Politics
29th October 2024
Dutch artist Jonas Staal's new book on the pending Climate Catastrophe continues his concerns about propaganda - the good and the bad of it; reveals who are the culprits planning to exploit and profit from it and what the rest of us can do about it. Johnny Rodger reviews and puts it in the context of Staal's broad politically-committed artistic oeuvre.
29th October 2024
Since their first gig two years ago, Glasgow band The Tenementals have played solidly round the city and elsewhere to full houses and released several singles. With a line up of eight musicians, and sometimes more, they sing the history of Glasgow into being and conjure up the glories and the disasters, and the pride and the shame of it before the citizens. Norry Wilson of Lost Glasgow will introduce them on stage at the launch of the first album in Oran Mor on Wednesday 27th November. Here he tells us why he is delighted to present them on the occasion of the release of their first major recording. (plus free track!)
1st September 2024
The film Orlando: My Political Biography only went into cinemas in general release here this summer, so, although it was first shown at the EIFF in August 2023, it seems to be up for discussion again. The gender issue(s) is/are, indeed, still way up on the social agenda - as Johnny Rodger puts it, 'We are all on our social stages ... all in our social cages'. Preciado's openly self-constructed cage is a particularly intricate one, and he inhabits it with his own peculiar and provocative panache.
8th June 2024
What has been the scope of bigotry, racism, oppression and prejudice? Owen Dudley Edwards telescopes a whole history of the entanglement of those evils with the struggle for freedom, justice and truth into a compassionate and humane reading (and most importantly, an Irish reading) of the cornering and silencing of Diane Abbott, who was the first ever black woman elected to the Westminster Parliament.
7th February 2024
Putting the writing and rewriting of state affairs by politicians in a long and broadly detailed context, Owen Dudley Edwards wonders if 'The self-destruction of the would-be partisan is becoming a literary form in UK political life'? Reviews of new books by Theresa May, Chris Bryant and Rory Stewart.
14th October 2023
In all campaigns and struggles with authorities it is important that the process is documented and made accessible so that lessons can be learned. This is no mere footnote to the struggle of the Wyndford Residents Union to save their homes from the wrecking ball. They commissioned Fraser/Livingstone Architects to produce a Report on the condition of the estate to respond to those reports produced by the authorities. We're delighted to reproduce that Report here with an introduction/preface by Malcolm Fraser.
29th July 2023
What can an artist do when faced with another war? Engage as a war artist ... that is, stand by and reveal the horror? But surely, art always challenges the neutral? Artists make things that engage with ideas and situations. Michail Mersinis proposes a repurposing of the instruments of war to make sensitive participatory gestures that constitute a respite from the language of war and hate. The tragedy is happening in Ukraine now -but is it even possible to act innocently?
9th May 2023
Scotland's foremost Irish historian and Ireland's finest Jockstorian, Owen Dudley Edwards, finds a textless chronicle of the farcical and chaotic politics of Jockland in the 2020s. It's to be sung swiftly, though it's no song of Solomon. The rulers from Laputa assume they have (in the jargon of the period) 'taken back control', but none of them can actually determine where Jockland is, or if it even exists ...
COALITION OF WATERS:
On Wounded Bodies in Capitalistic Time
Rupali Patil & Agnieszka Kilian