10 Membranes

08/02/2010

Via the Londonist.

Via the Londonist.

05/02/2010

04/02/2010

Above is a screenshot from the Paul Verhoeven film Total Recall. Featured extensively in the film are none other than full body scanners - the kind that we now see at Heathrow airport. In the world of Total Recall they are ubiquitous, found at the entrance to underground stations and airports alike. Surely this is where we heading now, the logic of infinite terror and infinite security meeting at the gaze of the full body scanner in all public places. Strangely I find the idea less intrusive than the camera overload we presently have: scanners actually do something, and if you didn’t want to be scanned, you could take private transport and so on. That’s not to say scanners are good.

Above is a screenshot from the Paul Verhoeven film Total Recall. Featured extensively in the film are none other than full body scanners - the kind that we now see at Heathrow airport. In the world of Total Recall they are ubiquitous, found at the entrance to underground stations and airports alike. Surely this is where we heading now, the logic of infinite terror and infinite security meeting at the gaze of the full body scanner in all public places. Strangely I find the idea less intrusive than the camera overload we presently have: scanners actually do something, and if you didn’t want to be scanned, you could take private transport and so on. That’s not to say scanners are good.

27/01/2010

Anish Kapoor looks likely to win the competition to design an enormous statue for the Olympics, trumping amongst others Anthony Gormley. I am pro-statue and pro-Kapoor so goody. However the news is always accompanied by the claim that the Mittal funded east London piece will trump a Peter the Great statue in Moscow as the tallest in Europe. See above. When I stayed in Moscow in 2008 the statue was opposite my hotel room; at the time I thought it was the most awful and ghastly piece of tat I had ever seen. Looking at again I still think. It’s completely bonkers. It’s tacky, kitsch and colossal. It’s out of place, ugly, a confused mesh of engineering and bad art built to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian navy. And thats why one can’t help but quite admire it as well. It’s so big and so bad that it’s good. As long as you don’t have to look at it everyday.

Anish Kapoor looks likely to win the competition to design an enormous statue for the Olympics, trumping amongst others Anthony Gormley. I am pro-statue and pro-Kapoor so goody. However the news is always accompanied by the claim that the Mittal funded east London piece will trump a Peter the Great statue in Moscow as the tallest in Europe. See above. When I stayed in Moscow in 2008 the statue was opposite my hotel room; at the time I thought it was the most awful and ghastly piece of tat I had ever seen. Looking at again I still think. It’s completely bonkers. It’s tacky, kitsch and colossal. It’s out of place, ugly, a confused mesh of engineering and bad art built to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian navy. And thats why one can’t help but quite admire it as well. It’s so big and so bad that it’s good. As long as you don’t have to look at it everyday.

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