Arts & Culture

“Portrait of Elliot”: Painting of brain cyst stars at neuroscience conference

At Museum London on February 20th, a painting of a glowing brain is displayed on an easel. The stylized MRI brain scan, from the back-of-the-head view, is aflame in yellows and reds that form a hazy halo around a starburst of highlighter-green brain fluid. Folds of pale coral-coloured grey matter coalesce into cranial nerves bordered by a streaming blue-violet neck. In the right hemisphere drifts a ghostly cyst.  The piece is called “Portrait of Elliot”, painted by artist Natasha Beaudoin. It is based on a real MRI scan of her boyfriend, Elliot Tomlinson, who was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst. …

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“Come with me inside a black hole”: A talk by physicist Carlo Rovelli

“They’re remarkable objects… I hope I can tell you something more about their strangeness and their beauty,” says physicist Carlo Rovelli of black holes on January 30th at Western University’s Conron Hall, for the 2025 Duncanson Lecture. Behind him beams a photo of Sagittarius A* — a black hole 26 million kilometers wide in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 26,000 light years from Earth (1 light year is about 9.4 x 1012  kilometers). The photo — the average of thousands of photos taken from a telescope — shows a hazy orange-yellow ring of fluctuating brightness circling a dark…

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Poetry and Prose, Roots and Rhythm: Black History SLAM

As the state of the world continues to change around me, it’s been hard to decide how to respond to it. There’s an endless list of things that need attention and many systems to fight to create any sort of change. When responding to a capitalist status quo that places profits above people and the environment at large, it’s hard to feel sane in any one form of response, so I’ve been able to find solace in multiple things at once. Protesting with the community; promoting and engaging in mutual aid; and, most recently through journalism, sharing underrepresented stories and…

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Council of Canadians Poetry Recital

On February 4, about 60 Londoners met at the Central Branch of the London Public Library to participate in “A Town Hall on the Future of Canada”, hosted by the Council of Canadians and the London and District Labour Council.  Speakers on organized labour, public health, the environment, and social justice and militarism presented the ongoing and interrelated crises facing people living in Canada today. But they also presented an alternative vision based on community connection and a call to action to change the trajectory of the Canadian state and its continual onslaught of policies and legislation against the working…

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Tatreez: Weaving Palestinian history

Originally published at NB Media Coop on February 11th, 2024 The Palestinian thobe fills my phone screen. It is black, originally indigo-dyed. It flares with orange, red, and jewel-coloured embroidery. The chest-piece is laden with intricate triangles, zigzags, and flower-like motifs. The front of the skirt bursts with a panel of squares bearing stars. The sleeves and sides are rich with greens, blues, and pinks that twine into branch-like patterns or descend in diamonds. The back is streaked with orange panels that border arching embroidery. In its entirety, the thobe is mesmerizing in the embroidery’s heaviness and vibrancy, handmade in…

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