Conor Bateman
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norbateman.co
Conor Bateman
@norbateman.co
video making / film programming

norbateman.co
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2025 reading log
First book of the year done, Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever - sharp and funny, intermittently gutting; a novel of fits and starts seemed fitting to start on.
really enjoying the new CV Vision album, it's like scanning through stations late at night, pausing intermittently to catch a fuzzy psych rock track: cvvision.bandcamp.com/album/releas...
Release The Beast, by CV Vision
14 track album
cvvision.bandcamp.com
October 27, 2025 at 11:07 AM
well read - you've correctly identified a situation
you're well read - you've read a lot of books
well red - an Englishman describing a fire extinguisher
October 24, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
The second LaserDisc Rip today is rarer than the first, and also is by Japanese City Pop artist Tats Yamashita.

Early 90s. New York City. Real people. A single day documented from morning to midnight. Christmas comes early this year:

Christmas in New York.

archive.org/details/chri...
October 22, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
The first LaserDisc upload today: a video art City Pop love letter to the American Southwest. A collaboration between two Japanese pop artists in the 1980s.

Tatsuro Yamashita & Eizin Suzuki: Southward Bound, translated and captured on a Domesday Duplicator.

archive.org/details/tats...
October 22, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
I wrote about my five days in Israeli prison for the LRB. Remember with every paragraph that this is the cosseted version of the experience; it is infinitely worse for Palestinians www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...
Naoise Dolan | ‘You’re here now’
The steel handcuffs the Israeli guard locked on me were ‘Tri-Max Made in England’. Clanking mine to the beat, I sang...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 16, 2025 at 4:01 PM
my related belief is that the c-format paperback should be outlawed
My strongest book-related belief is that the paperback should come first and then the hardback after for people who want a fancy edition.
October 17, 2025 at 1:25 AM
smashed through Easy Delivery Co. this week, impeccable vibe, great arcade rally-style handling
September 25, 2025 at 12:23 AM
My new video work, gameObject Permanence, is now on display in Melbourne as part of the massive @acmimuseum.bsky.social exhibition Game Worlds, curated by @astroblob.bsky.social + Bethan Johnson: www.acmi.net.au/works/125360...
September 18, 2025 at 6:53 AM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
Game Worlds opens this Thursday. An insane sentence to type out.
September 16, 2025 at 3:33 AM
the recent 'songs in reverse' episode of pop.soil is proving to be a very cathartic sunday night listen: www.nts.live/shows/lyra-p...
pop.soil: in reverse 26th August 2025
Playing Electronica, Experimental, Modern Classical, Minimalism. pop.soil is Lyra Pramuk’s bimonthly series exploring catharsis, transformation, and healing through sonic storytelling.
www.nts.live
September 7, 2025 at 12:03 PM
saw rRoxymore play at the Royal Exhibition Building tonight. entrancing stuff, though it did occur to me that you could describe some of the sound as an ambient dub take on Max Richter's Blue Notebooks
August 22, 2025 at 12:54 PM
you know what they say, one LSD: dream emulator day a day keeps the doctor away
August 15, 2025 at 12:07 PM
this afternoon I took myself to Docklands (cursed) to check out a secondhand bookshop (wonderfully chaotic)
August 15, 2025 at 9:32 AM
@seanseanson.bsky.social have you ever delved into the PS1 VHS promos sent to VJs? this one in particular captured such an incredible vibe, and sent me down many rabbitholes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOK...
PlayStation UK 1997 promo VHS
YouTube video by Tired Old Hack
www.youtube.com
July 23, 2025 at 5:47 AM
finally sent this in, probably wavered the most on which Mondo Rock track to select
July 16, 2025 at 8:10 AM
today's attention pipeline: ps1 emulation rabbithole -> gran turismo soundtrack songs with no official release -> this fantastic DJ Flux mix from 2000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n00L...
DJ Flux - Live In Los Angeles
YouTube video by Cryptic Jungle
www.youtube.com
July 14, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
As a film critic myself... having other critics and film thinkers write about my work (or in this case make work about my work!) is so wonderful. Love this piece.
a brilliant film that's been a real inspiration to me. I wrote my thesis on Jenni's landscape essay films, and made this video-essay-as-tribute for Fandor back when they were interested in the form: vimeo.com/200532609
June 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks
June 15, 2025 at 4:47 AM
(not quite) ten writers by whom I've read more than 5 books:

Ali Smith
Rachel Cusk
George Eliot
Georges Simenon
César Aira
Paul Auster
John Banville/Benjamin Black
Ray Bradbury
J.G. Ballard

Jon McGregor on the cusp
Ten writers by whom I've read more than 5 books:

Georges Simenon
Geoff Dyer
Iris Murdoch
Brigid Brophy
Roberto Bolaño
Javier Marías
Elena Ferrante
David Foster Wallace
Tessa Hadley
Muriel Spark
Oooh, I like this one! Pleasingly challenging, even though books are my job…

Ten writers by whom I’ve read more than 5 books:

Frances Burney
Julian Barnes
Hilary Mantel
Agatha Christie
Leila Slimani
Philip Pullman
Jane Austen
Angela Carter
David Mitchell
Zadie Smith
June 13, 2025 at 2:43 AM
a brilliant film that's been a real inspiration to me. I wrote my thesis on Jenni's landscape essay films, and made this video-essay-as-tribute for Fandor back when they were interested in the form: vimeo.com/200532609
June 13, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
There’s something happening in videogames and I’m gonna find out what it is
June 7, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
Remarkable that nephew literature once existed, that works like Rameau's Nephew and Wittgenstein's Nephew celebrated being an eccentric half-forgotten appendix to some intellectual personage. All over now of course. Due to the nuclear family
May 28, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Reposted by Conor Bateman
New blog post! At the intersection of language and... abstract math

aaronson.org/blog/square-...
Square Theory
The story starts in Crosscord, the crossword Discord server. Over 5,000 users strong, the server has emerged as a central hub for the online crossword community, a buzzing, sometimes overwhelming, som...
aaronson.org
May 27, 2025 at 3:10 PM
finished reading this yesterday, which I picked up (and went pretty much blind into) off of the back of this post, and it's one of the best novels I've read all year - Sebald's Vertigo by way of Jeremy Cooper's Brian (even gets into a Fosse zone near its end).
2025 Reading 24: The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth by Adrian Duncan. So happy that I woke an hour before my alarm this morning and so was able to finish this wonderful and unexpected book before the day even started. What a blessing, for me. What an achievement, for this unknown-to-me author.
May 26, 2025 at 12:30 AM