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Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 6 months ago

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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reviewed Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq

Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (Hardcover, 1997, New Press) 3 stars

A woman working in a beauty parlor chronicles her descent into gluttony and lust. In …

Absurd Metamorphosis

3 stars

Marie Darrieussecq's debut novel is a metamorphosis story that pulls in themes of sexism, racism, and political extremism, all painted with a heavy brush. The story is painful but playful, told by a narrator who has transformed into a pig after a series of harrowing life events where her body is abused constantly, mostly by men.

The story is absurd but engaging enough to entertain, even if at times it feels a little like you are being told the same joke again and again. The cleverness is spoiled at times by the obviousness of the plot or the clear influences of other books that come through too strongly. While some of the themes are obvious (the abuse of the female body for money, for example), other moments such as the strange ending or the fictional political events are a little too muddled. But even so, as a story and an …

reviewed A Convergence of Birds by Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell: A Convergence of Birds (2002, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.) 2 stars

Exquisite objects, poor responses

2 stars

In the introduction, Jonathan Safran Foer outlines how this project came together: he has asked prominent writers to write texts in response to some amazing object artworks of birds by Joseph Cornell. He reflects on a rejection letter from an author who has written to him lambasting him for expecting so much from writers without guidance, concept or recompensed.

I tend to agree with this critic – this book is a failed vanity project. The photographs of the Cornell artworks are wonderful but the short stories and poems in response to them are mostly poor, unconnected from the works, and poorly curated. Aside from a couple of exceptions (The Grand Hotels by Robert Cooper stands out) this collection is underwhelming, and I suspect much of this is down to the privileged presumptions of the editor-author who acknowledged (and then ignored) the author who eloquently lambasted him.

reviewed Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Max Porter: Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015) 5 stars

Crow brings hope

5 stars

This amazing book creeps into you as you move through it. Three protagonists, "Dad", "Boys" and "Crow" show different views of grief at the loss of the boys' mother. Written like a disjointed play, the short book manages to be heartfelt and heartbreaking, hopeful and tearful all simultaneously. The poetic writing and the well defined, carefully crafted voices of each character ensure the book wraps its wings around you and holds you, firm but not constricting. And then it lets you go.

reviewed Ghosts Of Gone Birds by Ceri Levy

Ceri Levy: Ghosts Of Gone Birds (Paperback, 2013, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC) 2 stars

A disordered nest

2 stars

Chris Aldhous brought together colleagues – artists and hobbyists – to make art about extinct birds. Then he and others found a way to tour it in England. Then they made this book about the project.

All this is fine, but the project is really scattered and doesn't maintain any real quality throughout the works. Lots of the art featured is terrific but lots more is uninspiring, and the documentation makes grand pronouncements with little room for nuance. The artworks are also disordered, with no oversight as to what stories to tell, or how to tell them, and as a result many artists have used the same bird, for example. In the end, the book shows a mishmash of artworks and a story that reads a bit like a vanity project. Maybe the exhibitions were good, but this book is only worth a peruse.

wants to read Built by Animals by Mike Hansell

Mike Hansell: Built by Animals (2007, Oxford University Press, USA) 3 stars

From termite mounds and caterpillar cocoons to the elaborate nests of social birds and the …

Found this referenced by Vinciane Despret in her chapter Politics of Terristories in the book "Multispecies Storytelling". She writes about how the book updates much of the writing from Karl von Frisch's 1975 book "Animal Architectures", but changes the narrative from one focussed on territorial battles and 'parasitism' to one about how many nonhumans live cooperatively with different species.

reviewed Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh

Kerri ni Dochartaigh: Thin Places (2022, Canongate Books) 5 stars

Both a celebration of the natural world and a memoir of one family’s experience during …

Words from the cracks

5 stars

This extraordinary book manages to offer so many things simultaneously: it is a story of trauma and healing, of moments and lifetimes, of time and space. The words are both written about and embedded in thin places.

Kerri Ní Dochartaigh is a wonderfully fluid writer, and this book tells her story of her life, beginning through the Troubles in Northern Ireland, caught in between places, with parents from either side of a bitter divide. These divides continue to haunt her life – moments of joy in the natural world counter-balanced with mental health issues in her city life, but it is in the thin places between that she finds solace. These places are borrowed from Irish mythology, and are moments that are liminal and often otherworldly. The pages ooze with honest, considered pain but also with a sunrise of hope constantly creeping over the horizon. I read the last 50 …

reviewed I, Pencil - My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read by Leonard E. Read

Leonard E. Read: I, Pencil - My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read (Paperback, 2006, The Foundation for Economic Ed) 3 stars

Subtle Thinking

3 stars

A sharp, short essay told from the perspective of a pencil that grasps the complexity of this apparently simple object. Millions of humans were involved in this pencil's construction. And this is its story.

Leonard E Read dissects complex manufacturing and economics, and the value of labour, in a short book that focuses on one small object. The tone is playful but polemic, and the 1960s essay has real resonance in our contemporary world where we all carry incredibly complex items with us all the time.