“When Griffin first rose to prominence in the ‘90s as an actress and comedian she was, in some ways, the pinnacle of the ‘un-cool’ girl. In her act she talked rapid fire about vapid subjects: friends, dating, celebrities, etc, but she didn’t have the edge of Janeane Garofalo, or the sexual brazenness of Margaret Cho. The only shtick she had was that she was willing to talk about anything with her audience.”
The Year Feminist Performance Art Made Its Revival, With A Mattress
“The performance will last until her rapist has left campus. The mattress will only be carried on campus. She cannot ask for help, but can accept it once it is offered. Once a person helps her carry the mattress, they enter into ‘the space of performance.’ By quite literally bringing the site of the crime (in this case an ostensibly ‘safe’ domestic space) into public sight, Sulkowicz’s performance relocates its subject in between the shifting grounds of public and private, personal and political.”
The Swedish Scientists Who Insert Bob Dylan Lyrics
“Five Swedish-based scientists have been inserting Bob Dylan lyrics into research articles as part of a long-running bet. After 17 years, the researchers revealed their race to quote Dylan as many times as possible before retirement.”
America’s Most Pliable, Pernicious, Persistent Myth: The Self-Made Man, From Ben Franklin To Nasty Gal
“The self-made mythology has evolved in its 200 years: from an exuberant celebration of opportunity in the young republic to a stern admonition against excess in the antebellum years; from a naive story of pluck rewarded in the post-Civil War-era, to a brazen defense of money-getting in the Gilded Age; from a beacon to the great wave’s huddled masses, to a pep talk for the young women of the digital age.”
The Daydreaming Disorder: Is “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo” The Next ADHD? (Is It Even Real?)
“The name of [this] ‘new attention disorder’ sounds like an Onion-style parody … It also sounds like a classic case of disease mongering: blurring normality with sickness to boost drug companies’ bottom lines. … Disease mongering is a tough concept to define – but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. What we have here seems to be a duck egg.”
How Do We Build Sustainable Arts Audiences?
Join the conversation: Building Arts Audiences – live panel discussion with Kurt Andersen, NEA chairman and national arts leaders. Oct. 1 at 3pm est. #buildingartsaudiences
Atlanta Symphony CEO Resigns As Lockout Continues
“I believe that my continued leadership of the ASO would be an impediment to our reaching a new labor agreement with the ASO’s musicians,” said Stanley Romanstein in a press release.
Giving Voice To Syria’s Hidden Dead In New Theatre Piece
Tania El Khoury’s interactive sound installation/performance piece Gardens Speak reconstructs “oral histories of the men and women who are buried not in public cemeteries, but in the back gardens of ordinary Syrian homes” because public burials were too dangerous.
“Children Of A Lesser God” Returning To Broadway After 35 Years
“Children of a Lesser God, a groundbreaking play about the relationship between a deaf woman and a hearing man, who clash over ideas about speech even as they fall in love, will be revived on Broadway during the 2015-16 theater season … The director will be Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in June for staging the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun last spring.”
Leonardo’s “Lady With An Ermine” – Turns Out There Were Three Of Them
“Engineer Pascal Cotte has spent three years using reflective light technology to analyse The Lady with an Ermine … [and] has shown the artist painted one portrait without the ermine and two with different versions of the fur.” (includes video)
Now The Big Guns Are Joining Writers’ Fight Against Amazon
“Andrew Wylie, whose client roster of heavyweights in literature is probably longer than that of any other literary agent, said he was asking all his writers whether they wanted to join the group, Authors United. Among those who have said yes … are Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera.”
UK Copyright Law Finally Allows Exception For Parody
“Under current rules, there has been a risk of being sued for breach of copyright if clips of films, TV shows or songs were used without consent. But the new European Copyright Directive will allow the use of the material so long as it is fair and does not compete with the original version.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.29.14
Philip Roth, Le Guin Take on Amazon
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-09-29
A Museum Merger That Seems Sensible
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-29
What have the Romans ever done for us?
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth | Published 2014-09-28
Telling the World What Dance Means, 21st Century Style
AJBlog: We The Audience | Published 2014-09-28
Do You Think You Know Gene Kelly?
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil | Published 2014-09-29
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We’ve Known The Internet Was Broken For Decades. Now What Do We Do?
“Because the net is built on software that gets endlessly used and reused, it’s littered with code that dates back decades, and some of it never gets audited for security bugs.”
Afraid To Fly? Aside From The Terrifying Crash Shows, Hollywood Can Help You
“Air Hollywood has become a go-to destination for filming aviation scenes in Hollywood. Its aircraft sets and props have been featured in countless TV shows, commercials and movies and not just for moments of terror.”
Author David Mitchell Claims A Bitter Writer In His New Book Is Himself, But Everyone Else Thinks It’s Martin Amis
“Either the monster in his mirror has led him on a dangerous journey he didn’t realise he was taking (though it’s hard to believe no editor would have pointed it out to him), or he’s belatedly woken up to the fact that taking a pop at his literary elders is not necessarily the smartest career move.”
Google, Europe, America, And The Right To Be Forgotten
“In Europe, the right to privacy trumps freedom of speech; the reverse is true in the United States. ‘Europeans think of the right to privacy as a fundamental human right, in the way that we think of freedom of expression or the right to counsel’.”
The Most Unusual College President In America
“Over the course of nearly forty years, [Leon] Botstein – a historian, writer, and conductor – has built Bard in his own polymath image,” revamping the curriculum, packing the faculty with well-known intellectuals, founding alternative high schools, operating degree programs in prisons … Everything but running sports programs and hitting alumni up for money, the way normal college presidents do.