Posts by Rob Stowell
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For example if I decide I am interested and decide I am an Artist does that make what I produce Art ?
If my wife is interested in my drawings does that make them Art ?
No: you need to be accepted, by people more disinterested than your wife.
I don't think this 'small-tent' interpretation is Dickie's. I seem to recall his position being wider: pretty much anyone can be a member of the 'art-world'. And as a 'member' can confer the status/role of art on what they produce.
But maybe that was the intrepretation of my lecturer... who was a paid-up subscriber :)
The institutional theory of art seemed a little like democracy: y'know- the worst possible theory of art, except for all the others :) -
Healthcare for the USA.
Welcome to the civilised world, guys :) -
That's quite a radical position, Ben. Not surprising, given your similar take (it boils down to 'taste') on morality/ethics.
But you'd save yourself some aggro if you stated it clearly up-front :) -
A found otter?
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Who the hell do these people think they are?
un-elected and unaccountable?
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I'd be in good company ... with kumara and carrots, boil my head- though thin gruel and close to unpalatable- no luxury, I fear :)
It's a bit of a slow-cooker, though, The Wire. Takes the first season to warm up. Second season changes gear, comes to a remarkable (greek tragedy, fate unfolding like a horrible mechanical chair) penultimate episode...
Series three and four it's really into its stride, and quite addictive. So y'know, maybe long winter nights? -
I, ur, really hate crime series...
They make crime look so - um - containable. Solveable. *Rational*.You'd probably like The Wire, then. You have to trust us on this :)
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Edmund White's "City Boy" is a good read. A mash-up of high culture, literary gossip and gutter sex, in 60s and 70s New York. Tying it together is a strong sense of the pleasures and rewards of friendship- which, at least in this telling- can endure love, sex, drugs, and even success.
Best Xmas reading: Charlotte Grimshaw's Opportunity. The stories are great; tense and funny. And the 'follow-up/other side' (also called 'Opportunity" I think?) of the title story- published in another anthology- is worth searching out. It adds a few extra twists, and hints at more possible points of view.
Which are probably further explored in "Singularity" (Grimshaw's 2009 short-story collection). Maybe Easter reading? -
(sorry, think I've said this before)... When I tried reading Huck Finn (one of the truely great books ever- despite Tom returning to ahem, kind've ruin the last 20% ) to the kids, I found it very hard. This was mostly down to my near-inability to say the word 'nigger' out loud (and maybe especially to kids). It's everywhere. I struggled with this- it almost seemed phobic- but I think the kids sensed it, and we gave up.
A lot of the book's greatness relates specifically to slavery and racism: how it colours the way Huck and Jim see themselves, each other, and their relationship- and how their friendship carefully negotiates, stumbles over, and manages to transcend this. Not reading it aloud seemed a shame (though probably mostly for me!)
Love to know how anyone else feels about/works past this. -
Yeah. I have a ghost investor who'd like to buy shares in your deceased Nigerian grandmother's spirit. Preferential shares.
Will pay in genuine afterlife Ruberian nuples- or a simulcra suitable for this world, if required.
(You are from the SPCA, aren't you?)