Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (March 24, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Claire Lowdon of The Rachel Paper at fifty; @Veidlinger on the Holocaust; @margarettelinc1 on Defoe’s letters; @_RachelHandley on Murdoch, Foot, Midgley & Anscombe; new poems by Bidhu Padhi and @otium_Catulle – and more.
The cherry blossom trees are without a doubt the stars of springtime in Washington, DC. Visit the District during this time and you’ll find the nation’s capital is accented in pink for the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which takes place from March 18 – April 16, 2023.
March 22, 2023: Two Asian leaders visit countries at war: China’s Xi Jinping is in Moscow, while Japan’s Fumio Kishida travels to Kyiv.
We ask what this reveals about how Asia views the conflict. Plus: the new Brexit deal faces its first parliamentary test in the UK and why the demand for transatlantic travel is soaring to record levels.
On the second day of the Chinese leader’s state visit in Moscow, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin declared an enduring economic partnership, in an effort to insulate their countries from punitive Western measures.
As the Federal Reserve reviews the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, and Congress prepares for hearings, bank oversight is getting a closer look.
After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by. The nation of grinding hardship has increasingly become one of haves and have-nots.
Irvo Otieno’s death was a devastating ending to a journey that began when his family immigrated from Kenya when he was a young boy, “compelled by the American dream.”
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the 1970s Clifftop House 00:26 – The Location and The History 00:56 – Clifftop Views 01:14 – A Walkthrough of the Home 01:53 – Experiencing Everything Nature Has to Offer 02:08 – The Materials 03:18 – A Personal Project for the Owners 03:57 – The Landscape 04:18 – A Restoration Project not a Redesign
Located in Studley Park, Melbourne, the 1970s clifftop house showcased original architecture that could not be replicated. However, desiring a respectful and modern update the clients chose to collaborate with Architects EAT, who agreed that retaining Stawell House’s character was important. While also taking on the role of project managers, the owners were able to maintain an intimate and collaborative throughout the entire process of restorations. Overlooking the Yarra River, the 1970s clifftop house asserts itself as part of the landscape blending effortlessly into the topography.
As the house tour begins, Stawell House’s modern renovations unfold like a sincere love letter to its original form. Beginning from the façade, the red brick home references the traditional build, yet once the door opens modern uplifts begin to take centre stage. After a linear skylight leads onto the kitchen and dining space, guests and owners make way to the balcony, which overlooks the west. Additionally, a spare bedroom and bathroom and the master bedroom have been installed on the entrance level to allow the owners ease of movement from private rooms to the public spaces.
Located downstairs, the guest room has been built with an ensuite containing an outdoor bathtub allowing the guest to fully experience the elements. To deal with the effects of a west-facing house, the architects have delivered a range of architectural devices which includes external steel shading. The external materials used for the 1970s clifftop house provide a weather resistance while also maintaining a tree like appearance to fit in with the surrounds. Honouring the original layout of the home, the floorplan remains wide as to allow an ease of movement and living.
Furthermore, timber cladding has been heavily featured on the internal walls and windows. Taken from the original home, the timber has been painstakingly removed, sanded and oiled again before re-use. Managing the entire construction process themselves, the owners work closely with the builders and trades to deliver personal modern updates to the 1970s clifftop house. Showing Architects EAT a range of design inspirations found in magazines, the owners were able to collaborate and create a home that reflects their personalities.
Additionally, the owner has also worked on the landscape, adding a deep personal touch that will grow with the home. Focused more on restoration rather than redesign, Architects EAT have worked closely with the owners and the trades to create a defining home for the modern age.
K11 Musea, Hong Kong – From the subway yards and parking lots of 1970s New York, K11 MUSEA’s third annual Art Karnival welcomes China’s largest street art exhibition, ‘City As Studio’!
Bleeding the city with the heart and soul of the art form, we take the plunge into the world of spray paint, tags, and throw-ups that steered a global cultural movement. Presented by K11 MUSEA and K11 Art Foundation, curated by “Champion of Graffiti and Street Art” Jeffrey Deitch,the exhibition brings the extensive history and evolution of street art to the people,
Over 100 works showcase the visions of more than 30 artists, including some of the most recognisable names of the medium — from veterans Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and FUTURA, to young bloods KAWS, AIKO, and more.
“The pictures are a documentation of the brutality within the conflict itself. It’s about civilians and civilian casualties because they are the ones hit the hardest. “
Grarup is convinced that the ongoing war in Ukraine will mark the beginning of a new area that will isolate Russia from the Western World for generations to come: “I have been covering wars and conflicts for the last 35 years – just about every conflict you can imagine. In many ways, the brutality of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is second to none. But the war in Ukraine comes really, really close. It’s basically a country which is desiring democracy and freedom and independence – and because of that, its people are killed.”
