______________________________________________1 June 07 _
*
In the Bowels of the Fun Palace By Mark Crinson
Architect Cedric Price's designs were seldom realised but his vision inspired 'fun palaces' from the Beaubourg to the Millenium Dome. Mark Crinson looks at two recent publications which deal in different ways with Price and his legacy
http://www.metamute.org/en/In-the-Bowels-of-the-Fun-Palace
*
French Banlieues and Urban Guerrillas By Yves Coleman
Mute recently published Italian sociologist Emilio Quadrelli’s long text on the 2005 riots in the French banlieues, ‘Grassroots Political Militants: Banlieusards and Politics’. Here, Parisian activist Yves Coleman responds to the claims and arguments made by Quadrelli and the militants whose testimonies appear in his text. Coleman argues that their vision of endo-colonial guerrilla warfare in the peripheries of French society is a dangerous piece of political myth making: while the left is indeed disengaged from the reality of life in the banlieues, so too, he argues, is Quadrelli
http://www.metamute.org/en/French-Banlieues-and-Urban-Guerrillas
*
New Left, Old Pessimism By James Heartfield
Duncan Thompson’s book, Pessimism of the Intellect: A History of the New Left Review, painstakingly reconstructs the journal’s long-term engagement with the British left from its post-Prague Spring reconstitution up until today. Despite the intra-left skirmishes and role reversals, the bigger picture that emerges, writes James Heartfield, is of the British left’s historical inability to act
http://www.metamute.org/en/New-Left-Old-Pessimism
*