The United States might no longer be the industrial powerhouse it once was, now that so many of its factories lie in rusting ruin, but it remains a powerful exporter, particularly of ideas. Amongst these an old but still powerfully attractive one is the idea of exceptionalism, that a place can exist outside what are […]
Matca x C4 Journal: Conversations Around Photography, Vietnam & UK is a series of 12 articles discussing various aspects of image-making supported by British Council Vietnam’s Digital Arts Showcasing grant 2021. [Bấm vào đây để đọc bài tiếng Việt] What is truth, where is it to be found, should we speak of it in the singular […]
In Phillip K. Dick’s novel, A Scanner Darkly, the characters live in a world pervaded by audio-visual surveillance. Constantly under scrutiny from ‘scanners’ covertly operated by law enforcement agencies seeking the suppliers of a dangerous drug, the protagonist’s reality is complicated by his role as an undercover narcotics agent, and yet more so by his […]
In 1651 the philosopher Thomas Hobbes memorably argued that without political community the life of man would be ‘poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. However, in truth, even long after Hobbes’s time the experience of most ordinary people remained characterised by disease, crime, poverty, and conflict. Until very recently the possibility of utopia came not in […]