Raqs Media Collective

 It began with the finding of something in a corner, dusty and forgotten. Extremely incongruous. Started us thinking in a different direction of that which is left behind and the idea of residue - again.

This is from a novel, "The Ragged Trousered Phillanthropists" by Robert Tressel. First published in Great Britain by Grant Richards, 1914, and Lawrence & Wishart, 1955. Tressel is his pen name, from the trestle table, part of the basic equipment of house painters and sign writers. It's a novel which is introduced with Tressel's lines: "this work which must be done or I will die in the work house". He submitted it to several publishers, but because it was handwritten, the publishers returned it without reading it. The book wasn't published till three years after his death - he died at 40 of tuberculosis - but hasn't been out of print since.

The novel is about a group of painters and decorators, and their families, in Hastings (Mugsborough), around 1906.

This extract is from page 46.

[thanks to Shveta for finding and sharing it.]

to think about past and future: (reminding of angels and farces)

McLuhan quotation:

"The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look
at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land."

(The Medium is the Massage, 1967)

Them (the police) throw me in ah van and tek me dow ah station, them insult me intelligence when them question me, ah treat me like ah animal ah call me monkey, them want me sign statement which wasn't written by me, but me nuh rob people fi get my money, so hey officer address me properly, cau me nuh born big me nuh drop out ah tree, I am more intelligent than you'll ever be, cos ah street life educate me, ah hard life educate me.

(Lezlee Lyrix, Put Back You Truncheon, 1985)

Osama in New York

While the whole world looks for Osama bin Laden, I found him here in New York, somewhere on Broadway, in the general direction of Soho, tagged as the 'Best of New York'