The Early Days of a Better Nation

Thursday, March 25, 2004


That same Ramblas

This weekend I'm going to Barcelona to take part in Stitch and Split, a cultural event whose agenda is as follows (it says here)
Stitch and Split explores the joint, the interstices, between these two registers which might be considered opposed, science and fiction, and their reciprocal contamination. Science fiction as a zone of tension that amalgamates imaginary and real, utopia and dystopia, flesh and machine; the use of intrusion, incongruity and discrepancy as a system of resistance and a tool for questioning the present. Science fiction is not an oracle that can predict the future more or less exactly, but a critical, inventive, cross-genre/gender and cross-disciplinary discourse on the body, identity and contemporary territories.
I think I know what they mean.

I've been in Barcelona before, but only for a day. Cap Nau, Parc Gaudi, Sagrado Familia, the Ramblas. An open-top bus tour around the old quarter. Readers of Orwell et al will understand why I felt a slight shiver seeing a big old building with the chiselled inscription Telefonica.

I've added a few links in my sidebar to various leftist sites. (Mostly Trotskyist in origin - links to offshoots of the previous three internationals will follow shortly.) No blanket endorsement implied. A little digging around any of these sites will turn up interesting and useful stuff. Caveat lector.

Also, I've added an Atom site feed to the sidebar. Lots of people have asked me to do this. Most of them have explained to me why it's important. If I've missed out something, please let me know.

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