrades, brothers, sisters
November 3, 2019
Through trial and error and collaborative refinement, entertaining all and dismissing nothing, we will engender a steady stream of memes and stories, videos and happenings, provocations and pranks that articulate the absurd, indifferent, cold-blooded unsustainability of it all; the perversity of a system that thrives on the death of nature and the scored backs of future generations.
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Roberto Bolaño
October 16, 2019
So what’s quality writing? Well, what it’s always been: knowing how to put your head in the dark, knowing how to jump into the void, knowing that literature is fundamentally a dangerous trade. — Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses
Read articleRead articleHeartbeat: Life, Choice, and Abortion.
September 24, 2019
When does life begin? This question might mean different things to, say, a teen-ager, yearning for excitement; or to a middle-aged man, driving a Porsche, groping towards some long-elusive “purpose.” But in the context of the abortion debate, this question takes on a greater weight. When does life begin? When does the union of two cells, one maternal and one paternal, become one human being? How can the inception of human life, the moment of miraculous awakening, be measured?
Read articleRead articleA fundamental shift in the nature of value
September 18, 2019
While derivatives have existed for millennia, under financialization they move from the periphery to the center of the economic order. Today, the value of outstanding “over the counter” derivatives contracts (private futures, options, and swap agreements not made on recognized exchanges) dwarfs the entire world’s GDP, and the volume of annually traded OTC derivatives (which may change hands multiple times a minute) dwarfs even that figure.
Read articleRead articleAustralia’s Abiding Legacy of Intolerance
September 18, 2019
Dreams of a “White Australia” are not dead. Despite the country’s rescinding of official policies under that name in 1973, refugee boats — chiefly from Asia — have been turned back in nearly every case, and asylum-seekers have been jailed in off-shore camps as decreed under current “mandatory immigration detention” laws. Inhumane conditions in migrant jails have led to endemic despair; in some cases, to self-harm and suicide.
Read articleRead articleRaising an Ecowarrior pt.2
August 29, 2019
I once asked a knowledgeable colleague: “What one thing would you teach children to ready them for the world that’s coming?” Without hesitation came his answer: languages. He explained how they create opportunities, improve economic options—the data shows that they even improve brain health (increasing self-control and reducing the odds of dementia).
Read articleRead articleRaising an Ecowarrior pt.1
August 22, 2019
Nearly four years ago I wrote in Adbusters about how I had been raising my son to be an ecowarrior. At the time, he was just three. So there wasn’t much to it: supporting my wife, Aynabat, in breastfeeding; keeping my son, Ayhan, away from screens; getting him outside and letting him eat dirt; and spending oceans of time with him from day one, no matter how monotonous.
Read articleRead articleMeme Warfare
August 9, 2019
In the beginning there was logic... then measurement, geometry and mathematics . . . then, for a few hundred years, we tried to prove the existence of God by using the laws of logic . . . then Descartes came up with “I think therefore I am” . . . then the enlightenment and modernism kicked in . . . and finally, hallelujah! the logical positivists of the 20th century — freaky, anal pipsqueaks all — perpetrated one of the most dastardly logic-freak acts in all of human history: They invented the “science” of economics.
Read articleRead articleThe Woman Who Had Many Names
August 8, 2019
“Deleir Khan has bought a new mare and a Bengali woman.” This news murmured through the square where villagers gathered to wag their tongues. People jostled and bustled, busier than on the holiest of holidays. Gossip was the only entertainment in my remote village. The favorite subjects were horses, dogs, and women. The latest juicy topic stirred their bored souls to life.
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