The weblog of Darren Friesen

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation

This book was recommended to me a few days ago by a friend. If some people don't like the word 'disillusioned', I am not one of them. Disillusionment is something I have felt for years, even when working in churches, which I did for 10 years. I think I'll pick this one up.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Incomplete Manifesto

This is such a great list. Often I find I need "permission" to do what I really want/need to do to be whole. This list gives me permission in bucketloads. It comes from a design firm that thrives doing the "other". Some of my favourites:

1.Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit

2. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort

3. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

4. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.