Sunday 20 July 2014

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 20th of July Edition



EDITORIAL

Dear friends, this is a very special edition for us, because is the Anniversary Edition (insert 'fiesta' emojis here). Yes, tomorrow is our birthday! A year has passed and we've come a long way (if you don't believe me, have a look at the First Edition.) Thanks to all the contributors, random collaborators, thank you for your feedback, for following us on Twitter, for sharing our articles, for letting us know that you enjoy and procrastinate by reading this little newspaper-ish edited with love for you.

This Anniversary Edition is also the official beginning of the summer in the Procrastinator HQ's (you know how it is, we do things in our own time), and that means that during the summer, the editions of the Procrastinator will be fortnightly and not weekly.

News about the situation in Gaza; about France and the elephant in the room: the race talk; and about London, who apparently is going to be the city most visited in the world in 2014 (hope that means you are coming to visit me!) In Science & Technology, flying cars can be real in just two years! In Design, Business & Innovation, explore the science of cool via Fast Company; and of course, in this edition we have to have an article about Grumpy Cat... or well, to be precise, Grumpy Cat's human. In Culture & Entertainment, Maria Konnikova on how to be a better online reader (very interesting!); George Clooney demonstrates he is monster-proof in his battle against the Daily Mail; also, you can brush up on your French with a nice flow-chart. In Dog We Trust celebrates with a summery edition, read it if you want to find out if animals have sense of humor, and also to have a look at the lovely dogs of the Instagram of the week because they are the best. Germán, prepared a very beautiful Sunday (Some) Times cartoon, I personally love it. Finally, one Special Section that we call Written Procrastination, from our lovely contributor Kerilyn Tacconi who send us for this edition a nice essay called Parallel Utopia, where she explores the possibility of escaping temporarily by not being where one is supposed to be. This is very close to the concept of procrastination as a mini-act of rebellion championed by David d'Equainville, creator of the Procrastination day.

Hope you enjoy our Anniversary Edition and get ready to celebrate tomorrow with us!

Happy Sunday, happy reading, happy summer, and if you STILL haven't done so, follow us on Twitter.




NEWS

Photo by Maha Shawan taken in Bit Hanon, Southern Gaza on Sunday July 13th  via The Huffington Post.
Taken on Sunday in Bit Hanon in southern Gaza, it shows a little boy outside what remains of his home. The bittersweet picture shows despite the destruction around him, something as simple as a balloon is still able to bring a smile to his face.

Seumus Milne in The Guardian thinks that the idea that Israel is defending itself from unprovoked attacks is absurd and that certainly occupied people have the right to resist: "For the third time in five years, the world’s fourth largest military power has launched a full-scale armed onslaught on one of its most deprived and overcrowded territories. Since Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip began, just over a week ago, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed. Nearly 80% of the dead are civilians, over 20% of them children. Around 1,400 have been wounded and 1,255 Palestinian homes destroyed. So far, Palestinian fire has killed one Israeli on the other side of the barrier that makes blockaded Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 5'

Bernard Avishai writes in The New Yorker: "We may think we have been here before, but we haven’t. The images of escalation are the same: exhaust tracing through Israeli skies; Gazans frantically picking through rubble; Israelis glued to their televisions, reduced to observers of spectacle, some poised to run for shelter but most affecting readiness, protected by rocket science and probability, fascinated by the deadpan proficiency of military officials whose mission may confuse them but to whom they suppose they owe their lives." read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

Thousands of people have marched through central London to call for an end to Israel's ground campaign and air strikes in Gaza. Protesters marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. A police blockade stopped them from gaining access. Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and Hyde Park Corner were closed. Before the event up to 15,000 people were expected to attend. Read full article in the BBC. E.T.P. 2'


Photo via The New Yorker.

