When confronted with any set of images or photographs in series, it is instinctual to try and form an understanding of what is being communicated. In the absence of being explicitly told, we sub-consciously begin to form relationships between the images that help constitute for us, a narrative or story we can hang onto. We […]
The story a nation tells itself is crucially important to its people’s sense of national identity. It serves also as a way of establishing and maintaining a shared set of values. Primordialism is the dogmatic belief that one’s national origins are defined by skin colour, blood and a spiritual belonging, but if you don’t subscribe […]
To understand what Jermaine Francis is about, it makes sense to pursue thinking beyond the labels we give to each other. His work is compelled by a certain kind of experience. It is an experience that I directly relate to, and this is why it was necessary to write this article and express it beyond […]
I come to this only days after taking my father to a residential care home for the first time. His blindness has added to a list of ailments which has meant looking after him at home is now no longer possible. A feeling of practical sense and reason is slowly being invaded by thoughts of […]
The introduction of computers in the workplace well prefigures the advent of the internet. Before the release of the PC in the 80’s, computers were mostly vast, immovable machines which by today’s standards had relatively low processing power. Located in air-conditioned comms rooms, various forms of cabling sprawled out from them into patch cabinets resembling […]
“Ractliffe’s work, whether consciously or not, emerges at a time when the impossibility of representing experience started to gain purchase in discussions around the medium’s shortfalls.”
“Demand found in Lautner’s dusty models a way of problem solving and working through designs even though these were for Lautner’s building proposals that never saw realisation.”
“The phrase “necessary fictions” both characterizes state-created realities, whether simulation in the military training context or the deployment and consumption of fictions in civilian society, and also comments on the documentary form.”
“In contrast to the concrete metaphors in the urban architecture and the materiality of construction, the bodies and flesh of the workers on the beach refer to something humane: of the flesh, tactile and intimate, something that is deeply lacking in these isolated lives.”
“I think what was really drawing me to Marina’s book was how it was animating this story of the mountains, their potential and actual destructive forces and how human lives are so dwarfed in the scale of that force yet so emotionally attached to life in the mountains.” – Sunil Shah
“This is a so much about family that the idea of the hotel and its function as the construction and as a dwelling for temporary accommodation, reflected through the blueprint cover and letterheaded endpapers is anything but the impersonal experience of temporary lodging.”
“Through connections to her family, dual religions, rituals and historic re-interpretations she staged herself in performative postures, using dress and ritualistic objects to perform specific rites or ceremonies for the camera.”