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Chengdu's Luminary Pavilion
Originally designed as a separata to be included in a larger publication, The Light Pavilion captures the seven years that lead up the only built work of visionary architect Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012).
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Painter Illustrates the Diversity of Sex and Gender in the Natural World with a Children's Book
The diversity of sex and gender in the animal kingdom is totally overlooked when people use the argument "it's not natural" to say that someone's lifestyle goes against their personal moral constructs. What's "natural" is actually incredibly complex, considering we have hermaphrodite leopard slugs,
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Reconsidering John Dewey’s Art as Experience
It’s hard to tell how many young Americans know the name John Dewey today. Those who attended New York City’s New School might know of him as a co-founder and one of the minds behind the progressive agenda that formed the intellectual and social foundation of the school’s early years. Others might r
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A German Expressionist Space Fantasy: Scheerbart’s "Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel"
The German fantasist Paul Scheerbart's greatest novel, Lesabéndio, was first published in 1913, the year that Expressionism began to flower in Berlin. The novel, both deriving from and contributing to this Zeitgeist, opens with a highly Expressionist scene: "The sky was violet, and the stars were gr
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The Work of Fiction in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Alexandra Chasin’s "Brief"
Alexandra Chasin’s Brief, an innovative narrative in the form of an iPad app, is “Exhibit A” in the case that the novel is finding exciting new ways to reinvent itself after the digital turn. Brief, the first novel-app of its kind, would make a rich and wonderful addition to any syllabus or reading
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Moments of Female Adolescence, Illuminated Online and in Print
In a culture that discounts the contributions of teenage girls yet rips them at will, co-opting their keen fashion sense into one that is marketable and desirable, Illuminati Girl Gang (IGG), a print and online journal of girl culture featuring work by kids who are mostly under the age of 25, comes
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I've Lost Pieces of Things I Want To Remember: Using Photography As Memory
There is a dislocated loneliness in being unmoored, in drifting away from connections and places until you become stuck somewhere again. Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay, published in 2009 Tarpaulin Sky Press, is a both spare and sprawling interpretation of this feeling. His compact prose set to the rh
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Invisible Man: The Biographies of J. D. Salinger
In July 1985, the British poet, editor and critic Ian Hamilton submitted the manuscript for J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life to his editors at Random House. Three years later, in May 1988, after countless depositions, preliminary injunctions, affidavits and court appeals, Hamilton’s truncated In Searc
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An Appreciation for the Often Hilarious, Usually Horrible, World of Bad Graffiti
Who cares about bad graffiti or street art? The spray paint scrawls of ill-chosen tag names ("Piggy Nasty," "Pony Tail," "Tricky Trout, Jr."), reckless vulgarity (penises and boobs drawn on absolutely everything), and sad drawings that barely shape into the animal, face, or whatever they're trying t
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Manufactured Dreams — Stepping Inside Televisa
The Aperture Foundation publishes beautiful photography monographs that are designed to look more like a portfolio than a book; such is their emphasis on image plates over explanatory text. The Factory of Dreams: Inside Televisa Studios, one of Aperture’s recent publications featuring the Brooklyn-b
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Irving Harper, a Mid-Century Designer Whose Playful Paper Art Deserves A Look
You've probably seen Irving Harper's work even if you don't know his name. His "Ball Clock" made for the Howard Miller Clock Company is an icon of mid-century Atomic Age design; his Marshmallow Sofa, created in the 1950s/60s for Herman Miller, is a continuously popular and curious piece of furniture
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Splinter Group: Short Works by Antonio Tabucchi
In his note to this collection, the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi (1943–2012) refers to the 14 pieces as “drifting splinters.” These “fragments of novels and stories,” he writes, “have a larval nature.” They are “sketchy compositions,” “quasi-stories,” and “background noise.” Despite the author’s