Month: January 2018

Glen Hansard: Between Two Shores

Glen Hansard: Between Two Shores

Posted by | Jan 29, 2018 | |

Glen Hansard Between Two Shores Anti- Glen Hansard is a rock’n’roll veteran.  He’s the frontman of legendary Dublin band, The Frames.  It’s odd, Dublin.  The largest rock band in the world is from there (U2, in case you were wondering) and yet, their impact on the Dublin scene in terms of bands making it is minimal.  They tried for awhile, running Mother Records, signing, amongst others, Hothouse Flowers.  The Flowers still hold the distinction for the biggest-selling début album by an Irish band for their 1988 album, People.  Anyway, The Frames are huge in Dublin, and have achieved some international...

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Jewish Tourism, or, I never cared very much for the Holocaust – Part I

Jewish Tourism, or, I never cared very much for the Holocaust – Part I

Posted by | Jan 29, 2018 | , |

I never cared very much for the Holocaust. As a child born shortly after the war, I grew up barraged by sordid black-and-white images and film footage of the piled-up, naked bodies of Jews, heaps of gold teeth, lamps made from their skin. These emaciated, striped-suited people in concentration camps seemed abject. I knew they were Jews, but they didn’t at all seem like me, my family, and my Jewish friends living in the Bronx. They weren’t Jews really to me; they were haunting images with scary eyes and belonged more in the B-horror movies I watched in my...

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Notes from a Recent Construction Site Visit

Notes from a Recent Construction Site Visit

Posted by | Jan 26, 2018 | |

La Borda’s north-facing street façade. The double-height communal space will eventually be enclosed with polycarbonate to form an intermediate climate zone in conjunction with a central atrium. I was recently fortunate enough to be shown a truly interesting work of architecture currently under construction in Barcelona: La Borda housing co-operative, by Lacol Arquitectes. Visiting buildings while they are under construction is, for me, fundamental (pardon the expression) to architectural learning. On a construction site, something real is being built for a practical use, not something that is merely intended to be admired visually or conceptually. Normally, of course, we visit...

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Framing Poems by Sacha Archer

Framing Poems by Sacha Archer

Posted by | Jan 25, 2018 | , |

This ninth installment of Car Poems shifts gears to visual poetry. Below, Sacha Archer introduces viewers to his Framing Poems and elaborates on the power of a given frame to defamiliarize, destabilize, and ultimately expand and resignify the signs we take for granted.       The four visual poems here are from a series tentatively titled Framing Poems. My main concern in this work and some other related projects is the role of the creator—in this case, the poet. Framing Poems presents the poet as guide rather than, perhaps, as singer. Someone who directs, or re-directs, your attention. As the...

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Meat Beat Manifesto: Impossible Star

Meat Beat Manifesto: Impossible Star

Posted by | Jan 24, 2018 | |

Meat Beat Manifesto Impossible Star Flexidisc/Virtual Meat Beat Manifesto are legendary. They’ve been around in some way, shape, or form since 1982, formed in Swindon, Wiltshere, they’re now based in San Francisco.  MBM is really one guy, Jack Dangers, though it hasn’t always been that way. I first came across them listening to CITR, the radio station from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; it must have been 1989 or 1990.  It was their début album, Storm the Studio.  That album came with a story, as the original recordings for it were allegedly destroyed in a fire.  Their record...

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