I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.
I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.
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Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to …
I loved Ní Dochartaigh's Thin Places and looked forward to her next. My partner gifted this to me for my birthday in 2023.
Annie Ernaux explains how shame has influenced her life in a short memoir. It begins with the climax: 'My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon'. From there, Ernaux explores her rural childhood in a post-war French village, and how this event and the fear of community shame stayed with her even nearly 50 years later.
It's hard to criticise something so personal, but the language is a little mechanical, perhaps because of the numbness created over time. It is also hard to understand the motivation for the book being published (I often feel this with memoirs so it may be my bias), but it did paint an interesting picture of a community that lived on gossip and thus hid their lives, something I have seen in my own life.
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in …
Long-term fan of McCarthy and I loved the companion book The Passenger so got this from the library.
Master storyteller Alan Moore (Watchmen) delivers twelve interconnected stories of lust, madness, and …
Gifted to me by my brother at Christmas 2022, and overdue a read. I love Moore's worldview but have never managed to read one of his novels through. Giving this a go.
Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket
Wherever you look, money is …
In Tokens, Rachel O'Dwyer tells a story of value through tokens, alternative objects of payment that operate outside of legal currencies. The book blends years of in-depth research with clever use of anecdote and a well considered structure of 9 chapters, each telling a different part of the story.
While the overarching theme of the book deals with contemporary digital technologies such as NFT artworks or video game trading currencies, there is plenty of room given to histories and cultures of tokens than just these recent phenomena. O'Dwyer blends art history, economics, feminist theory and technology to present tokens in everything from subversive economies to hyper-capitalist systems. Brilliantly written throughout, and overloaded with information that is a testament to a long and thoughtful research practice.
The classic chronicle of the impact disease and plagues have had on history and society …
Added after reading this quote.
Randomly chose this as I wanted to try a book by Ernaux. Got it from the library. Heard about her after she won the Nobel Prize.
Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2022) 1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the …
The best moments in Cormac McCarthy's last novel are dialogues that thread out different philosophies. They mingle the threat of nuclear war with fear of surveillance, weang physics and mathematics with literature and drama. It feels like a culmination of McCarthy's life's work, with thoughts on violence, friendship and major moments in 20th Century US history central to a story that is primarily about loss. The prose is addictively brilliant.
The beauty of the book culminates in a wonderful final section that is heartbreaking, and devastating, and perfect. It is a fitting half-farewell (accompanied by Stella Maris, released alongside this book).
This book wastes space. Baume is telling a story of her relationship to craft, and how (and sort-of why) she makes small sculptural birds. The sparse writing consists of only one or two paragraphs per page. These are sometimes interesting when they deal with personal moments of Baume's contemplative life, but more often they are just regurgitated facts about birds or weather that seem like they were recently read on Wikipedia, or scribbled half-thoughts that were not resolved. In the end the whole book feels self-indulgent, and is really unenjoyable to read.
I don't actually know how to review this obscure TH White novel. It needs three considerations, which I'll divide up below.
First, the novel centres on "Mr White", an English gentleman living in rural Ireland in the 1940s. White himself moved to Ireland as a conscientious objector to WWII, and lived there for some years. In the story, the archangel Michael appears and instructs White and his two Irish hosts to build an ark as a second flood is coming. The story follows the building of the ark, including some interesting pragmatic considerations (what to leave behind, how much food, etc). There is undoubtedly a lot of thinly veiled autobiography in the story, even if it is a satire.
The second consideration is how Irish people are treated by an English writer. Even as a satire, the stereotypes of lazy, violent and stupid rural people are rolled out liberally. While …
I don't actually know how to review this obscure TH White novel. It needs three considerations, which I'll divide up below.
First, the novel centres on "Mr White", an English gentleman living in rural Ireland in the 1940s. White himself moved to Ireland as a conscientious objector to WWII, and lived there for some years. In the story, the archangel Michael appears and instructs White and his two Irish hosts to build an ark as a second flood is coming. The story follows the building of the ark, including some interesting pragmatic considerations (what to leave behind, how much food, etc). There is undoubtedly a lot of thinly veiled autobiography in the story, even if it is a satire.
