nextevent

Is there an art to living?
Speaker: Mark Vernon Date: Tuesday 23rd February 2010
Is there an art to living?

Can we practice philosophy as an art of living, who should our inspiration be, and why does it matter?

Details »

recentblogging

Emancipation from What by Whom?

     I've been reading a fair bit of radical pedagogy (Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux etc) of late and seeing the word "emancipation" so many times that it started sticking out of the page and looking wrong. Then I read something in, of all places, Huddleston & Pullum that I think made sense of it for me.
Posted on 2009-12-18 09:52:44 in This Sentence No Verb

Coming up in 2010

     We've got some great speakers and topics scheduled for 2010. The calendar is filling up fast and here's a taste of what we've got planned.
Posted on 2009-11-14 12:11:06 in SitRep

An hallucinogenic lecture on London history

     Robert Kingham and Rich Cochrane will be putting on another performance of Align on 22 January 2010 at the Bridewell Theatre in London.
Posted on 2009-11-14 12:39:55 in SitRep

Reminder: What is psychogeography today?

     Rich Cochrane will be giving a talk about pychogeography at Housmans Bookshop tomorrow. Where: 5 Caledonian Road, King's Cross, London N1 9DX When: Saturday 7 November
Posted on 2009-11-06 09:13:22 in SitRep

Deptford Pastoral

     Yesterday we walked the lower half of the Ravensbourne River in South East London, recording our impressions as we went.
Posted on 2009-11-01 08:14:11 in This Sentence No Verb

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel

     Back in the summer Clare, her brother Mark and I visited the foot tunnel to take some photographs. There had been sometimes over-egged stories about the tunnel's scheduled closure for works over the next year and our main intention was to document some of the details of the fabric of the place, not knowing how much might be "improved" when it re-opened.
Posted on 2009-10-26 09:21:22 in This Sentence No Verb

A date for your diary

     This year's Big Ideas Christmas Social will be held on Tuesday 15th December. You probably don't want to think about Christmas festivities yet, but just take a moment to put this date in your diary and then you can forget about it all until December.
Posted on 2009-10-18 06:29:24 in SitRep

What is psychogeography today?

     Rich Cochrane will be giving a talk about pychogeography at Housmans Bookshop, London's premier radical bookstore, at 5pm on Saturday 7 November. Admission is free.
Posted on 2009-10-18 09:09:40 in SitRep

Get hooked up with a Greek

     Kind of like a philosophical dating agency, this system from Mark Vernon finds your perfect match in ancient Greek philosophy. I've been matched with Zeno of Citium who, given the stoic
Posted on 2009-10-18 11:01:40 in nathan @ big ideas

Is the Theism Debate a Class Conflict?

     I ask because Andrew Brown has claimed it is in his CiF blog, and atheism campaigner Ariane Sherine has strongly disagreed. CiF Belief is an engine that runs on this debate, but it's an angle I hadn't thought of before so I thought it was worth chewing over.
Posted on 2009-10-11 10:34:02 in This Sentence No Verb

Modernism As Coping Mechanism; Postmodernism As Shopping

     Reading yet again that the fractured forms of the twentieth century avant gardes were a response to the traumas of the first world war, I'm moved to wonder (a) why anyone thinks this is worth saying, since everyone knows it, and (b) why anyone thinks it's right.
Posted on 2009-09-20 12:35:09 in This Sentence No Verb

An Ackroydian pub crawl

     Back by popular demand, Robert Kingham is reprising his London pub crawl inspired by the writings of Peter Ackroyd on 24 October.
Posted on 2009-09-20 05:48:28 in SitRep

It's Just A Theory

     I've heard the phrase "just a theory" applied in a few different contexts in recent weeks and thought it might be worth teasing out what we mean by "a theory" and what that little modifier "just" might mean.
Posted on 2009-09-19 14:21:03 in This Sentence No Verb

The book-free library

     I'm sitting in the new Shepherds Bush Library. Modern libraries don't really do books. Books are certainly knocking around the place, but you get the sense that they serve as waiting room literature rather than the core purpose of the place.
Posted on 2009-09-07 13:12:36 in nathan @ big ideas

The Hirst-Cartrain Incident

     As far as I can tell, here's what happened. Last year, a teenager calling himself (or possibly herself) Cartrain made some collages that included images of work by artist Damian Hirst. Somehow or other, they ended up on the 100artworks site. Hirst was not amused.
Posted on 2009-09-06 16:02:16 in This Sentence No Verb

On Caroline Bergvall and Visual Poetry

     Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation I just discovered a recording of Caroline Bergvall reading "Via", a poem composed entirely of English translations of the first line of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Posted on 2009-09-04 06:31:04 in This Sentence No Verb

Rich's Oulipo Laboratory

     This Sunday, 30 August, Rich Cochrane will be running a highly interactive session on Oulipo techniques for writers at the Treehouse Gallery in Regent’s Park. He’ll encourage participants to experiment with some classic surrealist and Oulipean ideas, create a ‘pataphysical encyclopaedia, solve literary puzzles and write collaborative texts.
Posted on 2009-08-29 03:22:40 in SitRep

What's going on this autumn?

     We have an exciting programme of events this autumn. Coming up over the next three months are...
Posted on 2009-08-28 14:28:01 in SitRep

Oulipo Laboratory: 30 August 2009

     Rich Cochrane will be running a highly interactive session on Oulipo techniques for writers on 30 August at the Treehouse Gallery in Regent's Park.
Posted on 2009-08-20 09:15:35 in The Big Ideas Archive

Melanie Philips Scare Quotes Masterclass

     Just a quickie this, inspired by a Philips missive I came across by accident this morning while looking for something else. The main subject doesn't excite me much: the resignation of the Bishop of Rochester.
Posted on 2009-07-22 08:55:59 in The Big Ideas Archive
Next Page »