My recent cultural scrawlings

[imomus]

If Click Opera is a little slimmer and trimmer these days (what, a trip to London without a 20,000 word jeremiad about how horrible the city is? Nick, you're slipping!), it's because I'm writing a book, recording an album, traveling, and covering topics I might once have covered here in other venues, for money. Here's a round-up of three articles that appeared elsewhere online this week. Click each picture to read the whole article.

My Post-Materialist column in the Times talked this week about Naoko Ogigami's new film Megane (Glasses), Ku-nel magazine and the culinary end of LOHAS culture.



For the AIGA Voice I covered a "parasitical textiles workshop" organised here in Berlin by designer Rüdiger Schlömer, a very interesting man indeed.



The previous week's Moment slot covered the rise in interest in high density living, tying it into the recent mayoral contest in London and some Richard Florida research about links between high density and creativity.



Talking of high density residential structures, I'm excited to get a chance to go tonight to an art event held in the only Le Corbusier building we have in Berlin, the Berlin Unité d’Habitation. Susanne M. Winterling will project a film in the lobby at 8pm. It's part of the Berlin Biennial. Then tomorrow I'll catch the last day of the Ettore Sottsass show at the Schinkel Pavillon. Here's my tribute to "the pope of postmodernism" on the occasion of his death, aged 90, back in January.

Comments

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Great articles. Every one.

;--)) (http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2007/07/plu/People_Like_Us_and_Ergo_Phizmiz_-_Social_Folk_Dance.mp3)

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

Megane appears to have been filmed in part on Yoron, the southernmost of the Amami island chain, so it's certainly in yer Ryukyus, if not Okinawa prefecture. Tours available (http://www.chiiroba.co.jp/yoron_08.html).

I'm none too sure who did vote for Boris, I've not met anyone who has owned up aside from taxi drivers, but I'm not sure that the suburban/inner urban comparison really holds. What's inner urban in London? Mayfair? Fitzrovia? Kensington & Chelsea?

I do find myself chuckling at Florida finding "a positive relationship between the density of creative workers and metropolitan patenting activity". As you probably know, Fleming wrote his works in the distinctly slow surrounds of Jamaica...

[ducking.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I keep wondering: do you actually have an intimate knowledge of everything apart from quantum physics (and/or the intricacies of childcare)?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Good God, I know almost nothing! That's one reason I write journalism, to inform myself, to force myself to rummage around on fact-finding missions.

My part in it is mostly the narrative, the ethics and aesthetics part. Why choose Rudiger, and why Megane? And it's mostly related to the post-materialism theme; recycling, consumer culture that's in some way critical of itself, sustainability, other ways of living. It doesn't have to be super-puritan, though -- it can involve eating lobsters.

coathangers and other stories

[rinusvanalebeek.livejournal.com]

Talking of high density residential structures, I'm excited to get a chance to go tonight to an art event held in the only Le Corbusier building we have in Berlin, the Berlin Unité d’Habitation. Susanne M. Winterling will project a film in the lobby at 8pm. It's part of the Berlin Biennial.

For those who think it might get a bit busy in Corbusier's cloakroom, I might well advise to attend the das kleine field recordings festival (http://myspace.com/daskleinefieldrecordingsfestival). You won't find written information about it in the newspapers and such, because the festival is happening far away from main and side stream media. But from reactions of possible visitors to tonight's evening I have understood that one of the artists is 'famous.' (http://www.errantbodies.org/labelle.html)

[(Anonymous)]

You have done it Nick - didn't you know journalism is all about convincing the public you know everything?

I jest.

I must agree you have a knowledge that far outweighs many, a knowledge that you are not hoarding up for yourself but using to educate the likes of us.

So thanks.

Ps - I just moved to Washington DC - recommendations anyone?

wewillbecome.com

Anglo-Japanese Fry-ups

[viceanglais.livejournal.com]

Wagamama's at Heathrow Terminal 5 now do a kind of yakisoba fried breakfast. Bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and, oddly, cabbage. Something doesn't seem right here.

[(Anonymous)]

Protestantism is responsible for spawning both the "ethical" utilitarianism of brutalist architecture and libertarianism's emphasis on free markets and efficiency. While it may be nice to be ethical, it may also be missing the point in that if we have to make our world ugly to live it in, maybe it's not worth it.

Another thing is that the Japanese seem to do modernism better than the West. I think when you throw up an ugly tower in a European city it is hurt by its context, whereas in Tokyo it fits right in. It also just seems more right, historically. Japan never went as far as the west did in refining ornament and tracery in architecture. They always been content with more solid, geometric shapes.

[(Anonymous)]

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

i like how small and dense these are, with yummy links. like sushi bites!

[(Anonymous)]

In a way, you have too much talent to be a journalist. IMHO. Even great journalism is a form of analysis. A picking out and sieving. Rarely coming live from the studios called 'joy of living'. In a world where 50 Cent will be paid $300 million to be Rupert Murdoch employee, something seems amiss.

Meateaters and pointless flyers don't give a shit

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/food.biofuels

If you even care a tiny bit about the planet, you'll have been a vegan since you were 15. But now its official Green policy. Hurrah.

sorry i know facebook sucks

[(Anonymous)]

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