Thanks, Ed!

Thrilled to have been shortlisted for the RA Summer Exhibition.

What technology takes from us – and how to take it back | Rebecca Solnit The long read: Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out – but it’s going to take collectiv...

This piece by Rebecca Solnit is one of the most deeply moving explorations of what tech takes from us, how it transforms us, how it demands we become more like it and less human, that I've read www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Part of a series of negatives, some half plate glass negatives, some large format film negatives labelled ‘Time and motion studies’ which feature women with wires attached to their hands and arms which record the movements made. These two images are black and white half plate glass negatives ordered from the Kodak Research Laboratory, Harrow by WH Smith on 20th October 1959. British Library, Kodak A3038/20(1-2)

Colour print of a woman in a lab coat and goggles using glass laboratory apparatus. Photograph part of a series used for Kodak's internal newsletters. February 1975. British Library, Kodak A3146/27(8)

It's International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Here are a few highlights from Kodak Research Laboratories in Harrow, documenting innovations led by women in as early as 1891.

#KodakHistory #Harrow #WomenInSTEM #Innovation #PhotographyHistory #HiddenHistories

2 Postdoctoral positions in Intellectual History at the Department of History - Ledig stilling på Aarhus Universitet Ledig stilling ved Institut for Kultur og Samfund - Historie, fag, Aarhus Universitet

Some professional news: I'm now hiring two postdocs to be part of the research project I'm leading on global republicanism and the making of democratic cultures in the early 19th century. If you know someone for whom this may be relevant, don't hesitate to let them know.

www.au.dk/om/stillinge...

No problem!

Happy to email a copy to you!

Can probably guess your RCA email address—shall I send you a copy there?

Manchester renaissance 2016

Tomorrow marks 10 years since the greatest piece of art of our generation

If you donate $100+ before the end of the year, you can receive your very own set of mail-ready Places postcards! ✉️📬

placesjournal.org/donate/

A message to America: we are not your enemy Last night, the US launched an all-out assault on the "global censorship industrial complex", I respond with some deep breaths, solidarity and a vibey video (it's all I have)

NEW: last night, the US govt launched an assault on the ‘global censorship industrial complex’, aka European tech researchers/campaigners.

It’s a deeply chilling move & speaks as to why we need international solidarity more than ever.

open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

The AR’s paywall is down until 5 January, so you can register for free and access an unlimited number of articles on our website. Happy holidays and happy reading! architectural-review.com/altregister

Support Places Journal this Giving Tuesday A message from the chair and vice-chair of our Board of Directors.

Places is a community of dedicated scholars, editors, photographers, academics & practitioners. But just as important, Places is a community of readers & supporters.

Your donation will help us sustain and grow the journal — we can't do it without you!

A message from our board this Giving Tuesday:

Commission presents new Bioeconomy Strategy to drive green growth, competitiveness and resilience across Europe Today, the Commission adopted a new Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy, charting a way forward to build a clean, competitive and resilient European economy.

The European Union commits to a bioeconomy strategy - putting biobased materials, and their supply chains at the heart of the economy - thereby recognising the value that nature can provide. This is good news - and the UK must follow suit or risk falling further behind. ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

"We still don’t know 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘺 where Prince Andrew’s reported £12M payment to Virginia Giuffre came from."

@lewisgoodall.com explains why the taxpayer may have helped foot the bill.

@maitlis.bsky.social | @jonsopel1.bsky.social

On Bookmarks and Other Ruins <p>There is something indescribably intimate about the act of interrupting one’s reading, the act of marking one’s place in a book, a subtle gesture t

For the inaugural issue of Draught Journal @draughtjournal.bsky.social:

On Bookmarks and Other Ruins—a reflection on the bookmark as a fragile site of memory, desire, and incompletion, accompanied by images of my own bookmarks.

draughtjournal.com/article/on-b...

London Ulez reduced nitrogen dioxide to legal limit, mayor says The mayor of London says the fall in airborne toxins is due to the Ultra low emission zone expansion.

