life's too short to waste on hate

Herta Muller, German Author, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Seeded on Fri Oct 9, 2009 4:05 AM EDT (The New York Times)

Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist who writes of the oppression of dictatorship in her native country and the unmoored existence of the political exile, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

arts, artsvine, literature, nobel-prize-for-literature, herta-muller

Art's shock of the new will never die

Seeded on Thu Oct 8, 2009 3:52 AM EDT (Guardian Unlimited)

We're in the season of the new. As the Turner Prize exhibition opens, and Regent's Park squirrels quake at the imminent arrival of the Frieze art fair, it seems that art's rage for revolution is as passionate as it was 100 years ago when Picasso was dismantling reality.

arts, artsvine, visual-art, avant-garde, shock-of-the-new

Buzzwords from the McDonald's bucket

Seeded on Thu Oct 8, 2009 3:40 AM EDT (theage.com.au)

The jargon-infested public pronouncements of modern political and financial leaders are all potato and no meat. Whatever the shape of the new economic order, the language is sure to continue on its present depressing course.

education, word-play, language, double-speak, weasel-words, jargon

What Is an Andy Warhol?

Seeded on Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:23 AM EDT (nybooks.com)

Just as Monroe understood that you don't have to act for the camera in the way the stage-trained Olivier defined acting, so Warhol realized that you don't need to make art for an audience brought up on film and television in the way Kenneth Clark defined art.

arts, artsvine, visual-art, pop-art, andy-warhol, silk-screen

Punished for being yourself

Seeded on Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:26 AM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Urgent action is needed to fight a rise in homophobia and hold governments accountable for human rights violations.

politics, queer-agendas, homophobia, human-rights, violence, extra-legal-killings, lgbt

Generation Y and texting

Seeded on Sun Sep 27, 2009 7:22 AM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Purists may despair that technology is killing the English language but the digital age spells a new era of communication, Australian academics and researchers say.

education, word-play, english, communicaotion, generation-y, texting, text

The cannibal convict was an everyman at heart

Seeded on Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:23 PM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Cruising on the Gordon River in his home state of Tasmania, Jonathan Auf Der Heide was told the story of the cannibal convict Alexander Pearce. The aspiring film director was soon obsessed.

entertainment, artsvine, cinema, alexander-pierce, cannibalism, wilderness

The Joy of Reading in the Subways of New York

Seeded on Fri Sep 4, 2009 5:26 AM EDT (The New York Times)

The middle-aged woman with the black cardigan around her shoulders had assumed a meticulously calibrated posture: feet shoulder-width apart, arms slightly bent, fists loosely clenched, muscles relaxed yet alert.

entertainment, reading, public-transport, mass-transit

Knossos: Fakes, Facts, and Mystery

Seeded on Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:04 AM EDT (nybooks.com)

The masterpieces of Minoan art are not what they seem. The vivid frescoes that once decorated the walls of the prehistoric palace at Knossos in Crete are now the main attraction of the Archaeological Museum in the modern city of Heraklion, a few miles from the site of Knossos.

arts, artsvine, ancient-civilisation, archaeology, reconstruction, knossos

Hate from the right stoked gay murders in Tel Aviv

Seeded on Thu Aug 6, 2009 6:03 PM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Last Sunday, at 11pm, a masked gunman walked into a gay and lesbian youth centre in Tel Aviv, pulled out a pistol and opened fire. Nir Katz, a 26-year-old centre counsellor, and Liz Trubeshi, 17, were killed. Eleven others were injured, some seriously.

politics, gay-vilification, hate-crimes, oppression, violence

When writers' festivals turn into Twilight Zone episodes

Seeded on Fri May 22, 2009 8:45 PM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Most writers will tell you we love writers' festivals, but the truth is not all festival events go according to plan.

arts, artsvine, literature, writers, writers-festivals, public-speaking, readings

All your movies on a single DVD

Seeded on Thu May 21, 2009 4:27 AM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Australian scientists have unveiled new DVD technology that stores data in five dimensions, making it possible to pack more than 2000 movies onto a single disc.

technology, data-storage, dvds, nanotechnology, swinburne-university-of-technology

Lap up literature where you find it

Seeded on Mon May 18, 2009 5:38 PM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

A few years ago I attended - for professional purposes only - a literary speed-dating evening at the State Library of Victoria.

arts, literature, new-media, twitter, sms

Gurrumul interview: the mystical heart of Australia

Seeded on Sun May 17, 2009 12:31 AM EDT (Telegraph)

