ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Stories

Are We At A Creative Reckoning?(It’s All Good)

Deborah Cullinan: "When we finally arrive in this future, we, the people, will be brazen about the power of artists and of art and creativity to change everything. We will have, at last, comprehended and put to action the real potential of our own strength as creative souls." - Howlround

Screens Versus Pages – How We Read Depends On What We Read On

Because we use screens for social purposes and for amusement, we all — adults and children — get used to absorbing online material, much of which was designed to be read quickly and casually, without much effort. And then we tend to use that same approach to on-screen reading with harder material that we need to learn from, to...

Science Fiction Was Depicting Climate Change More Than A Century Ago

"For a few decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors from across ideologies and genres published stories that today would be called 'cli-fi,' or climate fiction." Among those authors were no less than Mark Twain and Jules Verne (who wrote about industrialists intentionally heating the Arctic in order to mine coal). - JSTOR Daily

Warner To Start Theatrical Release Of Its Movies Again

But the window between theatre debut and release to streaming will be shortened. The shortened theatrical window matches recent changes from other studios instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating effects on the film business. - The Verge

Dance Was An Integral Part of Christian Worship For Centuries

In the earliest period of Christianity, dance was frowned upon as pagan. (St. Augustine, in his typical way, was particularly scornful.) But when folks want to dance, it's hard to keep them from it, and by the 9th century the church was permitting and even encouraging dance; by the 13th, it was being formally incorporated into liturgy. (Then came...

Jean Nouvel Wins Competition For Dramatic New Opera House In Shenzhen

The design of the Opera House takes on unconventional forms, opening up the space and integrating the opera house into the Greater Bay Area. Entitled Light of the Sea, the proposal puts in place a curved, light, transparent, and floating roof, under which performance spaces such as opera hall and concert hall are placed. - ArchDaily

3,000-Year-Old Gold, Silk, Jade Discovered In China Could Rewrite History

"The treasures unearthed at the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan, Sichuan, belonged to a highly-developed civilisation that may have lasted for thousands of years but never appeared in any historical records. … quality and craftsmanship far exceeds that of artefacts made at the same time in other parts of China." - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

COVID Shutdown Has Wiped Out Entry-Level Hollywood

"While the pandemic overturned the lives of workers industrywide, those just beginning to establish their careers in an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into were disproportionately impacted. The production shutdowns in L.A. and New York eradicated on-set gigs that PAs and extras rely upon, while furloughs and layoffs at agencies decimated entry-level office jobs." - The Hollywood...

Advertisers: If We Can’t Put Commercials On Netflix And Amazon Prime, We’ll Just Have To Make Our Own Movies

"With more people home and glued to their streaming services, many of which don't allow advertising, companies are finding they need to be creative about the ways they get in front of audiences no longer seeing 30-second commercials. More are turning to traditional Hollywood production companies like Imagine to partner on feature films like The Day Sports Stood Still,...

How Our Stories Frame Our Issues

"Why should storytelling matter so much? Because it conditions us to respond to society. Artists teach us what to take notice of and what to turn away from, whom to empathize with and whom to tune out. Plato thought this power too consequential to be entrusted to poets, whom he would ban from his ideal republic, leaving the politics...

The Best Character Actors In The Business (Well, Most Of Them)

" the results of an industrywide survey we conducted to answer one simple question: who are the most memorable character actors working today? To find out, we polled nearly 60 directors, showrunners, casting directors, and critics — and when we tallied the results, 32 names had emerged from a field of more than 300 suggestions." (The only problem: anyone...

Actors’ Equity Faces Rebellion Of Its Own Members Over COVID Restrictions

"Quietly simmering frustrations erupted publicly last week, when more than 2,500 union members signed a letter, circulated by a Broadway performer and signed by Tony winners and Tony nominees, plaintively asking, 'When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?'" - The New York Times

Paris Review Names New Editor (The Second Emily In A Row)

The magazine, co-founded and long run by the late George Plimpton, "has a new editor, only the sixth since being founded in 1953, but its third since 2017. Emily Stokes, currently a senior editor at The New Yorker, succeeds Emily Nemens, who announced earlier this month that she was leaving to work on a new book." - AP

Mills College Will Shut Itself Down

The 169-year-old liberal arts college in Oakland, which has left an extraordinary legacy in American arts (especially contemporary classical music), is one of the few all-female undergraduate schools left in the U.S. But the pandemic has only intensified longstanding declines in Mills's enrollment and financial health, and administrators say that the school will accept no more new students, stop...

Soprano Christine Goerke Named Associate Artistic Director Of Michigan Opera Theatre

"The move brings a singer at the peak of her international career to Detroit. She will perform locally at least once a season, take the lead in casting MOT productions and complement Sharon's experimental streak with a sensibility forged within the core of the operatic tradition." - Detroit Free Press

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