‘This is madness’, two friends chimed one night upon hearing I planned to bring out a book, reminding me I had no marketing strategy or distribution network. I would lose a fortune they maintained, consigning good paper to land fill. I was at least reassured by the designer’s, Distinctive Repetition, insistence on the most stringent … Read more
PROLOGUE ‘The reverend Judge leaned over and addressed the defendant’ ‘I have taken your spotless record into account.’ ‘However…by the power vested in me I am obliged to sentence you to three score years and ten, maybe more, maybe less.’ ‘You will serve this time in an open facility.’ ‘Allowing for the normal remission for … Read more
THE LONG READ: Ireland is neither a totalitarian state, nor even a dictatorship. Nonetheless, the propaganda of an economic elite has forged a dominant consensus, in which two centre-right parties compete for power. Across a print media duopoly and national broadcaster well-honed techniques of social control divert attention and sow confusion, while subtly instilling dogmas. … Read more
Leo Varadkar dismisses his father Ashok’s claim to be a socialist, which came in an interview after his son became Taoiseach. According to Leo he does not really know what the term means: You’ve probably seen stuff where he describes himself as a socialist but that’s total rubbish .. It’s not that he believes in high … Read more
The Harp needs more than tuning. The single most important and useful change we should make to our Constitution is to remove the first paragraph of Article 45 which reads: Directive Principles of Social Policy The principles of social policy set forth in this article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application … Read more
At the age of sixteen, in 2001, I took a job in a small factory which built appliances in Cardano al Campo, near Milan’s Malpensa airport. I worked there for four years. As with the majority of the manufacturing industries in the area, including the spring-making factory I had worked in the previous year, it … Read more
Tune into any Irish radio station, and it is hard to escape the constant flogging of motor cars: RTE’s flagship ‘Morning Ireland’ is associated with Opel; sports bulletins on the same programme are brought to you by Kia; traffic introduced by Hyundai, only afterwards to be announced as ‘AA Roadwatch’. Ads for other brands such … Read more
What does it mean to be a loafer? Loafing as an activity has always existed. It has been carried out, witnessed, imagined and sung since the dawn of human time; from the ancient Aborigines on their walkabout, to the modern idling of the nineteenth and twentieth century dandies. Today, loafing as a mode of existence, … Read more
Missiles flashed, and it was beautiful— flares in the darkness of a fallen world where Satan plays the good guy in a wig. I’m in my safe space, a battered easy chair, swearing at the laptop, at the stream of video and voices, overlaid on top of breakfast. Coffee’s gone lukewarm, the trail’s gone cold. … Read more
I first came across Dragana Jurišić’s work in the National Gallery of Ireland, when her ‘Tarantula’ was displayed as part of the ‘After Vermeer’ exhibition in 2017. ‘Tarantula’ was a contemporary response to the Vermeer exhibition, which featured a series of photographic self-portraits of overlapping dancing figures. Jurišić says she was ‘immediately struck by the … Read more