A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the dangerous gap between Wall Street and Main Street in America, (10:22) high-speed science—new research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. (21:00) And, casual sex is out, companionship is in.
Monthly Archives: May 2020
Interviews: 86-Year Old British Author Michael Frayn – “Magic Mobile”
British author, playwright and translator Michael Frayn is best known for his farcical comedy ‘Noises Off’ and ‘Copenhagen’, which details a 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.
He is also a translator of Russian and has written several English translations of Chekhov. He spoke to us about his prolific career and his latest book, ‘Magic Mobile’.
With the whole world at the touch of your finger – why ever leave the imaginary realm of your mobile phone? This book of short comedic vignettes might give you a reason ―Magic Mobile is the latest offering of comic genius from Michael Frayn, award-winning author of the plays Noises Off and Copenhagen and novels The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, and Headlong.
Interviews: American Poet & Writer Cynthia Zarin On Her New Book “Two Cities”
A conversation with the acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin that transports us to two of her favorite cities, Venice and Rome, in a celebration of Italy as the country begins to loosen the longest coronavirus-related lockdown in Europe. The episode features evocative readings from her forthcoming book,Two Cities, which captures the meditative yet constantly surprising nature of travel from a deeply personal point of view.
From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on two cities, Venice and Rome—each a work of art, both a monument to the past—and on how love and loss shape places and spaces.
Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.
The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.
ekphrasis
Dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes the ekphrasis series is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.
Cynthia Zarin
Cynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Orbit (2017), as well as five books for children and a collection of essays, An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History (2013). Her honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Zarin teaches at Yale University.
Travel & Culture Videos: “Ethiopia – Natural Utopia” By Florence Lepavec (2020)
Filmed and Edited: Florence Lepavec
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Ethiopia, the ‘Roof of Africa’, the ’Cradle of Humanity’, the ‘Promised Land of Zion’…
It had been already given quite many designations.
Another one I also heard before going there for the first time, was ‘Ethiopia, the Africa for Beginners’. ??
Was it because, for the most part, Ethiopians are genuinely friendly, generous and rather naturally relax?
Was it because, as occidentals, we share a common religious identity, rooted in mutual values? Was it because
it is mainly safe for travellers?
For whatever reason it was, I did find the expression suiting me right down to the ground because apart
from Morocco, I had not yet stepped foot in deep Africa.
And actually, now that I am back, I could personally add another title: ‘Ethiopia, the Natural Utopia’.
Is that for its breath-taking Nature? For its colourful Spiritual Identity? For its beautiful People?
Or is that for all of these?
For this abundant land offering an incredible diversity of eco-systems and landscapes, going from arid
desert regions to Afroalpine up-lands breaking down into vertiginous abyss. A land combining peaks reaching
above 4000m and depressions as low as 125m below sea level. Mountains, forests, lakes, meadows, deserts and swamplands.
A diversity also found in the fauna, with some interesting endemic species like the Gelada, the red-hearted baboon
-a peaceful grass-heater with impressive canines.
Or either, for this fascinating primal religious form of Christianity, tinged with animist rituals and colourful arts.
A religious belief deeply infused into the People living according to spiritual principles and values. People trying
their best to give you their best. Everywhere I went, I left it with brothers and sisters. With a sense of home given
by their genuine gentleness and education and their natural sensitive and respectful nature, in deep connection with
Nature Itself. I left with lots of good memories and friends. Filled with Humanity.
The same Humanity our ancestor ‘Lucy’ and her siblings might have been creating some 3.2 million years ago, on the same lands.
On this antic land rich of a unique history and culture.
Those are all the reasons why I called my Ethiopia, ‘the Natural Utopia’: a land that potentially possesses
ideal (or perfect) qualities for People…
Timelapse Travel Videos: “Genesis 8K – Discover Japan” By Daisuke Shimizu
Filmed and Edited by: Daisuke Shimizu
Discover Japan Series 3nd: This is an 8K Timelapse and Hyperlapse video that I shot in Japan for about two years. Japan has experienced many earthquakes, disasters, and wars. And we have overcome the challenges each time. And now I’m being influenced by COVID-19. Japan is moving toward a new era. I expressed this feeling as an 8K image.
International Podcasts: Switzerland Eases Its Lockdown Restrictions
Monocle 24 checks in on Switzerland’s plans to further ease coronavirus restrictions and ask whether the country is setting an example that others should follow.
Plus: the weekend’s newspapers and top stories. From Milan: Salone highlights, interviews and a daily running guide.
Top Design Books: “Studio Gang Architecture” (2020)
The most in-depth exploration of one of the most important, innovative, and creative architecture practices working today.
For the last twenty years Studio Gang, led by Jeanne Gang, has created bold, visionary architecture that engages the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time. This first comprehensive monograph brings together 25 signature projects-from the award-winning Aqua Tower and Writers Theatre to highly-anticipated upcoming buildings for the American Museum of Natural History and O’Hare International Airport-to reveal the resonant concepts and design approach that connect them. With a rich variety of visual materials and short essays by Jeanne Gang, the book elegantly captures the creative sensibility and trajectory of an architecture driven by pressing twenty-first-century questions.
Studio Gang is an international architecture and urban design practice founded and led by Jeanne Gang. A recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture and numerous other honors, the Studio works as a collective to create projects that foster interaction and connection. Their research-based, interdisciplinary approach has produced award-winning buildings across scales and typologies as well as publications and exhibitions that push design’s ability to effect positive change.
Interviews: Travel Guru “Rick Steves” (NYT Podcast)
Rick Steves is a travel evangelist, always in motion, traversing faraway places and inspiring others to do the same. So when the world shuts down, and Rick Steves can no longer travel, then who is Rick Steves?
Sam Anderson, a writer for The Times Magazine, profiled the travel guru last year. Today, Sam asks Rick how he’s been expanding his horizons from home. Dreaming of travel, we learn, is nearly as sweet as the real thing.
Top Literary Catalogs: “Johns Hopkins University Press – Winter 2020”
Art History: “Auguste Rodin – The Father Of Modern Sculpture”
From Christie’s online magazine (May 2020):
Rodin travelled to Italy in 1875, a trip described by the late art historian Kirk Varnedoe as, ‘one of the seminal events in modern art’.
Here, in his mid-thirties, he fell under the spell of the Renaissance master, Michelangelo. His monumental, exaggerated nude figures would have a deep and lasting influence on the artist. ‘My liberation from academicism was via Michelangelo,’ Rodin later recalled. ‘He is the bridge by which I passed from one circle to another.’
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is renowned for breathing life into clay, creating naturalistic, often vigorously modelled sculptures which convey intense human emotions: love, ecstasy, agony or grief. Breaking the rules of academic convention and classical idealism, Rodin ushered in a new form of highly expressive sculpture that went on to influence generations of artists that followed.
Read full article at Christie’s
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