Q: What do Hydrotherapy, houses built to look like ginger bread houses, injecting the sperm of guinea pigs as a cure for sloth, and Women natural historians of the nineteenth century all have in common?
A: Issue 29 of Cabinet Magazine. I discovered this art and culture magazine while poking around the Electric Works gallery last week. The photo of a baby sloth on the cover was what reeled me in. Now that I’ve spent a couple of weeks reading it to and from my home and work on the bus, I can safely say I’m head over heels in love with this magazine. Its strange collection of seemingly disparate material is fascinating and each article is well crafted and eloquently written. Cabinet’s quarterly issues follow a loose thread that magically ties all of its content together. Among other topics, this issue’s theme: sloth, discusses the plot of Hansel and Gretel, the busy idleness found in the children’s story Harry’s Holiday, and a history of the development of remote controls. I particularly loved the article on busy idleness as the definition for sloth and it relates very well to our current state of webitis. SO many of us check email 10 or more times a day, browser news sites, twitter and flickr and facebook our days away. We are all busy doing nothing. And when I read Cabinet, and collecting news and exciting bits of impractical facts, I am increasingly self aware of how I spend my time, and I must say, Cabinet is the most enriching time-wasting activity I have encountered in years.
Check out Cabinet Magazine online