Sunday Scraps #123

Walking through the RA Summer Exhibition is like walking through a souq, it rewards patience as eventually you find some gems. Here are the pieces I loved most.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve lived around Brixton since 2009 but I’m still discovering things as I walk the streets. The history behind this old radio shop sign is wonderful / a familiar stranger introduced me to sati in Buddhism / an excellent long read about AI mania in the tech industry / I listened to this great piece about the end of reading so I must be part of the problem / there’s a wonderful piece on in the great hall of Tate Britain which includes a mini cinema experience. As part of it the founder of the Cinemathèque recommends the 1973 film Touki Bouki so I should probably watch it / a lovely piece from Rob about growing up today / went on a city break to Vienna with some friends and kept thinking about Before Sunrise / the Secession’s Beethoven Frieze audio experience is exactly the kind of immersive experience I like (ie. it’s just some music on headphones)/ this show on the ‘neutral’ role of Austria in global architecture was absolutely fascinating / the closure of the MIT Dewey Library is really sad.

Added to my commonplace book:

It is ok if things are unfamiliar to you. (Terence Eden’s blog)

If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want. (David Ogilvy’s 1982 memo)

Histories of violence that are geographically distant yet psychologically near. (Tomoko Yaneda’s work in the excellent Photographer’s Gallery show)

When you’re clever, everything teaches. (Denise Scott Brown retrospective)

They wrote, as everyone does, in the heat of a chaotic present and in the face of an unknowable future. (Great piece in the NYTimes about the US Constitution)

What does love feel like? Safety or alarm, I can never decide which. (Esther Freud in the Guardian)

People generally find fault with substractive solutions more readily than they do with additive ones. (A piece on doing less in the Guardian)

All the other jobs seemed so common. (Thomas Lupo, owner of American Wood Columns Corp.)

In social news, I’m heading to Québec for some time with family (first time since mum’s funeral last year) and friends and Boston for a weekend to see a childhood friend. I’ll report back.