Our discussion this month was focused on value: what it means in the context of art-making & the complications in assigning it to works of art.

The list

- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

- Conversation with Sister

- Truman Chambers, The Vantablack Controversy: Anish Kapoor vs. Stuart Semple: https://www.thecollector.com/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple-controversy/‍

- Hiromi's Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnISpahN2dM‍

- Luke McDonagh, Music & Drama in UK Copyright Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pirg1g83es‍

- Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Czeslaw Milosz & Lillian Vallee), 'Arts Poetica?': https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49455/ars-poetica-56d22b8f31558‍

- Melena Ryzik, 'Duke Riley: Grand Master Trash': https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/arts/design/duke-riley-artist-brooklyn-museum-trash.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DU0.KyFc.jdmhS5CINAGs&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share‍

- John Schwartz, 'Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide': https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html‍

- Dead Poets Society (scene): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wey8nauEyA4‍

- Jorge Luis Borges, 'Pierre Menaud, Author of Quixote' (attached as PDF)

- Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger: https://kottke.org/12/07/andy-warhol-eating-a-hamburger‍

- Oswald de Andrade (traslated by Leslie Barry), 'The Anthropofagist Manifesto': https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Andrade_Cannibalistic_Manifesto.pdf‍

- Catherine Lacey, 'How to write fiction':

In order to write fiction a writer must first believe she is writing fiction, and thus armored in the belief that she is writing fiction, she can pass some hours believing she is doing nothing more than making things up— yet if all goes well the writer will write something that is not quite fiction, some personal item or admission she would not have written if she had known any better, something she could have only written under the safe delusion that she was writing fiction, and it is in this way that the writer tries and fails to hide from herself, and it is in this way that she realizes the futility of trying to write fiction, and after this realization some hours or a full night’s sleep must pass before she can forget this recurrent self-betrayal in order to again write fiction.

- Walt Whitman, Quote from Preface to 'Leaves of Grass': "He [the poet] is no arguer  . . .  he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing"