#SCIFI VENICE WHEN????

[viiridiangreen]

i clicked through and i'm experiencing shrimp emotions (<- this user lives in the Beastly City Of 20 million ppl that the colonisers dried out which is still keeping up the dry land charade for some fucking reason)

also this:

3D Reconstruction of Tenochtitlán by Thomas Kole

[rawwkfingers]

The Masque of Mandragora

I suffer from the curse that many asoiaf girlies suffer from; since I've been exposed to medieval fiction that does an excellent job portraying realism in court politics, now when I encounter stories that portray them unrealistically it takes me out of the suspension of disbelief

The actual plot of the serial was good. It lifted a good portion of its plot from Hamlet, but then used the scifi element to ensure it wasnt a straight copy. Hieronymus was a good villain and, while I do wish the Mandragora's motives were a bit clearer, it was quite a threatening enemy

This is also the first time that I felt there was queercoding in the series, which imo always makes a story better even if its certainly unintentional, with the prince Giuliano and his servent Marco. I know others might disagree with me, and there are definitely queer ships from earlier in the series, but personally I never felt the 3/Master or 2/Jamie relationships to be romantic in nature

But I could just not get past the many, many ways the writing got court politics wrong I was immediately taken aback by how bad it was! The scheming, power-hungry uncle and the noblehearted-if-naive heir is a common trope, largely because of Hamlet, but what it so often gets wrong is the way both of these people are required to interact with the larger scale court politics.

Claudius did not initially intend to kill Hamlet because if he had, everyone in court and in those outside their nation would immediately know (or at least suspect) that it was murder, which then leads to questioning the king's death. It's certainly easier to move the plot along quickly, and they tried to justify it by having Federico control the military (which makes even less sense because Giuliano is heir apparent??? He has the power to remove Federico from control of the military) but seeing such a blatant disregard for any sense of "lets at least try to cover it up" just made me want to slap these idiot politicians

And thats not even mentioning the complete lack of care put into the Italian nobility at the party. We're supposed to believe that both Federico and Giuliano gave the fucking Doge of Venice the cold shoulder, that multiple members of nobility were murdered at a party held in their castle, and there's going to be no political repercussions? Alright then

So on a personal level, I was definitely not a fan but if I try to remove myself from that I do think it was a well-told story. I'm not sure if it's just because I've been Classic Who pilled and haven't had a bad time with any serial since like, the Second Doctor or what but I'm able to enjoy even ones I dislike thankfully

[takaraphoenix]

Oslo, Reykjavik, Venice

Thanks for playing! :3

oslo: what’s more important: work or love?

I mean definitely love. Humans can live without work, but not without love. Familiar, platonic, romantic, heck even if you just have a pet - humans need some form of love in their life.

reykjavik: do people usually have trouble pronouncing your name when you first meet?

First name? No. Last name? A little bit. Which is ridiculous because it is literally not that hard. But I always gotta spell it out when I have to give it to someone... -__-

venice: why did you last fall in love?

Wow. Uhm.

Okay so that was when I was 16. It was an internship at a bookstore back when those still existed. She was everything I liked about a girl. Tomboyish, short pink hair, mischievous. She loved fantasy and scifi and she was the first lesbian I ever befriended.

We loved the same band, went to my first ever concert with her. We had the same interests - I read my first actual American comic books thanks to her because she let me borrow her Deadpool. We had Disney movie marathons. We binge-watched Once Upon a Time, my back then favorite TV show, together. When she first discovered Doctor Who, she immediately recommended it to me as something she thought I would definitely like and it had been my back then second favorite TV show.

Many people say that fandom shouldn’t influence that, but... uh... fandom is a giant part of my life? I dedicate myself to the things I love and I want to be able to talk about the things I love. I’m not saying my ideal partner has to love all the same things as I, but... some, the big things. Or at least... willing to give it a try. Like, she read the first three PJO books because I recommended it to her.

I just genuinely could not fall in love with someone who says like “ew Disney princess movies? Lame” or hates fantasy and only watches like political dramas...

I love talking about the shows and movies I love and I want to share that with someone when I love them, be that romantic love or platonic. I’d be willing to try new things for her too, of course! But like... if she hates fantasy or scifi, I don’t see that working for me at all.

So, with every shared interest, I fell a little more for her, because it was so easy to talk to her, we talked for hours about the things we both loved.

