Sunday 21 October 2018

untitled (questions)

Composed first in 1990, conceptual artist and collagist Barbara Kruger’s massive, declarative mural in Futura Bold Oblique that begs important and resonant questions will be reinstalled on the south wall of Los Angeles’ MOCO Temporary Contemporary building.
An anonymous donor is paying to have the installation recreated ahead of US mid-term elections and will remain up until at least 2020. The nine questions posed are anything but rhetorical devices and are as follows:

Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does time? Who follows orders? Who salutes the longest? Who prays the loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?

Learn more at Fast Company at the link above.

Saturday 20 October 2018

8x8

a benign and relatively common parasomnia: by an eerie coincidence, I experienced the “exploding head syndrome” drifting out of sleep this morning

let me reach, let me beach on the shores of tripoli: a look at the cultural impact and legacy of Enya Orinoco Flow

buchstabcenschrift: the rise and fall of Nazi Germany’s one time signature font—via Kottke’s Quick Links

moral compass: scenarios that make one wish for two trolleys

head in the sand: we are mostly ignoring dire and immediate climate-change warnings

god bless you, mister rosewater: Kurt Vonnegut, JR—sketch-artist

casualty rate: death by numbers examined from various angles

be a joyful rule-breaker: the reprisals of two interviews from Terry Gross and Pope of Trash, John Waters, made our day

velocitร  astratta + rumore

Arguably best known for his 1912 painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash which encapsulates all of the elements of Futurism—depictions of light, movement and speed, we are introduced to the portfolio of artist and educator Giacomo Balla (*1871 - †1958) via the serendipitous and unexpected discovery of murals from the artist, conserved for decades behind wallpaper and drop-ceilings.
Commissioned to decorate the fashionable and up-and-coming jazz club Bal Tic Tac in Rome in 1921, Balla’s racing vision of things to come matched the experimental nature of the musical acts and were feared lost to the ages when the property became a bank and was repurposed. In the near future, the space will become an exhibit hall. Learn more at the local—Italy’s English language daily at the link above.

whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for congress and ultimately the american people

Tonight forty-five years ago, the Saturday Night Massacre occurred in the Nixon White House when US Attorney General Elliot Richardson refused the direct order to dismiss special prosecutor Archibald Cox, charged with investigating the Watergate scandal. Richardson resigned rather than interfere in the proceedings of the probe which advanced the deputy to the top lawyer position, William Ruckelshaus, who also refused to concede to the president’s wishes and was fired. Turning to the person in the fourth highest post in the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, Nixon with some reluctance had his command obeyed. This display accrued for the first time a majority (though still very polarised) in favour of impeachment and Nixon two weeks later announced his intention to resign in lieu of being fired the following August

Friday 19 October 2018

pedantry

Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals indulges some of our pet peeves with an exhaustive list of grammatical non-errors, not usages that persist despite all attempts to dispel them but rather people’s insistence that they’re mistakes in the first place.
The prohibition against split infinities is particularly pernicious but actually has its roots in classroom Latin lesson. With the emphasis on the America version of English, I wasn’t aware of many of these quibbles and don’t know that I’m totally onboard with all the distinctions but it’s nonetheless worthwhile going through and exploring the idea of nuance in word choice.

Thursday 18 October 2018

thurn und taxis

Breaking with a one hundred and forty-four year old convention that regulates postal rates world-wide in order to prevent barriers to entry by poorer nations and promote the ease of cross border communication and commerce, Trump is signalling that the US will withdraw from the treaty that legitimised and continued the Universal Postal Union, an arrangement that has fully one hundred and ninety three signatories with the four outlying states relying on other members to execute their mail delivery.
Drafted at a time when European powers were dominant exporters and much of Asia was agrarian society (also kind of a myth borne out of the idea of exceptionalism), the US believes the conditions of the treaty disadvantages American business by subsidising shipments from China and flooding markets with cheaper wares. Prior to the agreement, countries needed to negotiate separate treaties and issue stamps for each leg of the missive’s journey, often outsourcing mail delivery to forwarding agents under conditions and protocols created during the sixteenth century by the Lombard-German royal house referenced in the title. The US was already given the dispensation to dictate rates for large packages but small parcels (under two kilogrammes—in keeping with the union’s original charter to establish a uniform and affordable flat-rate across currencies and purchasing-parity for sending letters and vendors’ samples) were under the jurisdiction of the international body. The proliferation of on-line shopping translated to opportunities for retail sellers. What do you think?  Maybe the house of Thurn & Taxis were the original postal Illuminati but this recent investigation on the treaty and the Universal Postal Union from Planet Money is helpful and comprehensive primer for understanding what is at stake.