All Picks posted by Eva Wilson
The text Brittany posted today from across the ocean (hey Brit! How are you? I miss you!) on authorial omniscience reminded me of something William Kentridge said in a workshop a few weeks ago: That it sometimes takes years for him to realise what he was doing with [more]
While I was researching recently built exhibition spaces and thinking about what constitutes “creative space” I came across Wikileaks’ former server room in a mountain in Sweden. Apparently Wikileaks transferred their data there after being removed from the Amazon servers, but has since had to move from Sweden to France [more]
David Gates on his project to convert a caravan into a pinhole camera and place it in the woods of Essex: “Why my caravan has become subject to threats of abuse, vandalism, arson, I don’t know, they’re not actual threats, they’re the projected threats of people witness to [more]
Dedicated to all Hollywood doomsday fantasies triggered by the advent of the comet Ison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8BSlqHAhuY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLgSKv2P-ow
Going to Vienna on these sudden trips is always a ride, ein Ritt, never a moment to stop and think about the entirely surreal situations you are casually pirouetted into. The unnerving waltz playing on loop on the Austrian Airlines flight gives you a first indication of the [more]
Many of the 60pages dispatches seem to have been written in transit, up in the air. Writers are frequent flyers, cosmopolitans, people of the world. I conform by just having boarded the 5:20 pm flight from Tegel to Vienna. Unfortunately I had to leave my research group’s workshop [more]
The third installment of the guest appearances presents a collaborative text by Alison Yip, Claudia Barth, and Agnes Scherer about their recent project in Düsseldorf involving a local group of Ikebana artists in a two-day, ephemeral exhibition based on a Haiku: “The exhibition ‘At The Indoor Pond’ was [more]
Dear Eva, since days now i am thinking about what to write you or which form our conversation could take. as you see, i decided to write to you in english, like you suggested. i know my english is not the best, since i just learned in school [more]
“Today I received an email from a friend. It said: ‘Dear Eva Today, as I was reading the former Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il’s “On the Art of Cinema”, specifically the lines: “The real objective of cinematic art is not merely to enhance people’s awareness [more]
We painted Novak the whippet’s toenails and our lips red, our eyes black, we swapped glasses and dresses and got drunk on bubbly, danced to Falco and forgot to eat. We looked like Hildegard Knef. The view over the roofs of Berlin for once gave us the feeling [more]
Sitting in her kitchen and eating baklava, my friend told me about her slightly creepy new job today: She answered an advertisement on Craigslist from an American company looking for German-speaking applicants who could transcribe audio records. She passed a test and got the job: Now she receives [more]
In 1978, the businessman Girard “Jerry” Henderson built a 16,500 square foot underground mansion in Las Vegas to be able to escape the dangers of the impending nuclear war that would be able to sustain life for a full year. The mansion features bomb- and earthquake-proof magnetic doors, a swimming [more]
During our first and as yet only conversation Maxime was pouring champagne into his vodka drink at Elise’s party in a “no pain no gain” effort which clearly backfired but seems to be constitutive of this guy’s eclectic ideology. While happily ruining the drink he was telling me [more]
I wish I could retrieve the silver ring I lost yesterday. It was a möbius strip, a surface with only one side, an infinite surface—like a Klein bottle. The möbius band has a boundary, whereas the Klein bottle does not. I wore the ring for exactly three years [more]
Here, for no particular reason, is a complete list of Captain Haddock’s curses and insults: Aardvark! Abecedarians! Addle-pated lumps of anthracite! (old) Alcoholic! Anachronisms! Anacoluthons! Antediluvian bulldozer! Anthracite! Anthropithecus! Anthropophagus! Arabian Nightmare! Artichokes! Autocrats! Aztecs! Baboons! Baby-snatchers! Bagpipers! Bald-headed budgerigar! Bandits! Bashi-bazouks! Bath-tub Admiral! Beast! Belemnite! Big-head! Billions of blue [more]
Yesterday would have been Aaron Swartz’s 27th birthday. On January 11 2013, Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. At the time of his death, Swartz, a programmer, internet activist and outspoken advocator of open access, faced more than 30 years in prison and a maximum of one [more]
Dear Eva, It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5nXuvyBvjI The documentary „Meine keine Familie“ („My fathers, my mother and me,“ Austria 2012) tells the story of the Friedrichshof Commune in the Austrian Burgenland near Vienna from the perspective of one of the children born and raised there. The director, Paul-Julien Robert, lived in the commune for [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXWWz5Tv_I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXINTf8kXCc
Iceland spar, a transparent calcite very common in nature, has the property of polarising light. Specifically, the double refraction of light through the anisotropic crystal led physicists to understand the nature of light as a wave. When a ray of light enters the Iceland spar, it is split into [more]
“You can write to Pvt. Manning at the following address. While the outside of the envelope must be marked “Bradley Manning,” Pvt. Manning will be happy to accept letters that refer to her with her chosen name Chelsea on the inside. She has also expressed that within the [more]
My father recently returned from a trip to Australia where he encountered the story of the Cane Toad. He retold it to me in great detail last night on the phone. Here it is: The first 102 cane toads, native to Central and South America, were introduced into [more]