I just... it’s a huge part of my life, why would it not be important to me to share with the person I love? Never got that “It’s so shallow to say you wouldn’t date someone who hates Marvel!”. I mean, sure I wouldn’t go that far. You can hate Marvel and I can still love you, but if you hate superheroes in general? Man, I love superheroes, that is a major bummer and puts me in a position of stopping myself from fangirling, from having this big thing to share with you, ya know? So, if it’s too many genres that I love deeply that you hate or don’t care at all, what’s the point because we don’t really have a lot in common then.

But she loved fantasy, scifi, the same music I did, the same kind of comic book things. Not all the same - she was a major Joker fangirl and I hate that, she really loved zombies and I really hate that, while she really didn’t get into PJO and would not touch Shadowhunters with a stick, but eh that’s okay because on the overall we shared enough, we don’t have to share everything, you know?

European City Asks

[dillydedalus]

what i read in april

in which i read two (!!) 5-star-adjacent books and also defeat my nemesis thomas mann 

the paper menagerie & other stories, ken liu

impressive collection of (mostly) scifi short stories with some fantasy elements. liu is particularly interested in historical/collective memory, historiography, textmaking and textuality, and the importance of stories. my favourites were the bittersweet title story (feat. living origami animals), an alternative history story about the construction of an underground tunnel between japan and america, and the last story, in which time travel becomes tied to politics of remembrance. some stories are not as strong, especially an honestly boring take on AI/voice assistants/surveillance, but overall these are really good, especially in how they approach SFF from asian perspectives. 3.5/5

der zauberberg/the magic mountain, by my nemesis thomas mann THE EVIL IS DEFEATED!!! after 1.5 months i finally finished the magic mountain & honestly.... i really liked it. literally all that happens is that a sweet young fool called hans castorp goes to a mountain sanatorium in switzerland to visit his cousin for three weeks and then.... just stays there for 7 years even tho he ISN’T REALLY ILL (which is both incredible dumbassery & incredibly relatable). up there he hangs out with a lot of people, has lots of conversations about politics & philosophy, falls in love w/ someone, some people die, some people leave, hans takes up skiing, everyone becomes obsessed with seances & psychoanalysis & whatever else for a time, there’s duels, and most of all, thomas mann is like HEY TIME IS WEIRD AM I RIGHT??? and it is! it is pretty weird. things i didn’t expect: a) it’s honestly pretty funny, b) i had several feelings (’als soldat und brav’), c) i kind of knew what the ending was going to be but still i was. distraught. ANYWAY. sometimes.... books that are classics.... are really quite good. 4/5

city of dragons + blood of dragons (rain wild chronicles #3-4), robin hobb i really enjoyed this series even tho i think these two are not as strong as #1-2. the central characters & relationship dynamics are great, i was happy to see malta back, and i loved the new plot points here (trader conflicts! hest coming to the rain wilds! most of all, chassim and the chalcedean women’s liberation front!!!) BUT i think all of these could have done with a bit more space; it all feels crammed together at the end & not really satisfying. 3.5/5 for both these books, series rating 4/5 

the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, douglas adams like, it’s funny. maybe i was not in the mood, but funny doesn’t carry a book. 2.5/5

remembering babylon, david malouf (uni) this book is really good but it is also exactly the kind of book you read in a seminar on postcolonialism, which is what i’m doing. it’s set in a small australian settlement in the mid-19th century, where one day a strange man appears who looks like a “savage” but claims to be a ‘british object’. it turns out that he was marooned as a child and joined a native community, and his presence and strange liminal status (’the white black man’) disturb the entire community. it’s all about questions of assimilation, indigeneity, whiteness, and who owns the land, and it’s very very good, well-written, evocative of the australian landscape, dreamy and i’m probably gonna write my paper on it & end up resenting it a lil bit. 4/5

