FYI #111
The 2026 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize, an annual competition for unpublished writers. I’d never heard of the studios.. ‘established around the former studios of Anna Mahler and Sol LeWitt in Spoleto, Italy. The residency program provides a focussed and stimulating environment for artists, curators and writers to develop new ways of working in dialogue with peers and the unique cultural heritage of the region.’ Sarai Kirshner won last year’s prize for her proposal for On Refusal.
How to See Ruth Asawa, a lovely short documentary, via MoMA, great archival footage.
Two Poems, by Lavinia Greenlaw, via London Review of Books. I enjoyed Greenlaw’s book, The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further (2025)
Keeping Bandcamp Human, ‘Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans’
Some 2026 dates for the Public Theatre’s Watch Me Work zoom sessions, with playwright-in-Residence Suzan-Lori Parks
From Oliver Jeffers’ newsletter… I do stand by my observation that the world has sort of always been this broken, we can just see it more clearly now in an age of constant and instantaneous information, more often than not designed to outrage you. But if you retune your ears and eyes to a lower, smaller frequency, you will still notice, beneath the frothy surface, a steady current of small acts of kindness and contributions to society by people everywhere. They just don’t make the news. Almost all people are good people who just want to get on with their lives. This is where I find my hope.
César Fieiras Ceide on the complex influence of AI in creative industries, via The Creative Independent
I came across William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) via a mention in John Naughton’s excellent online diary. The book includes an interesting reference to Alberto Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m.
Laurene Powell Jobs In Conversation With Ruthie Rogers & Ed Ruscha. I love the sound of their book collaboration, Squeeze Me: Lemon Recipes & Art
Doomscroll: Ro Khanna, with Joshua Citarella
Empty Set magazine.. new technology writing
A classic west London townhouse given a colourful new life by Gavin Houghton, via House & Garden