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Rose McLaren

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.



Articles Available Online


Talk Into My Bullet Hole

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July 2015

Rose McLaren

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July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t...

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May 2014

Art Does Not Know a Beyond: On Karl Ove Knausgaard

Rose McLaren

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May 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has an oddly medieval form: a cycle, composed of six auto-biographical books about the...

Seeing the pen hover millimetres above my notebook in anticipation, Dona Vilma holds up her hand ‘Ask me anything you like’, she says to me with a smile ‘But you can chop some potatoes while we speak’ I switch on my tape recorder instead   On a tiny scrap of land on the eastern outskirts of São Paulo, off an unpaved path leading to the favela beyond, stands a small squat building made of poured concrete and chipboard A banner outside reads ‘Cozinha Solidária Almoço Grátis’ Solidarity Kitchen Free Lunch It is a modest affair, but for many residents of Jardim Iguatemi the facility had become a second home    Six days a week Vilma and Rose arrive at 8am and get to work cooking for never less than 100 people When I first visit in 2021 to interview them, at the peak of the Brazilian summer, the ground dried to a cake of dust, the menu is beef and potato stew served with filling manioca and rice Vilma, a retired school cook, is in charge Dona is a prefix of respect Her silvery hair is tidied away by a white scarf cheered up with a teddy bear motif; her leopard print blouse is protected by a red apron She navigates bumper packets of beans and sacks of flour piled high, hauling heavy cooking pots of steaming food on and off the small gas stove Later a colleague arrives with black plastic sacks splitting under the weight of sturdy carrots and leathery spinach, bulbous spring onions and big bunches of deep purple beetroot, all grown and donated by a nearby community garden    I still think about the kitchen a lot, as Brazil nears the end of Jair Bolsonaro’s gruelling four-year presidential term: it represents the cruelty of this country, one that welcomed a far-right leader with a mix of social fury and misjudged financial self-interest; but the kitchen says something too of Brazil’s perseverance and generosity   I first came to Brazil in 2012 Three years previous The Economist had used its cover to hail the country as an economic miracle: the headline ‘Brazil

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.

The Prosaic Sublime of Béla Tarr

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Issue No. 6

Rose McLaren

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Issue No. 6

I have to recognise it’s cosmical; the shit is cosmical. It’s not just social, it’s not just ontological, it’s really huge. And that’s why we...
Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

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February 2012

Rose McLaren

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February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer half way through Zona. Such...

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Interview

Issue No. 19

Interview with Álvaro Enrigue

Thomas Bunstead

Interview

Issue No. 19

Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican writer who lives and teaches in New York. A leading light in the Spanish-language...

fiction

June 2015

Gandalf Goes West

Chris Power

fiction

June 2015

Hal stands in front of the screen. On the screen the words GANDALF GOES EAST.   GO EAST, types...

poetry

February 2015

In bed with the radio

Péter Závada

TR. Mark Baczoni

poetry

February 2015

IN BED WITH THE RADIO   You’d turned against me. There’s safety in knowing, I thought. Like lying in...

 

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