The Front
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Clearly the Yanks rule when rt comes to TV lT/ie Office and Little Britain are notable exceptronsl so il you yin/ant to know tit/hats cornrng to our screens rn three. srx or even 1? months' trrne then look here. Then bombard Channel rt wrth demands to screen your favourites before Sky does. www.tvtome.com
If the thought of schlepping through the wads of srlrcon rnflated superheroes on show rn you." local comrc store frlls you vrrth bad thoughts then try thrs route to nrrvana. For only 89.95) a month you get access to stops by undiscoveretl -- and some discovered -- artrsts as they sketch out the worlds rnsrde therr grant cranrtrrns.www.seria|izer.net
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DIGITAL MAGAZINE
Into the Stom‘ rs a (icy-Mea:lalzle mag that engages mth that evergreen toprc: the ores and cons of oer: culture. Debates on new waste. new laterature and new haircuts are let (l()‘.'.’l‘ at times by the desrgr‘ but this has the flzckabrlrty of somethrng from the newsagent mth the slrckness O'tly the drgrta. age can orovrde. www.intothestorm.com
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theEditorial
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nyone who‘s passionate about lidinburgh should be delighted by the scale of its public building now. Thanks to the international flow of information. cities have become more important than countries: nodes on a global network and magnets for wealth. Look at London‘s financial and cultural dominance over the rest of Iingland: when the National Lottery threw L'lbn at cultural projects in lingland. London got a healthy slice of the proceeds and bought itself Tate Modern. the Royal Opera House and a lot more. It‘s easy to see why Glasgow. lidinburgh. or any city that wants a place in the international league. desperately needs to follow suit. Despite Scotland‘s relative parsimony. five years ago. lidinburgh had two landmark public building projects on the starting blocks. Both were in sensitive historical sites. and both had been priced in the region of £3()—--l()m. At one end of the Royal Mile. a sparkling riot of a design by the irrepressible Iinric Miralles had been commissioned. Meanwhile. a stone's throw from the other end. a less glitzy but highly significant project was in the offing: the renovation of the Royal Scottish Academy building and an underground link to the nearby National (iallery. In the safe hands of architect John Miller. it was guaranteed to be a well- mannered intervention. James Craig. who in I766 planned lidinburgh‘s New Town. with its wide boulevards and graceful uniformity. would have approved. He believed that the messy. organic development of the Old Town needed an antidote in the straight lines of his New Town. Fast forward to
Farenheit 9/11 Cameo. Edinburgh. Fri 16 Jul
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Edinburgh gets a new £30011 ’gallery extension - and underground shop.
2004 and each side has the building it deserved: while Holyrood is as madly organic as the Old Town. the Playfair project is New Town personified. It is elegant and restrained and. unlike Miralles‘ building which has ballooned to ten times its estimate. the Playfair has been steered borne on time (give or take a week) and on budget. That‘s a rare achievement.
And yet. There‘s something about the Playfair that doesn’t add up. It‘s not the slightly lurnpen columns that punctuate the glass facade of the new underground building: nor is it the fact that there is no access from the western end of Princes Street Gardens — that it fails to open up a circulation route along the length of Edinburgh‘s most important green lung. More fundamentally. we‘re left with a nagging doubt about the building‘s purpose. Upstairs. the RSA has been sensitively restored. but in a manner that renders the display of post-1945 art difficult. And the underground link between the two buildings contains a restaurant. a bookshop. an ‘interactive gallery" and an auditorium. No spaces for screen—based art. so the chances of a Douglas Gordon exhibition in Edinburgh remain slim.
It comes down to the economics of art galleries today. To pay for this extension. the Play/fair has opted to maximise future revenues above all else — and ultimately that philosophy has had to be extended into the galleries. Setting out to show only blockbusters is no recipe for innovation. Prudence may be the winner at the Playfair. but history will judge the Holy'rood building to represent the more significant development in Edinburgh‘s cultural history.
Tony Kirsty Gas worker Socra/ worker Somewhat I got really
angry. Bush rs an absolute
frantic rn style. but that doesn't
take away from disgrace. the rmpact of the People should trlm rtself. I'll go see thrs.
back to see rt again.