Review
23rd December 2020
'Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies', runs the blurb on on Leslie Kerns' book feminist city published by Verso. Writer and housing activist Andrea Gibbons takes a critical read, and ponders on why our cities are still made for and by 'mostly men', and what are the possibilities for other, better cities for all sorts of bodies and beyond the already charted pathways...
20th November 2020
In an exceptional article for the Drouth, Neil Cooper writes to mark the release of Shadow of Fear, the first new album from Cabaret Voltaire for twenty years. The piece is exceptional in its musical profile for The Drouth, its exceptional in its extraordinary length, and also in its personal take on a rock story from Cooper.
27th September 2020
Artists have been adapting their practice to COVID-19 restrictions. In the open, is the Common Guild’s off-site response to the ongoing situation. Six artists have created new audio works designed to be listened to outdoors on headphones during government-sanctioned daily walks. Neil Cooper responds.
12th August 2020
There's been no shortage of big screen entertainment based on the Christian story - especially in the years immediately after 9/11 and the Anglo-American adventure in Iraq. What exactly is/was their appeal and what is the measure of their success? Are they just for the faithful and the fervent? David Robertson surveys the field.
18th July 2020
Powerful personality and polymath par excellence – Patrick Geddes has been plastered with so many labels that it sometimes seems that he’s all but disappeared from public perception. How should we rate Geddes and his work now? R J Morris puts the new critical work by Murdo MacDonald in context.
11th July 2020
For the second year in a row The Turner Prize takes a lurch towards acknowledgment of the collective. Is this democracy in action? Is it a definitive change? Should we rejoice? Or is the change dictated merely by temporary circumstances? Neil Cooper looks at the history and some contemporary realities.
31st May 2020
A new work commissioned from artist Susan Phillipsz was set to open at The Woodland's historic Hamilton Mansion. As the pandemic made the presentation impossible, the artist remade the work as a series of files that can be downloaded for lockdown , Neil Cooper describes the experience.
25th May 2020
How long will the patriarchy last?
-How long have you got?
The universal quality of Butler's work demands, ironically, that you find it, not as some pristine, independent, already perfected example, but as situated in the relational context of, and with all the potential of, your own local world.
Alien of Extraordinary Ability by Gavin Mottram