Appreciating the Weirdness: An Interview with Ina Blom
KH: Let’s talk about your writing. It has appeared in a number of different types of publications, including art critical journals such as Artforum, Afterall, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst, and exhibition catalogues, as well as more standard academic journals and publishing houses. Would you say that this allows you more freedom within your writing practice?
IB: Yes, absolutely. I started out as a music critic and radio DJ many years ago, so I got a lot of training in basic journalism and various genres and styles of writing, depending on the publication and the audience – from straightforward reporting to the more literary or essayistic and the more academic. I really enjoy being able to have different voices for different contexts, and I also just enjoy writing! [Laughs]
THINKS to Think: my interview with art historian Ina Blom.
Taking the Line for a Walk: An Interview with Piers Secunda
Keeley Haftner: You’re in New York City currently for your first solo show in the United States, ISIS Bullet Hole Paintings at New York’s Jaeckel Gallery, is that correct?
Piers Secunda: Yes, it will be on view until May 6th. There was a panel discussion at the gallery with critic Anthony Haden and Tim Slade, the director of a film called The Destruction of Memory. We also had a screening of a powerful ten-minute film called The Quake by Matteo Barzini, which highlights the destruction of mostly religious architectural sites in Syria.
THINKS to Think the fourth: my interview with Piers Secunda.
Through Either Side: Interview with Simon Anderson
Keeley Haftner: So Simon, this will be somewhat of a traditional interview, but punctuated with my mention of selections from George Brecht’s Water Yam for you to respond to. Sound good?
Simon Anderson: Okay!
KH: Let’s begin with:
TWO DURATIONS
red
green
SA: Brecht was a scientist, so he kept good notes and drawings. He begins by playing with electric lights for different durations. Around this time he’s in a class with John Cage, where they work very closely and developed a bond. Cage kind of allows him to relax a little and open up his work. So, after all of his experiments engaging the complexity of electronics, he just goes with two durations: red and green, which I think is a lovely piece. I’ve done it myself and seen it done in many ways. Of all of them I think my favourite is eating the green salad and drinking the red wine – a most excellent version!
THINKS to Think the third: my interview with Simon Anderson.
Active Sorrow: Interview with Morehshin Allahyar
Keeley Haftner: You’re still okay with me recording you for the Bad at Sports blog, right?
Morehshin Allahyari: Yes, I will tell you all my secrets!
KH: Okay, you are on record now. I have to admit to you that I’ve never done this before – you’re like, my test subject.
MA: Okay!
KH: So let’s start way back. You came to be known in Iran for a book that you wrote when you were twelve, translated in English as “My Ancestor’s Barefootness.”
MA: Yes, I was thinking about ‘barefootness’ not in reference to poverty, but in regard to struggles and taboos and things that my family had to deal with. It is a three hundred and eight page book. It’s about my grandmother, and her life in Kurdistan.
I have recently begun producing content for Bad at Sports, a new selection of blog posts we're calling THINKS to Think which are released every Wednesday. You can find my first interview here.
More to follow!
Keeley
Book Review: Death's End by Liu Cixin
** spoiler alert ** I really struggled as to whether or not to give this book 4 or 5 stars. In the end, though I adored its interminable imagination, its poignant reflection of our time, and its awe-inspiring scope, I could not let this book off the hook for its portrayal of feminine and female figures. Liu Cixin, in his seemingly boundless imagination, still can't seem to imagine a universe in which women are not either Eve-esque doomsday bringers (Three Body Problem, Ye Wenjie), delicate but inconsequential muses (Dark Forest, Zhuang Yan), literally alien (and stunningly beautiful) militaristic robots (Dark Forest/Death's End, Sophon), or angelic Virgin Marys whose maternal instincts doom not just humanity but the entire solar system (Dark Forest, Cheng Xin).
** spoiler alert ** I really struggled as to whether or not to give this book 4 or 5 stars. In the end, though I adored its interminable imagination, its poignant reflection of our time, and its awe-inspiring scope, I could not let this book off the hook for its portrayal of feminine and female figures. Liu Cixin, in his seemingly boundless imagination, still can't seem to imagine a universe in which women are not either Eve-esque doomsday bringers (Three Body Problem, Ye Wenjie), delicate but inconsequential muses (Dark Forest, Zhuang Yan), literally alien (and stunningly beautiful) militaristic robots (Dark Forest/Death's End, Sophon), or angelic Virgin Marys whose maternal instincts doom not just humanity but the entire solar system (Dark Forest, Cheng Xin). When feminized in the Deterrence era, the human race is beautiful, peaceful, and superficial. This results in the near destruction of the earth in under 10 minutes when Earth's fate is transferred from the stoic, relentless hands of Luo Ji to those of Cheng Xin (notably: in her mentor-nemesis Wade's hands, deterrence would undoubtedly have been maintained). In her second chance to save the earth, Cheng Xin opts to once again choose the route of non-violence in opposition to our cut-throat Wade, which leads to a 35 year loss of progress on light-speed ship construction, a delay in part responsible for the collapse of the entire solar system into two dimensions (though this is later explained away as probably not the fault of a single individual - after all, humanity chose her as their representative - according to her placating male defender). Cheng Xin has a total of two knights in shining armor: the socially-defunct but loving Yun Tianming who gives her a star, a small universe, and is able to save her and her supportive counterpart, AA, with an actual Fairy Tale. Our second male savior comes in the form of Guan Yifan (former civilian astronomer from the starship Gravity), who protects Cheng Xin from emotional collapse and death with his timely arrival on the Blue Planet, and with his protectorate sensibilities when both fall victim to reduced light speed when black hole 'death lines' are ruptured. Indeed, this -1 star is accounted for when, like so many of his science fiction predecessors (Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov) Liu Cixin is able to imagine a brilliant new universe of infinite possibility, but not one in which we've progressed socially beyond the limitations of our current era. As Michio Kaku outlines in Hyperspace, this failure in imagination may literally mark the difference between what astronomer Nikolai Kardashev has described as Type 0 and Type I-III civilizations: that whether or not a civilization can catch up with its own technological progress after the advent of nuclear technology without self-annihilating on account of archaic and lagging social progression may actually be the reason we have not yet found intelligent life in the universe. In other words, intelligent life has, so far, not been culturally intelligent enough. That even a series of literary masterpieces like Cixin's Three Body Problem can fall victim to such failures in Sci-Fi imagination seems to verify the likelihood of such a theory.
Click here for original post: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1859646150