Since I moved to London, the most multi-cultural city I've ever lived in, I started filling legal forms that asked for my race. Surprisingly (or maybe not), I don't fit into any of the UK default race descriptors, and I end up ticking the less friendly of all: "other mixed background". That's why it surprised me discovering that the French don't gather data about race. This very same fact makes Alexander Stille ask in The New Yorker: Can the French talk about race? "France, with its revolutionary, republican spirit of egalité, likes to think of itself as a color-blind society, steadfastly refusing, for example, to measure race, ethnicity, or religion in its censuses. And yet France is, undeniably, a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multiracial society, and has been at least since the nineteen-fifties, when large waves of immigrants began arriving from its former colonies. It has significant problems of discrimination, and of racial and economic segmentation, but limited tools to measure or correct them. The obvious answer—to many American scholars and to some French ones—is to begin to gather better data." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 3'



Photo via The Economist.


LONDON is likely to be the world's most-visited city this year, according to a forecast by Mastercard, a credit card company. It reckons that 18.7m foreign visitors will come to Britain's capital in 2014, not including those that use the city as a brief stop-over on the way to somewhere else. The firm thinks Bangkok, with 18.4m visitors, will be the second most popular, followed by Paris (15.6m), Singapore (12.5m) and Dubai (12m). Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 2' (And if you're planning to come and visit (me), hurry, you have exactly 3 months!)

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY



Photo via Fast Company.


Liz Taurasi writes in Fast Company: Flying Cars Predicted In Two Years: What Then? "Massachusetts-based company Terrafugia, which makes a car-plane hybrid called the Transition. Scheduled to debut in 2016 at an estimated cost of $279,000, the Transition is a street-legal car with wings that fold out to make an FAA-approved airplane." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 7'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION


Photo via Fast Company.

Great article by Eric Jaffe in Fast Cmpany about what makes one consumer design cool and others meh: The Science of Cool. "Take a look at the two water bottles above. The one on the left is pretty much your standard water bottle design: tall, clear, probably crinkly. The one on the right feels a bit less conventional, with its sleek aluminum shell shaped like an Erlenmeyer flask. In a survey of which is cooler, the bottle on the right would win right away, though both bottles serve the very same function. So what is it, exactly, that makes one design cooler than another? The difference is surprisingly tough to articulate. You might say it's because the bottle on the right is unconventional. But a water bottle shaped like a kangaroo would be unconventional, too, and you wouldn't necessarily consider it cool. There's more to it than just being different." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 5'

Photo via Fast Company.

And of course, our anniversary edition had to have an Internet celebrity cat news: "Tabatha Bundesen was a waitress at Red Lobster when her brother first posted a photo of her cat, Tarder Sauce, on Reddit. Soon the cat had become a meme. A couple of months later, she had an agent. Then she had a book deal, a beverage brand, a line of merchandise, and a Christmas movie on Lifetime.. “I am Grumpy Cat’s human,” Bundesen says when I ask her if she owns the cat." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 4'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT


Illustration via The New Yorker.


Maria Konnikova writes in The New Yorker: "Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the Squid,” a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first century, she began to receive letters from readers. Hundreds of them. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand. There were the architects who wrote to her about students who relied so heavily on ready digital information that they were unprepared to address basic problems onsite. There were the neurosurgeons who worried about the “cut-and-paste chart mentality” that their students exhibited, missing crucial details because they failed to delve deeply enough into any one case. And there were, of course, the English teachers who lamented that no one wanted to read Henry James anymore. As the letters continued to pour in, Wolf experienced a growing realization: in the seven years it had taken her to research and write her account, reading had changed profoundly—and the ramifications could be felt far beyond English departments and libraries. She called the rude awakening her “Rip van Winkle moment,” and decided that it was important enough to warrant another book. What was going on with these students and professionals? Was the digital format to blame for their superficial approaches, or was something else at work?" Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 9'

Photo: Gearoge Clooney, via The New Yorker.


George Clooney, Monster-Proof. Lauren Collins writes an excellent piece in The New Yorker that will give more reasons to never read the Daily Mail again... if is the case that you still have that nasty little habit ;) Three great fragments of this excellent reading: "Until last week, when George Clooney excoriated the Daily Mail for fabricating a story about his future mother-in-law, the newspaper’s most prominent sworn enemy was Hugh Grant" . . . "The Mail is a machine for wasting reputations. Sometimes civilians are its fodder, “monstered” like so many recyclables that got thrown in with the garbage. The paper demonstrates particular efficiency and relish in shredding the character of celebrities" . . . "The Mail, like all bullies, has quieted down in the face of a fair fight. It doesn’t seem to have found even a mildly tawdry means to impugn Clooney’s motives, and the false story was not a triviality." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 4'


Infographic (fragment) via LA Times.

