Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • History dissembled

    Noto, like other cities in the southeast of Sicily, is a near perfect encapsulation of the Sicilian Baroque, built on a planned grid, its buildings designed by notable architects, on a new site selected after the old city’s near total destruction in the earthquake of 1693. In contrast to Palermo it is a well-tended city, Read more

  • The primacy of the useless

    The primacy of the useless

    For much of my life I have done ‘nothing’, and for almost all of it I have resisted or involuntarily recoiled from the ‘somethings’ that I was supposed to do. At school I was horrified by the expectations of teaching staff and my peers alike, and to this day I fail to grasp the moral Read more

  • The island’s amnesiac heart

    The island’s amnesiac heart

    At the approximate heart of the island of Sicily there is a site which it is hard not to regard as its historical or spiritual centre, although it is far from the oldest dwelling known there, and certainly not unique in the political and economic power which it embodied – but of course such ascriptions Read more

  • A socially situated erotic

    A socially situated erotic

    Enigmatically named band releases enigmatically titled record featuring enigmatically titled songs (other than ‘Full Trance Effect’). I like some enigma in my groove, it makes me pay attention. Urban Homes emerged from a largely punk background (so their potted biog on the Altin Village & Mine Records website has it), and owing to drummer difficulties Read more

  • Mutually constituted histories

    Mutually constituted histories

    British commercial comics have always been an idiosyncratic little world, in comparison to the vast American scene with its division of labour, standardised conventions, and industrialised processes. When 2000AD came along in 1977 it was written by a bunch of iconoclasts and radicals, determined to see what they could get away with before questions were Read more

  • The bright glare of professionalism

    The bright glare of professionalism

    We were welcomed to the (deep breath) Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo by a dole of small turtles, lazing in the fountain in the entrance courtyard, to the great delight of Spawn. Clearly taking equal pleasure in the water and the sun, which they scaled one another to bask in, their happiness was Read more