The Baltic, Newcastle

At the Baltic Arts Center, first visit in a long while – last time it was Anthony Gormley – [Link]. This time – Anselm Keifer and his remarkable workings with memory, materiality, guilt and landscape. I’m waiting for the fog to clear at Heathrow. Lovely winter views out over the Tyne. (Photos taken on the…

things – beyond objects

Two new books add depth to my long-running ruminations on the character of things. Nonobject, by Branko Lukic and Barry Katz, was published this week by MIT Press [Link] It’s a rather beautiful book about Branko’s design work. Barry (and Bill Moggridge in his foreword) provide fascinating commentary. The nonobject is inbetween, relational, interstitial, combinatory….

dot com material culture

Start-up company Box dot Net – preparing for its move to new offices. I usually prefer the term “design studies” over “material culture studies” – the term typically used in cultural anthropology for a focus upon humanity’s material accoutrement. I don’t think the distinction between material and immaterial or intangible is always that useful (isn’t…