The writings of Owen Hatherley

November 13, 2007 9:38 PM

Owen Hatherley, has three blogs where he expounds on culture and architecture from an English Leftist perspective, sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy, The Measures Taken (which has longer essays than the previous blog) and the group film blog kino fist. To give you an idea of the range of subjects he covers, here's a sampling of his blogposts: Towards a Communist Couture? Sartorial Socialism from Huey P Newton to Honecker, Zuckendes Fleischer (on pre-WWII American cartoons), Industrial Island Machine - Vorticism and the absence of an English Avant-Garde, Hurrah for the Black Box Recorder (on songwriter Luke Haines and The Daily Mail), The Children’s Book as a Revolutionary Object (with a bunch of pictures from Soviet avant-garde children's books), Architectural Drawings of the 1960s, Art is a branch of Mathematics (Taylorism and Russian SF classic We), Brechtian Productivism in an age of Mechanical Stagnation and Notes towards an attempted refutation of the 'Associational Fallacy' (on architecture). All of the blogs are heavily adorned with pretty pictures, some not safe for work.

He has been mentioned before and one of his essays was the subject of a previous fpp.

posted by Kattullus (7 comments total)

Ahhh! What a wonderful collection of links... and were I not so near to slipping into my night full of a blissful amalgamation of REM and deep sleep, I would type something intelligent.

Perhaps these images and words will have invigorated my imminent - and strangely regular - departure from my presently problematic work situation. I deeply hope to revisit these links tormorrow.

Thank you, Mr. Posterman.

Yours truly (uh-huh),

Kozad. Right.
Kozad (uh-huh).
posted by kozad at 10:25 PM on November 13, 2007

I skimmed sections, and read parts, of all three. At first glance, he really reminded me of that guy you find in every graduate program -- who is really intimidating in seminars, who has read every semi-marxist theorist in existence, who can give great thumb-nail summaries of all kinds of disparate texts, and who loves to talk and always sounds very smart.... but who never seems to graduate or write his thesis. I've read just enough of the books this guy is talking about to say, yeah, he knows his stuff, but somehow the overall tone of it kind of makes me roll my eyes a bit. It's just a bit too excited by itself, you know?

Visually, I really liked his balance of text and image, and wish more bloggers could find that balance. Great fpp, and I will definitely go back and read deeper in those blogs later.
posted by Forktine at 2:05 AM on November 14, 2007

I actually performed in Brecht's play The Measures Taken back in Grade 10 drama class - it's an excellent story. And it must have quite a lasting effect on me as I still find myself recall the verses all the time, and would love to see it performed some time... and nowadays, I'm an architect with socialist tendencies.
So I find that first blog to be interesting, good reading. Especially as I'm at work and can pretend to myself that it's work-related.
posted by Flashman at 4:17 AM on November 14, 2007

Thanks, interesting stuff—I really enjoyed the Zamyatin one (and was glad to reacquaint myself with El Lisitsky's About Two Squares).
posted by languagehat at 6:02 AM on November 14, 2007

Thanks for the link to About Two Squares, languagehat. That's an amazing book.
posted by Kattullus at 8:59 AM on November 14, 2007

Thanks for these links. I read several of the articles - I think I may have heard of the Vorticists, but it was very interesting to see this particular article. It's interesting how avant garde art of the early 20th century still strikes me as fresh today!
posted by Slothrop at 11:42 AM on November 14, 2007

I found Hatherley's recent post about attending a mandatory jobseeking seminar fascinating. David Brent welfare state.
posted by Kattullus at 12:03 PM on November 27, 2007