If you're studying French, thinking of visiting Corsica this summer or if you just want to have a look at a nice infographic, our contributor Marie sent us this nice Bastille-Day flow chart to brush up our French a little. Allez! Have a look at the full chart in L.A. Times. E.T.P. 2'

IN DOG WE TRUST






The wonderful Obi-Wan and Mia, heart and soul of La Guía del Perro via their Instagram.




Hello dog lover! There's so much to celebrate this week! Hope you're having a good time reading.
 
 
Here are some links to make you smile:



Video of the week: Barkwatch Happy summer!
 
Enjoy your Sunday! And follow us on Instagram


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In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

WRITTEN PROCRASTINATION


Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.


Parallel Utopia
by Kerilyn Tacconi

“But the Lord was my stay.
 He brought me forth also into a spacious place.”
Psalm 18:18b

I love spacious places. When everything sucks all I want to do is go to a large white beach before a limitless ocean, or a large green field under a dizzyingly vast sky of stars. I love beach vacations, the countryside, the mountains. Mountains by bodies of water are my favourite.

But I have chosen to live in a city and probably will continue to do so. Cities have their own sort of spaciousness, a spaciousness of opportunity, of culture, of people, of vibrancy. But these very same aspects can feel intermittently liberating and suffocating.

When such pressures and contexts become oppressive I become small: I hunch, I slouch, I go into a fetal position. I feel choked, devoid of energy, like I have a hole in my big toe out of which my soul oozes.

Responsibilities make my time feel limited. Everything on my schedule is something I ‘should’ do. Everywhere I go is somewhere I ‘should’ be. And because my life is dictated by external forces (who are these forces? where did they get their power?) I don’t care. My desires have no place in my life. Desire is limited to sexual encounters, chocolate cake and other carnal urges.

One of my guilty pleasures is not being where I am supposed to be. This tendency unchecked could get me labelled a ‘flake’, could lose friends, could lose jobs. But when indulged in moderation it feels amazing because I elude the system for a few moments or hours, I go where the universe cannot find me. I become like a kid who covers his eyes during hide and seek and thinks he is out of sight.

But the system does not care if I do not show up. It simply disqualifies me from the benefits it offers because I refuse (for a moment) to play its game. So while I may run chuckling for an hour, it is a fleeting freedom.

Hakim Bey described a similar theme with much more ‘poetic fancy’, through research into what he called ‘Pirate Utopias’ which he crystallized in the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (T.A.Z.). He describes a T.A.Z. as a “guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then it dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen.”

But my problem with the T.A.Z. is that it is fleeting, set apart and isolated; it is temporary, autonomous and a zone. I want to feel free all the time. Is that irresponsible? Is that gluttonous?

We create or throw ourselves into T.A.Z.’s occasionally in life: we get drunk, go to dark clubs, dance like crazy people, do drugs, go to festivals, participate in immersive art performances, listen to mind-blowing music, create, make love, watch the sunrise, lay in the park reading a book. These are our pirate utopias.

Am I naïve enough to ask if the feeling of freedom could be not just temporary, but steady, but eternal? Is it quixotic to seek a utopia that is not located in a single time or place but is an inward reality? And is autonomy what we want or deep communion?

Maybe spirituality poses a suggestion to these questions. From a Christian perspective, maybe there is an aspect of what God wants to give that I am not receiving. What if the Lord was my stay? Where is this spacious place of which He speaks?

Maybe some constraints are truly externally enforced. Though maybe several things that choke and restrain me are chains of my own design, figments of my own imagination, monsters in dreams that cause my sleeping self to punch the air. Maybe that’s why I wake up tired.

Escapism may not be freedom. Not being where I am supposed to be is only fun until I get back where they are expecting me. I want to find a place where I want to stay.

SUNDAY (SOME) TIMES

(Click to enlarge).


More monos by Germán here.

