Thursday, September 20, 2012
Wurlitzer 1: William Walker
- T.J. Stiles, 'The Filibuster King: The Strange Career of William Walker, the Most Dangerous International Criminal of the Nineteenth Century'
- Brady Harrison, Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature (2004)
- William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (1860) [Google books]
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
Cosmic Futures
Gregory Benford website
David Brin website
John Smart website
Bannerman's Castle
Bannerman's Castle is an abandoned milary surplus warehouse on the Hudson River 50 miles north of New York City and easily spotted from the commuter train from Poughkeepsie. Like a future ruin of West Point, also to be seen on this route.
BLDGBLOG: Bannerman's Island
Shaun O'Boyle
Bannerman Castle Trust
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
London -- The Modern Babylon
On July 16th 2012 the BBC decided not to screen Julien Temple’s latest documentary, London - The Modern Babylon, which had been scheduled as part of a season of films about the capital in the run up to the Olympic Games. The film, pieced together from footage from the British Film Institute archives, is an attempt to articulate a century of London life up to and including the 2011 riots. One scene culled from British gangster film The Long Good Friday (1980) imagines a UK Olympic bid for the derelict Docklands area. Whether the BBC decided that images of looting and street-fighting were not the best way to represent London days before the Olympic torch reached the city is unclear, though the broadcaster might have blanched after British Airways thought using The Clash’s London Calling for the soundtrack to an upbeat Olympic themed TV commercial was a good idea: ice age, heat death, famine, nuclear error, zombies of death. Here the apocalyptic punk imaginary returns to haunt an affirmative display of corporate engineering designed, presumably, to celebrate British efficiency and London as a global destination. The sheer wrongness of the soundtrack is a thrilling act of self-immolation at least as pointed as anything Temple has assembled and also opens up a dream-space where punk nostalgia refuses to capitulate to the restorative logic of the heritage sector and insinuates itself instead into the marketing DNA of the corporation as a mode of auto-détournement.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Is This a Joke?
It's all gone quiet regarding the actual content of Boyle's opening ceremony, overshadowed as it is by the cock-ups over security. Recent aerial photographs show a scene that looks like the opening of Eastenders. Still, the question remains: is it a joke or is it really that bad?
Simon Jenkins in The Guardian smelled a rat.
Simon Jenkins in The Guardian smelled a rat.
Monday, July 16, 2012
The Cold Coast Archive
Signe Lidén (Norway), Annesofie Norn (Denmark), and Steve Rowell (USA). Information at the Center for Postnatural History
Friday, July 13, 2012
Monday, July 09, 2012
Sunday, July 08, 2012
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