It probably has happened to you. One day, you find by chance in a random box one of those treasured possessions of your childhood: a broken die-cast car, a puppet, a book…Magical stuff that once was so powerful that it could suspend any distinction between dreams and reality. What isContinue Reading
Interview by Francisco Martínez (EHI, Tallinn Univ) & Larissa Vanamo (Dept of History, Univ. of Helsinki). “A democracy where there is freedom of consumption is the worst thing possible” “The worth of an individual is smaller when there are a lot of humans” “Force and oppression are needed becauseContinue Reading
A note from Dimitris Dalakolgou, Department of Anthropology, Sussex University “The City at the Time of Crisis” is an urban anthropology project which examines the everyday public socialities and materialities of Athens during the current capitalist crisis. It focuses on urban public spaces in an effort to study ethnographically the rapidContinue Reading
Rebecca Martinezs Photos of Lifelike Baby Dolls at NYTimes.com. Continue Reading
By Oliver Wainwright (forwarded by Fiona McDonald) The Guardian, Wednesday 16 January 2013 It has lined the interiors of everything from greasy spoon cafes to luxury cruise liners, from hospital wards to train cabins – bringing a fusion of wipe-clean practicality and sleek modern style. And now Formica is celebrating its 100th birthday. The braveContinue Reading
The Salvage Art Institute, a New York based project started by artist Elka Krajewska, surveys, catalogues, and investigates the status and value of art objects once they succumb to the effects of decay, damage or destruction. Its mission statement reads: Salvage Art Institute works to confront and articulate the conditionContinue Reading
If you happen to be a photo-realist painter, and you also happen to find yourself a resident of Sweden, you might just follow in the brushstrokes of an enterprising artist named Fredrik Saeker, who convinced the transportation authority to let him use a (photo of) a painted self-portrait on hisContinue Reading
Caught at the bus stop without your smartphone or tablet? Whatever are you to do? (An apposite aside: do people still twiddle their thumbs or has thumb typing dexterity displaced the neural connectivity previously forged through such antique pastimes??) An Italian conceptual artist named Fra.Biancoshock has installed a solution in Milan: freeContinue Reading
I wanted to draw reader’s attention to Rolling Jubilee, a project that buys up debt with the explicit intention of abolishing it. As I write this (and this will be long out of date by the time you read this post), $109,507 has been raised to abolish $2,194,957. This is aContinue Reading
[Greek Coffee Cup, 1960s; from the NY Times site] An artichoke and an elevator. A Checker taxicab and a conductor’s baton. A MetroCard and a mastodon tusk. Inspired by “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” the British Museum’s BBC radio series and book, the NY Times recruited historians and museumContinue Reading
Click here to read A Photo Essay by Max Liboiron at Discard Studies. It has been one week since the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, September 17, 2012. In celebration, let’s look at the movement through the lens of discard studies.My article, “Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard inContinue Reading