On May 13, 1787, the Friendship, a brig of 278 tons, left the harbour of Portsmouth carrying seventy-six male and twenty-one female British and Irish convicts. She arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, on 26 January 1788, minus the female convicts who had been transferred to other vessels at [more]
On the hem of the cloak of a Verrocchio Madonna with child (ca. 1470) you can discern a band of gold embroidery that resembles script, but which makes no sense. It is painted in perfect detail to bring to mind Arabic writing, however it is just an array [more]
I had such a nice topic to write about today, and now I ran out of time. I had this whole idea laid out on illegible script – script that looks like writing but really is just ornament – to be found in Early Modern painting. It would [more]
Today’s finds: Kentridge, Duchamp, Rorschach, Rilke Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, [more]
Last night at Würgeengel, Georg, Sam, Carson, and I talked about the community of 60pages, about the freedom and discipline of thought in writing, about postmodernist gods, about long reads, about the daily rhythm of production, about the difference between writing and publishing, about form, style and content. [more]
People, everyone: go see Gravity. In 3D. It is the future of film. It is every film ever. It’s the story of everything. The opening shot instigates what must be a substantial cinematic or Euclidian or Cartesian revolution – the hemisphere of the blue planet looms onto the [more]
Buzzfeed today reported that Glenn Greenwald—together with the filmmaker Laura Poitras one of the journalists who were contacted by Edward Snowden and who broke the story on the NSA’s surveillance—is leaving The Guardian to join a new media venture, ostensibly funded by eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar (as reported by [more]
In the first version of the text Iphgenia wrote about me for 60pages, she described me as “not as polite as she seems.” In the final version that part of the sentence had disappeared. Maybe out of politeness. Maybe because sadly I am as polite as I seem. [more]
Saturday night, Sarah, John, and I talked about game theory and how it had changed their lives and relationships. Treating life as a game and oneself as a player was a liberating realisation, said Sarah. John explained remote manipulation of behaviour. Earlier, we had talked about August Strindberg’s [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni We wander in circles at night and are consumed by fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Si6cTE_n8
The first instance of talented assemblage of words in Iphgenia Baal’s biography must be credited to her parents for giving her her name. She carries both parts of it with equal amounts of dignity and disdain. In Homer, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon, destined to be sacrificed [more]
After learning that he had won the Nobel prize for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle in 1964, Peter Higgs vanished on holiday without a mobile phone and now seems as hard to detect as the particle itself. Higgs’ statement on winning the Nobel prize mentions [more]
In my feverish dreams of last night the infinite and interweaving soundtrack was Miley Cyrus, “We Can’t Stop” and Bryan Adams’ “All for Love” from the 1993 Musketeers movie. Thanks a lot, brain. I can only explain Miley’s appearance with the rhyming homophony of Cyrus and virus. Words [more]
This must be the most melancholy consequence of the US federal government shutdown: Mars rover Curiosity has suspended her twitter feed. “Sorry, but I won’t be tweeting/responding to replies during the government shutdown. Back as soon as possible.” We can only hope that while Curiosity is no longer communicating [more]
It’s Sunday. It’s hangover day. Today’s hangover cure is Ragnar Kjartansson and his pomp and circumstance brass band sailing the S.S. Hangover in Venice whose flag flies in the ensign of a fat pegasus. If that didn’t help, I am sure Fitzcarraldo will. Just remember Captain James Lawrence’s [more]
Yesterday, Christina told me a story about Buckminster Fuller: To make people aware of the movement of earth through space, of the maniacal speed of “Spaceship Earth” through the cosmicomics of our universe, he would tell them to stand with arms outstretched, probably somewhere near Lake Eden on [more]
Today’s post is a text written by Walter Benjamin titled “Zum Planetarium”, published in 1928; it was discussed as part of a presentation at yesterday’s panel on cosmotechnology in Lüneburg and it is beautiful. It is written in German but an English translation can also be found. Walter [more]
I realise what a slacker I am when I have to get up before sunrise for the first time in ages. But the rest of Berlin seem to be slackers too, the streets are deserted. Then I remember it’s a bank holiday, Tag der deutschen Einheit. Both my [more]
Today, two deaths: On October 2 1968, Marcel Duchamp, optician, voyeur, and chess player, passed away, aged 81. On October 2 2002, Heinz von Foerster, one of the architects of cybernetics and Wittgenstein’s nephew, died at the age of 90. The only traceable connection between the two might [more]
Last week’s NY Art Book Fair at Moma PS1 was visited by 27.000 people. About 23.000 of them were dressed incredibly well for book people, but maybe that’s normal for the combined crowd of the bookish and the artsy and New York. One of the 27.000 people who [more]
Last night I came back to Berlin after a month of mundane travel — London, Rome, New York, and finally two days with my family in Westphalia (a location I mainly mention because Christopher described 60pages’ interests as seemingly gravitating toward West Germany). (His exact list of prevailing [more]