“‘I call this ‘The Metaphor Strikes Back,” says [director Suzanne] Richard of ‘the deaf, dumb and blind kid,’ as the ‘Pinball Wizard’ lyrics un-gently describe the traumatized title character of Pete Townshend’s seminal rock opera. ‘I think it’s time for the metaphor to get a dose of what the real experience of disability is like.'”
Artist Tino Sehgal Returns To His Ballet Roots – Sort Of
“In his early years, Sehgal” – now famous for his “constructed situations” – performed for the French choreographer Jérôme Bel, working also with Les Ballets C de la B, a highly conceptual contemporary dance company in Ghent.” Earlier this fall, he created new works for a very un-Sehgalian setting: the Paris Opera Ballet at the stupefyingly lavish Palais Garnier.
Science Fiction Writers Have Done A Dreadful Job Of Dealing With The Future
Typically, as noted above, science fiction authors posit a united world under benign or tyrannical world government. How our present divided world came to be united in the future is seldom explained. Science fiction authors are notorious for getting out of plot holes by inventing new technologies like “handwavium.” The political equivalent of handwavium is the World Federation of Handwavia.
Enough Of Bad Sex In Fiction – It’s Time For A Good Sex In Fiction Award, And Now There Is One
“You may have heard of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, but isn’t it about time we started rewarding good sex in literature? That’s exactly what Erotic Review [magazine] decided, prompting them to create the Good Sex in Fiction Award. And while the Bad Sex in Fiction long list is certainly worth a few laughs, let’s all be honest: It’s the Good Sex in Fiction long list that you’re going to want to go out and read.”
The Ten Best Books On Creativity
Just as no two artists have the same working methods, so too might your next bolt of inspiration come from an unexpected place, be it a groundbreaking building, a compelling work of art, or a spare Oblique Strategies deck.
Bad Ideas For How To Feel Good: Positive Psychology
“In 1998, the American Psychological Association appointed a new president, Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. Up until this point, Seligman was best known for his work in the 1960s administering electric shocks to captive dogs, but in his new role as president, he was now changing tack. Seligman used his inaugural speech to the association to declare the grand opening of a whole new branch of psychology, to be known as ‘positive psychology.'”
Netflix Says It Will Spend $6 Billion On Content
“Netflix is promising two big highlights for 2016 [sic]. For viewers, there’ll be 1,000 hours of original new shows, part of a planned $6 billion in spending on content. And for investors there’ll be serious profits for the first time in the company’s history.”
Yoko Ono’s First Public Artwork In The U.S. Unveiled In Chicago
The installation, titled Sky Landing, is in Jackson Park, which will also be the site of the Obama Presidential Library. “[It] consists of 12 steel lotus petals and mounds that form the yin yang symbol to symbolize peace.”
Svetlana Alexievich, Margo Jefferson Among Finalists For UK’s Top Non-Fiction Award
“Books by two journalists, one a Pulitzer prizewinner, the other a Nobel laureate, have made it to the shortlist announced on Monday for the £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.”
Strong Female Roles In TV Are Getting More Common On Both Sides Of The Pond
“The trend is evident in such acclaimed serials as Girls, Unreal, and Transparent in the U.S. Meanwhile in the U.K., period pieces Call the Midwife and Victoria, Blighty’s biggest new drama this fall, have put women to the fore in two different centuries. The fashion for female leads is just as clear in comedy.”
Italian Mafia Groups Are Trading Weapons To ISIS For Looted Antiquities: Report
According to an investigation by the newspaper La Stampa, “the ‘ndrangheta and Camorra mafia groups in southern Italy … are reportedly handing over to [ISIS] weapons smuggled out of Moldova and Ukraine by Russian criminal groups in exchange for Roman and Greek artefacts illegally excavated from ancient sites including Leptis Magna, Cyrene and Sabratha in Libya – all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.”
David Antin, 84, Known For His ‘Talk Poems’
“Identified by the Poetry Foundation as part of ‘a group of artists and poets who brought new definitions and ambitions to poetry in the early 1970s,’ Antin won acclaim for his signature ‘hybrid of criticism, poetry and storytelling that involved Antin discoursing freely on a subject in front of an audience,’ as the foundation described his talk poetry.”
When Attention Is Always Demanded, How Do We Still Think?
