Jason Calacanis, founder of the Silicon Alley Reporter and the search engine Mahalo.com (powered by actual humans), says that “50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working on them) within the next 18 months.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
It’s Turner Prize Time Again – What Are They Up To Now?
Yes, the Young British Artists are at it again. This year’s four finalists include abandoned supermarket checkouts with leftover food and a mannequin on a toilet (Cathy Wilkes), a lecture on such modern icons as Wile E. Coyote and Homer Simpson (Mark Leckey), a collage made up of two other artists’ work (Goshka Macuga) and video of a woman smashing crockery (Runa Islam).
What Can Choke and Californication Teach Us About Sex Addiction?
“So is Don Juanism funny, or is it sad? The pop-culture ambivalence reflects an uncertainty that extends all the way through the medical establishment – to the sex therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists who can’t agree on how to define sexual addiction, or indeed whether it should be called an ‘addiction’ at all.”
Dancing Aborigines in Paris
The Australian Ballet and the indigenous company Bangarra Dance Theatre have traveled to France with their joint project, Rites, a new take on The Rite of Spring that pays tribute to 30,000 years of Aboriginal culture. What do the French make of it? Critic Rosita Boisseau, looking “somewhat shell-shocked,” said, “It’s very strange. It left me a bit confused. All the dancers suddenly appearing covered head to toe in mud… It’s a completely different approach, and we have to be very curious and open-minded towards this kind of composition.”
Harry Christophers to Direct Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society
The 54-year-old founder of the wildly successful choir The Sixteen wants to bring America’s oldest performing arts organization back to its roots. “The Handel and Haydn Society is a great brand name. You’ve got two of the great composers of Baroque and Classical music. Let’s concentrate on those two people. We don’t really need to go beyond those boundaries.”
Stolen Renoir Found After 33 Years
Last week Italy’s Carabinieri recovered the painting of a nude woman which had been stolen from a private collector in Milan back in 1975. (And who tipped off the police? An art critic.)
Congress Passes New Law Creating ‘Copyright Czar’
The new Cabinet-level official “will oversee government anti-piracy crackdowns and, among other things, train other countries about [intellectual property law] enforcement. The legislation also creates an FBI piracy unit and allows for the forfeiture of equipment used in large pirating operations.”
Sarah Palin, the ‘Sexy Puritan’
The vice-presidential candidate “represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman… that’s become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years.” Sexy Puritans attract attention “not simply by advocating conservative positions on hot-button social issues but by embodying nonthreatening mainstream standards of female beauty and behavior at the same time. The net result is a paradox… You get a little thrill along with your traditional values, a wink along with the wagging finger. Somehow, you don’t feel quite as much like a prig as you expected to.”
New York Sun Sets for Good
The conservative-leaning daily publishes its final edition on Sept. 30 after attempts to find new investors fell through. While “the paper… took political and socio-economic stances that were unpopular in a city teeming with Democrats,” many observers praised its local news and extensive arts coverage. But the Sun had a paid circulation of only 14,000. “The paper definitely carved itself a niche, but it wasn’t profitable.”
Plain Dealer‘s Ombudsman on Replacement of Classical Critic
“[Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz] Welser-Möst’s contract extends to 2018. [Critic Donald] Rosenberg has made it clear, over and over, that he believes the conductor routinely fails to get the most out of the orchestra, a view he seems unlikely to change or mute… Just as we would not assign a book review to a critic who is already on the record as loathing a certain author’s style or genre, is it reasonable to continue assigning a music critic to review performances by a conductor whose leadership he is unlikely ever to approve?”