Author: Paul Kingsnorth File Type: epub A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in an age of ecocidePaul Kingsnorth was once an activistan ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on sustainability rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change.Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorths thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls dark ecology, which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds.This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed Uncivilization manifesto, asks hard questions about how weve lived and how we should live.**ReviewThis book is refreshing in both a literary respect and an environmental one. What Kingsnorth argues in these essays is so radical that, if put into practice, it could effect meaningful preservation. . . . Kingsnorths is a much-needed perspective in the environmental movement, recovering or otherwise.Star Tribune (Minneapolis)Kingsnorth writes with undeniable love for the planet, for locations and histories, and for people. . . . The overall effect is necessarily grim, but often remarkably uplifting as well. In a world on the brink of collapse, Kingsnorth offers humor, compassion, humility and wisdom.Shelf AwarenessA brilliant and sobering collection recommended for anyone, liberal or conservative, concerned about the runaway train of climate change.BooklistKingsnorth is a talented, engaging writer. . . . Every essay provides food for thought and given a chance, can rearrange the way you view things. . . . It could even change the way you decide to live.The Ecologist (UK)About the Author Paul Kingsnorth is the author of Beast and The Wake, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He is cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists, and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink.

Author: Oliver Sacks File Type: epub When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passionsweight lifting and swimmingalso drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual his guilt over leaving his family to come to America his bond with his schizophrenic brother and the writers and scientistsThom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crickwho influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writerand of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human. **

Author: Adrian Piper File Type: pdf p lead Detailed notes and images on Adrian Pipers 1970s performance The Mythic Being.Excerpted from Out of Order, Out of Sight

Author: Klaus Carl File Type: pdf I am not interested in myself as a subject for painting, but in others, particularly women...Beautiful, sensuous and above all erotic, Gustav Klimts paintings speak of a world of opulence and leisure, which seems aeons away from the harsh, post-modern environment we live in now. The subjects he treats allegories, portraits, landscapes and erotic figures contain virtually no reference to external events, but strive rather to create a world where beauty, above everything else, is dominant. His use of colour and pattern was profoundly influenced by the art of Japan, ancient Egypt, and Byzantium. Ravenne, the flat, two-dimensional perspective of his paintings, and the frequently stylised quality of his images form an oeuvre imbued with a profound sensuality and one where the figure of woman, above all, reigns supreme. Klimts very first works brought him success at an unusually young age. Gustav, born in 1862, obtained a state grant to study at Kunstgewerbeschule (the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts) at the age of fourteen. His talents as a draughtsman and painter were quickly noticed, and in 1879 he formed the Kunstlercompagnie (Artists Company) with his brother Ernst and another student, Franz Matsch. The latter part of the nineteenth century was a period of great architectural activity in Vienna. In 1857, the Emperor Franz Joseph had ordered the destruction of the fortifications that had surrounded the medieval city centre. The Ringstrasse was the result, a budding new district with magnificent buildings and beautiful parks, all paid for by public expenses. Therefore the young Klimt and his partners had ample opportunities to show off their talents, and they received early commissions to contribute to the decorations for the pageant organised to celebrate the silver wedding anniversary of the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empress Elisabeth. In 1894, Matsch moved out of their communal studio, and in 1897 Klimt, together with his closest friends, resigned from the Kunstlerhausgenossenschaft (the Cooperative Society of Austrian Artists) to form a new movement known as the Secession, of which he was immediately elected president. The Secession was a great success, holding both a first and second exhibition in 1898. The movement made enough money to commission its very own building, designed for it by the architect Joseph Maria Olbrich. Above the entrance was its motto To each age its art, to art its freedom. From around 1897 onward, Klimt spent almost every summer on the Attersee with the Floge family. These were periods of peace and tranquillity in which he produced the landscape paintings constituting almost a quarter of his entire oeuvre. Klimt made sketches for virtually everything he did. Sometimes there were over a hundred drawings for one painting, each showing a different detail a piece of clothing or jewellery, or a simple gesture. Just how exceptional Gustav Klimt was is perhaps reflected in the fact that he had no predecessors and no real followers. He admired Rodin and Whistler without slavishly copying them, and was admired in turn by the younger Viennese painters Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, both of whom were greatly influenced by Klimt.