TweetShare In keeping with the ongoing purge of bureaucracy from my life I stumbled across a piece in The Economist from 19th November 1955 (don’t ask how these things happen). It’s a piece by a British naval historian called Northcote Parkinson. Its called Parkinsions Law. He formulated a mathematical equation proving that bureaucracies always grow [...]

TweetShare The Madagascar Institute is an art combine in Brooklyn, New York that specialises in large-scale sculptures and rides, live performances, and guerilla art events. “The Madagascar Institute is a collective of these crazy people who make really cool things and pull off all these ambitious and imaginative ideas. They had a team in the [...]

TweetShare Right. It’s up. I’ve put up a new page in the blog. We’re moving on. In the right direction. What am I talking about? I’m talking about The Trash Culture Revue that we’re producing through mutantspace.ie in June, in Cork, Ireland. New possibilities are gaining momentum, albeit slowly. It’s hard work. Constantly, consistently trying [...]

TweetShare This week has seen another blow. Less money going around means scratching and hustling is getting harder, the shoulders heavier, the pocket lighter. Things are precarious, teetering on the edge and like many working in the arts the pressure is beating down, a force pushing hard, trying to squash me into the ground. Making [...]

TweetShare A blackness has descended when there should only be light. No explanation. No rhyme nor reason. Just thick, heavy clouds, amassing, in ever increasing tones of grey. A cold wind is rising. It’s damp and creeps into every crease. I’m standing, stranded, rooted to the ground, awaiting my fate, not willing myself on to [...]

In my 1st year of taking part in a St. Patricks Day parade myself and my art college friends, along with a remarkable tutor we had, (Martin Folan in case any of you might know him or of him) re-enacted the assassination of JFK in the Limerick St. Patricks Day Parade. We angle – grinded off the roof of an old car, painted the entire body of it in stars and stripes, dressed up two friends as Jackie O and JFK, put on trench coats and photocopied FBI ID cards and went for it. Needless to say the authorities prevented the shooting and JFK made it to the end of the street alive. The following year we wrapped ourselves up in blue cling film…

We live in a world in which creativity is recognised only when it is productive. This notion of cultural production is explored by many modern cultural and political theorists (of which I know little of but will be learning more about when we start a new series of articles on the subject in next months issue) and although for some it is merely an academic theory for many it is a sorry fact of life. It is a damning indictment of the society we live in.

I don’t have the tools to talk about the large political, philosophical, sociological issues of our times. I don’t have the language, the exactness to express that need I have, that desire to explain my frustration with the system in which I live. The control it has over me, the all pervasiveness of it. I am frustrated in my attempts to try and articulate the situation I find myself in – like a baby who knows what they want but can’t say it, can’t be succinct, can only point in the general direction and grunt until someone eventually gets it. I am a babble machine vomiting goobledegook as I try to make my way beyond the shadow of control into the light of freedom.

I was invited to go North in February to see, be part of, help with, a performance week Sinead O’Donnell was curating with others in Belfast. There was to be a Canadian Performance artist one of whom was Paul Couillard. The various Performances, discussions, and collaborations were around the theme “Chaos” A Condition or place of great disorder and confusion and to be held/seen in Belfast’s Catalyst Art Centre, Black box, theatre space, and other Not for Profit Art Spaces.

Hy Mayerson and Sean Corcoran step onboard an Amtrak train in Miami on the 12th of March for a not so ordinary journey. They travel for 30 hours through 11 states covering a distance of over 1500 miles until it reaches New York. The entire journey will be captured on camera. Hy is an experienced videographer and Sean uses photography as a tool of his trade.

a friend recommended a taverna near the famous Minoan ruins at Knossos; we were told to order mezédhes, similar to the Spanish tapas or the Italian antipasto. As the holiday neared its end, we remembered that we had a wedding anniversary to mark and off we went to the Knossos restaurant. As instructed, and with no great expectation, we ordered the mezédhes. We were blown over; this was a truly memorable meal.

Cauliflower is especially plentiful and delicious this time of year. It grows enclosed in its swirling green leaves – and so the head and its undeveloped flowers remain pale (unlike its tan sibling broccoli who grows up near naked). It’s rich in those classically autumnal tastes – milkyness and nuttiness – but is spearheaded by a sweetness which keeps it relevant through spring.

Every month we pick a website to profile. This month it’s againstthegrain.org, a radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. We’re based at the studios of Pacifica station KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California.

This months choice books from our arts blog are; Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction by Ben Highmore, Tribes by Seth Godin, Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage

IN VALOUR would describe their musical style as song based electronica. The duo first met in Sydney where they were members of trip-hop band ‘Kinetic’. Re-acquainted in Jan ’09 they thought they might work on a handful of tracks, but found that their musical connection was still alive and kicking. They took the name ‘IN VALOUR’, and forged their unique sound from a blend of cultures, styles, tastes and experience

An audio story from The Moth on New York. This month Malcom Gladwell speaks of a well-intentioned wedding toast goes horribly awry for a young man and his friends. Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the best sellers “Blink,” “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers,” and “What the Dog Saw”.

Two poems from our resident poet Alan Maguire; Manical Monsters and Urban Gorilla

Let’s make this clear. No ambiguity. Culture has been appropriated and compartmentalised and departmentalised and soon that is all we’ll know. Before long culture will become a facsimile of itself – our knowledge will only extend to what we’re sold, spoonfed. Independent thought will become so marginalised that it will become ineffectual – it will longer play a role in our cultural development and makers who refuse to co-operate will be relentlessly driven to the margins, to the badlands. Unseen, unheard, unimportant.

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can”

The signal tower, elusive behind the brow of the hill, was one feature of the island I had wanted to see. Martello towers have always interested me- it’s their proud replication in so many different parts of their globe coupled with a universal redundancy. From the height of the tower is a full round view of the Bull, Cow and Calf islands, the stump of lighthouse on the latter like a charred log, the Mizen and Sheep’s Head to the south, the Kerry peninsulas to the North, and the Skelligs haunting on the horizon. On such a day it was not hard to imagine the fleets of fresh, white billowing sails floating past in the heyday of the pirates.