Graffiti, street art, vandalism, drunken scribbles, guerrilla communication, culture jamming – call it whatever you want.
Graffiti pieces focus on form, colour, technique; it is art, it is shape and message. The scribbles or stencilwork uses words and rarely seems to bother with the finer parts of typography or texture. Read the rest »
Some of the best non-fiction books I have read. Some of them are not necessarily well written, and would not win prices for excellent language; at least one of them is actually annoying in that respect, but I have included them because the subject is interesting/important. I am sure I have forgotten some, but there you go. Teflon brain.
The art of looking sideways
Alan Fletcher
This is how it looks like inside my head. It a fountain of musings, facts, the odd, solid, and whimsical. It is design, doodles, unfinished thoughts, images, drawings. It is colours, shapes and wisdom. It is a delight and frustration at the same time – if I could show what goes on in my head, this is pretty much it. Read the rest »
I live in a shithole. I try to ignore that I live in a shithole. My sleep pattern gone haywire, my eating habits likewise. Time does funny things, and seems to coil and loop. That is why I drove out last night, at three thirty in the morning to capture the early morning light.
Read the rest »
I admit I don’t really keep up with Northern Irish news much these days. It’s either desperately provincial – or just plain desperate. Yes, someone planted a bomb the other day, and yes, somebody got hurt. And I’m sure the obscure rural radio show is still going on without me. So. Some things never change.
But the other day, I got tangled in a BBC-infused NI-news-net. And some old skeletons dropped out of the closet. Good old names like Michael Stone and Mad Dog Adair.
Gerry Adams and Martin McGunniess nearly had their parlamentary meeting disturbed by Michael Stone, the old rascal, who wanted to slit the throats of the Shinners. Seriously. No kidding.
Michael Stone – exceptionally bad haircut and not-a-winning personality – stuck his nose out again, and this is a good wan!
enforce peace
authentic replica
burning cold
friendly war
wooden irons
liberal conservative
modern history
The sea – most of all the sea.
Coming from Damascus, two things are sights for sore eyes: the sea, and green things. I drank in green; on corners, on waste ground, balconies, flowerpots. My friends had lived in, and not really left Damascus, for a month at this point and I can only imagine how they felt. Nurseries. Trees in pots. Trailing ivy. Gums. Mimosa (?). Breathing air.
And the sea.
Awfully toxic and polluted, but to see a horizon. Delicious. Sniffing salt air.
The Mediterranean sea, basically a very large and deep bathtub with originally only the shallow Gibraltar strait to replace water through, the oceanographers estimates it takes a century to replace all the water in the Med, so it’s saltier (evaporation, narrow flow) than the atlantic, and have less nutrients.
The nutrient-poor, high-salinity of the Mediterranean sea getting mixed with water from the Red sea, through the Suez canal, and tiny marine creatures with it. It’s been going on for a while, but no one know quite which way it’s going.
Do we ever? Read the rest »
In the spring of 2008 campuses all over the country exploded in political protest. Riots spread like wildfire, and creative students built barricades of tables, vending machines and arming themselves with molotovcoctails and general kitchenwear found on campus.
The first buildings they occupied, was the server and computer labs, and from there coordinated their actions. In Østfold, they painted the glass walls and brick buildings with slogans of politcal dissent, and set up watches with web cameras and sensors on the roof of the university college.
The leaders of the riots said to the press, via video interviews, that they will not give in, that the demands must be met, and that the educational system..
