Reading List 001

Roland Barthes once said that if you’re a nationalist, you’re in the cult of stupidity. But politics today is steeped in factionalism, which is to say, lots of cults vying for space as if they’ve double booked the same meeting room. The West is experiencing a nationalist upsurge that would, by Barthes’ measure, count as mass stupidity. Is it, though? As someone who advocates the freedom to be ...

We’re at the time of year that’s devoid of grey. Scratch that – decade. End Of The Decade. Best Of The Decade. The Most Important Lists We Can Capitalise And Get Away With. As if we were processing events exactly as they happened, when they happened, and can’t admit we need more time to reflect than an arbitrary year asks us to.  Music is particularly pernicious. Some songs smack us in the gut...

“Urban life having served its term is become a life-sentence (…) A life outmoded. The big city is no longer modern.” - Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City, 1932 In the 1930s, when the telephone became a common home appliance in the US, the architect who pioneered heroic modernism in America imagined that telecommunication would eventually tear up the big city. Advances from the second ...

When talking about post modern design, the conversation will either begin or end with Paula Scher- 99design refers to her as “a reigning titan in a heavily male-dominated industry” and with good reason. Scher graduated with a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Pennsylvania in 1970 and moved to New York City to start her first job as a layout artist for Random House publication; by 1991 she joined Pe...

Music is always here for us, whatever our mood, whenever the time. It can soundtrack a blissful, lazy Sunday. It can reach an arm around our shoulders on a blue morning. It can even scream alongside us in the night.  We used to twist the radio dial until a song sputtered out, made our bodies ape it. Today, the likes of Spotify will do the hard work for us; cobbling together like-minded tracks ...

There’s a scene in Going Clear, the 2015 documentary, that stuck to my brain last week. It’s the remembered pettiness of one David Miscavige, the most famous Scientologist without a movie deal, who, in the 90s, heard that his best pal liked wildflowers. That would be Tom Cruise, then newlywed to Nicole Kidman. They were due to touch down in California and – Miscavige envisioned – should be able...