Sunday 13 July 2014

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 13th of July Edition


EDITORIAL

Morning everyone! Today is the final game of the World Cup. Although I was not paying too much attention at the beginning, these last couple of weeks my life is been absolutely football-centered, also my two favorite teams reached the final and I'm happy. I know that is contradictory to like Germany and Argentina, but honestly, I couldn't care less. There will be World Cup stories in our news section, including a very peculiar one where Brazilians consider Mick Jagger some sort of football jinx. Also in news, a great reportage by Canal + Spain tells the story of Alcatraz, the rugby team of the Hacienda Santa Teresa in Venezuela and its unbelievable origin. Very inspiring.

 Robots will take over the world by 2045 according to physicist Louis del Monte's prediction in our Science & Technology section, and watch out for the summer super moons. In Culture & Entertainment we share the trailer of the controversial James Franco/Seth Rogen film The Interview, and an interesting exploration of the young French filmmaker Raphaële Bezin about appropriation techniques in cinema. Finally, In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro share some tips to protect your pets from the heat.


Happy Sunday, happy reading and Brasil, decime qué se siente...


NEWS

Photo via The Atlantic.

Kabbir Chibber's article in The Atlantic titled The Best World Cup Ever? is not super fresh (Brazil still had hopes of winning the World Cup) but some of his points are right, as by a lot of measures, it's been an unusually exciting, convention-defying tournament, and "no matter who wins, this is the start of a new era in world soccer." Read full article in The Atlantic. E.T.P. 3'


Screenshot of the BBC compilation via BBC.

This is the first time that I get to watch the World Cup outside Latin America and I can truly say that I miss South American commentators. The English definitely lack passion. Maybe that is why I found cool this mini-compilation made by the BBC of the best commentaries in foreign languages. "Watch and listen to how fans from other parts of the world experienced some of the World Cup's best goals. James Rodriguez's stunner for Colombia against Uruguay, Miroslav Klose's record-breaking goal for Germany and Argentina's semi-final shootout win against the Netherlands all feature in our round-up of TV and radio commentaries from other countries." Watch video in the BBC. E.T.P. 3'



An attempt to use the Curse of Jagger against Argentina. Photo: AFP Photo/Odd Andersen/Getty Images via The Guardian.

"Since appearing at a USA game with Bill Clinton at the World Cup in 2010 - and subsequently watching them lose - Mick Jagger has become something of a footballing curse. After witnessing Germany's 7-1 thrashing of Brazil earlier this week, the Rolling Stones' singer has now been forced to defend himself against angry tirades on social media. "I can take responsibility for the first German goal but not the other six!" he said." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 3'


Image: Screenshot of Informe Robinson: Alcatraz via Canal +


Thanks to my friend Su, I had the opoprtunity of watching the report Informe Robinson: Alcatraz produced by the Spanish TV channel Canal +. This is an incredible story that shows the best and the worst of Venezuela taking as a case study the Alcatraz Project, developed by Alfredo Vollmer, the CEO of Santa Teresa, one of the most important companies of Venezuela that makes our famous Santa Teresa rhum. Back in 2003, when three robbers assault his property, Mr. Vollmer, instead of looking to punish them and let things spiriling down as it use to happen in the country so often, decided to make that event an opportunity for implementing a real social change, because in that community as in the world in general, "we win together, or we all lose." The Estimated Procrastination Time for this video is 34' and I swear, it will be the best half an hour of your day. Just click here. (The video is in Spanish and it takes a little bit to charge, but be patient, is worth it).


Photo via BBC.

Finally, the WTF news of the section is also about Venezuela: "We're used to a seemingly endless range of taxes and surcharges when we fly - passenger taxes, departure taxes, fuel levies. But Maiquetia International Airport in Caracas has taken this a step further - passengers flying out now have to pay 127 bolivars tax (£12; $20) for the air they breathe." Read full article in BBC. E.T.P 2'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY


Photo via The Independent.


The moon will appeared unusually large and bright on Saturday evening, but if you couldn't see it, worry not because this was just the first of three so-called ‘Supermoon’ events that will take place this summer. "On 12 July and at 01:38 (GMT) on 9 September, it will become full on the same day it is in perigree, and appear in the sky as an enormous, glowing orb." Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 2'

Photo via Dazed.