a canticle for leibowitz, walter miller jr. post-apocalyptic monks in the desert preserving knowledge!!! i ADORED the first two parts of this with all my heart (the first set 600 years after the nuclear apocalypse in a new “dark age”, showing the canonization of leibowitz, engineer-turned-protector-of-knowledge; the second 600 years later again, when during the “renaissance”, conflicts arise between church and secular scientists), the third part (a new nuclear/space age w/ mutual destruction threatening) i liked less, especially when it abandoned the themes of cyclical history, the danger knowledge presents to humanity but also its value, and the process of science and culture rebuilding itself from the atomic ashes for a digression on euthanasia, but i still loved a lot about it, particularly the monks sent to human colonies on other planets (”remember this earth... never forget her - but never come back” made me cry). it is very steeped in catholicism (obvi) which i don’t have much of a connection with but i actually loved how the book talked about religion. on the whole, i genuinely, genuinely loved this, loved francis illuminating a blueprint for 17 years, loved benjamin/lazarus (?), the apocalypse being reframed in biblical terms, loved the melancholy & despair over humanity destroying itself again and again, and the mad mad tiny hope for peace somewhere, some time. i will read this again for sure. 4.5/5 

machandel, regina scheer perfectly fine multi-perspective novel about 20th century (east) german history, all revolving around the small village machandel (a lower german word for the juniper tree). it incorporates some interesting perspectives/topics you don’t necessarily see a lot (forced laborers from eastern europe, euthanasia programs during the third reich, a sympathetic look at the promises & failures of the gdr) and it’s a pleasant read but it didn’t resonate with me in any special way. i’m more interested in scheer’s new book, which is literally set right around the corner from me. 3/5 

wild seed, octavia e. butler sooo this is a afrofuturist-y science....fantasy (??) book about two immortal beings, doro (spirit possessing bodies) and anyanwu (healer & shapeshifter) & their complicated relationship over about 200 years. also involving a magical selective breeding programm, changing your gender, slavery of different kinds and a whole lot of babymaking. it’s interesting&unique&very immersive, but not really octavia e. butler at her best imo. i think my next butler will be xenogenesis. 3/5

kokoro, natsume soseki early 20th century japanese classic about a young student and his mysterious mentor. very quiet and slow but still a good read. don’t have much to say about it tho - i’m probably missing a lot of cultural context. 2.5/5

the merchant of venice, willy shakes (uni) tbh i skimmed most of the scenes shylock wasn’t in bc in this house we stan shylock & no one else, but also like why would anyone sign away a literal pound of their literal flesh as a bond for money you don’t EVEN NEED fuck you antonio. 

shylock is my name, howard jacobson (uni) the hogarth retelling of merchant. i’ve read this before & thought it was clever & sharp re: the play & shylock, but ultimately sexist & gross. i still kind of think that but i liked it A LOT more this time around; it’s really the best of the hogarth series (that i’ve read) in terms of actually engaging with & deconstructing the play rather than just retelling it in a modern setting and it does it in a really smart & thoughtful way. everything not about shylock is ridiculous and farcical but that’s really the point - all the characters beside shylock are the worst and already were the worst in merchant. still not happy about the sexism but: 4/5

the complete maus, art spiegelman honestly it really just is that staggeringly good and given the amazing panels about beckett (x), i’m not going to say much more. if you’re interested in the graphic novel (not really novel bc it’s not fictional) and can deal with the subject matter, just like. read this. predictably, my favourite part was the beginning of maus ii, where art (post-publication of maus I) reflects on what he was doing and why (and why mice) and deconstructing the central conceit from within (see the panel linked, where everyone’s wearing animal masks and he wonders whether mentioning housepets will ruin everything). 5/5

[astrodenzbotw]

Book of the Week No. 9 Inferno by Dan Brown Actual Rate: 10/10 Favorite Line: "The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial." Actual Review: Inferno follows our great symbologist into another complex suspenseful campaign with global-scale bent on destruction. Published in 2013, it is Dan Brown's fourth Langdon novel that navigates topics—overpopulation and societal responsibility. In this another level of Brown's work, he still used the same conspiratorial material, catalytic plot and thrilling theme. Yet he still put it into comprehensive manner which fits all the pieces together. Reading it is like decrypting a puzzle chapter per chapter. Unconventional writing of Brown is still here, well this really never goes out of style. That's what makes him different to other authors. Conversations in his book are far from reality but really are the ideal ones. The story goes along when Langdon woke up in a Venice hospital, not remembering anything why he even got there. All he just discovered is that an assassin is off to killing him which makes it more strenuous for him to gather his thoughts to comprehend about the visions he is seeing in his head. Visions that are always marked with words��"seek and find." Running from an assassin as well as the police, Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks are drawn into a meandering plot that centers on one of the world's most mystifying literary masterpieces, Dante's Inferno. And as soon turned out, Brooks being the main antagonist of the whole venture. As the action executes, I find my way turning pages a little more. Some may find this type of narrative to be weak but Inferno really has much to offer. His storytelling typically relies on his common tropes but nevertheless, it is straightforward enough for reading which will entice you to ponder and wonder. #fiction #books #novel #danbrown #inferno #overpopulation #science #scifi #bookstagram #bookrecommendations #bookreview #booklover #booknerd #bookaddict #bookphotography #goodreads https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfim74CpmpE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lifetimeinafist]

