We are so quick to equate pessimism with passivity or fatalism or despair, and to reject it on that basis – for, of course, we do not want a philosophy that tells us to give up. But is that really what pessimism means? - Aeon
Better and less expensive equipment, the growing festival circuit, and, most of all, the rise of streaming video have made it easier for Africans to get films made and for viewers overseas to see them. (Not to mention that Nigeria now has one of the world's largest film industries.) - CNN
Children are sophisticated thinkers, more than capable of abstract thought. They’re creative too. Indeed, in some ways, kids make better philosophers than adults. They question things grown-ups take for granted. And they’re open to new ideas. We can learn a lot from listening to kids—and from thinking with them. - The Atlantic
"An upstart museum in (Bangalore) has launched an open-source digital encyclopedia of ... the subcontinent's rich artistic history, dating from 10,000 years ago to the present. Included on the free platform, which went live last week, are thousands of articles on famous artists, movements, disciplines, techniques, and other topics." - Artnet
What’s surprising is that content fueling viewership only comes from a small subset of TikTok’s user base—a statistic similar to YouTube. Only 33.9 percent of TikTok users publish content to the platform, compared to 69.9 percent of Instagram users who publish their own photos and videos. - Fast Company
"It is an astonishing output for a region of six million people, featuring elegant libraries and special educational needs schools, as well as dramatic concert halls and bridges – in a place once derided as 'the ugliest country in the world'." Oliver Wainwright explains the change. - The Guardian
Over the course of creating The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical, Barlow and Bear played to other fans of the show via TikTok: They rehearsed their songs, interacted with fellow performers and contributed to the thriving creative fan culture for which the video platform has become known. - The Conversation
Julie Phillips: "When I actually looked at Lessing's life, I didn’t find either heartless abandonment or a bold dash for freedom. Unsurprisingly, the author who brilliantly laid bare the dissatisfactions and self-deceptions of mid-20th-century women's lives ... had a much more complicated story." - Slate
"Music for String Quartet was composed by an 18-year-old Bernstein in 1936 while he was at Harvard. You can tell, authenticators agree, from the familiar scratch of his signature. ... It could be Bernstein's first major composition — or minor ... Barely anybody has ever heard the thing." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Alice Sheppard of the disability dance company Kinetic Light: "It kind of made sense. If you're making a work about barbed wire, of course it would be aerial." (Er, of course.) She and her colleagues had never studied aerial dance, so they figured it all out from scratch. - Chicago Tribune
The opening of Queer Britain at king's Cross in London, "is an important milestone for a minority that has only enjoyed widespread public acceptance and significant legal protections for the briefest of periods, and is, in a sense, still blinking, slightly dazed, in the light." - The Guardian
"People who work in the arts in (the Texas city) say City Manager David Cooke is seeking to gut funding for Arts Fort Worth and Fort Worth Public Art, claiming his ultimate goal is to privatize public art and arts funding in general." - Fort Worth Weekly
Culture officials in Newcastle envision an event with "the same spirit, vibe and inclusivity as the Edinburgh Fringe" but including art shows, concerts, and dance as well as theatre. They're planning a pilot for August 2023, with a full-fledged festival in the summer of 2024. - The Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK)
"The programme, developed with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, is led by professional singers from the ENO and focuses on breathing retraining through singing techniques, using lullabies as its musical starting point." - iNews (UK)
