Recent Activity.

An great article by Hugh Pearman on Jim Stirling's Runcorn Housing, yet another seemingly cursed work of his, demolished around the turn of the 1990s. There's a lot of Stirling around at the moment - I recently got hold of the book on the 'red trilogy', which is excellent (see Owen's review), and there is a forthcoming show of his work at Tate Britain. I've been recently fascinated with the buildings from the end of the 1970s, such as the Olivetti Training Centre and Runcorn, both of which seem to be simultaneously Brutalist, Postmodern and also Hi-Tech, an eclecticism that is strangely thrilling. Musing about this, we came up with the new, stupid term 'Brutalomo', to be used for those strange buildings from that period that defy easy classification, with the new material and referential palette still being expressed through modernist formal arrangements.


How about this creepy video of Bill Hicks standing outside Waco? As seen on Found Objects


Which is where I also found this, essentially a propaganda video for the new town of Stevenage. It makes me rather sad to watch.

Levi Bryant has posted up an essay on Derrida from an OOO perspective. I must say I'm quite excited by the prospect of an extension of Derrida's work out into the world of stuff. I thought that there was something similar when I read bits of Harman's work on withdrawal, and so it's interesting to see it being pushed further. A development to watch.


This, Adam Curtis' most recent blog, has been getting all sorts of coverage, and rightly so. He really does have one of the best blogs around, scurrying away in the BBC archives, digging out all sorts of conspiracies. It's really impressive.

There's a really interesting piece at Spillway on Gavin Stamp's 'Britains Lost Cities'.

And this, this is really something. Paul Mason over at the BBC, blogging about the current conjuncture. "The world looks more like 19th century Paris"...

Up n Coming

Here are a few things that are happening now/soon, or are just worth looking at:

-Mark Fisher and Nina Power will be talking at the ICA on Saturday the 22nd, and it's free. The press release describes the event as "A public discussion on how the dissemination of artwork and information on blogs’ and websites has altered the way that artists distribute and discuss their practice."


-Between Channels is posting a wonderful series of photographs of UK towns in 1968 that they found. They're gorgeous in their own way, and in the words of Mr/Ms Channels: "This is just everyday life as it once was, and never will be again."

-A really rather terrifying post from City of Sound regarding the Australian floods.

Trailer – The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.

-There is a film that has just been made about the reality behind the architectural myth of the Pruitt Igoe flats. Hopefully there will be showings in the UK at some point in the future.


-A post on 'We Make Money Not Art' highlighting some fine art photography of 'La Vela' in Napoli, one of the most notorious housing estates in the world.

-If you're into philosophers who have spies telling them when you've sarcastically mentioned them on twitter, or even if you're just into some of the most interesting young thinkers currently active, then there is a new collection of essays, 'The Speculative Turn' which can generously be downloaded from here.


-There is a little exhibition down at the Nunnery in Bow, where artist Simon Terrill has created a massive photograph of Balfron Tower and its residents. There is a symposium on Thursday the 20th of January with Edward Colless, Nigel Warburton and Owen Hatherley.


-And finally; I will be giving a talk and taking part in a panel with Rut Blees Luxemburg at the London Art Fair. The theme of the talk and the accompanying show is 'the Ephemeral', so I'll be cracking open a can of 'spectrality' and discussing representative media, ghostliness and probably a bit of politics as well.

What goes around...

... I might have guessed that this would happen, but Graham Harman has apparently heard that I might unsubscribe from his blog! I've actually seen him lecture before, at Goldsmiths a number of years ago, where he spoke about Latour and De Landa, which I remember partially for being a fascinating, if somewhat mechanically delivered paper, and partially for the fact that he was the first (and only) person I ever heard say the word 'catalysis'. I was even at dinner afterwards, but never spoke with Graham, and now probably never will...

Of course, this being the internet, nothing is actually private. So if you're reading this Graham, I'm sorry I was rude. I find your philosophy compelling, and I have frequently encouraged others to read it because I think it's some of the most important work that's going on in philosophy right now.

That said, I don't care much for the pretentions towards iconoclasm that you and others of your milieu often indulge in, and I often find your writing style to be a little exasperating, my 'favourite' example being;

"Having been deeply perturbed by a personal visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I mean no disrespect to the victims and ruined objects of Japan if I say that the same list of objects is destroyed in a different way by the various philosophies of human access. Human-centered philosophy is a Hiroshima of metaphysics"

-Prince of Networks, p.103

But I do agree that with you that style is important even in philosophical writing.

But anyway, you're right of course, you should be able to write whatever you want about whatever you want, as often as you want, and for whatever reason you want, even if an 'icy cynical, black jacketed poseur' (he's right, you know!) like me might often find it banal. So again, I'm sorry for being a 'wraith spreading grey banality everywhere' (have you been stalking me?). So perhaps it's best that you go on being an important philosopher, and I can go on marinating in my own miserable and resentful black bile. Although, maybe one day we can chat about '26-2', Coltrane's reharmonisation of Parker's 'Confirmation' from 'Coltrane's Sound' (and my particular favourite from that album). I'd like that.

"I'm not racist, but..." logic.

"Having been deeply perturbed by a personal visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I mean no disrespect to the victims and ruined objects of Japan if I say that the same list of objects is destroyed in a different way by the various philosophies of human access. Human-centered philosophy is a Hiroshima of metaphysics"

-Graham Harman, Prince of Networks, p.103

I am, I suppose, enjoying this book, but the style is at times simply unbearable.