arts & cultures

Welcome to Arts & Cultures, where you will find world-class reviews of literature, film and music. You will also find kaleidoscopic analysis of everyday objects, from hair to shorelines.

Monday 12th December

Cornelius Cardew lives

Virginia Anderson, 12 December 2011

A pioneering, charismatic composer who searched sincerely for the truth of art, life and politics died on 13 December 1981. Cornelius Cardew's integrity and creative restlessness ensure that he remains an inspiration, says Virginia Anderson

Plus: some of those who knew and worked with Cornelius Cardew pay tribute

Saturday 5th November

Railtracks

John Berger and Anne Michaels, 5 November 2011

"Impossible now to think of train travel without a kind of tenderness - as if that is what love is: arrival after arrival". A conversation between the writers Anne Michaels and John Berger, in dialogue with a photographic journey through southern Bohemia, evokes the intimate meanings and shared belongings that unfold to the rhythm and the heartbeat of the world the railways made.

Friday 5th August

Derick Thomson at 90: Gaelic poet in the world

David Hayes, 5 August 2011

Ruaraidh MacThòmais (Derick Thomson) has as poet, scholar, teacher and editor made a profound contribution to Gaelic literature over six decades. The quality and range of his work deserve belated recognition in the context of the culture he has done so much to enlarge, says David Hayes.

Tuesday 24th May

Bob Dylan at 70: revolution in the head, revisited

David Hayes, 24 May 2011

The most influential and original musician of the 1960s generation remains a figure of protean creativity half a century on. The wealth of attention devoted to Bob Dylan as he reaches his 70th birthday is testament to a career of astonishing range. It also reflects the complex legacy of a formative decade which Dylan’s songs and persona helped to define, says David Hayes.

Monday 23rd May

Bob Dylan: a conversation

David Hayes, 23 May 2011

The celebrations of the 70th birthday of the great American musician Bob Dylan include many personal journeys through the archives of memory. Here, David Hayes recalls a thrilling series of concerts Dylan performed in 1981...and a late-night encounter.

Saturday 7th May

Cornelius Cardew: a life unfinished

David Hayes, 7 May 2011

Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) was one of the most influential modernist composers of his generation. On what would have been his 75th birthday, some who knew and worked with Cardew reflect on a protean figure

Saturday 29th January

Vapor Trail (Clark): wastes of history

Graeme Hobbs, 29 January 2011

A cinematic project in the Philippines that began as an exercise in political documentary and ended as excavation of the toxic legacies of the country’s early-20th century war with America is a vital counterblast to global amnesia, says Graeme Hobbs. 

Friday 17th September

The fiction of climate change

Andrew Dobson, 17 September 2010

What is a climate-change novel, and what makes a good one? Andrew Dobson takes time from his day job as professor of politics to read the existing literature and emerge with suggestions about how to do it better.

Thursday 16th September

The white and pleasant land

Delwar Hussain, 16 September 2010

A racist assault on unfamiliar ground provokes Delwar Hussain to reflect on why the British countryside looks less than welcoming to people of colour.

Thursday 19th August

Edwin Morgan, 1920-2010

David Hayes, 19 August 2010

The poet and translator Edwin Morgan has died at the age of 90 in his beloved home city of Glasgow. David Hayes salutes a "Glasgow internationalist and Scottish universalist", who made the world new for generations of readers.

Tuesday 17th August

Ecocentrism: a response to Paul Kingsnorth

Andrew Dobson, 17 August 2010

Paul Kingsnorth’s journey from a degraded environmentalism to nature-centred ways of living and thinking has many echoes for Andrew Dobson, but also clarifies a difference of outlook.

Monday 16th August

Confessions of a recovering environmentalist

Paul Kingsnorth, 16 August 2010

"Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the 'progressive' left." A personal, twenty-year journey through the world’s wild places and the movements to protect them is also, for Paul Kingsnorth, an education in the limits of a project that has forgotten nature and lost its soul.

Wednesday 16th June

Oysters Rockefeller

Jim Gabour, 16 June 2010

The threat to a unique New Orleans culinary tradition is one measure of the Gulf of Mexico tragedy, says Jim Gabour.

Wednesday 9th June

The World Cup kaleidoscope

David Hayes, 9 June 2010

What is the football World Cup really about? A London pub conversation between four friends on the eve

(This article was first published on 29 May 2002)

Tomás Eloy Martínez and the Argentine dream

Ivan Briscoe, 9 June 2010

The work of the Argentinean writer Tomás Eloy Martínez is intimately bound with the country’s modern history of political delusion and personal liberation. Ivan Briscoe reflects on a fiction-reality fusion that made a unique contribution to “inventing Perón”.

Barcelona i Catalunya: the real thing

Fred Halliday, 9 June 2010

The scholar of world politics and openDemocracy columnist Fred Halliday lived and worked in - and fell in love with - Barcelona. In a warm essay written five months before he died on 26 April 2010, Fred celebrates the home of his last years.

Monday 24th May

Bob Dylan's revolution in the head

David Hayes, 24 May 2010

The love of millions is invested in Bob Dylan, who turns 69 today. But can we know too much to see him? (archive)

Monday 17th May

Siberian Shamans Come in From the Cold (part 3)

Ken Hyder, 17 May 2010

After decades of repression, Siberia’s shamans are re-emerging. Ken Hyder is a musician who performs with a Tuvan shaman. His novel describes the culture of contemporary shamanism as it emerges after decades of repression. Part three of three.

Friday 30th April