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A plan is an abstract thing: a schematic representation of space in the most codified and flattened manner. Yet between those thin dark lines, so much information can be inscribed. “If anything is described by an architectural plan,” wrote historian Robin Evans in his influential 1978 essay “Figures, doors and passages”, “it is the nature

The sense of unease that permeates Interpret it Well, Ches Smith’s 10th release, is conjured with minimalist lines, vibrant tones and a strong collective will. It enters with sparse Craig Taborn piano and is sustained until the reverberating twang of Bill Frisell’s guitar fades the album to a close. Smith plays vibraphone on both short

It was in 2010 that Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s name came prominently to notice again, when his opera The Passenger was staged by the Bregenz Festival. Since then, there has been a slow but determined revival of much of this too-long neglected composer’s music. There is plenty of it to rediscover. Weinberg was prolific, writing seven operas,

Over the past 40 years or so, the face of dictatorship has changed a great deal. The most notorious tyrants of the 20th century — from Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to Uganda’s Idi Amin and François “Papa Doc” Duvalier of Haiti — ruled by means of mass violence, cults of personality, rigid

Nowhere is our bad attitude towards food better illustrated than by a recent incident in the home of Professor Phil Stevenson, head of trait diversity and function at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. During a meal his teenage son threw a piece of cauliflower in the bin because it was a bit burnt. “I said to

Deutsche Telekom has nudged up its guidance for the year, mostly driven by a stronger than expected performance in its US business, as its first-quarter earnings rose almost 7 per cent. The German telecoms business upgraded its full-year earnings forecast on Friday, saying it expects to generate an adjusted €36.6bn before interest, taxes, depreciation and

Australia’s defence minister Peter Dutton has accused China of committing an “act of aggression” after a People’s Liberation Army naval vessel came within 50 nautical miles of a naval communications centre. Australia’s department of defence said the Dongdiao Class intelligence ship Haiwangxing had entered the country’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 miles to sea,

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Boris Johnson has set out plans to cut up to 90,000 civil servants — equivalent to a fifth of Whitehall — in order to reduce UK government spending. The prime minister told cabinet ministers to cut departmental headcounts during an away day in Stoke-on-Trent on Thursday. Johnson told the Daily Mail that reducing the Whitehall

I first came to Milan when I was nine years old, in 1956 – before that I lived in Mantua. My father relocated here for work and our family moved into a two-floor flat in the Ticinese district. Things have changed tremendously since then. People used to say, “Oh, Milan is boring, nothing happens there.” It was

The American Library, Paris Nestled on a quiet side street under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, this was originally founded as part of an effort to get millions of donated books to American soldiers serving in the first world war, and has been a haven for expats ever since. Edith Wharton was among the library’s first trustees, while Ernest

For anyone who watches the stock market for a living, the recent car crash in tech stocks has been mesmerising. There are plenty of reasons to believe it isn’t over. This is not so much an issue for Big Tech, though the wealth erased since the start of the year is significant. Between them, the

A small but potent piece of history is up for sale in Zurich this month, when Numismatica Ars Classica offers one of only three known examples of the “Eid Mar” aureus, celebrating the “liberation” of Rome after the bloody assassination of the dictator Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44BC. “This is among the most

On any normal weekday, Dubai’s food delivery riders would be up and out early, but in recent days, banks of motorbikes have been parked outside their budget dormitories. “They are all sleeping,” said one doorman in Bur Dubai, the central district where many cram into apartments. Food delivery riders for Talabat, a unit of Germany’s

Only a fortnight ago, Russian forces were shelling Kharkiv from their positions on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-biggest city. Those same troops have now been pushed up to 30km back towards the Russian border following a successful Ukrainian counter-attack that has emboldened Kyiv to raise its military ambitions and its hopes of driving the invaders

It’s art fair season again, but not quite as we knew it. Frieze New York, which opens in Manhattan’s The Shed on May 18, encapsulates the new normal better than most. In 2019, nearly 200 galleries participated in the fair’s trademark temporary tent on far-flung Randall’s Island, where it had been since its 2012 launch.

The three Baltic states have hailed Sweden and Finland’s expected accession to Nato as dramatically improving their own security and ability to repel any attack from Russia. The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania told the Financial Times they would seek to ratify any membership application from Finland and Sweden as quickly as possible.

In 2003, Sophie Mörner, a Swedish native fresh out of a photography degree at New York University, started Capricious Magazine, devoted to the work of emerging photographers who were often also women and/or queer. The magazine, which soon expanded into a publishing initiative supporting feminist and queer journals, also spawned a project space in Williamsburg

Lenin, the Russian revolutionary leader, is said to have remarked that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. The Bank of England currently forecasts that inflation in the UK will soon top 10 per cent. This falls short of outright currency debasement. Yet we live in an economy where

It seems as though everywhere one looks in New York City, Latinx artists are making their mark. In April, El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, established in 1969 as a neighbourhood museum by and for the Puerto Rican community, opened a major retrospective devoted to the work of its founder, Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Venture