This essay appeared in my regular newsletter, The Pathos of Things, in January 2024. Subscribe here.  I recently watched for a second time J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost, a strangely riveting film with only one character, no dialogue and almost no words at all, set in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The entire plot consists … Continue reading Mechanising the Oceans

This essay appeared in my regular newsletter, The Pathos of Things, in January 2024. Subscribe here.  I always find it strange to see children using the same stationary that I once did: the protractors and rulers made from clear shatter-resistant plastic, the index cards in their familiar range of pastel colours, the pocket calculators that … Continue reading Why Do Some Things Last?

This essay appeared in my regular newsletter, The Pathos of Things, in December 2023. Subscribe here.  Today more than ever, there is a strong dose of fantasy in the British dream of home ownership. The ideal house is no longer a comfortable dwelling and a way of accruing capital; it is a sandbox to be … Continue reading Mourning the Biosphere

This essay was originally published by Engelsberg Ideas in November 2023. In June 2020, everyone was ‘taking the knee’. Protests had erupted in the United States and spread to dozens of countries around the world, after the killing of an African American man, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis. The act of kneeling on one … Continue reading Aby Warburg and the Memory of Images