An great article by Hugh Pearman on Jim Stirling's Runcorn Housing, yet another seemingly cursed work of his, demolished around the turn of the 1990s. There's a lot of Stirling around at the moment - I recently got hold of the book on the 'red trilogy', which is excellent (see Owen's review), and there is a forthcoming show of his work at Tate Britain. I've been recently fascinated with the buildings from the end of the 1970s, such as the Olivetti Training Centre and Runcorn, both of which seem to be simultaneously Brutalist, Postmodern and also Hi-Tech, an eclecticism that is strangely thrilling. Musing about this, we came up with the new, stupid term 'Brutalomo', to be used for those strange buildings from that period that defy easy classification, with the new material and referential palette still being expressed through modernist formal arrangements.
How about this creepy video of Bill Hicks standing outside Waco? As seen on Found Objects
Which is where I also found this, essentially a propaganda video for the new town of Stevenage. It makes me rather sad to watch.
Levi Bryant has posted up an essay on Derrida from an OOO perspective. I must say I'm quite excited by the prospect of an extension of Derrida's work out into the world of stuff. I thought that there was something similar when I read bits of Harman's work on withdrawal, and so it's interesting to see it being pushed further. A development to watch.
This, Adam Curtis' most recent blog, has been getting all sorts of coverage, and rightly so. He really does have one of the best blogs around, scurrying away in the BBC archives, digging out all sorts of conspiracies. It's really impressive.
There's a really interesting piece at Spillway on Gavin Stamp's 'Britains Lost Cities'.
And this, this is really something. Paul Mason over at the BBC, blogging about the current conjuncture. "The world looks more like 19th century Paris"...
