Category: issues

Is it possible for a single artist to turn an entire town into a regional arts center – to use his aesthetic choices to facilitate socialism, creativity, and togetherness? One town, in Israel’s Upper Western Galilee, has hired an artist to do just that. – Haaretz (Israel) 08/30/00

New York billionaire Alan Gerry announces plans for a performing arts center on the grounds of the original Woodstock Festival in upstate New York. “The plan calls for a 4,000-seat covered theater with 15,000 additional open-air seats. The Gerry Foundation will own and operate the $40 million facility; the state will pay $15 million of the construction costs.” – New York Daily News 08/30/00

“No matter how we voted, for many of us in the arts and letters the election of the charismatic Mr. Fox is as bracing as a cold shower. No one really expected the plain-spoken rancher from Guanajuato to win, and we’re flummoxed by a world turned suddenly inside out: a political right that has promised to reject its traditional religious, censorious, and invasively straight-laced stances, and a left adrift without a compass. Artists and intellectuals dependent on government largesse are at a loss as to how to court the unknown.” – Christian Science Monitor 08/30/00

“While Susan Sontag has argued that tuberculosis preoccupied the 19th century and cancer, then AIDS, dominated the 20th, there are signs that Alzheimer’s is becoming an important cultural metaphor for our new century.Consider the number of recent novels, stories and memoirs in which characters with Alzheimer’s figures prominently.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada) 08/30/00

New study suggests that today’s kids are so programmed that they are losing the time for imagination. “Playtime has morphed into what Klauber calls a “digital wonderland” – a fast-moving, goal-oriented zone that affords little time for aimless fun. Many kids today are focused on competition, efficiency and results. One consequence of this development is that their imaginations are beginning to atrophy: Play is all about the destination rather than the journey.” – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 08/30/00

Austria’s annual digital arts festival, Ars Electronica, this year includes what might be the world’s most bizarre arts festival activity – “sperm racing.” “The idea of Ars Electronica is always to deal with areas where new technologies are starting to have an impact on culture and society.” – Wired 08/29/00

US vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman will testify as early as Sept. 13 about a Federal Trade Commission report that reportedly claims “that film, record and video game producers are pushing their wares on children while pretending not to.” The Gore campaign is unfazed: “I think he’s brought to the ticket some real credibility on this issue. And it’s an issue that’s real important to people, especially to families. And where you find this level of concern is with working families – families where both parents are working, and the kids have a lot of time on their own where they’re unsupervised.” – Salon 08/29/00

Tactics used by Britain’s culture secretary Chris Smith to secure a record amount of funding for the arts this year have been revealed in confidential minutes from a meeting between Smith and his Irish counterpart. “The aim appeared to be to get the cash without mentioning the dreaded word ‘arts’ to Treasury mandarins.” Instead, Smith stressed the economic returns of “educational funding” and “niche tourism” (read: museums). – The Guardian 08/29/00

Attacking culture is usually good for a few votes. But so far the candidates in this year’s US elections have been generally quiet. “Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s selection as Al Gore’s running mate prompted a flurry of Hollywood hand-wringing, but so far the vice presidential nominee has spent more time attacking George W. Bush’s tax-cut plan than the way women are tortured in ‘The Cell’.” – Los Angeles Times 08/28/00

US VP-candidate Joe Lieberman’s criticism of popular culture has free-speech advocates worried. But he’s also a supporter of government funding for the arts.  “To have strict restrictions, having the government being judge and jury of what’s acceptable art, (Lieberman) doesn’t believe that’s an appropriate role for government.” – Boston Herald 08/28/00