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Rose McLaren

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.



Articles Available Online


Talk Into My Bullet Hole

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July 2015

Rose McLaren

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July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t...

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May 2014

Art Does Not Know a Beyond: On Karl Ove Knausgaard

Rose McLaren

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May 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has an oddly medieval form: a cycle, composed of six auto-biographical books about the...

The Oakland Police Officers Association in California said something clever recently: ‘As your police officers, we are confused’ It feels like a long time since any political group or institution confessed to such a common human condition But far from being a mission statement, this was an honest and heartfelt plea from an organisation of working men and women with families to support for an intelligent debate surrounding the Occupy protests that have spread like a viral video of police ‘overreaction’ across the globe   That might be the first point of confusion to clear up They weren’t overreacting Heavy-handed, authoritarian, ‘tough-on-crime’ policing is how these servicemen were taught to act, and they have been ‘reacting’ just fine on the streets of Oakland and US cities like it ever since Until recently they probably thought they knew why Oakland has long had an unemployment rate well above the national average, endemic multi-generational poverty, and an illustrious history of black labour organisation Like many poor places in the US it also has a wealthy neighbour, San Francisco — which like most affluent areas prefers that struggling populations remain out of sight, and out of mind There are many ways to achieve these political erasures, but an effective method has always been aggressive policing, increasingly privatised warehouse prisons, and a ‘tough on crime’ culture And as long as you’re on the right side of all this, and the ever-tightening ‘legal’ definitions this degree of control requires, it really works Over time US police departments have developed the skills, toys and temperament their political paymasters required of them In a nation state, which comprises just five per cent of the world’s population yet a fearsome 25 per cent of the world’s incarcerated, these are valuable skills The highly politicised nature of American incarceration, spurred on by the morally bankrupt ‘legal’ machinations of the domestic war-on-some-drugs, means the US now has a large portion of its potential workforce locked up inside Those allowed out are branded ‘felons’ and denied employment opportunities and voting rights A disproportionate number of which are black or brown skinned — caught in the revolving

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.

The Prosaic Sublime of Béla Tarr

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Issue No. 6

Rose McLaren

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Issue No. 6

I have to recognise it’s cosmical; the shit is cosmical. It’s not just social, it’s not just ontological, it’s really huge. And that’s why we...
Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

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February 2012

Rose McLaren

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February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer half way through Zona. Such...

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fiction

January 2014

Hagoromo

Paul Griffiths

fiction

January 2014

for the spirit of Jonathan Harvey   There was a fisherman, who lived in a village on a great...

Interview

February 2015

Interview with Nicholas Mosley

Alex Kovacs

Interview

February 2015

Nicholas Mosley’s reputation as a writer has often been obscured by the extraordinary nature of his family background. Born...

Art

February 2012

Awst & Walther: A Lexicon of Questions

Francesca Gavin

Art

February 2012

Awst & Walther are a husband and wife team who create multi-disciplinary art works which range from building a...

 

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