September 29, 2006
Weekend reading: Around the web #22
After a busy week at the office, I can think of few better ways to kick off the weekend than a long bike ride in the crisp autumn air. I ended up on the far side of Prospect Park, at Caton Ave. and Bedford Ave., before looping back home to Clinton Hill. Now, refreshed, here are a few weekend reading options:
- Large online archive of RealAudio author interviews conducted by Don Swaim for his long-running CBS show, "Book Beat." (via Critical Mass)
- Laila Lalami on writing fiction in a language other than ones own, published in the Boston Review
- "Why the graphic sex in Destricted is more than porn," at Slate.
- A long interview with historian Sean Wilentz, conducted by Robert Birnbaum
- One of the least raunchy but nonetheless funniest Overheard in New York posts I've read in some time.
- Marianne Moore's poem "Silence," at House of Mirth.
- Ada Louise Huxtable on Ground Zero, in the Wall Street Journal (via Culturegrrl)
- Unique GIS maps of New York (via Gothamist)
- Paul Myerscough on Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait at the London Review of Books (via Jenny Davidson):
We see the kick-off on a television monitor; but the film camera immediately draws nearer to pick out Zidane, who blurs and dissolves as the frame narrows still further; his gait and monk-pattern baldness are easy to recognise even as he fragments into countless green, red and blue pixels. The point is made: the galáctico, like any modern celebrity, is available to us only through his mediation, and the more pervasive his image, the more frustratedly we recognise that he remains finally opaque, unreachable. The film begins and ends with a neat ideogram, a superimposition of the letters of Zidane’s name: the effect of his total presence is to obscure him completely.This may be the idea the film starts out with; it is not what makes it compelling. Watching Zidane at work in this way is an extraordinary experience.
- Lastly, the artist Ryan Gander, who I hold in high esteem, opened a nonprofit gallery this week in the space formerly housing STORE, the commercial gallery that represents him. It is called Associates, will remain open for one year, and will give 100% of its profits to the artists who exhibit there.