If anyone’s interested, this is the working draft of my director’s statement on my production of The Merchant of Venice:

After the election of Donald Trump, anti-Semitic incidents rose by a staggering 75%: synagogues burned to the ground, Yeshiva school buses lit on fire, #AreJewsPeople trending on Twitter, hundreds of bomb threats called in to Jewish Community Centers. In August, Nazis marched through the streets Charlottesville, shouting “JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US.”

None of this is new to American Jews. We know that these attitudes have been quietly festering, unaddressed for as long as our national issue with racism. And yet in the wake of the Charlottesville marches, I can count on one hand the number of times I heard the word anti-Semitism mentioned by someone who wasn’t Jewish.  Even amongst my well-meaning, white, liberal friends, anti-Semitism is an afterthought.  

My audiences are largely comprised of these self-same well-meaning, white, liberals. Many of them also share a love of gutsy feminist heroines and of the romantic comedies that feature them. In Merchant of Venice, bright, passionate Portia, held prisoner by her gender and her father’s oppressive love, reminds me both of myself and many women I know and love. Audiences eagerly empathize with Portia, because, anti-Semitism aside, she’s a compellingly written heroine. Many others will feel for Antonio, especially when his queer character is played as being openly in love with Bassanio. My audiences (including myself) easily identify with a plucky heroines and tragic gay lovers.

It would be easier for the audience’s conscience to watch the people in this play and distance themselves from what the characters do. It’s much harder if they find themselves relating to them. It is through that audience identification that I will ultimately show the audience the insidious nature of the polite, neglected anti-Semitism in their own lives. Genre pieces like romcoms, scifi, and horror engage audiences because they are digestible, are safe. You can get people through the door with genre, let them think about hard concepts with recognizable plots. It therefore allows us to talk and think about abstractions in a relatable way that doesn’t risk revealing personal failings. This use of genre as a way to demonstrate a clear metaphor of an abstract concept is best seen in 2017’s horror film Get Out. My version of Merchant will be a romantic comedy to Anti-semitism as Get Out’s horror was to racism.

Portia and Antonio are emblematic of the white moderate. They may both be members of oppressed classes, but they both wittingly and unwittingly contribute to the cultural cancer of anti-Semitism.  It’s possible that Antonio uses anti-Semitism as a smoke screen for his sexuality, but he is the most cruel to Shylock in private. Portia’s anti-Semitism is so ingrained, the first thing she does after entering the world outside Belmont is eviscerate the life of a Jewish man she’s never met. To the Christians in this play, anti-Semitism is just their opinion and Shylock is awfully mean to them, so doesn’t he deserve it? It is possible to do this play without acknowledging the Christian characters’ remorseless anti-Semitism.  If I wanted to do that, I would direct another play.  

In the end, the city of Venice offers an elegant visual metaphor for this play. It is an impossible city: stunning Renaissance architecture, glittering canals, art on every corner. It’s also sinking into the ocean and rotting from the foundation up.  This play is what happens when the effervescent, vibrant citizens of a gorgeous city—characters with whom the audience identifies—suddenly put a foot through the damp, rotted ground to be confronted by the reality both of the world they live in and the people they are.

[ariaste]

49 for the writer asks

This is now the third time i have to answer this question because like an idiot i keep going, “oh, refresh my dash” and then like, “....that wasn’t my dash you fuckhead”

here we go.

49. Favorite fictional world?

GONNA LIST A FEW:

Because I fucking love Venice: Camorr (Gentleman Bastards) but also Bellezza (City of Masks). The latter was a book I read when I was about 14, and it made me imprint on Venice as somewhere fantastical and not-quite-of-this-world, which turned out to be absolutely true. I went to Venice in 2014 and it is exactly like it is in the books.

