Latest Featured Articles

  1.

    Notes on a Deracinated Surd

    by
    8th September 2015
    Whatever else we do with it, the Bible is not to be treated as a deracinated surd. If you don't know what this means you can guess why I wrote this article.
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  2.

    How can we believe?

    by
    8th September 2015
    Orthodoxy is neither a mere preservative nor a regulation against change. It is a dynamic, difficult and lively pursuit of communal imagination and faithfulness.
    Read more...
  3.

    Reinventing the wheel

    by
    27th September 2011
    Another iconic design bites the dust   That grand master of industrial design, Ron Arad, has done it again. Will he never stop rethinking? Surrounded as we are by industrial...
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  1.

    A Walk among the Ruins

    by
    8th September 2015
    After the end of Christendom what is to become of our desire to build our temple in our land in our way? Israel lost her way long before Christianity did. What can we learn from this?
    Read more...
  2.

    Eyes to see with…

    by
    31st July 2015
    The Arts - Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter, two eminent German artists whose work and intentions could not be more different from each other.
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  1.

    Hermeneutic Gingerbread

    by
    8th September 2015
    Following the thoughts of David Bentley Hart on why no heuristic or hermeneutic system can do away with the need for clear thinking and careful dialogue.
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  2.

    A Curse upon Iron

    by
    17th August 2015
    Arts-Music Veljo Tormis is an Estonian composer with a huge catalogue of choral music and an intriguing approach to the use of traditional folk motifs
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  3.

    Building Imagination

    by
    4th October 2011
    A celebration of an architect who truly understands what it means to create places, seen through one of the loveliest of his places, the Kolumba gallery in Cologne.
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Previously Featured Articles

  1. Vaclav Havel

    A celebratory reflection on the life and death of one of the most remarkable politicians of the twentieth century and an artist of rare and serious intention.
    Read more...

  2. Hough on Faith

    A recent broadcast of the Waldheim concerts, with the Berlin Philharmonic under, of course, Simon Rattle, featured the astonishing British...
    Read more...

  3. Just Imagine

    About the aesthetics as a theological tool (101) “Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage – these are… the architects of...
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  1. Genius Granny

    Martha Argerich, a musician of extraordinary eloquence, taker of musical risks and defeater of all that makes performance routine. A small celebration.
    Read more...

  2. The Sound of America

    Public Discourse – are you serious? It was late, I couldn’t sleep, even John Stewart’s Daily Show looked appealing. As...
    Read more...

About This Site

My name is Chris Bourne, I am a writer and correspondent on the intersection between theology and the arts and society. Well, that’s one of the things I do when I am free to do as I like. Other times I write about whatever I am commissioned to write about. My intention on this site is not quite as clear as it could be, largely because I see no need to define things now that might restrict imaginative development later. It is an exploration and an experiment and most of all, I hope, a conversation. Much of what I am exploring in these areas at present can be seen as an enquiry into aesthetics as a tool for understanding.

The Arts?

By this I mean anything that people do or make with the intention of the outcome being a form of art, or by means of true creative process. Of course it includes all the visual arts, literature, performance, music, movement, theatre, film and so on. But it could mean even more.
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