Tag: nature
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Animals Out of Place
There’s a post on Instagram; a photo mottled with gallery reflections, close-up and a little oblique. It shows a vintage glass slide of a zookeeper and his charge. It’s not the best image but has an instant power. The keeper, wearing a peaked cap and a stern expression, holds high a short, straight chain. On…
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Announcing…
The Learned Pig is changing. Since launching in November 2013, The Learned Pig has taken an instinctive approach to editorial. We have published what feels right to us and we have published as often as we can. We are very proud of the work we have done so far and the brilliant people we have…
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Open call: Root Mapping
*** Root Mapping is currently closed for submissions. We will reopen again soon. You can sign up to our newsletter for updates. *** There is no map to the place we are going. We will be lost for a good, long time. — Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth (2016) Between Vermont’s Green…
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Art in a deteriorating world
An epistolary exploration of art’s moral responsibilities “In the era of not yet, barely daring to guess of how soon,” wrote Welsh-British writer Horatio Clare about the melting sea ice, the planet’s air conditioner, in his book Icebreaker, published less then two years ago. Now the scientists dare to guess, and red lights on…
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Chanctonbury Rings
Chanctonbury Rings is a new spoken word and music project on Ghost Box Records by the poet and writer Justin Hopper and folk musician Sharron Kraus, and featuring Ghost Box’s own Belbury Poly. The album is based on live performances of Hopper’s book The Old Weird Albion (Penned in the Margins, 2017), a poetic and…
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Foregathered wi’ the beast
I am standing in a lay-by of the A9, 2 miles north of Brora. I am face to face, for the first time, with a stone that I encountered a photograph of a year earlier, in a book about the wondrous wildlife of Scotland. Paving slabs ascend the bank to a hefty lump of granite…
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Architecture for All
Maria-Chiara Piccinelli is director of PiM.studio Architects in London. She is a strong believer in the importance of public spaces for a city to thrive, and in the crucial role nature plays within architecture. She began her career in Italy, and has since worked in Tokyo, Edinburgh and Paris with Kengo Kuma & Associates, and…
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Hildaland
Hildaland is a hidden island, said to rise in the mist between two tides. When spotted by a sailor, they had to sail towards it without taking their eyes off it, for if they did it would vanish. There have been very few sightings of vanishing islands in recent years, however few have been looking….
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Join The Learned Pig!
The Learned Pig is looking for two new section editors to take a lead as we expand and adapt our editorial offering over the course of 2019. Each new section editor will take charge of one editorial thread and help to shape its direction. Currently these are art, thinking, nature, writing, but we will be…
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Noticing the Invisible
In cities, we don’t usually see polluted air in front of our eyes, but its impact may still be felt inside our lungs. According to Open Air Laboratories at Imperial College, “In contrast to the visible smogs that affected cities in the past, much of the air pollution in the UK today is largely invisible…
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Scrub
Beyond the chain-link fence of my primary school, across the alleyway into town, was a land of fascination. We called it the ‘waste ground’ and I’d wander there looking for treasures among the broken fireplaces and scuffed concrete. Garden survivors rose from the cracks and dust: snapdragons, evening primrose, mullein. This was suburban south-west London….