Discworld and the world all KJ Parker’s books are set in: Why are these grouped together when Pratchett and Parker are such wildly dissimilar writers? Because they took Tolkien’s “hi my name is john and i really like worldbuilding, let me show u all fifteen of my binders and scrapbooks. wat u doing? try to leave? I locked all the doors” and made it COOL and ENGAGING. In Pratchett and Parker, the nations are almost characters themselves because of how much we know about them and how much we see them interact with each other. GEOPOLITICS WOOOOO. Apparently this was an influence on me because I’m doing the same thing now with most if not all of the books I’m writing. 

Barrayar from Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. A planet with medieval morals and social systems, but with access to scifi technology. IT’S FEUDALISM IN SPACE, GUYS, WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE?

(Writer ask meme! Send me some! I’m bored and procrastinating!!)

[galpalbrielle]

Original Stories

Graveworlds (Set in a future where the expansion of the human race has resulted in too many dead to bury on Earth and as a result, planets unsuitable for large scale colonisation are designated as graveworlds, planet wide graveyards. On Thanatos, one of the largest graveworlds, the caretaker, a schizophrenic woman, begins experiencing bizarre phenomena and has to struggle between what is her illness and what is horrifyingly real. The end reveal is that because of the overwhelming amount of dead to living the barrier between the two realms has weakened whereas on Earth it is balanced. Culminates in her crossing the barrier properly and becoming a lich, creating a new galactic power.)

Untitled Post Apocalyptic Story (In a world torn apart by a magical cataclysm, magical beings and spell casters are hated and reviled as old prejudices are reignited. A trans mercenary stumbles into the town of Salem, one of many havens for magical folk. She meets an eclectic cast of characters and begins to find a home. May include a more elaborate story about her being linked to the disaster.)

Untitled Urban Fantasy Story (Set in the same world as the previous idea but pre cataclysm, it is a world where magic and technology are irrevocably intertwined. Follows a private detective in a film noir style narrative.)

Untitled High Fantasy Story (The gods are dying and one young priestess is “chosen” to solve the mystery by a vision. Accompanied by the mercenary her superior at her temple forced her to hire, she sets out on a quest to unravel who is killing gods and why, but even more importantly, how.)

Superhero Universe (See it's own post for more info.)

Untitled High Fantasy Story (In a venice like city, a young member of a religious order tries to stop a growing conflict aided by the princess of the cities royal family. Includes masks inhabited by souls of the dead, steampunk elements, districts guarded by undead that patrol the canals around them and drag trespassers back into the water to take their place in the eternal march.)

Untitled High Fantasy Story (Set in a world of sky whales, forests that walk and fairies, a young girl accidentally bonds herself to a monster in a desperate escape from a city besieged and subsequently finds herself assuming the mantle of the last of a line of ancient heroes.)

Untitled Scifi Story (In the distant future Arkengaard, an artifical planet is built as a research station at the edge of all known space in an effort to explore and experiment upon the boundaries of reality itself. However, Nietzche's words prove true and eldritch horrors are unleashed, eventually destroying Arkengaard. The survivors, naming themselves Arkengaurdians, turn to the limits of science to turn themselves into equal horrors to stop the threat.)

Untitled Contemporary Story (In a small town in Australia, a young trans girl struggles to cope with her sister's suicide and her growing crush on a girl at school.)

Untitled Urban Fantasy Story (Autistic girl finds an angel tied in the basement of the church she frequents as an escape from her regular life. They strike up a fast friendship which develops into something more but when she frees the angel, she finds that she has unwittingly opened a pandora's box of horrors as the demon that lurked in the church attempts to reclaim its prize. There is more to this and I had a complicated plot that I really liked but I can't recall the details.)

[micaramel]

Artist: Maria Loboda

Venue: Thomas Schulte, Berlin

Exhibition Title: Woman observing the Alpha Persei Cluster

Date: November 16 – January 11, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artist and Thomas Schulte, Berlin. Photos by Stefan Haehnel.

Press Release:

Galerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to present Woman observing the Alpha Persei Cluster, Maria Loboda’s first exhibition project with the gallery. In her site-specific installation, Loboda responds to the spatial parameters of the exhibition space and its history. Drawing inspiration from the findings of an ancient Egyptian burial site, 1920s Cubist architecture, a 1970s international SciFi comic book hit and a 60 million year old gigantic stellar constellation the artist creates a multilayered, transhistorical environment in which different aspects and meanings come into view in relation to changes and shifts in perspective of visitors and passersby.

