On houses that fall into the sea

Earlier this week the papers were full of stories of Ridgemont House in Devon – a house bought for £150,000 by auction, only to see its garden plummet down towards Oddicombe Beach.
The story brought together the national obsession with house prices with the fact of increasing coastal erosion due to climate change. Artist Kane Cunningham is jealous of [...]

Pothole gardens; opportunity from decay

This via Thriving Too:
“An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain’s roads by Pete Dungey, a Graphic Design student at the University of Brighton.”
On Dungey’s web page the photos are accompanied by the quote: ”If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road.”
Go [...]

Land Art and changing perspectives

Filming Jan Dibbet’s 12 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective, 1969

Jan Dibbets 6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective, Maasvlakte beach, 8 February 2009
A year ago this week as part of the Portscapes project, the artist Jan Dibbets had what he called a “second attempt” at his 1969 piece 12 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective; [...]

Coalition of the Willing: film-making, collaboration, activism

This is a brilliant initiative: a growing online activist movie created by an army of collaborators, who are animating a script by philosopher/activist Tim Rayner:

Still from Coalition of the Willing: Back to the 60s by World Leaders
The film is appearing online at coalitionofthewilling.org.uk. Rayner’s collaborator is the film maker Simon Robson aka Knife Party, who has pulled in [...]

Streetlight Storm by Katie Paterson

“At any one time there are around 6,000 lightening storms happening across the world amounting to some 16 million storms each year.”
… a delicious fact is culled from Pippa Irvine’s review of Paterson’s Street Light Storm installation on Deal Pier on FAD Fast Art News:
Inspired by such dizzying statistics Paterson set about translating this natural phenomena [...]

The new bucolics: Caught by the River

Illustration by Jonathan Newdick from Caught by The River
In our industrial societies, nature comes to represent the escape from the business of our lives. Caught by the River (“the antidote to indifference”) has been around a while; it’s an interesting collective of people who have come together to reflect on the luxury of taking time out [...]

The impossible hamster & RSAnimate: thoughts on “nubs”

Yesterday, the New Economics Foundation released this video to support their report about the irreconcilability of the idea of sustained economic growth with the idea of sustainability itself, Growth Isn’t Possible. It’s made by Leo Murray, one of the makers of The Age of Stupid and the short film Wake Up Freak Out.
The Impossible Hamster is a clever [...]

Update on State of the Arts

A week ago the RSA and Arts Council England held the substantial State of the Artsconference, which we hope will become an annual event. The conference tweeters continue to sing with the compelling ideas and discussions that the event prompted. And now content from the London event is becoming available from the RSAs main website and there will be more online soon. Enjoy.
Go [...]

Can literary fiction ever do climate? Part 2

… and, as if to continue that very thought above in the post about Ian McEwan, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine have just announced Dark Mountain Festival Uncivilisation 2010, from May 28 to 30. In an email, Paul says:
It is deliberately staged to clash with the opening weekend of the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival: as civilised literature’s establishment [...]

Ian McEwan: Can UK literary fiction ever “do” climate?

There is a sense of anticipation about Ian McEwan’s new novel, Solar, out in a few weeks. Well… maybe we better not get our hopes up.
Of course I hope to be proved wrong. As a young novelist, McEwan was extraordinarily radical; The Cement Garden was scary, edgy and transgressive. He remains, without doubt, a brilliant talent. However [...]

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