They thought it would take 193 years to clean the air in London, but they did it in 9

“Dr Gary Fuller, associate professor in air quality at Imperial College, described Ulez as a "game changer" for reducing toxins & he "could not recall a policy that matches its impact" www.bbc.com/news/article...

The use of photography Published in Visual Studies (Ahead of Print, 2025)

THANK YOU to the editors at Visual Studies @visualsociology.bsky.social for inviting my review of The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, translated by Alison L. Strayer–another exquisite literary publication from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1080/1472...

I am one of the 14 authors who chose to leave the Polari Prize, and I find myself frustrated and saddened at the way this entire story has been represented. 1/

The Trust seeks to appoint an Assistant Director, a newly-created position in our centenary year. This broad-ranging grants leadership position will cover three major activities: grant-making, representing the Trust and leading on key areas of policy development. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/current...

Visa rules ‘obstructing’ Gazan students from UK universities UCU’s Jo Grady urges Home Office to ‘do everything it can’ to ensure students with offers to study in the UK are able to do so

The UK government should be “going out of its way” to ensure Palestinian students can take up places to study in the country’s universities instead of “obstructing” them, the University and College Union has said. @julietterowsell.bsky.social reports
#AcademicSky

A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. To the left of the door, the traces of a radiator, removed: shut-off supply and flow pipes protrude vertically from the floor, a single wall bracket remains to the left, pulled fixing holes for its counterpart to the right.

I have learned things about myself, the weight of a full radiator, and the deep, black despair which leaks in their final moments.

In order of encounter, from the first of January to last Sunday, 29 June: Adania Shibli, Minor Detail Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion, Shame, Happening, I Remain in Darkness Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others Noreen Masud, A Flat Place Adrian Duncan, A Sabbatical in Leipzig Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection Annie Ernaux, The Years Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue Adrian Duncan, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, Real Estate Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book I Jon Klassen, We Found a Hat Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book II Adrian Duncan, The Geometer Lobachevsky Annie Ernaux, The Possession Lou Stoppard, Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, and other writings Lauren Elkin, No.91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute Susan Sontag, On Photography Helen Clarke & Sharon Kivland (eds), The Lost Diagrams of Walter Benjamin Paul Lynch, Grace Simon de Beauvoir, The Image of Her, translated by Lauren Elkin

January to June, 2025

Some days, I read ten pages.

Others, I (need to) re-read the same paragraph ten times.

And occasionally, I read a book in a single sitting.

Reading sustains me, and brings me joy.

Thanks for sharing this!

Rope is so good.

A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. A flat panel radiator—to the left of the door—hangs from a single bracket, sitting on the floor at right, compressing the thermostat and bending the supply pipe free at left.

The old, existing dining room radiator FELL OFF THE WALL.

Just finished Grace by Paul Lynch.

And I am not ok.

James Baldwin: You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone.

Claude: ______

James Baldwin: That is the goal.

Claude: [pulls a regurgitated mouthful from the bottom of a bucket of chicken wings]

Entirely reasonable.

Marseille: Architectures of Transit in Novel, Film and Place (1936-1945 and 2001-2021) This article is a study of Marseille and an examination of the spatio-temporality of transit through novel, film, and place. Adapted for the screen by Christian Petzold in 2015, Transit is a modernist bildungsroman exploring borders, identity and exile—a semi-autobiographical novel "written in transition" by Anna Seghers in 1942. This article retraces Seghers' route from Paris to Marseille, writing into the space and time of the train journey to form a site-writing, before examining a transitional space shifted from novel to film, the Mont Vertoux, and exploring the larger cultural conditions situating literature, film, and architecture. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, lain Borden, Victor Burgin, Hélène Frichot and Naomi Stead, Jane Rendell, Katherine Shonfield and Dora Zhang, this article explores what Benjamin referred to as the "continuum of transformations" at play in the "removal from one language into another" of the self across disciplinary, temporal, and spatial borders.

Marseille: Architectures of Transit in Novel, Film and Place (1936-1945 and 2001-2021)

New OPEN ACCESS publication: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I’m proud of this one—a work exploring occupation, borders, identity and exile—and grateful to many.

Much like how.