A New Map of Berlin
I had no intention of bicycling in the snow, this winter. I started riding just seven months ago to stave off the inevitable corrosion of old age. I have no…
nature
Darwin’s Polar Bear
Many people may be aware that the beaks of Galápagos “finches” (in fact, the islands’ mockingbirds) helped Charles Darwin to develop his ideas about evolution. But few people realize that…
Hello, World: Making Nature at Wellcome Collection
Karl Reich’s 1913 recording of a nightingale – among the world’s earliest extant recordings of bird song – feels like a bottled metaphor for modernity. Trapped in shellac, this sweet…
Chroma Hunt
From cave drawings to medieval tapestry, classical pottery to Rubens or Rembrandt, the hunt has provided artists with powerful subject matter for thousands of years. Much of this power has…
Extinction and the Image
Animals. The non-human kind. They are everywhere in an increasingly virtual world and more often not there in reality. Our eyes and minds seem instinctively to search out and recognise…
Open Call: Wolf Crossing
In Finland there is a line around the city: susiraja, the wolf border. Within is law and order: shopping malls and social security. Beyond the susiraja lie the wilds and…
A New Map of Berlin
I am an inexperienced cyclist. As far as possible, I avoid Berlin’s main arteries and stick to the backstreets. Bike lanes constricted by car traffic, tram tracks and intrusion from…
Being a Beast
Mankind has celebrated a close connection with the animal kingdom since our Stone Age ancestors dressed in furs and painted bison on cave walls. Mythology abounds with tales of creatures…
Lines in the Ice
Human Marks in the Ice Ships fighting against a freezing sea. Masts and ropes caked in ice. Crews of men hauling sledges over crumpled and broken landscapes. These are the…
A New Map of Berlin
Fehrbelliner Strasse intersects the indefinite, porous border between the old East Berlin neighbourhoods of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. Forming a T with the sloping green space of Volkspark am Weinbergweg,…
The Paper Zoo
Choosing to draw: philosophy and aesthetics Whatever else the Romans may have done for us, teaching us to draw was not one of their gifts. The two great works of…