For centuries, scientists believed that living matter possessed a special quality-a spirit or essence-that differentiated it from nonliving matter. But by the nineteenth century, the scientific consensus was that the building blocks of one were identical to the building blocks of the other. Elixir tells the story of two young chemists who were not convinced, and how their work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife.
In the 1830s, Édouard Laugier and Auguste Laurent were working in Laugier Pere et Fils, the oldest perfume house in Paris. By day they prepared the perfumery's revitalizing elixirs and rejuvenating eaux, drawing on alchemical traditions that equated a plant's vitality with its aroma. In their spare time they hunted the vital force that promised to reveal the secret to life itself. Their ideas, roundly condemned by established chemists, led to the discovery of structural differences between naturally occurring molecules and their synthetic counterparts, even when the molecules were chemically identical.
Scientists still can't explain this anomaly, but it may point to critical insights concerning the origins of life on Earth. Rich in sparks and smells, brimming with eccentric characters, experimental daring, and the romance of the Bohemian salon, Elixir is a fascinating cultural and scientific history.
Drive Time, Sea Time, and Air Time comprise the first horological lifestyle trilogy to survey high-performing timepieces through the lenses of the cars, ships, and planes that inspired them. With curated new watches to reflect ever-more sophisticated time-pieces and horological expertise, this deluxe third edition of Drive Time is a modern, distinctive update to the series. Housed in a handsome slipcase, Drive Time Deluxe Edition focuses on the iconic racing chronographs of the mid-twentieth century, such as the Rolex Daytona, Omega Speedmaster, and TAG Heuer Carrera and Monaco, through current timepieces from Chopard Mille Miglia, Breitling by Bentley, Porsche Design, and IWC Mercedes-Benz AMG collections. In celebrating two great twentieth-century inventions the mass-produced automobile and the wristwatch Drive Time is perfect for lovers of timepieces, cars, and deluxe style.
Ce disque vinyle édité à 2000 exemplaires signés et numérotés par Gilbert & George revisite une de leurs oeuvres emblématiques, The Singing Sculpture (1968). Conçue selon eux comme une oeuvre à savourer d'un seul tenant, comme une pièce en galerie, l'oeuvre invite les auditeurs dans les archives et l'atelier des deux artistes. Remise plafonnée à 30%.
'A fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position' Dan Jones, Sunday Times.
'Superb storytelling ... captivating and profound' Literary Review.
'A page-turner' The Spectator.
*A major new reinterpretation of Christendom, by one of our foremost medieval historians*.
In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance.
In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Peter Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and astounding willingness to mobilize well-directed force.
Christendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but-from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent-to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.
'Sweeping and engaging history ... a non-triumphalist history of the triumph of Christianity, and all the more powerful for it' Financial Times.
Beuys Laughing présente en édition limitée un montage sonore inédit de 20 minutes des rires de Joesph Beuys enregistrés en 1974 lors de la tournée qu'a effectué l'artiste au Etats-Unis, accompagné par Gerhard Steidl et Klaus Staeck. Perdues alors qu'elles devaient être publiées sous forme de cassettes audio, les bobines ont ressurgi 46 ans plus tard et ont été remasterisées pour enfin devenir disponibles au public.
It's 1980s New York, and though the coke flows freely, money and glamour are the more powerful intoxicants. While fortunes are being made in SoHo galleries and on Wall Street, an underclass of transient drag queens and dandies, club kids and strippers, artists and actors, models and waitstaff wander the streets, providing the city's background color, cheap labor, and even cheaper entertainment.
The unnamed narrator of Catherine Liu's 1997 novel Oriental Girls Desire Romance - now reprinted by Kaya Press - is a young Chinese-American woman who skirts the edges of New York privilege. A refugee both from her Ivy League education and a family of Maoist ideologues, she navigates the city as a slacker, temp, and exotic dancer, outmaneuvering the ever-present lure of Prozac. Liu's debut novel recalls the seedy street atmosphere of Bette Gordon's 1984 film Variety through a narrator that is perceptive, funny, and unhinged.
This recording by Anri Sala is inspired by surface noise: "I wanted to compose a soundtrack that mostly sounds, when played on the vinyl, like one is only listening to the physical attributes of the medium itself: the sound of the static crackling of the vinyl played by the stylus. As if it was contact music. However, in the course of the composition the crackling starts to evolve, gradually taking the shape of other sounds. One hears hints of percussion and sometimes even distant sounds, like fragments of ghostly music."Sala begins with the sound of surface noise and slowly superimposes characteristics of other sounds upon it. At the initial moment the listener will confuse the record's actual surface noise with the recording of surface noise inscribed in its grooves. But soon the ever-present scratching, popping, and crackling starts to resemble rain, or footsteps, or music. «Hence, when the vinyl will play, the ensuing crackle of the stylus little by little will develop to suggest a composition, a rhythm, a journey, perhaps a tale".
Vinyl LP, 22:20 min Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana / Albania, he lives and works in Berlin. His oeuvre explores the relationships between music and literature, architecture and film, interleaving qualities of different media in both complex and intuitive ways to produce works in which one medium takes on the qualities of another. Sala has taken part in many group exhibitions and biennials, including the Havana Biennial (2015); Sharjah Biennial (2013); Gwangju Biennale (2012); Documenta 13 (2012); São Paulo Biennial (2010); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007); Berlin Biennale (2006). In 2013, Anri Sala represented France in the Venice Biennale with his exhibition Ravel Ravel Unravel.
