MONTHLY EMAIL NEWSLETTER: APRIL 2011
March was a febrile month. Fukushima was an existential threat posed by an energy utopia gone wrong; Joseph Giacomo's book 'Thermal' rendered our energy addiction visible; and the collapse of civilization became an experimental dance piece in New York. I visited Bilbao to talk about bioregions — only to encounter a disused nuclear plant that I said could be their next cultural icon.
My talk at Norway's Design Day also begins in somber terms — but ends on a positive note.
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JOHN THACKARA
Utopia is Here
Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, made in 1982, portrays a dystopian Los Angeles as it might be in 2019. In just eight years from now we are due to discover and find out whether or not the film was an accurate prediction.READ MORE
JOHN THACKARA
Collapse of Civilization Tango
Choreographer Valerie Green and Dance Entropy, a New York City-based experimental dance troupe, will shortly premier a new work, “Rise and Fall,” that's about collapsing civilizations, the raw ugliness of industrialization and gross consumption.READ MORE
JOHN THACKARA
From Bankster HQ to Start-up Central in Iceland
Made by two young Icelandic women, The Start-Up Kids is a documentary about young entrepreneurs who have founded web and media startups in the US and Europe.READ MORE
JOHN THACKARA
Can Thermal Perception Change Behavior?
A premise of Joseph Giacomin's new book Thermal is that global warming is hard to ignore when you view the world through thermal eyes.Hard, but not impossible, to ignore. We humans are skilful evaders of uncomfortable truths.
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JOHN THACKARA
Images de Pensée
Darwin, Freud, Descartes, Goethe, Klee, Beuys, Marinetti, Nabokov, among others, left behind these “images of thought.” They have been found in notebooks, on the pages of manuscripts, in the margins of letters, on paper napkins.READ MORE
JOHN THACKARA: RECENT ESSAY
Does Bilbao Need Another Guggenheim?
Ideas for remaking Basque country that go far beyond fancy architecture.READ MORE
More essays by John Thackara >>
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JOHN THACKARA: RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Animate EarthStephan Harding
Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water UndergroundCleo Woelfle-Erskine, July Oskar Cole, Laura Allen, editors
Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate ChangeClive Hamilton
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