‘This inflexibility makes sense to a non-visual thinker, but to visual thinkers such dogma is depressing and sad, like forcing ballerinas to wear suits of armour.‘
Last summer in Vancouver I attended a screening of the cult documentary Helvetica – a biography of the classic sans serif font designed in 1957. All 950 seats of the Ridge Theatre were filled, and I haven’t felt as much energy in an audience since attending the 1993 taping of Nirvana’s MTV Unp…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘In the year leading up to this I started collecting objects that, in some way, evoked a sense of Canadianness in me.’
‘The presence of another person at the scene is suggested. The image invites you to imagine their position and to mentally assume it.’
Photography by Debmalya Ray Choudhuri, introduced by John-Baptiste Oduor.
‘Seven thousand forest fires are currently burning – fires which, under normal circumstances, would never even cross your mind.’
Fiction by Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson.
‘He was “a Joyce, not a Joycean”, yet considered himself the supreme arbiter of what constituted valuable Joyce scholarship. At the same time, he admitted that he rarely read anything in full.’
James Scudamore on trying to ghostwrite Stephen James Joyce's memoir.