For anybody who expects aboriginal music to be a carnival of ethnic costumes, didgeridoos and body-painting, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu might initially seem like an anti-climax. He wears black jeans, a black leather jacket and thick-soled black shoes.

arts, artsvine, performance, music, indigenous-music, yolgnu

Buckminster Fuller's World

Seeded on Sat May 16, 2009 10:55 PM EDT (Wall Street Journal)

Was modernism totalitarian? That's coming at it a bit high, but it's true that more than a few top-tier modernists were also one-size-fits-all system-mongers who thought the world would be improved if it were rebuilt from top to bottom -- so long as they got to draw up the plans.

arts, artsvine, architecture, buckminster-fuller, modernism

Spontaneous constructions

Seeded on Fri May 15, 2009 9:55 PM EDT (theage.com.au)

The first hint of intrigue was the secret code on a heater. One day, nine-year-old Cavan Klinsky was in the bedroom of his New York apartment when he noticed dozens of letters carved into a radiator. The letters, he realised, were a cipher and his name was the first word.

arts, artsvine, ciphers, architecture, puzzles, literature, installations, creativity, childrens-art

Redrawing line in sand - minister allows exhibition of priceless Aboriginal works

Seeded on Fri May 15, 2009 9:52 PM EDT (The Sydney Morning Herald)

A colletion of priceless and culturally sensitive Aboriginal paintings that has languished unseen in vaults for almost 40 years will soon be exhibited in the Northern Territory.

arts, artsvine, visual-art, indigenous-art, western-desert-art-movement, papunya

It's art, Jim, but not as we know it

Seeded on Sat May 2, 2009 9:51 AM EDT (theage.com.au)

Critics of the Turner prize are used to harrumphing crossly about the absence of painting or drawing from the award's shortlist and condemning a perceived preponderance of video or film work.

arts, artsvine, visual-art, contemporary-art, turner-prize

Milan furniture fair 2009: Designs for life

Seeded on Sat May 2, 2009 9:11 AM EDT (Guardian Unlimited)

Colossal is the word that springs to mind when you arrive at Milan's international design fair, the most important event of the year for designers all around the world. The fair, on the north-west outskirts of Milan, covers four times the surface area of the British Museum.

arts, artsvine, design, milan-international-design-fair

Screen test - Video Games as art

Seeded on Sat May 2, 2009 12:14 AM EDT (New Statesman Contents)

Cultural realities tend to lag behind economic ones.

arts, artsvine, interractive-art, video-games, digital-art, criticism

Who Should Own the World's Antiquities?

Seeded on Fri May 1, 2009 11:56 PM EDT (nybooks.com)

Last June, the directors of the leading art museums of the United States agreed to limit their acquisitions of antiquities to works that have left their "country of probable modern discovery" before 1970, or that were exported legally after that date.

arts, artsvine, art, antiquities, heritage, provenance, cultural-colonialism, plunder, looting

David Hockney paints with his iPhone

Seeded on Fri May 1, 2009 11:49 PM EDT (Telegraph)

Having invested in the popular Apple device only four months ago, Hockney is hooked and has even invested in a mini wooden easel to sit his phone on. He has painted everything from flowers to landscapes.

arts, artsvine, visual-art, digital-art, david-hockney, iphone

Notes on Conceptual Fiction

Seeded on Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:12 AM EDT (conceptualfiction.com)

Is it possible that the idea of "realism" as a guiding principle for fiction is itself unrealistic? After all, there are no Newtonian laws in stories—an apple can just as easily fly upward from a tree as drop to the ground.

arts, artsvine, literature, realism, conceptual-fiction, science-fiction, fantasy

Strange meetings

Seeded on Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:25 PM EDT (New Statesman Contents)

Vienna at the fin de siècle was a crucible of modernity. Amid the nervy multicultural babble of tongues in the imperial city, writers, artists, composers and architects jostled with philosophers, social reformers and scientists.

history, vienna, modernism, psychiatry

On a dead mouse and an escaped snake

Seeded on Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:07 PM EDT (Guardian Unlimited)

I go downstairs to reheat what's left of the coffee and find a tiny dead mouse on top of the microwave. My initial shock turns to muted outrage, passing on to denial and finally to grudging acceptance, once I realise that the mouse is only defrosting.

entertainment, snakes, children, pets, cleaners

– Show More

Comments & Feedback

just wanted to stop by and say thank you for your friendship & helping me getting started right on nv. sent you an invite to survivors & friends of abuse, hope to see you there too. maddad

— maddad