The second consideration is how Irish people are treated by an English writer. Even as a satire, the stereotypes of lazy, violent and stupid rural people are rolled out liberally. While sometimes sympathetic, and often also self-critical of the foolishness of the Englishman who thinks he is superior, the delivery is still offensive (I am Irish, and have encountered this type of stereotyping in my life, and it does sting). I couldn't help think that if this was written about another British colony, like Kenya, the text would be abhorrent.
Third, and this deserves consideration, it is a well-written, sympathetic and funny book in the vein of Evelyn Waugh or Flann O'Brien. White takes aim at Catholic Ireland brilliantly, and really lands his punches (the book was even banned for blasphemy by the church in Ireland on publication). It is joyful and thoughtful, and a very well written satire, when the paddy-whackery is not prominent.
These fragmented thoughts are not independent of one another. I fought through offence and read this as an interesting historical document, a record of embedded eugenics that White grew up with, as well as of power systems emerging at a specific moment in a newly independent Ireland, viewed from an "outside" perspective. But the complexity of this makes it hard to say whether I liked the novel, or could recommend it.
Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket
Wherever you look, money is …
Written by a colleague and I've been looking forward to this being published for a while. Bought a copy as soon as it was out.
A reflection on, and an extension of, the ideas laid out seven years ago in …
Got a copy of this because it was referenced somewhere that I have forgotten (a paper, a talk, a book?). Open access at The Anarchist Library
Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those …
There are so many things that amazed me about this book, from the intricacy of the characters to the extraordinary storytelling, to the intense depth of the research. But most of all, I was amazed that I had never heard of it or of the Atlanta child murders. Both the book and the murders seem so central to modern Black American history that their invisibility (or erasure) seem deeply poignant.
It took me nine months to read. It is a long book, but it also needed space to read, digest, and understand. Ostensibly, it is a book about a mother looking for her child who has disappeared during the spate of murders of Black children in Atlanta from 1979-81. Zala, the protagonist, becomes an active community member, joining up with other parents of disappeared young Black children who try every avenue possible to find their children. It tells the story …
There are so many things that amazed me about this book, from the intricacy of the characters to the extraordinary storytelling, to the intense depth of the research. But most of all, I was amazed that I had never heard of it or of the Atlanta child murders. Both the book and the murders seem so central to modern Black American history that their invisibility (or erasure) seem deeply poignant.
It took me nine months to read. It is a long book, but it also needed space to read, digest, and understand. Ostensibly, it is a book about a mother looking for her child who has disappeared during the spate of murders of Black children in Atlanta from 1979-81. Zala, the protagonist, becomes an active community member, joining up with other parents of disappeared young Black children who try every avenue possible to find their children. It tells the story of the Atlanta child murders from a Black perspective, but this is also a foil for a deeper story that depicts the trauma of Blackness and the implicit violence of white America, the dysfunction and negligence of state police, the emotional experience of the families of the disappeared, the paranoia of loss, and how people live their lives within all of this maelstrom. It creates lived experience, not metaphor, and for that it is exceptional.
Toni Cade Bambera has their own unique voice, reminiscent of another generation of writers; Tolstoy sprang to mind several times while reading, for the depth of character and interlinked events, but Cade Bambera has a soft touch that is magical. It is a rare skill for a writer to empathise with grief in such a beautiful way.
Those Bones Are Not My Child is definitely one of the 'Great American Novels', although it is never mentioned in lists of that canon. In fact, I've read many of the novels that are in these lists, and they are not in the same league, and its lack of visibility is telling.
In the end, for all its other merits in highlighting Black womens' experience in a violent place, what will stay with me is the strength of community togetherness and family, and how people learn to carry on together even in the worst situations. Despite the difficult subject, the hope is welcome.
Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those …
Phew, exactly 9 months after starting this epic....review to follow.
This book analyses the values and processes that characterise DIY (do it yourself) digital infrastructure, …
This book explains at the beginning that it is the conversion of a Master's Thesis into a publication, and that is exactly how it reads. It's a good documentation of the project 'A Transversal Network of Feminist Servers' (ATNOFS), which was an EU-wide project where different organisations set up data servers under feminist principles. The documentation goes into detail on how this works, and focuses on how sharing and making space is central to the servers.
It does feel a little light on critique and future considerations, but again this is not unsurprising given its origins.