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Sham Ruins
ISBN/GTIN

Product description

In the middle of the 18th century, a new fad found its way into the gardens of England's well-to-do: building fake Gothic ruins. Newly constructed castle towers and walls looked like they were already falling apart, even on the first day of their creation. Made of stone, plaster, or even canvas, these "sham ruins" are often considered an embarrassing blip in English architectural history. However, Sham Ruins: A User's Guide expands the specific example of the sham ruin into a general principle to examine the way purposely broken objects can be used both to uncover old truths and invent new ones. Along with architecture, work by Ivan Vladislavic, Tom Stoppard, Alain Mabanckou, Aleksei Fedorchenko, Michael Haneke, and Sturtevant is used to develop this thesis, as well as artifacts such as pre-torn jeans, fake histories, and broken screen apps. Using these examples, one of the key questions the book raises is: What is it that sham ruins ruin? In other words, if real ruins are ruins of what they actually are, then sham ruins should be considered ruins of what they are not. Thus sham ruins are about imposing new meaning where such meaning does not and should not exist. They also can show how things we think are functioning well are actually already broken. Sham ruins do this, and much more, by being lies, ruses, and embarrassments. This is what gives them the power with which we can think about objects in new, unintended ways.
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Details

Additional ISBN/GTIN9781000529388
Product TypeE-book
BindingE-book
FormatEPUB
Format noteno protection
FormatE101
Publishing date29/11/2021
Edition1. Auflage
LanguageEnglish
File size1919 Kbytes
Article no.10159082
CatalogsVC
Data source no.3006251
Product groupBU676
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Recommendations for similar products

Among headlines of rising numbers of mental problems among teenagers and ever smaller green spaces available to children, this book is an urgent und well-researched reminder of what we're really losing. Coming at it from various angles, Jones examines the importance of nature and wild spaces for our mental and physical well-being. The benefits are so clear, in fact, that even having a hospital bed with a green view instead of one of building has been shown to improve patients' recovery, to give just one example. Her focus here is on all humans but clearly children, still developing and without much agency, are easily the worst affected. Having schools without any outdoor space, of which there are at least 20 in the UK at the moment, should not be legal. Easily my favourite nugget of knowledge was that all babies, if left to their own devices, will eat soil, which turns out to contain important microorganisms the contribute to a lifetime of better gut health and mental health. So yes, my little one might loke like some sort of hippie dracula with his little soil stained mouth - but I'm playing the long game and will not disturb him.
Bill Gates is one of the few super-rich who actually seems to feel some responsibilty attached to his wealth and is currently trying his best to get the world vaccinated. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that he feels strongly enough about the climate crisis to publish a book about it. It's a pleasantly solution-minded approach: he sets out in detail what exactly needs to be achieved and which, in his opinion, is the best way to do so. Clearly enthusiastic about the developing technology, Gates largely puts his faith in scientific funding and advancement. His optimism here comes across as highly knowledgable and justified, only tampered by his lack of plan when it comes to political cooperation. Here though, a lot of the initiative when it comes to tackling the climate crisis has floundered and been torpedoed by other interests. Let's hope Gate's book goes some way in opening politicians eyes everywhere.
I am not the first Dussmann employee to recommend this wonderful book and I suspect I won't be the last either. Flynn's exploration of what she calls the 'post-human landscape' is a fascinating window into what happens to places humans have all but destroyed after we leave. From forest clearings created by WW1 shells to post industrial Scottish landscapes, she casts a rare optimistic glance over the effects of human intervention in the landscape by demonstrating that (although it can take many years) the natural world has an incredible ability to reclaim man-made wasteland and this can have extraordinarily positive effects on biodiversity and even on CO2 levels. Flynn is careful not to get too carried away in her optimism but an uplifting book which looks at the climate crisis is rare - all too often we are left to wallow in our imminent doom - so in many ways it is a breath of fungus cleaned fresh air!
Auf die Romane, für die Autoren den Literaturnobelpreis erhielten, bin ich immer besonders gespannt und hege vermutlich oft zu hohe Erwartungen. Hamsuns Roman "Hunger" ist eines meiner Lieblingsbücher und ich merkte, dass fast 30 Jahre Schaffenszeit dazwischen einen deutlich anderen Stil beim Autor zum Ausdruck brachten. Und das ist gut so - trotz allem wollte mir sein (durch den archaischen Erzählstil fast biblisch oder alttestamentarisch anmutender) Isak als Figur nicht so viel über sich erzählen. Fast 30 Jahre verfolgen wir ihn und seine kleine Familie mitten im Ödland, die in die Selbstversorgung geht. Es wird selten kommuniziert, das Gesetz umgangen und die Modernität kritisch beäugt (Telegrafenmasten, wofür denn dies moderne Gerät hier?). Das einfache Bauernleben fängt der Autor zwischen endloser Plackerei und malerischem Idyll ein. Nichtsdestotrotz hätten es gern 200 Seiten weniger sein dürfen. Einige Raffungen mehr und meine Zufriedenheit wäre gestiegen. Das Kapitel über Schwangerschaften, Fehlgeburten und Kindstötung war ein wunderbar Emanzipiertes. Bitte mehr davon, Herr Hamsun! Ich las diese kleine Bauern-Chronik nicht ungern, aber Hamsun überzeugte mich definitiv bereits mit anderen Romanen.
The book that launched a publishing obsession. Isabella Tree's account of her and her husband's transformation of his family estate into a 'rewilded' oasis for flora and fauna is only a few years old yet has proven such a hit that other publishers have raced to put out their own books on wilding/rewilding.
This is with good reason. Once you get over the fact that Tree and her husband just happen to own thousand of acres of the best and most beautiful countryside in Britain, you discover this is a book filled with fascinating nuggets about what best to do with the countryside in the climate crisis and how to think about natural history in different ways. Among the biggest revelations to me was Tree's scepticism about the idea that closed canopy forests had once covered the whole of the UK. Her point being that if they did, there would have been no sustenance for large grazing animals. There is much much more to learn in the book itself!

Author

Brian Willems is Associate Professor of Literature and Film Theory at the University of Split, Croatia. He is most recently the author of Speculative Realism and Science Fiction (2017) and Shooting the Moon (2015). He has curated exhibitions of new media art in Croatia and Slovenia and is the author of the novella Henry, Henry (2017).