I have already seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey twice and I enjoyed the experience both times, including talking about it afterwards, both for its merits as a film (especially its timely commentary on the devastation of war, male arrogance and violent deception), and also in how it relates to Homer’s poem (e.g. its incorporation of […]
Episode 1: The House Three Athenians (let us call them Bia, Alexis and Nina) live together in a tiny house on the outskirts of Kassel. They are here to work at Documenta, the exhibition that this small German city hosts every five years. This year the curators have divided the exhibition between Athens and Kassel […]
On page 29 of No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump (which you can order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the Wexner Center Store), at the beginning of Chapter 2 (‘Mourning Diary’), you can read: [w]e knew that we had something very concrete and specific that we could […]
The clip is only one minute and six seconds long, and was uploaded on September 11, 2012 by someone calling themselves guysintrouble. A young Alec Baldwin is being led in handcuffs through a hallway with two guards and his female lawyer, played by Stephanie Zimbalist, an actress I have never heard of or seen before. […]
Too General or Arcane? Didactic or Funny? Introducing The Digital Democratising Classics Library: Maggenti: I think that the tension that emerges around AIDS is that it’s not a gay disease, right? But, in fact, there are a lot of gay men who have AIDS. So, in fact, it’s gay/lesbian people who are doing the work […]
Whose Canon? Bringing Iphigenia and Plato Closer to Home [T]he canon, that transparent decanter of Western values – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Whose Canon is it, anyway?”, in Group Material Democracy (Education and Democracy section), p. 72. Dominant ideologies, usually with a nationalistic streak, have used the classical canon as a propaganda machine—primarily through […]
You are teaching an upper-level ancient Greek class on Homer’s Odyssey and you reach the ninth book of the poem and Odysseus’ re-telling of his wanderings to at the court of the Phaeacians. You start the class by telling the small group of students that even though this part of the poem is devoted to […]
I didn’t go to Venice this year and so I missed Mark Bradford’s Tomorrow is Another Day at the US Pavilion. This means that these reflections are limited to the accounts of those people who I have spoken to who did see Bradford’s work in the flesh, as well as images and written accounts online […]
If you open the book, which you saw in yesterday’s post (and you can see here if you missed it) balancing on people’s head in Athens (in a photograph and as a performance), as part of a darkened installation in Kassel (along with its 12 sisters), and which I held in my hand in the […]
Come on let me out or I’ll explode…I am Noman…of Ithaca, son of Runawayhorse… – Philocleon in Aristophanes’ Wasps Our three Athenians living in Kassel have just finished their daily performance for documenta 14 and they are feeling especially happy and content with their day’s work. Since returning from their act of defiance and resistance, […]