Soul Cans

The Soul Moved The Pen, And Broke It

Henry Oliver | Common Reader | 18th March 2024

Flaubert wrote about emotions but kept himself apart from them. His most moving writing comes from the "opposite of empathy". "The less you feel a thing... the more capable you are of expressing it. To merely write out your emotions, is, to Flaubert, hardly to write at all. It is not to make Art, not to prioritise style, not to make sacral the aesthetic. Everything is style, he insisted" (1,900 words)

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Spacing The Cans

Rob Horning | Internal Exile | 15th March 2024

Aldi has re-invented the visual style of the no-frills supermarket. Rather than blank packaging, its goods are the wares of imaginary brands that look slightly wrong, such as the "Happy Harvest" tin of tomatoes inspected here. "They seem provisional, desultory, like drafts from a brand-strategist firm, or improvisational parodies, or something that generative AI would spit out" (1,800 words)