Dr Karen Di Franco
@archivist23.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer, MA Curating & Collections | Programme Curator, Chelsea Space | Chelsea College of Arts, UAL 🍩 Archives, Reproduction (artists' publishing), Feminisms, Writing 📐 Personal account 📎 linktr.ee/karendifranco
The institutional silence around the sell-off of the CCA's assets is deafening.
London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 22h ago‘The heritage of a civic arts centre belongs to the community it serves. Before it went into voluntary liquidation on 30 January, the CCA was a publicly funded, multidisciplinary arts institution.’ Helen Charman on Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/au...
Join us in demanding that territorial waters and ports across Asia are not part of the supply chain that feeds Israel’s genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation against the Palestinian people.
Worried about how my balcony plants have been doing over the week. Have they survived?
I’m on the wrong side of the island for the eclipse but the light is definitely different tonight.
For the solar eclipse in 1999, I was living in Istanbul so we went to the harbour at Kadiköy were I lived and watched it through a pinhole camera. All the cormorants went silent, and the shadows were the same shape as the eclipse.
The Perseids will peak between August 12 and 13. Here’s what time—and where—you can get the best view, and why 2026 will be an exceptional year. www.wired.com/story/how-an...
How and When to View the Perseid Meteor Shower This Week
The Perseids will peak between August 12 and 13. Here’s what time—and where—you can get the best view, and why 2026 will be an exceptional year.
wired.com
How my holiday is going: DAY 1: “so nice to be able to relax and not think about work, my brain 🧠 is able to connect with other ideas and thoughts, perhaps I’ll write some stuff down.” DAY 2: “The sea is amazing— I wonder what it’ll be like tomorrow?” DAY 3: “THE SEA.. THE SEA… THE SEA” DAY 4: 🌊🌊🌊🌊
Heads up! It’s Harold Pinter night on BBC4 tonight from 10pm, repeating the 1987 production of The Birthday Party (with Pinter himself as Goldberg), followed by parts 1 and 2 of the 2002 Arena special. Not to be missed! www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
The Birthday Party
It's Stanley's birthday, but the party that is thrown for him is not quite what he was expecting. Written by Harold Pinter.
bbc.co.uk
Beach reading. Thoroughly enjoyed this, although I think it’s a very ‘mid-life’ book which hasn’t been discussed by reviewers. Not a negative but contributes to how Lerner engages with memory.
On the final leg of my journey to the island. Started at 3am this morning.
Ah the joys of East Croydon station waiting room.
Add the UK Web Archive (alongside all the research sites archived there) — the list of inaccessible databases grows longer. The Arts on Film archive is another.
Heather Froehlich@heatherfro.bsky.social · last wk."Research databases are not preserved. There is no system in place in the UK (or anywhere else, so far as I know) to ensure that research outputs are officially preserved in perpetuity, as though they were books, when they are in the form of a database. " lukemckernan.com/2026/06/28/l...
"This rare publication was produced by Rank Xerox to accompany an experimental photocopy lab installed w/in Italy’s pavilion at the Venice International Art Biennale in 1970. It documents [Bruno] Munari’s experiments with the Xerox 914 machine, which he first began utilizing in his work in 1963"
Bruno Munari - Xerografia - First edition 1970 — Wrong Answer
This is a longtime favorite and a book that I’ve always wanted to handle. This rare publication was produced by Rank Xerox to accompany an experimental photocopy lab installed within Italy’s pavilio...
wronganswer.ca
#OtD 4 Aug 1887 the first public event by the new anarchist bakers' union took place in Buenos Aires. Radical bakers came up with many of the names of Argentinian pastries mocking government, police and the Church, like bolas de fraile (friar's balls) stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1040...
Today's slap on the face. Tasteless Herald ad on Instagram offering up the 50 year archive of the CCA for sale. Tonight Save Our CCA meets at the Garnethill Multicultural Centre at 7pm. See @save.our.cca on Insta.
Having now had a variety of shelving and storage installed in my flat I’ve spent the last couple of days reuniting with box loads of stuff (mainly books and ephemera) and feeling profoundly ambivalent about most of it which is somewhat unexpected.
Find the continued presentation of Nick Cave (the musician) as some kind of arbiter of creative integrity and not an apolitical grifter is wild to me
There’s a cheeky bird who keeps burying things in my balcony planter.
"Much of the escalation no longer requires secrecy – it is photographed, filmed, and disseminated by its own perpetrators, turning the thousands of members of Israeli society who daily consume and share the footage into co-participants." www.thekeymagazine.com/p/israel-rap...
“Everything Is Legitimate”: How Israel Uses Rape as a Tool of Genocide
The rape of Palestinian detainees is so commonplace that it’s no longer hidden. It’s filmed, joked about, and celebrated in parliament. This is no mistake; it’s core to Israel’s colonial project.
thekeymagazine.com
Just left the house and came into town for an event that’s tomorrow.
The absolute joy of the final week at work when everyone else has gone.
Watching the Odyssey as Nolan intended. As a French-Japanese animated series.
Put geraniums in the balcony planter to replace the herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme) that weren't doing so well. They're now in smaller individual pots alongside some outdoor succulents. Let's see how they do.
