“Now that luxury mind-body spas and juice bars are familiar totems of gentrification, and Fortune 500 corporations roll out “McMindfulness” seminars and on-site wellness centers, engaging in such practices can feel like an endorsement of a superficial, bourgeois mainstream — a mainstream against which many intellectuals define themselves.”
Time To Get Rid Of The Viking Helmet Cliche For Opera
“Like many Zombie Symbols, there is a kernel of truth, but even that truth is based on a fiction. The horned helmet was basically invented (torn out of its limited historical context and radically repurposed) during the last quarter of the 19th century to flesh out a nascent sense of Nordic identity in Germany.”
Technology Can Make Exact Copies Of Artifacts. Do We Care About Ownership?
“An entire swath of startup enterprises have been based on the simple principle that what one group or storm destroys, an endless array of new technology can re-create, making copies that are more enduring, sustainable, and user friendly than the original antiquities that inspired them.”
Can A Book Be Good Even If Its Politics Are Terrible?
Adam Kirsch: What could be more cruel than Dante’s Inferno, with its sadistic vision of divine justice? … Art will always exceed ethics, including political ethics, in the same way that the possible exceeds the desirable.”
Zoë Heller: “If we couldn’t find anything to delight or instruct us in the works of sexists, racists, anti-Semites and people who believe in the divine right of kings, our literary canon would barely fill a medium-size handbag.”
This Week In Defining Audience
What are the boundaries in artist/audience relationships these days? Do you have a problem with inclusiveness if you can’t define what it is? Do we lose an essential part of the audience experience when movies go in-home? And what is to be learned about what audiences want from the big new insta-culture districts?
In The History Of The World, Here’s How Many People Who Have Lived
“Coming up with how many people were born after that is certainly based on informed speculation. Plagued by low life expectancy (up to 10 years during the Iron Age) thanks to lack of medicine, food supply issues, climate changes, killing each other and other problems, human population grew at a slow rate. Early infant mortality was as high as 500 infant deaths per 1,000 births or higher.”
Who Won The Big Off-Broadway Awards?
“Unlike last year, when ‘Hamilton’ took home 10 awards for its production at the Public Theater, this year’s prizes were more evenly divided.”
Hulu May Become Your ‘Skinny Cable’ Provider
“The move would give Hulu another leg up in courting cost-conscious consumers and others who live in the 10 million homes in the U.S. without a pay-TV subscription.”
Our Everyday Game And Screen Immersion Experiences Are Reshaping Museums
“Some people like to just observe. Some people prefer to read. Some people prefer to be told a story in a movie. So, in the department of exhibitions, we have people that think in all these different ways and we have to balance it out between all of us to get an exhibition that is attractive to everybody, and tells each one of these stories in the most compelling way.”
Big Data Shows Us The Gap Between Foodie America And Everyone Else In The Country
“In an era of celebrity chefs and recipe-kit delivery services developed by experts, a pasta dish by a Dallas dad who describes his heritage as ‘entirely Anglo-Saxon’ is quite possibly America’s most-cooked meal.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 04.20.16 And 05.01.16
MoMA to Mount Tzara’s Magnum Opus
Samy Rosenstock’s idea for a great big book is getting a great big show nearly 100 years later.Dadaglobe Reconstructed (June 12–September 18, 2016)Dadaglobe Reconstructedreunites over 100 works created for Dadaglobe, Tristan Tzara’s planned but… … read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2016-05-01
This Is What May Sounds Like
Take it to the Bridge: From the Boston Phoenix, Graffiti Bridge review, 1990 …read more
AJBlog: blog rileyPublished 2016-04-30
Take it to the Bridge: From the Boston Phoenix, Graffiti Bridge review, 1990 …read more
AJBlog: blog rileyPublished 2016-04-30
Propwatch: the cake in Kings of War
A good prop isn’t a decoration or a bystander but a player. The cake that dominates the stage picture midway through Ivo van Hove’s Kings of War is never mere set dressing. It’s the… …read more
AJBlog: Performance MonkeyPublished 2016-04-30 Technology: Bad Experience. Jim Levitt: Good Experience
It would accomplish nothing to detail the struggles of the past week and a half that have kept the Rifftides staff occupied. It is enough to report that I spoke with perhaps every technical expert,… … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-04-29
A good prop isn’t a decoration or a bystander but a player. The cake that dominates the stage picture midway through Ivo van Hove’s Kings of War is never mere set dressing. It’s the… …read more
AJBlog: Performance MonkeyPublished 2016-04-30 Technology: Bad Experience. Jim Levitt: Good Experience
It would accomplish nothing to detail the struggles of the past week and a half that have kept the Rifftides staff occupied. It is enough to report that I spoke with perhaps every technical expert,… … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-04-29
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Robbie Fairchild Is Back From Broadway, But He’s Still Doing Wheeldon’s Dances To Gershwin’s Music
“Pop quiz: The New York City Ballet principal Robert Fairchild is dancing to the sounds of Gershwin, in choreography by Christopher Wheeldon. The title of the work contains the word ‘American.’ Where are we?”
Jodie Foster’s Entire Career Has Been Motivated By Fear Of Failure
“Oh my God, yeah. If Mother Teresa is propelled to do good works because she believes in God, I am propelled to do good works because of how bad I feel about myself. It’s the first place I go. ‘Oh, what did I do wrong?'”