Grarups also reflects upon his feelings covering the war, such as his general discomfort with silence as “you can be sure that something is about to happen.” On the other hand, he sees the necessity to document the war for future generations and the possible prosecution of war crimes. “What I like about black-and-white photography is its timelessness. We think in our part of the world that the world has changed, developed, and moved far away from what we have seen historically.
But the fact is: It hasn’t. It’s still the same atrocities. It’s still the same victims.” Jan Grarup was born in Denmark in 1968 and is today regarded as one of the leading and most experienced war photographers globally. Already in 1991, the year of his graduation, he won the prestigious Danish Press Photographer of the Year Award, a prize he would receive on several further occasions. In 1993, he moved to Berlin for a year, working as a freelance photographer for Danish newspapers and magazines. Afterwards, Grarup covered many wars and conflicts worldwide, including the Gulf War, the Rwandan genocide, the siege of Sarajevo and the Palestinian uprising against Israel in 2000.
His coverage of the conflict between Palestine and Israel led to two series: The Boys of Ramallah, which earned him the Pictures of the Year International World Understanding Award in 2002, followed by The Boys from Hebron. His book, Shadowland (2006), presents his work during the 12 years he spent in Kashmir, Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Rwanda, Kosovo, Slovakia, Ramallah, Hebron, Iraq, Iran, and Darfur. In the words of Foto8’s review, it is “intensely personal, deeply felt, and immaculately composed.”
His second book, Darfur: A Silent Genocide, was published in 2009. In 2017 he released the prizewinning bestseller And Then There Was Silence. He is currently working on a follow-up called While We Bleed with Danish author Adam Holm about the war in Ukraine. Jan Grarup has won numerous prizes for his dedicated work, for example eight World Press Awards, the Pictures of the Year International World Understanding Award, the UNICEF Children Photo of the Year Award, Visa d’Or, Leica Oskar Barnack Award, to mention a few of the more prestigious ones. Jan Grarup was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The interview took place at the Danish War Museum in March 2023 on the occasion of Grarup’s exhibition One Year With War. Camera: Jakob Solbakken Edited by: Helle Pagter Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Orion Magazine (Spring 2023) – THIS ISSUE features exclusively works in or about translation, engaging with over twenty-five languages across six continents.
The Northern Mariana Islands lie in a crescent moon south-southeast of Japan. At the lower point is Guåhan, also known as Guam, an island that is geologically part of the same volcanic chain but that set itself apart by becoming an unincorporated U.S. territory instead of remaining part of the Commonwealth.
BANZEIRO—THIS IS WHAT THE PEOPLE of the Xingu call places where the river grows savage. Where, if you’re lucky, you can make it through; where, if you’re not, you can’t. It is a place of danger between where you’re coming from and where you want to go.
Our Spring 2023 issue speaks to the language of nature and features works in or about translation. Here, Orion staffers and friends pulled together a list of their favorite fiction and nonfiction books that in some way reflect this literature of etymology.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This slim fantastical novel reads like an incantation. Set in rural late-19th century Iceland, its braided, lyrical, fugue-like narrative is tender and electric. Here we find a cruel priest named after a monster, trapped in an ice cave, raving at a dead fox. But too, a kindly herbalist burying his friend with her feather collection—a young woman with Down syndrome who spoke a language of her own—who he rescued from an unthinkable fate. This was my first encounter reading Sjón, who is apparently so big in his home country he doesn’t need a last name, but the book’s otherworldliness made perfect sense when I learned he writes lyrics for Björk. This one will haunt me for a while.
Simon and Schuster
In Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist, naming becomes an imposition, an attempt at order and, sometimes, hierarchy. In this book—part memoir, part biography—Miller is searching for a reason to keep living, a sense of order in a chaotic world, and she does so by looking to a taxonomist who spent his life naming the creatures under the sea: David Starr Jordan.
March 21, 2023: The Zoo Zürich is a zoo located in Zürich, Switzerland and is considered one of the best zoos in Europe. Opened in 1929, it is the third oldest zoo in Switzerland and it accumulated a collection of 2,200 specimens of 300 species by its seventy-fifth year.
The over 90-year-old Zurich Zoo lies in an idyllic location on the Zürichberg, in the city’s Fluntern quarter. The zoo is located high above the rooftops of Zurich, surrounded by greenery, yet can still be reached quickly and easily from the city center.
Approximately 4,000 animals representing 380 different species live at Zurich Zoo. The oldest resident is Nigrita, a Galapagos giant turtle. She is over 70 years old and has been living at the zoo since 1946.
Filmed on March 18, 2023 by Jeka Kiriloff
March 21, 2023: What’s next for Emmanual Macron after Monday’s no-confidence votes?
Plus: a look at the latest market turbulence after the Credit Suisse deal, how Greece was trying to attract new business opportunities at this year’s Mipim property trade fair and how Finns have reacted to the news that their country has been ranked the world’s happiest for the sixth year running.
Boomers Daily 