The title for Loboda’s installation is taken from a caption found below a photograph in a newspaper, “Woman observing…,” which inspired the artist to make the unknown female observer—who ambiguously can also be read as the artist herself—look or marvel at something gigantic like the Alpha Persei Cluster. This cluster of stars in the stellar constellation Perseus is between 50 and 70 million years old. The Alpha Persei, the biggest and brightest of the stars, is 56 times larger than the sun. Loboda in her installation domesticates the colossal natural phenomenon from outer space and integrates it into her large wall drawing of an architectural interior.

Viewed from afar, the architectural drawing The interior, left alone, transforming itself, which has been air brushed onto the wall, dominates the view. The drawing is based on a 1920s architectural sketch by Robert Mallet Stevens (1886-1945) and patterns of the same era by the interior designer Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933). Spread across the two perpendicular walls, the modernist interior becomes spatially distorted, while at the same time and in contrast to the original drawing, Loboda’s interior shows signs of abandonment and decay.

Opposite the drawing, the work Some mysteries have no clues, three stainless steel cups, which the artist had forcefully crushed, adorn the two pillars. They are influenced by the so-called Ringlemere Cup, a golden vessel from the Bronze Age found in England in 2001 that was acquired by the British Museum. The weight of the soil, which buried the cup for centuries, slowly led to its destruction and left it folded in on itself enhancing its unique beauty.

Inside her interior, Loboda presents her new work The chair of Hetepheres, Mother of Khufu. The seat, legs and backrest of the chair consist of interwoven, irregular tree roots. The work is a reproduction of the so-called “Naturstuhl” (nature chair) by Karl Gräser (1875-1920), who was one of the co-founders of the Monte Verità community on a hill in the Swiss canton Ticino, which in the early Twentieth century became the home for different Utopian movements and an artist colony. Loboda appropriates Gräser’s back-to-nature design and places it in the context of the history of the ancient Egyptian queen Hetepheres. Hetepheres’ funerary chamber, which was discovered in 1925, mysteriously did not contain her mummy, but several pieces of furniture, including an armchair. Her burial site was found near the great pyramid of Giza, built during the reign of her son Khufu and the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Another work decorating the space is a 1920s marble desk set bearing the traces of a deer or a gazelle. Loboda has engraved the prints of the animal’s hooves on its surface to create an artificial petrosomatoglyph, the natural shape of footprint carved into rock, whose symbolism is used in religious and secular ceremonies in many cultures around the world. The word gazelle is derived from the Arabic word ghazāl, which also describes a type of love poem, which originates in the 7th century and centers on the themes of love and separation.

In the centre of the room there is a chair and a table with medieval armored gloves and antique greaves. Next to them there are several copied comic books, for example some editions of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal), a comic book anthology of science fiction and horror stories, published between 1975 and 1987. During the opening, the Corner Space will become a platform for a happening with the title A goon for hire, when a friend of the artist will inhabit the space, temporarily embodying both the role of the “Woman observing…” and of Hetepheres. Dressed up wearing a piece of medievalist body armor, the performer will sit in the chair, reading and enjoying the books and comics.

With her dialectical and egalitarian approach to history, Loboda creates works, which play with scale in relation to time and space, both on a physical and a mental level. Evoking ancient and mysterious histories and colossal natural phenomena and architectural sites as well as domestic and mundane scenes and narratives, the artist with her installation transforms the exhibition space into a decaying bourgeois interior, burial chamber, living room and archaeological site, oscillating between interior and exterior, nature and culture, macrocosm and microcosm.

Maria Loboda, born in 1979 in Krakow, Poland, studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt a.M., where between 2003 and 2008 she was a student of Mark Leckey. From 2015 to 2016, she taught as a guest lecturer at Hochschule der Bildenden Künste, Zurich. Loboda’s wide-ranging exhibition activities encompass the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Taipei Biennial (2014), and documenta 13 (2012). Important solo exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a.M. (2018/19), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2019), Kunsthalle Basel (2017), Institut d’art contemporain, Villeur-banne (2017), The Power Plant, Toronto (2016), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012). Furthermore, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Contemporary Art Center, Singapore (2018), MADRE, Naples (2018), Modern Art Oxford (2016), Sprengel Museum Hannover (2015), Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2015), Ludlow 38, New York (2012), MMK in Frankfurt, a.M. (2010). Loboda lives and works in Berlin.

