Jun 28th 2010

The Museum of Obsessions

Obsession

The Museum of Obsessions accepts donations on loan from collectors, enthusiasts and the sentimental.

The things that enthral us, but which we cannot give a home to; our treasured possessions from which we cannot bear to be parted, yet cannot keep: these are the contents of the Museum. If you have no more room in your house, if you lack the means to store the essential things of your life, then the Museum was established to help you.

The contents of the Museum, even cumulatively, are worth little on the open market. The value of each item lies explicitly…

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Jun 18th 2010

Metronome and Semina: Publishing as artistic practice

Metronome

I’ve written about Metronome Press before, in a series of articles at the old STML Litblog in 2005 – 2006. If you recall, the Metronome series commissioned contemporary artists to write novels, presented as much as art pieces or artefacts as well as traditionally published books. At least one of the authors, Tom McCarthy, has gone on to considerable success in the mainstream.

What I most liked about Metronome back then was twofold: the unashamed presentation of such work as “art”, and the appropriation of the mundane apparatus of the art world for the funding, distribution…

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Jun 14th 2010

On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people recently about how they bookmark stuff. It seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds as more and more of our reading moves onto screens. So I thought I’d share a few things, and ask for some feedback.

the insincerity of words

Firstly, here’s what I do:

  • I dog-ear a lot. I dog-ear every page that has something interesting on it (which is not always obvious when I return to it), and I dog-ear my last position in the book. Top corner. Sometimes I try to make the dog-ear point to the

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Jun 2nd 2010

99 Delights: London

A few weeks ago, while filming Battersea Power Station from the roof of a pub, I got chatting to Katie Bonham, a ceramics artist whose recent work includes pieces fired from the mud of the Thames itself.

As a result of this encounter, I’ll be showing a short film at a pop-up exhibition this weekend, documenting the progress of my London 2010 project, which, if you haven’t been following, is an attempt to reconstruct Patrick Keiller’s 1992 film, London.

The venue is 99 Delights, one of London’s loveliest secret restaurants, so from midday til 6…

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Jun 1st 2010

Cassava Republic

This morning, on as wet and dismal a Tuesday as London has to offer, I had the pleasure of meeting Bibi Bakare-Yusuf and Jeremy Weate from Cassava Republic.

Independence

Cassava Republic was founded four years ago in Abuja, Nigeria, with the intention of introducing African readers to local writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America, and to encourage home-grown writing, “rooted in African experience in all its diversity, whether set in filthy-yet-sexy megacities such as Lagos, in little-known rural communities, in the recent past or indeed the near future.”

Cassava faces all the usual pressures of a…

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