Intellectual Onanism

The Divided Brain

2011-10-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot

2011-05-03T05:48:00.000-07:00

New American Paintings x Future Shipwreck: Annie Lapin

2011-05-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga & Craig Lawrence

2010-05-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Francis Bacon

2010-04-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

The Books - Twelve Fold Chain

2010-02-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

at last it started in the middle

beginning as it all begins, it forsook the source of things.

and that which flowed over that which stayed, it made the choice to form a standing wave.

it leaned the out against the in, unfolding in a place to call its own.

and it gently draped six senses over this house of cards that it built, and opened ground to the roots of touch and let them in.

incredible sensations

it was the insatiable feeling of a feeling of insatiable desire.

and all that it could do was hold tight to that that it was not.

it told itself it needed names and in so doing it became.

this is the birth that everyone is always talking about. the one assumed but not remembered.

but death does not forget.
the end will remind it to cure it of itself.

VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

2010-01-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see

2009-11-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

Demetri Martin: If I

2009-02-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

2009-02-01T11:31:00.000-08:00

Episode 1

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Brad Warner: Tokei-in Temple Lecture

2008-12-24T03:25:00.000-08:00

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

via youtube.com/user/sueslater

Andrew Graham-Dixon's exhibition walkthrough: 7 min 35 sec, one take

2008-12-24T03:10:00.000-08:00

www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/citizensandkings

Authors@Google: Slajov Zizek

2008-12-13T04:20:00.000-08:00

via youtube.com/user/AtGoogleTalks

Solid Geometry

2008-12-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

'Icosahedron II' by Richard Sweeney

'Gentlemen,' said Hunter, 'I must ask you to forgive this improper form of address, but I have something to tell you of the utmost importance. I have discovered the plane without a surface.' Amid derisive smiles and gentle bemused laughter, Hunter picked up from the table a large white sheet of paper. With a pocket-knife he made an incision along its surface about three inches long and slightly to one side of its centre. Then he made some rapid, complicated folds and, holding the paper aloft so all could see, he appeared to draw one corner of it through the incision, and as he did so it disappeared.
'Behold, gentlemen,' said Hunter, holding out his empty hands towards the company, 'the plane without a surface.'

from 'Solid Geometry' by Ian McEwan

Put downs and suck ups: Matthew Collings' weekly ventings on the art world

2008-12-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

No 1: The Frieze Art Fair - One Day in the Art World
No 2: Get Sploshing - Laura Owens at Sadie Coles, London
No 3: The Turner Prize 2008
No 4: Happy Birthday Clement Greenberg
No 5: Another hot book about the YBA's

via www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon

James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia

2008-12-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

via www.ted.com

Towards Crash

2008-12-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

"We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind – mass merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality. In the past we have always assumed that the external world around us has represented reality, however confusing or uncertain, and that the inner world of our minds, its dreams, hopes, ambitions, represented the realm of fantasy and the imagination. These roles, it seems to me, have been reversed. The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction – conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads."

- J. G. Ballard, 1995