“Where the human gaze goes, business soon follows.” When that gaze eventually shifted to the smartphone—portable, social, location-aware, always on—whatever last reserves of human attention were still left unexploited were suddenly on the table. The smartphone would become “the undisputed new frontier of attention harvesting in the twenty-first century, the attention merchants’ manifest destiny.”
What Apple Learned About Innovation From Glenn Gould
The Canadian pianist was an innovator, a maverick who went his own way. But he had some ideas about innovation not being just for the sake of innovating…
Louis Menand: What Has Cultural Criticism Become In The Age Of Crowds?
“The cultural critic’s conceptual enemy is the smoothing formula known as ‘the wisdom of crowds.’ On that theory, it must be the case that the person whose favorite song is the No. 1 song, whose favorite book is a best-seller, whose favorite food just switched from kale to quinoa, is the luckiest person in the world, because the culture is producing exactly the goods that he or she enjoys. This rule would apply right down all the rungs of life-style choices within your demographic: the kind of car you drive, the number of kids you have, where you take your vacations. On a wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, what most people who are like you choose to do should be the optimal choice for you.”
Detroit’s Motown Museum Plans Big Expansion
The 50,000-square-foot project will rise around the existing museum, housed in the humble Hitsville, U.S.A., building where Berry Gordy Jr. launched the careers of stars such as the Supremes, Temptations and Stevie Wonder.
Ambitious Miami Museum/Theatre Project Collapses As College Pulls Out
Miami Dade College’s grand plan to build a massive downtown cultural center imploded Monday when college trustees chose to cancel the project rather than proceed amid a declining real estate market and an escalating feud with a local art dealer.
What Will Pop Culture Look Like In The Future? Here are Some Projections…
“The act of going to the movies itself will likely become an expensive, high-culture sort of ritual, like the opera. Hollywood classics will be digitally retooled as VR environments and shown in restored out-of-town multiplexes. And ex-movie stars, desperate for cash, will perform the movies live.”
Actors Union Threatens Video Game Makers With Strike
“The union said that it has tried for more than 19 months to negotiate a new deal with prominent employers in the video game industry and that performers have been governed by a two-decade old contract still in place.”
Anne Midgette, Classical Music Critic, Turns Her Reviewer’s Eye And Ear To Art
“The work of the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson is all about the quest for beauty and the ways in which that quest is doomed to failure, bogging down in mediocrity or kitsch, or, in these works, the trappings of Las Vegas. But the work radiates so much theatricality and glitz and humor that it feels like a big party. For a show about failure, it sure is having a good time.”
Are Our Theatre Spaces Failing Our Imaginations?
“We believe in the power of imagination to transport audiences across the universe and everywhere in between, but we could do better to reckon with the technological abilities and limitations of our artistic spaces. How does the architecture of those spaces, of rehearsal rooms and theatres, subtly shape the stories we tell? And how might we acknowledge within our work that making theatre extends beyond rooms?”
200 Walk Out Of Amy Schumer’s Arena Show When She Disses Donald Trump
“You’d think Amy Schumer fans would know where she stands.” But a couple hundred people in Tampa evidently didn’t. Said the comedian in a statement, “I want to thank the 8400 people who stayed. We had a great time! “
Russia Today’s Bank Accounts Shut Down; UK Denies Kremlin’s Accusations Of Censorship
“RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, … said she had received a letter out of the blue from NatWest saying that it was pulling the plug on the broadcaster’s accounts from mid-December. ‘We have recently undertaken a review of your banking arrangements with us and reached the conclusion that we will no longer provide these facilities,’ it said.”
Bob Dylan Has Given No Response Whatsoever To His Nobel Prize
“So far the American troubadour has responded with silence since he won the prize on Thursday. He gave a concert in Las Vegas that very night, but made no mention of the accolade … [though his] set ended with a cover of Frank Sinatra’s ‘Why Try to Change Me Now’.”
Pierre Etaix, France’s King Of Slapstick, Dead At 87
“A trained clown who performed in circuses and cabarets, Mr. Etaix was supporting himself as an illustrator when he met filmmaker Jacques Tati,” who immediately offered him an apprenticeship. “Although [he] directed and starred in only five feature films and several shorts … he was considered one of the most brilliant physical comedians of the past half-century.”