Sonic Places: In Conversation with Peter Cusack

In this interview, Recomposing the City co-directors Sarah Lappin and Gascia Ouzounian talk with Peter Cusack about his recent work, reflecting in particular on relationships between sound, sound art, planning processes and urban communities. Cusack, a field recordist and sound artist, has been a leading figure in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies for more than two decades

Recension av Andkjær, Søren, Bentsen, Peter & Ejbye-Ernst, Niels (2009) ”Friluftsliv: Natur, samfund og pædagogik” : Ambitiöst om friluftsliv i Danmark – kanske alltför ambitiöst...

Friluftsliv uppvisar ett uppsving som för många säkert är oväntat men som nog till stor del är i samklang med den skandinaviska tidsandan. Visserligen är det ett i huvudsak urbant fenomen, de senaste årens fokus på fysisk aktivitet, konditionsträning och fitness, aktiviteter som dessutom ofta äger rum inomhus i speciella kommersiellt drivna träningshallar – där är luften inte fri! – men trenden tar sig också uttryck i löpning eller joggning i urbana parkområden eller i lagom tuktad natur i anslutning till städer. Man kan tänka att steget inte skulle vara långt till verkliga naturupplevelser, och, som sagt, det finns ett uppsving. Det nymornade intresset för autentiska naturupplevelser kan säkert också bottna i en civilisationskritisk trend i det tidiga tredje millenniet, vars beståndsdelar spretar på ett sätt som gör det omöjligt att närmare skärskåda företeelsen i detta sammanhang. Istället konstaterar vi att forskningen varit kvick att fånga upp friluftsintresset, vilket inte minst märks i recensionsfloran på den här webbplatsen, som denna gång utvidgas med en recension av Friluftsliv: Natur, samfund og pædagogik av Peter Bentsen, Søren Andkjær och Niels Ejbye-Ernst (Munksgaard Danmark). Erik Backman, som disputerat i ämnet, har läst och recenserar, och han bjuder redaktörerna på många tips till förbättringar inför nästa upplaga av boken.

Arbeitskreis „Repräsentationen“ (Hrsg.): Die ‚andere‘ Familie, Repräsentationskritische Analysen von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2013 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Arbeitskreis „Repräsentationen“ (Hrsg.): Die ‚andere‘ Familie, Repräsentationskritische Analysen von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2013 (497 S.; ISBN 978-3-631-64412-6; 78,95 EUR)

Klaus-Peter Horn / Heidemarie Kemnitz / Winfried Marotzki / Uwe Sandfuchs (Hrsg.): Klinkhardt Lexikon Erziehungswissenschaft, 3 Bände im Schuber, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2011 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Klaus-Peter Horn / Heidemarie Kemnitz / Winfried Marotzki / Uwe Sandfuchs (Hrsg.): Klinkhardt Lexikon Erziehungswissenschaft, 3 Bände im Schuber, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2011 (1.509 S.; ISBN 978-3-8252-8468-8; 99,00 EUR)

Towards Night

Sixty artists explore the nocturnal. Curated by Tom Hammick. The evening hour too gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves. – Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting: A London Adventure, 1930 Towards Night is an exhibition exploring the nocturnal through paintings, prints and drawings by over sixty artists. Drawing on the nineteenth century European Romantic tradition, the show surveys contemporary and historical connections to wonderment and dystopia at dusk, twilight, night and dawn. Towards Night juxtaposes key paintings and prints by Constable, Friedrich, Munch, Nolde, Palmer and Turner, some of the best known visionaries of the Romantic tradition with contemporary artists who work with the transformative aspects of nightfall to convey emotional responses of awe, anxiety and solitude, love and loss, revelry, insomnia, and journey’s end. The exhibition opens with direct and positive responses to the natural world; Marc Chagall’s exotic dreamlike evening in The Poet Reclining (1915) sits close to eighteenth century Indian miniatures depicting brightly painted figures offset against darkening monsoon clouds, and William Crozier’s Balcony at Night, Antibes (2007), of a plant, blue and iridescent against the cool night sky. As the exhibition progresses, the dystopias become darker and more disturbing, and the connections between artists and works intensify: Emma Stibbon’s Rome Aqueduct (2011) takes on a heightened sense of pathos alongside Caspar David Friedrich’s Winter Landscape (1811); Peter Doig’s cinematic Echo Lake (1998) conjures up an increased sense of contemporary angst; and Prunella Clough’s False Flower (1993), a magical tree defying brutalism by growing out of concrete, becomes more miraculous near Night Shift (2015) Nick Carrick’s tomblike high rise. Tom Hammick’s Violetta Alone (2015) and Michael Craig Martin’s Ash Tray (2015), reinforce hedonistic aspects of night-time revelry alongside Four AM, Betsy Dadd’s young woman drinking in the early hours of the morning and L.S. Lowry’s drunken people in a pub in The Crowd (1922). In the final room, a cluster of works explores dreams and insomnia, from Louise Bourgeois’ Spirals (2010) to Munch’s lovers embracing in The Kiss (1902). Tom Hammick, curator of the show said “This exhibition has grown way beyond its original conception, to become a magnificent survey of painting and printmaking from over two hundred years based around the central tenet of night. The exhibition is a kind of painterly response to the way figurative artists use their artistic heroes as starting points for their own work, both compositionally and emotionally.” Artists featured in Towards Night: Christiane Baumgarter, Michael Craig-Martin, Julian Opie, Will Gill, Merlin James, Howard Hodgkin, WillIam Scott, Patrick Caulfield, George Shaw, Stephen Chambers, Basil Beattie, Betsy Dadd, Christopher Le Brun, L.S Lowry, Andrew Cranston, David Willetts, James Fisher, Emma Stibbon, Vija Celmins, William Blake, William Crozier, Tom Hammick, Georgia Keeling, Helen Turner, Humphrey Ocean, Julian Bell, Craigie Aitchison, Mark Wright, Ken Kiff, Matthew Burrows, Andrzej Jackowski, Sarah Raphael, Nick Bodimeade, Nick Carrick, Mary Newcomb, Hurvin Anderson, Peter Doig, Phoebe Unwin, Danny Markey, Sara Lee, Simon Burton, Susie Hamilton, Marc Chagall, Alfred Wallis, Emil Nolde, J.M.W. Turner, Prunella Clough, Samuel Palmer, Louise Bourgeois, Caspar David Friedrich, Alex Katz, Ewan Gibbs, Susie Hamilton, Andrzej Jackowski, Amanda Vesey, Edward Stott, Gertrude Hermes, Rose Wylie, Sidney Nolan, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Emil Nolde, Hiroshige, Edvard Munch, Samuel Palmer, Eileen Cooper, Charles Neame-Spencer, Samantha Cary.

Beata Walter: Die berufliche Orientierung junger Menschen. Untersuchungen zur Verantwortung von Gesellschaft und Pädagogik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2010 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Beata Walter: Die berufliche Orientierung junger Menschen. Untersuchungen zur Verantwortung von Gesellschaft und Pädagogik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2010 (331 S.; ISBN 978-3-6316-0342-0)