“Underlying all his characters was his fascination with how different people might experience differently the same situation. … Where Tasso’s verses describe for Tasso and his readers the essence of war, Cervantes’ prose describes how his characters perceive and misperceive war. Tasso’s words paint heroes; Cervantes’ lines animate characters.”
A Danger To ‘Moral Values And National Security’: Kenya’s Film Censor On Netflix
The chairman of the Kenya Film Classification Board cited the threat of terrorism alongside the usual sex, drugs and bad words as reasons that his body should be able to regulate Netflix. But the country’s infotech minister says the Board does not have that power.
When Robert Pinsky Wrote A Video Game
Mindwheel, a text-based game from the 1980s, “is a playful mishmash of sci-fi tropes, Pop surrealism, and allusions both high and low … The player traverse[s] the minds and memories of four deceased individuals – loosely based on major historical figures – using what the game calls a ‘neuro-electronic matrix.’ The goal is to retrieve the titular mindwheel, which ‘contains the secret of the world’s best values.'”
From The Inside: The Many Flaws Of El Sistema
“It’s not really an educational system, because…if you do something 22 or more hours a week, at some point, you’ll start getting good at it, that’s all.” Extreme working conditions were the norm.
Does This Argument About The Wine Industry Ring True For The Arts?
“Today wine consumers do not need help finding new wines. Wineries need help finding new consumers.
Instead of admitting their failure as sales people, the wineries have succeeded in convincing the consumers that they are doing something wrong.”
New Tax Break Saves UK Theatres £25M In First Year
“Theatre companies across the UK will have benefited from an estimated £25 million of tax relief in the first full year of a government scheme for the sector, according to figures published by HM Revenue & Customs.”
Backlash: 400 Sign Letter Objecting To Akram Khan’s Comments About Female Choreographers
Earlier this month, Khan told an interviewer, “I don’t want to say we should have more female choreographers for the sake of having more female choreographers.” Says the open letter in response, “We do not live in a meritocracy – all the data proves this. The way in which we ascribe merit is itself socially constructed and gendered.”
A Video Game Program Where Women Outnumber Men
“Female characters, while still not the norm, are becoming more prevalent in top-shelf video games. And at USC, there’s been a dramatic rise in the acceptance of women into the game design program. In 2011, USC admitted 15 men into its graduate track and five women. In 2015, those numbers were nearly reversed with 12 women and seven men.”
Why It’s Important To Read While Pregnant
“I’m still me: a person for whom reading has always been a defining feature. I deal with change by reading my way through it.”
A Computer Is Now Generating New ‘Friends’ Episodes
Is the future of comedy writing by actual humans sort of doomed, or what? (Hint: Probably not.)
Why The Oscars Protest Is Important
“This protest is not simply about counting faces and looking for an accurate representation of the world, although that would be a start. It’s about whose experiences count. Whose stories get told? Whose emotions in the movie theatre are validated and amplified by awards, and whose are rejected or ignored? Creative awards like the Oscars aren’t based on merit. They never have been. Oscars are based on visibility and resonance.”
Seattle Wants A Writer-In-Residence… For A Bridge
“The selected writer – who could be a poet, fiction or “creative non-fiction” author – will receive $10,000 (£7,000) to work in the space for three months, and is expected to “undertake an in-depth exploration of the bridge” and write a literary response to the experience, to coincide with the 100th birthday of the structure in 2017.”
Numbers: A Boom In Private Museums Worldwide
The report’s most starling statistic may be that 53% of the world’s private contemporary art museums were founded between 2001 and 2010. Another 18% have been founded since 2010, which lends further credence to the widespread perception that more and more wealthy collectors are opting to build their own museums rather than pledge their holdings to existing institutions
How The Museum Visitor Experience Has Been Transformed
“In plain terms, across the field, in museums, art institutions, performance forums, and even historical societies, the visitor’s experience is now being personalized. This means that not only is the visit marked by enhanced, interactive, and “dialogic” engagement, but also there is an institutional recognition of the visitor as an independent maker of meaning who uses the museum in a variety of ways to fulfill particular, individual needs and desires.”
Data: Getty Images Says These Trends Are Defining Visual Culture In 2016
“Creative In Focus 2016 sorts its emerging threads in visual culture into six categories, each with its own snappy, slightly cutesy title. I think of them as offering the outlines of the boxes our corporate image-overlords are sorting our tastes into.”
Charlotte Rampling: Oscar Diversity Protest Is Racist Against Whites?
“One can never really know, perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list … Do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”
Michel Tournier, French Novelist Who Fused Myth and Philosophy, Dead at 91
“Mr. Tournier, a failed philosopher, came late to literature – his first novel, Friday, was published in 1967, when he was 43 – but got off to a running start. The Académie Française awarded its grand prize to that novel, his retelling of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe … Ogre (published in England as The Erl-King), the twisting story of a French prisoner of war who ends up procuring boys for an elite Hitler youth camp, won France’s top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1970.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.21.16
What Makes A Great Blog(ger)? Five Observations
As inconsistent and distracted a blogger as I am, I am hardly a great blogger. But as someone who runs a network of arts blogs, I do have some observations. Great bloggers don’t just … read more
AJBlog: Diacritical Published 2016-01-21
Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Half-Baked Idea
Celebrate it or hate it as you will, Wikipedia has metamorphosed from its beginnings as a gangly cultural interloper into the de facto reference work of first resort. … read more
AJBlog: Quick Study Published 2016-01-21
Objects of Creative Attention
Here’s an obvious premise: As we grow from children to adults, we gain proficiency in engaging the world around us. We learn its conventions, assumptions, and physical laws, and we learn to occupy, navigate, and … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-01-21
Meier, Ingels, Seldorf, Cook: My Storify from Architects’ Panel on NYC’s Skyline
I would have hoped for more incisive questions from journalist/moderator C.J. Hughes for the inter-generational panel of major architects who shared tidbits last night in a conversation at the 92nd Street Y in New York. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-01-21
Historical Materialism 2016
It’s not complete, but I’ve received a list of things scheduled to run in the journal Historical Materialism in 2016 and it’s impressive. Here it is: … read more
AJBlog: Quick Study Published 2016-01-21
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Turning The Art Of Knot-Tying Into Theatre
“With naked torsos shining, artists Daniel Kok and Luke George slowly, carefully, bind each other in rope. They string themselves – and later audience members – from the ceiling, like colourful trussed chickens. … [Their piece] Bunny explores the ancient Japanese knot-tying technique of shibari, but also taps into bondage and rock climbing.”
Boston: Rich In Arts Institutions, Meager Foundation And Government Support
“Boston places near the top of 11 major cities across the United States in the number of nonprofit cultural organizations in the city and the revenue they earn. But the city’s wealth of arts organizations receive comparatively meager foundation and corporate support, are overburdened with facilities costs, and place dead last in per-capita government funding for the arts.”
Will Oxford Really Take Down Cecil Rhodes Statue?
“A recent poll by Cherwell, the university’s newspaper, found 54 percent of Oxford students were in favor of letting the statue stand. But Tuesday night’s vote suggests a majority of students stand behind Rhodes Must Fall. During Tuesday night’s debate, Professor Biggar argued that if “Rhodes must fall, so must Churchill, whose views on empire and race were similar. And so probably must Abraham Lincoln.”