Link: Maria Loboda at Thomas Schulte

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2QbCWzy

[papercatsblog-blog]

Hi friends! So, since my blog posts have been a little short and boring lately, and will be short and boring in November too, I thought I would do something fun. I stole a bookshelf tag from YouTube. I hope you like it! 

1. How many bookshelves do you have? I have two book cases and a few random shelves. One is a Billy bookcase from Ikea which holds a majority of my books. That one is in the dining room. On the mantle in the dining room, I have a few signed books, some coffee table type books, and my two crusty old Shakespeare volumes. I have a smaller bookcase in the living room, and my desk has two little cubby shelves that I use to hold a few books that I keep on hand for work purposes. I have copies of whatever book I’m talking about in my next podcast for reference, some grammar guides, and books that I love in terms of prose so I can look at how a certain writer does x, y, z, like dialogue or opening sentences or whatever. I also have some TBR books on the bottom shelf but I might need to relocate it because it’s full of books that aren’t actually on my TBR, lol. It’s more like overflow.

2. How many books you think you have? I’ve got 326 physical books, and 118 eBooks for a total of  444! What a satisfying number!!

3. How do you organize your books? When we moved into our house, I just sort of threw them onto the bookcases, hahaha. There’s no rhyme or reason. One of my shelves is Harry Potter and Tolkien books ONLY. I also have a shelf that’s slowly becoming a home for Wheel of Time and other fantasy series I love or plan on reading for the podcast.

4. What is the oldest book on your bookshelf? I have a copy of The Merchant of Venice and a copy Julius Cesar of from 1911. I got them at the thrift store for $5.

5. What is the newest book on your bookshelf? I just got my copy of Killing Comendatore by Haruki Murakami today. It came out October 9th. It doesn’t get newer than that!

6. What is the longest book on your bookshelf? Definitely Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s 1047ish pages, the pages themselves are quite big and the font size is tiny. I haven’t read it yet but I might have time like… when I’m retired. Hahaha.

7. What is the shortest book on your bookshelf? Oh Cats by Nola Buck. It’s probably like 25 words long and most of those words are “cat” or “cats,” haha.

8. What is the predominant genre on your bookshelf? I’d like to say it’s fantasy but more than likely it’s classics/19th-20th century fiction. There are a lot of books from my college courses still on my bookshelves and I still really enjoy reading those same authors and their peers. Fantasy is definitely second and scifi is third.

9. Have you done a bookshelf tour? I actually stole this tag from YouTube and since I’m not a YouTuber no one wants to look at just pictures of every book I have. You can do that in this blog haha.

10. Go on a random number generator and talk about the book that corresponds with that number.  I got #88. The 88th book on my big shelf is The Once and Future King by T.H. White. I got it at Half Price Books quite a while ago and it was once owned by someone named Karishma B., who wrote their name everywhere on it.

11. Do you have fan merch or any other decorations on your bookshelf? Yes, tons! I have a few pop figures, some dragon and wizard type things, Bernie Bott’s every flavored beans, etc. You can see everything on my book shelf pictures.

12. Show us your bookshelf! OKAY! 🙂

13. Tag someone. I only have one blogger friend that I care about, and that is Sam! I’d love to see your answers.

Thanks!

Bookshelf Tag Hi friends! So, since my blog posts have been a little short and boring lately, and will be short and boring in November too, I thought I would do something fun.

[genocidehero]

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A post shared by Akira Awangga (@akiraxlegend)

Work, concerts, getting tattooed, travelling overseas, outdoor sports activities, parties and repeat. Thats all i do these days. Living life in the fast lane, You can chill when you're dead. Here is my other sleeve progress if anyone interested. If not fuck you then lol. Halfway through.. continuing rapidly once im back from Venice next month. Yiewwwww 🤘 because life is metal. Cheers to this legend @mcgtattoo #djent #newschooltattoo #coloredtattoo #malmö #spacetattoo #comictattoo #tattoo #tatuering #neoncolors #tatueringmalmö #malmötattoo #fullsleevetattoo #sleevetattoo #tatovering #spacemonkey #80s #alien #walker #vintagecomics #halfsleevetattoo #tato #tattoos #scifi #livinglifeinthefastlane (at One Floor Down Tattoo)