Spend even the shortest amount of time in the delightful and disturbing Scottish capital and you begin to read native Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a metaphor for the city itself. Edinburgh boasts a warm and welcoming population residing in an atmosphere where an ever-present hint of menace hangs palpably in the air like its famous rainy mist. (This openness is evidenced by the fact that one early afternoon my sister and I were able to pretty much wander in to a Justice Committee hearing of Parliament debating that day’s front page news […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 28, 2011It’s hard to find original gift ideas. While searching for a Valentine’s Day present, I remembered a conversation I had with the director Sara Driver in Rotterdam. She told me about Boym Studio’s Buildings of Disaster series. Small postmodern totems, the series consists of bonded nickel sculptures of sites like the Chernobyl nuclear reactors, the Unabomber’s Cabin (pictured, right), the L.A. freeway during the O.J. Simpson chase, the Waco Complex, and, yes, the World Trade Center. Reading about the sculptures, one would imagine them to be pieces of ghoulish kitsch. Seeing them in person, though, they come off as strange […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2004