Author: Simon Elmer

Culture Wars: The Piper and the Archer

1. The Death of Art The death of art has been proclaimed for at least a century, most loudly, perhaps, by Dada during the Great War in Europe; but its clarion call has been sounded with diminishing ferocity over the last few decades. Initially, under the neoliberal revolution and fiat economies of the 1980s, the … Continue reading Culture Wars: The Piper and the Archer

Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism

Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism by Simon Elmer Hardback: £45.00 Paperback: £25.00     Look Inside Description Written between 2016 and 2024, four years either side of lockdown, the articles collected in this volume have the benefit of straddling this watershed in Western capitalism, and of documenting, from the battlefields of the culture wars … Continue reading Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism

Crossing the Jinsha River

In the upper reaches of Tiger Leaping Gorge, Where the rapids of Jinsha River cut their way xxxxBetween mountains of unmelting snow In a torrent of gold water and silver spray, xxxxAnd the shadowed cliffs on either side Ascend to sunlit peaks five-thousand metres high — Chinese tourists, beneath masks and white umbrellas, Queue patiently … Continue reading Crossing the Jinsha River

Replacement Immigration. Part Two: The Colonisation of the UK

4. Debunking Reality The management of the response to the Southport murders I looked at in Part One of this article, largely by the same political organisations and media companies that turned the vote of 20 percent of the UK electorate into the extremist government of Keir Starmer, is not the only way in which … Continue reading Replacement Immigration. Part Two: The Colonisation of the UK

The Circus

Ants on the locust tree assume a great-nation swagger xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx— Mao Zedong, 1963 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx1 On this nameless junction, where Fuzhou Road Crosses Jiangxi Road on its way to the Bund, For a hundred years the British Concession In the Far East — Shanghai’s City of London; And where, today, a red light means ‘stop’ But … Continue reading The Circus

Case Studies in Estate Regeneration

My old friend and sometime adversary, the architect Patrik Schumacher, once declared that the ‘unique and exclusive concern of architects’ is what he described as the first few millimetres of a building.[1] By this he meant a building’s form, its exterior and interior surfaces, the sculptured and engineered façade or envelope behind which whatever goes … Continue reading Case Studies in Estate Regeneration

Case Studies in Estate Regeneration: Demolition, Privatisation and Social Cleansing

Case Studies in Estate Regeneration: Demolition, Privatisation and Social Cleansing by Simon Elmer Hardback: £40.00 Paperback: £25.00     Look Inside Description Created in its current form in 1997 by the Labour government of Tony Blair and formalised in 2016 as a national programme by the Conservative government of David Cameron, estate regeneration is the … Continue reading Case Studies in Estate Regeneration: Demolition, Privatisation and Social Cleansing