*Books available at The Book Lounge
The 2009 Flux Trend Review by Dion Chang Macmillan
The idea behind The Flux Trend Review is to reduce the onslaught of information we’re faced with on a daily basis into bite-sized chunks for easier mental digestion. Inviting some of the country’s keenest minds to discuss topics as diverse as economics, parenting, travel, social networking, product design, human behaviour, politics and food, it’s an extremely edifying and easy to read analysis of our changing times. The regular global issues like digitalism, credit crunch and the environment pop up frequently, but each chapter is unashamedly skewed to the specifics of life in South Africa. Published at the end of last year – pre-Obama and pre-Zuma – a couple of the topics are already somewhat outdated, so swift is the pace of transformation in the modern era. Thankfully The 2010 Review is due on shelves later this year. An essential read nonetheless.
Avenue Patrice Lumumba by Guy Tillim
Peabody Museum/Prestel
Bands on the Road: The Tour Sketchbook
This surreptitiously arresting collection of photographs reveals the decay and detritus of colonialism in Western and Southern Africa on a scale both monumental and slight. Tillim exposes the stains, cracks, and filth of huge, crumbling institutional structures — post offices, school, offices, hotels, and banks – through images that seem to whisper rather than shout. He winds around their staircases and looks through their windows, finding offices and classrooms void of basic equipment and furniture. While the people in his photographs are almost peripheral, there is an acute sense of humanity in the images, shown through the personal objects left behind: an umbrella, a house plant, a purse, a book. I found myself flipping through the first few pages, gradually coming to terms with Tillim’s distinctively ‘empty’ aesthetic. Before long I was hooked, poring for minutes at a time over every bleak image as an indefinable feeling ossified somewhere inside me. That’s Guy Tillim for you.
by Silke Leicher & Manuel Schreiner Thames & Hudson
There’s no real introduction or conclusion or anything like that in this book, but what I’m guessing happened is that the people who compiled this book got high and decided the world would pay good money to see musicians apply themselves to the art of doodling while they murdered time in the tour bus on the way to their next gig. Something like that. Though it’s interesting for the first five minutes or so to see what bands like Bloc Party, Oasis, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol and Death Cab for Cutie can do with a pack of twelve koki pens, the fun wears out when you realise they’re all rubbish at drawing and should probably just stick to singing and drumming and whatever else it is they do. A novel idea, though. I’ll give them that. Paper’s nice too. one small seed
15