Thomas Gordon in Dazed Magazine writes: "Sci-fi authors have long predicted that robots will take over the world, but that moment may be closer than you think. Louis Del Monte, a physicist and the author of a new book, The Artificial Intelligence Revolution, has warned that humans won't be running the world anymore in 30 years time – robots will be." Read full article in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 2'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Dazed.


Contrary to the English, as Dazed Magazine points out, North Korea really sucks at self-deprecation "the country has just submitted an official complaint to the UN over the forthcoming release of James Franco and Seth Rogen's comedy, The Interview.
In the film, Franco and Rogen play two undercover journalists who are recruited by the CIA to asassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Two weeks ago, a spokesperson described the film as a "blatant act of terrorism and war" to a state news agency. Now the country has taken the issue to the United Nations, with its UN ambassador Ja Song Nam writing a letter of complaint to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon." Read full article and watch The Interview's trailer in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 3'


Images via Les Inrocks.


Raphaële Bezin is young French filmmaker from the Ecole supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy who made as final dissertation a movie called "Une estéthique de coups (des opérations d'artistes)" that analyses different practices of appropriation in cinema: from the Hollywood remake, to hidden quotations, supercuts, and even parodies. An interview with Raphaële (in French) and her movie are available in Les InrocksLab. E.T.P. 3' (article) and 1h 4' (movie).

IN DOG WE TRUST


Photo: Harry Potter, the pug. Via his Instagram.



Hello dog lover! Hope you're having a fantastic weekend!

Here are some links from around the web:
Video of the week: Shelter Me

Enjoy your Sunday! And follow Harry Potter the Pug on Instagram




-
In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

Sunday 6 July 2014

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 6th of July


EDITORIAL

Morning friends! In our news section we have the story of the people of Kiribati who are the first to prepare to be “climate refugees”. Some estimate that the number of people displaced by the effects of global warming will reach 700 million by 2050. Also in News, your weekly dose of Venezuela, this time featuring the ongoing coverage of Al Jazeera, and an article in El País on how Google helped prove the government is lying. In Science a set of surprising experiments has revived old skepticism about quantum mechanics. In Culture & Entertainment, Aaron Rose's Coney Island photographs via The New Yorker, and The Paris Review claims to be loving procrastination... and peacocks.  In Dog We Trust tell us about the Black Dog Syndrome and some hard working dogs with incredible jobs. Finally in Our Weekly Procrastination we talked about Radical Geometry, the new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Happy Sunday and happy reading!

NEWS
 
Photo via Quartz.


An entire island nation is preparing to evacuate to Fiji before they sink into the Pacific: "This has to be the weirdest business deal of the week: The Church of England just sold a chunk of forest-covered land on the Fijian island Vanau Levu for $8.8 million to the government of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. For the moment, Kiribati plans to use its 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) plot for agriculture and fish farming. But the investment is really a fallback for its 103,000 residents—a place to live if they must leave their home island." I don't know what shock me the most, reading about the first climate refugees or about the prevention capabilities of the Kiribati people. I know for a fact that some countries wouldn't start planning anything until they are in full Atlantis mode. Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 4' 

 
Screenshot from AlJazeera's Website.


In Venezuela's news, Al Jazeera has been covering the ongoing unrest in the country. Fault Lines Venezuela Divided premiered one week ago, and the latest entry in their blog is from June 27, there you can see what happened when they tried to filmed one of the many food lines that Venezuelans have to make daily to buy food. Have a look here. E.T.P. 3'

When the Venezuelan government finally decided to present evidences of one of its conspiration accusations (deliriums), these turned out to be (as expected) false. They are accusing 3 leaders of the opposition of plotting the president's murder and presented some emails as evidence. Pedro Burelli, one of the accused, asked Google to investigate if the emails were authentic and Google confirmed that they are fakes, "there is no proof that those emails ever existed". The Venezuelan government is caught once again lying, and once again they will pretend that nothing is happening or blame the CIA, Starbucks, the World Cup, a lizard or Mercury retrograde. Read full article (in Spanish) in El País. E.T.P. 6'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo: A droplet bouncing on the surface of a liquid has been found to exhibit many quantum-like properties, including double-slit interference, tunneling and energy quantization.  Taken by John Bush.





