A Revelation: Alan Macfarlane On Writing

I have written all my life: articles, features, essays, diaries, letters, columns, seminar papers, speeches, lectures. I have experienced writing as burden and as bliss. Writing never stopped to fascinate me. Still I felt unsatisfied with my way of writing. Most of the time I have written for money as I used to work as a journalist since my teenage years. This is certainly not the worst reason. But I always had this other longing. I wanted to experience a different kind of wirting and yet not a  poetic, fictional one. I was looking and longing for way of writing about the world, about so-called „reality“ as well as about art I neither learned at school for journalism nor at university, especially not at German university. Eventually today a friend of mine drew my attention to this interview on writing with the British anthropologist Alan Macfarlane.

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Radio portrait of Miranda July

On Sunday night, the 3rd of April at 10.05 pm my one-hour long radio feature „Wir und sie und alle die wir kennen. Die kalifornische Konzeptkünstlerin Miranda July im Portrait“ will be boradcast in German at Zündfunk Generator on Bayern2 (afterwards available as podcast). Based on my November 2015 interview with Miranda July and my interview with the scholar Antje Czudaj, who wrote a book on July’s intermedial art, I am analyzing her work in a wider context. In this portrait I am looking at Miranda July’s background in 1990s Riot Grrlism in Portland, Oregon and at her own art work alike: I will talk about her short stories and her debut novel, her films and her media art pieces. Especially I will focus on the interactive and webbased project „Learning to Love You More“ (together with Harrell Fletscher, 2002 – 2009) and her latest intermedial art work „Somebody“, a combination of an app and a wonderful short film, which the fashion label Miu Miu of Prada helped her to realize.Thus I strive to unravel her artistic concept and claim that Miranda July should be regarded as one of the most interesting artistic voices of the current generation.