Full Stop Recommends, Fall 2013 (pt. 2)
“This is the point,” Herzog tells the viewer, gesturing to the 179 meter mark, “where ski-flying becomes inhuman.”
Awakening the Dead: Film and the Technologies of Wonder
Hugo traces a history of movie technology, but it also gestures towards something far more elusive and far-reaching: a modern history of the desire for pictures that come to life.
Full Stop Recommends, Fall 2013 (pt. 1)
“I have no health insurance,” you say, “and there is a hole in my sock.” Let us point you to some novels, short stories and animated gifs that will improve your outlook.
We Always Promise: The Making of Partia e Fortë
Kosovo’s satirical “Strong Party” makes visible the perversion of the nation’s political-ideological status quo.
Like Morrissey, Oscar Wilde views his world with a humorous disdain, raising an eyebrow and a cigarette at its vanities and minor injustices. But, also like Morrissey, he seems to be performing his discontent like a character actor.
When an ordered society depends on maintaining a hierarchy of images, the ability to wield this kind of ironic superposition has a concrete political power.
To focus simply on the immediate costs of NSA spying — deterioration of privacy, tactical inefficacy — is not enough. The destruction of the commons and the privatization of public space is an equal, if not much more serious, danger.
Where Nothing Happens: On the Henry Miller Library
How can the Library sustain its status as an exciting, relevant cultural institution, while remaining a refuge for the peace-seeking?
Sneering Optimism: Jesse Michaels from Operation Ivy to Whispering Bodies
It could be demoralizing, recalling those days from the Excel-induced ennui of my nineteenth floor desk… but Jesse Michaels had grown up into a literary young man, too, and he was still punk as fuck.
Ismail Kadare’s Toolkit: Literature and Transition
He was no Václav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Ai Weiwei. Yet, while not explicitly taking up contrary political positions, he had a literary toolkit that allowed him to scrutinize totalitarian power.