Beyond Gender – Classification, Experience and the Symbolic Life of Identity
The Beyond Gender episode on the classification of gender identity opens up a more difficult question than whether the phrase “transgender child” is true or […]
Articles by Rob Watson
Has Socially Engaged Art Run Out of Feeling?
There is a fatigue that settles in when every artwork is introduced by its social purpose before anyone has had the chance to look, listen, […]
Distraction Therapy – The Sound of Exhausted Sincerity
This edition of Distraction Therapy moves through a contemporary Japanese and Japan-adjacent soundworld shaped by electronic minimalism, platform pop, balladry, actor-singer performance, soundtrack atmosphere, urban […]
Distraction Therapy – The Fragile Work of Uplift
This edition of Distraction Therapy follows a mix that moves through release, uncertainty, warmth, memory and late-night abstraction. It is not a mix built around […]
Leadership Without a Mandate – Why Labour Should Let the Country Decide
The prospect of Andy Burnham becoming Leader of the Labour Party should be welcomed as an opportunity for debate about the future direction of the […]
The Sound Of Emergence – A Structure Of Feeling In Japanese Music
This edition of Distraction Therapy moves through Japanese soundtrack music, technopop, electronic minimalism, guitar rock, singer-songwriter balladry and contemporary pop. What connects the tracks is […]
Emergence, Feeling and The Creative Imagination
There is a peculiar paradox at the heart of contemporary life. We have unprecedented access to information, techniques, systems and processes, yet many people struggle […]
Distraction Therapy – Feeling Carried Into The World
This edition of Distraction Therapy is arranged around the idea of cultural emergence. That phrase can sound abstract, but the experience itself is familiar. A […]
Distraction Therapy – Creative Emergence and Open House
What happens when art leaves the gallery and returns to the places where people live? That question sat quietly in the background as I visited […]
Habitus, Belonging And The Mythic Grammar Of Social Change
When political controversy is viewed only through headlines, it tends to appear as a sequence of disputes about policy, identity, speech, migration, technology, borders, rights, […]