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Orit Gat
Orit Gat is a writer living in London. She is a contributing editor of The White Review.


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On Marriage, Netflix, and Other Things I Hate

Book Review

June 2023

Orit Gat

Book Review

June 2023

1. ‘It’s kind of crazy to shop at Target, watch Netflix, drive a Honda, and still have a husband.’   Marriage falls into a...

Book Review

July 2022

It’s Personal: Writing and Reading Through Grief

Orit Gat

Book Review

July 2022

1. A spill  I’m drinking coffee in bed and reading The Reactor. I feel so close to everything Nick...

The world is seeing an increase in the use of social media as a tool for mobilisation and protest The so-called ‘Twitter revolution,’ a term used to describe the role of sites like Twitter in effecting change, has come to the forefront of discussion as popular uprisings sweep the Middle East Former US national security advisor Mark Pfeifle even went so far as to call for the social networking site to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize   After the recent blackout of all digital communications in Egypt, Twitter saw a surge of thousands of users relying on proxy servers to post live news updates to the world When Tunisian dictator Ben Ali fled government after 23 years in power, Twitter was there to give users a direct insight into events  Such sites, which disseminate information quickly, can be an essential tool in activism – they give the world an up-to-date and uncensored view of opinions and events, particularly those the mainstream media chooses to ignore But can there really be such a thing as a ‘Twitter revolution’?   Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker cites the civil rights unrest in America in the Sixties as evidence of the success of a movement without social media With sites like Twitter, he says, we are told that ‘the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended’, making it easier for people to voice their concerns The majority of people tweeting about movements are not, however, at the focal point of discussions Does this make a difference? In Egypt, for example, only 25% of the population have access to the internet  Does this not make Twitter merely a means through which western commentators can, in an abstract and non-attached way, feel tied to a movement? And does this tie to a cause define ‘activism’, or is it another case of the bourgeoisie thriving on novelty?   For Gladwell, activism is defined by ‘strong ties’ to others involved in a cause, rather than any weak ideological commitment This kind of attachment to a cause through personal relationships is less likely to occur through the impersonal

Contributor

August 2014

Orit Gat

Contributor

August 2014

Orit Gat is a writer living in London. She is a contributing editor of The White Review.

Essay

September 2020

Three Finals

Orit Gat

Essay

September 2020

1998   In the summer of 2006, at a bar off Odéon, a girl I didn’t know drew a...

Anna Wiener’s ‘Uncanny Valley’

Book Review

February 2020

Orit Gat

Book Review

February 2020

1. SF vs NY   Anna Wiener found herself in the right place at the right time. That is, if that was what she...
James Bridle’s ‘New Dark Age’

Book Review

October 2018

Orit Gat

Book Review

October 2018

Halfway through James Bridle’s foreboding, at times terrifying, but ultimately motivating account of our technological present, he recounts a scene from a magazine article...
Women and Technology: History is a Cautionary Tale

Book Review

April 2018

Orit Gat

Book Review

April 2018

Few book reviews open with amateur rap, but: ‘back in the day when new media was new,’ goes the first line of a song...
Scroll, Skim, Stare

feature

Issue No. 16

Orit Gat

feature

Issue No. 16

1.   This is an essay about contemporary art that includes no examples. It includes no examples because its subject – artists’ websites, their...
What Can an Art Magazine Be?

feature

Issue No. 10

Orit Gat

feature

Issue No. 10

What can an art magazine be? Today, as the publishing industry reassesses its role in the age of the internet, the pioneering art magazine Metronome provides...

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fiction

April 2014

Spins

Eley Williams

fiction

April 2014

Spider n. (Skinner thinks this word softened from spinder or spinner, from spin; Junius, with his usual felicity, dreams...

Art

September 2015

Sightlines: James Turrell

Gareth Evans

Art

September 2015

For, and in memory of, Jules Wright   Approach   It is a pleasure too rarely realised to venture...

poetry

March 2017

Two Poems

Uljana Wolf

TR. Sophie Seita

poetry

March 2017

Mittens   winter came, stretched its frames, wove misty threads into the damp   wood. fogged windows, we didn’t...

 

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