Tag: 02.14.20

Did Internet Pioneers Blow It When It Comes To Free Speech?

Increasingly, I’m hearing from politicians, activists, and people like my journalist friend who say that maybe we 1990s-era internet activists blew it. The story goes that we were so shortsighted in our focus on things like internet free speech and digital privacy that we overlooked a whole spectrum of long-term threats posed by digital technologies, the companies that sell them, and the governments that deploy them. This perspective suggests that the internet freedom my colleagues and I championed has instead chained us all by corrupting democracy and poisoning relationships. In recent years, my views have evolved. – Slate

Yolanda Bonnell: Why I Don’t Want White Critics To Review My Work

“Indigenous performance has been grossly under-reviewed and while the tide is shifting, the lens with which predominantly white critics view the work has been problematic. The lack of IBPOC voices in the media—at a time when arts’ coverage is shrinking—means white critics are often the gatekeepers of success. There is often a tone along the lines of ‘I don’t understand this, therefore it’s not valid or good art.’ Aspects like style, movement, language, and music are at risk of being dismissed.” – Vice

A Huge Frank Stella Painting Disappeared In Chile And Ended Up Being Used As A Lunch Table

“It’s a little known fact that in 1972, minimalist artist Frank Stella donated the painting Isfahan III (1968) to the Museo de la Solidaridad in Chile, a new institution that invited artists from around the world to donate art in honor of Chilean president Salvador Allende’s new socialist government.” And then came Augusto Pinochet’s coup … – Hyperallergic

Meet Oliver Dowden, The UK’s New Culture Secretary

He has a history of handling thorny issues like cybercrime and data privacy. As a Parliamentary Secretary in Theresa May’s cabinet office, Dowden was the Minister for Implementation of the Government’s technology strategy.  Though the new BBC licence fee and rolling out gigabit broadband will be pressing tasks, Dowden’s expertise and interest in digital matters could be good news for the creative industries. – Arts Professional

Fan Fiction Has Been Around For Almost 300 Years (And It’s Been About Sex The Entire Time)

The fan-fic phenomenon seems to have gotten its start in the wake of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with William Hogarth and Alexander Pope riffing on the adventures of Swift’s hero (and, in Pope’s case, his put-upon wife). Add to that Shamela, Henry Fielding’s lusty takedown of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, and the genre is well and truly established. – The Atlantic

John Eliot Gardiner On Period-Instrument Beethoven

“What you get in a period orchestra are three things: greater individuality of timbre, more transparency of texture and an increased dynamism once all the instruments are stretched to their absolute maximum capacity of volume and expressivity. If you attempt that with a modern symphony orchestra, there will always be a certain comfort factor, a plushness, which, I feel, doesn’t help the listener to savor all that is most original in the score. It can sound a tad too comfortable.” – The New York Times

Ballet Philippines Appoints Foreign Artistic Director; People Flip Out

As the company’s founding artistic director, Alice Reyes, retires after 50 years, its board of directors selected as her successor Mikhail Martynyuk, a star of the Kremlin Ballet in Moscow. Many of the dancers and other members of Manila’s dance community are objecting to the appointment; they say they’re upset about a rushed timeline and lack of consultation, but the petition now circulating calls on the board “to rescind or revise the contract offered to a Russian artist … and to keep the position of Artistic Director Filipino.” – BusinessWorld (Manila)

Abu Dhabi’s “City Of The Future” Gets Off To A Slow Start

To build Masdar City, the provincial capital put in seed money for the estimated $20 billion cost. The project team, Masdar, a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, brought in the British architectural firm Foster + Partners, which boasts impeccable eco-credentials. The vision was for a 2.5-square-mile neighborhood that would be close to carbon neutral, thanks to clean-energy wizardry, LEED-certified building design, and a giant adjacent solar panel farm. – CityLab

How We Got So Disaffected From Our Culture

We make the same movies, over and over (most involving Marvel superheroes or galaxies far, far away). Our young turn away from actual sex and toward the consolations of pornography: sex without human relationship, and therefore without consequence and contingency. We approach “politics the way [we] approach a first-person shooter game—as a kind of sport, a kick to the body chemistry, that doesn’t actually put anything in [our] relatively comfortable late-modern lives at risk.” As Walter Benjamin famously predicted as early as 1939, we aestheticize through alienation, and alienate through aestheticization: living our lives in second order. – City Journal