"For nearly a century, “reality” has been a murky concept. The laws of quantum physics seem to suggest that particles spend much of their time in a ghostly state, lacking even basic properties such as a definite location and instead existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Only when a particle is measured does it suddenly materialize, appearing to pick its position as if by a roll of the dice.

This idea that nature is inherently probabilistic — that particles have no hard properties, only likelihoods, until they are observed — is directly implied by the standard equations of quantum mechanics. But now a set of surprising experiments with fluids has revived old skepticism about that worldview. The bizarre results are fueling interest in an almost forgotten version of quantum mechanics, one that never gave up the idea of a single, concrete reality." Read full article by Natalie Wolchover in Wired, originally published in Quanta Magazine. E.T.P. 21'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT


Photo via The Paris Review.

Nicole Rudick in The Paris Review of all the articles featured in the printed edition of Nautilus Magazine, that she calls sharped and well-rounded, recommends Alisa Opar’s short piece in the Spring 2014 issue on procrastination, which we featured back in January, of course. "I’m writing this, you see, up against the deadline that Dan Piepenbring sets for us each week. I did the same thing last week. Though I spend all week knowing I’ll write a few lines on what I’ve been reading, I wait, without fail, until the very last minute to sit down and write it. That’s because, according to Opar’s article, my future self is a stranger. That future version of me is the one who will have to deal with the consequences of my current procrastination (sucker!). Apparently, making a lengthy timeline that ends with me writing this should help me feel connected to my future self. It’s an interesting idea." Full article in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 4'


Photo: Aaron Rose via The New Yorker.


Aaron Rose, made his art-world début in his late fifties, at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, spent three summers in the early nineteen-sixties photographing the beaches of Coney Island. Seventy of Rose’s photographs from Coney Island are on view for the first time, at the Museum of the City of New York, until August 3rd. Have a look at some of his wonderful photos in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 3'

IN DOG WE TRUST

Photo: Clarance Zeta-Jones and her baby cousin Striker via Instagram.



Hello dog lover! Hope you're having a lovely day!

Here are some links for you:

Enjoy your Sunday! And follow Clarence Zeta Jones on Instagram

-
In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION



Juan Melé Irregular Frame No. 2 &
Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) Sphere, via Royal Academy.

Lygia Pape Untitled (from the series Weaving) &
Hélio Oiticica Metascheme 1958, via Royal Academy.

This week we had the opportunity of visiting the new exhibition of the Royal Academy: Radical Geometry that features the works of South-American plastic artists like Joaquín Torres-García, Juan Melé, Hélio Oiticia and the Venezuelans Alejandro Otero, Gego, Jesús Soto, and of course, our wonderful maestro Carlos Cruz-Diez. The Royal Academy introduces the exhibition like this: "From radical innovations in the use of colour and form to new materials like neon and interactive, kinetic sculpture, this exhibition will reveal some of the most original art of the last 100 years."

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

The event that opened the exhibition was a wonderful talk with Carlos Cruz-Diez and Dr. Joanne Harwood, where he shared with us the story of his his early works, when he thought that as a painter he had to be like a journalist and tell the story of everything that crossed his eye. Then he talked about his long relationship with the instant phenomenon that is color for him, that perpetual present: "color is a situation, not a certainty . . . is always in the making, is not a finished fact."

He also talked about the academy; the Goethe's book that blew his mind; his early days in Paris, the generational movement that in the 50s and 60s explored art as communication; his family and how life and art cannot be separated, "there is no schedule to be an artist". And finally he closed the night by saying that he wished to be 40 years old again, to start inventing new stuff.

Not only as an artist, but also as a human being, Carlos Cruz-Diez is an incredible inspiration. I feel deeply proud of his genius and wisdom. I'm also very happy to have had the opportunity of meeting him. He and his artwork always manage to make me feel at home.

The Royal Academy staff were recording all the event, so it's possible that the podcast or the video will appear on their website soon. Meanwhile, and until the 28th of September, you can go and visit the wonderful Radical Geometry exhibition, that even though is not super extensive but more concise, it's really good. According to The Telegraph (E.T.P. 2')  Radical Geometry "is a quietly marvellous show. And to all those who once suffered excruciatingly through maths classes, trust me: geometry has never been so riveting."