In mitigating the impact of the COVID19 crisis, the federal government swiftly responded with economy-wide measures as part of its immediate relief. It is in this roll out of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) that officials discovered the many gaps in addressing the labour force in the arts—the artist. More than the employment of the labour, it was what constituted their income that became the challenge and eluded the fit for an artist. – Georgia Strait
Making Art On Instagram During A Shutdown
The Strip may be closed, but Las Vegas is so much more than gambling – or at least that’s what its chroniclers show. “In the absence of take-my-hand influencers, creative control of Instagram is free to return to the first group who adopted it: artists and photographers. If you give an artist a tool like Instagram and a bunch of idle hours, he or she will find a way to build a project.” – Las Vegas Weekly
More Thoughts On Museums And Their Endowments
Some directors say they’re not truly created for stressful times. “Calling an endowment a ‘rainy day fund’ is ‘grossly inaccurate,’ said Brent Benjamin, Saint Louis Art Museum director and AAMD president. Endowments are not cash reserves that can so easily be tapped. You shouldn’t spend the principal, and unrestricted earnings are typically committed to annual budgets in advance.” – Los Angeles Times
And Now… Drive-In Van Gogh
Art lovers will drive into the 4,000 square foot downtown industrial space and will stay inside their vehicles. It’s quite a change from the original concept, which permitted 700 people to walk inside the space at a time. – CBC
Now More Than Ever: The Social Value Of The Arts
Beyond simply creating art for art’s sake, or for school credits, many of the young people I encountered are building social movements and creative projects around a different vision for our planet. And they are calling us in. This is an unprecedented moment for intergenerational justice and we need to seize it. – The Conversation
Report: We’re Reading More In Lockdown (And Our Taste Is Changing)
According to the nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, surveyed from 29 April to 1 May, the nation has also increased the amount of time it spends reading books from around 3.5 hours per week, to six. Just 10% of adults said they were reading less. Readers also revealed their tastes have changed since the outbreak of Covid-19. – The Guardian
Musicians Association Will Pay Musicians To Perform Online
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada will pay musicians $150 per online performance for its members. The project is backed by $200,000 in funding every three months for the duration of COVID-19 lockdown period. Shares of royalties will go to all rights holders of the music performed. – Ludwig Van
Fall TV Is Going To Look Very Different
Now — when yearly upfront presentations would normally take place — networks are instead deciding whether to move forward with or completely scrap prospective shows, despite having barely any other finished product to consider. Some networks are requesting more scripts and approving straight-to-series orders, while others are delaying summer releases so they can be used as fresh content in the fall. – Huffington Post
Interest In Disaster, Dystopian Stories Is Soaring. Why?
Global downloads for Plague Inc, a 2012 video game that encourages players to spread a disease around the world before a cure is found, increased by an annual 123% from January to March this year, as the spread of Covid-19 began to gather speed internationally. Its UK-based developer Ndemic Creation addressed the game’s popularity: “Whenever there is an outbreak of disease, we see an increase in players as people seek to find out more about how diseases spread, and to understand the complexities of viral outbreaks,” the company said. – BBC
On Second Consideration: Rewatching Theatre Online Can Spark Different Conclusions
Laura Collins-Hughes: “As we flock online in these isolated, uncertain days, looking to sate our theater cravings, a lot of us are watching plays we have already seen onstage — familiar comforts that, in digital form, can bring fresh revelation, too.” – The New York Times
A Book Festival For The Epidemic Era, Live From Africa
“Afrolit Sans Frontières, a series of hourlong readings and question-and-answer sessions held entirely on Facebook and Instagram, kicked off on March 23 and [is recurring monthly]. In the face of the pandemic, with countless numbers of book fairs, tours and other literary events canceled or postponed, Afrolit stands out as a gathering where readers — for some sessions, hundreds have logged in — can hear from authors and talk to them about sometimes difficult or taboo subjects.” – The New York Times
Francophone African Authors Are Finally Getting Their Work Published Within Africa
For decades, most authors writing in French in Africa have had to publish their books in France, partly because of a lack of publishing infrastructure at home and partly because French companies have insisted on worldwide rights. So if these writers’ books appear in their own countries at all, the prices are something like a week’s pay for an ordinary person. Now the authors are pushing back, insisting on retaining rights for Africa and even starting their own publishing houses to produce affordable editions. – The Guardian
What Are The Possibilities Of Socially Distanced Performance? We’ve Been Seeing Some Of Them For Years
Justin Davidson: “There is a cohort of artists and presenters who, long before the great contagion, were already rethinking the physical relationships between performers, audience, and space. They rebelled against the tyranny of the proscenium, placed intimate shows in vast rooms, coaxed audiences to roam, and expanded their palette with electronics — all techniques that could now prove essential. … I can think of a dozen powerful experiences from the recent past that might seem suddenly timely.” – Vulture
Morton Feldman’s Music Is Just The Thing For Quarantine
By the time new Washington Post classical critic Michael Andor Brodeur confesses that he used to listen to Feldman at the supermarket and when stuck in traffic, you might think he’s not impartial enough to make a convincing case. Actually, he’s pretty persuasive: “Now, as the days repeat with barely perceptible variations like one of Feldman’s figures, his music isn’t just lending form to time as it drifts by, it’s recalibrating my sense of scale. And I’m not alone.” – The Washington Post
Coronavirus Or No, Demolition And Construction At L.A. Museums Goes On
“In California, all construction — including museum expansions — has been categorized as essential. While much of the art world is standing still, expansions at LACMA, the Hammer, and other museums are prompting both questions and criticisms.” – Hyperallergic
The Satellite Company That Helps Transmit Everything To Everyone Has Just Gone Bankrupt
“Set up in the 1960s via international treaty, Intelsat SA has played a critical and often-overlooked role providing connectivity infrastructure for more than a half century so that humanity could witness everything from Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969 to Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes’ recent victory in [this year’s] Super Bowl. But thanks to technological evolution, shifting FCC priorities and the latest COVID-19 pandemic, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Next-Level Zoom – The Virtual Reality Version
“The weird feel of us meeting in a virtual fishtank, with real people able to peek in, makes me think of a possible future where performers work in VR, while directors or creators observe in video panels, able to provide more emotional nuance with their faces. VR isn’t able to blend moving around and using real facial expressions yet, which makes VR theater performances feel more like dance and puppetry than real living, talking faces. But this hybrid of VR and video chat feels like something new.” – CNET
America’s First Subsidized Artists’ Housing Complex Turns 50
“Many of the community’s original tenants remain, and with rents for a live-work studio in the building maxing at about $1,200 per month — $1,900 less than the median rent for a studio in the neighborhood, according to StreetEasy — who could blame them? But residents of Westbeth have found more than cut-rate rents among the 383 lofts designed by a young Richard Meier. Their Hudson River-facing community is a stronghold of creative output and unyielding spirit in a neighborhood that’s now at odds, at least financially, with the reality of being a working artist in New York.” – New York Post
When Pianists Write Books
Five prominent pianists have released books recently. Some are collaborations, some a simple musings. All show an engagement with the world beyond the keyboard. – Van
Gerhard Richter On The Ambiguity Of Images
“Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures.” A good picture “takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.” – New York Review of Books