Only about four of Australia’s major performing arts groups can be described as financially secure. Now the government is considering a plan to spend $40 million over the next four years to help stabilize the rest of them. – Australian Financial Review
Tag: 03.04.00
INTELLECTUAL COMING-OF-AGE
Is the breakthrough of 1960s North American intellectuals the real legacy of that decade? – Salon
WHEN YOU’VE SEEN ONE AFRICAN PERFORMANCE, YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THEM ALL
The Kennedy Center has just completed its three-year “African Odyssey” initiative. It staged 260 events of contemporary dance, theater and music from 40 countries, as well as presentations by African artists living in America and American creations inspired by Africa. Was this attempt to reach out beyond traditional European art successful? – Washington Post
HERR HAIDER AS CULTURAL PATRON
In Joerg Haider’s province in Austria, he is his own culture minister. Haider has two rhetorical enemies: foreigners who sponge up social benefits, and artists who crave subsidies and then refuse to toe the line. Herr Haider believes that art should be for the people. Avant garde artists have lost commissions because their work is too modern. What do people want? plenty of folk music. Herr Haider’s cultural adviser is Andreas Mölzer, whose view is that artists “behave like whores”. – The Times (UK)
ON THE ROAD TO MARRAKESH
There’s a revival of Western interest in North African music. “Long before India and the hippy trail, Morocco provided a springboard into the exotic, right on Europe’s doorstep. As Westerners from Cecil Beaton and Joe Orton to William Burroughs and the Rolling Stones came here in search of easy drugs and risky sex, so Moroccan sounds fed into Western pop.” – London Telegraph
POST-APARTHEID RAP
No that isn’t Snoop Doggy Dogg you hear thudding down the streets of Johannesburg – it’s Kwaito, South Africa’s latest musical craze. The lyrics, written in Zulu, Xhosa, and tsotsi taal (gangster slang) are dedicated to describing life in the townships and the experiences of the post-apartheid generation. – The Economist
DESTRUCTION, NEGLECT AND PILLAGE
Archaeological treasures in Afghanistan have been massively damaged and destroyed after years of civil war, reports a historian and archaeologist who has returned from the region. – The Art Newspaper
LITTLE ART ON THE PRAIRIE
Former Lenin Museum in the heart of the Siberian gulag reinvents itself as a museum showing contemporary art. – MSNBC
AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
The tiny African country of Burkina Faso is home to Africa’s biggest film festival. “Fespaco has also turned little Ouagadougou, with its red-earth streets, into a city of biennial movie maniacs, who flock to the screenings and discuss the candidates for the Stallion of Yennanga, the festival’s grand prize, with as much fervour as World Cup football matches. Meanwhile, the bars and terraces of the Hotel Indépendence seethe with film-makers from Algeria to Mozambique and TV production scouts from Europe.” – The Telegraph (UK) 03/04/00