Arts funding may be getting slashed, burned, and beaten into the ground as the U.S. struggles with a dismal economy, but in Ontario, arts advocates are expecting a jump in cultural spending as the provincial government releases its budget today. “In 1995, the council’s $42 million budget was cut dramatically by $25 million, where it has hovered since,” but the federal and provincial governments have shown a willingness in recent years to jump in and bail out struggling arts groups. An increase in arts funding would have the potential to reduce the number of struggling groups, and thus, the number of needed bailouts.
Tag: 03.27.03
Iraqi Blogger Goes Silent
The weblogger known as “Salam Pax” has a lot of readers worried for him. “For months, the mysterious Blogger of Baghdad, whose pseudonym translates as ‘peace’ in Arabic and Latin – and who is suspected by some of being a secret agent or a hacker – had chronicled the minutiae of life in a city on the edge of war… On Friday, Pax – a gay man in a repressive society, an atheist in a Muslim land, a lover of democracy but a hater of war – filed a worried dispatch as he awaited the first shock-and-awe assault on the city he cherishes.” A short time later, the blog, one of the most widely-read on the web, went dark. So far, no one seems to know if Pax is dead or alive, free or imprisoned, or if he ever really existed at all.
Musicians Avoiding America
Cancellations are coming in from European musicians and ensembles wary of performing in America in the midst of a globally unpopular invasion of Iraq. Last week, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu cancelled an appearance at the Met Opera, and this week, the Rotterdam Philharmonic called off a major U.S. tour, which would have included a stop at Carnegie Hall. Some of the performers have cited security concerns – others have merely said that they don’t wish to be in America while the war is going on.
Torturous Art
“It was torture with a creative flair — build tiny cells that kept prisoners from sleeping, sitting or pacing, and decorate the walls with mind-bending art. These chambers operated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and were the work of Communists fighting for the government side as it battled troops under fascist Gen. Francisco Franco. Their existence is a bizarre, little-known footnote to the conflict and is now the focus of historians and artists. Researchers say the Soviet-inspired cells were the size of a walk-in closet, with terra-cotta bricks sticking up from the floor at sharp angles. A cot and a seat attached to the walls teased prisoners with the lure of rest, but tilted so far downward that they were useless.”
Finally, Legal MP3s!
Ever since the record industry began cracking down on illegal file-trading services like the now-defunct Napster, consumers looking for a legal way to download music online have been stymied by an industry which seemed more interested in stonewalling the digital music movement for as long as possible than in finding a way to turn the new technology into profit. Now, a new site called MusicNow has been launched, aimed at 30-to-50-year-olds who want digital music, and won’t mind paying for it. The fees are reasonable – $10 a month for unlimited downloads, and 99 cents for a single song – and the company behind the site hopes it will finally begin to attract music consumers with money to spend.
Truly Cerebral Music
“Hook a whole bunch of brains up to a computer, capture and play the sounds they make, and you get, well, not quite music, but certainly some interesting noise. That’s exactly what happened at the Cyborg Echoes Deconcert in Toronto over the weekend. The concert was billed as a participatory event, and it certainly was: Audience members’ brains were scanned, the scans were transformed into sounds, mixed with a solid little backbeat from some heart scans, combined and played back to create Music in the Key of EEG.”
War Pushes book Promotion Out Of Spotlight
Publishers rushing to promote war-relevant books, are abandoning other books as TV promotion concentrates on the war on Iraq. “Books, perhaps even more than movies or music, depend on the news media for publicity. And for now, TV news is all war, all the time. That means some authors are being unceremoniously bumped, while others who had trouble attracting publishers a few years ago suddenly are welcomed as experts.”
Poetry Jury Fails To Field Shortlist – Poetry Fans Protest
Poetry fans are protesting that the jury for the new $10,000 Trillium Prize for poetry in Canada were unable to come up with a shortlist for the prize. “There were very few titles published in 2002 that met the criteria of a first book of poetry by a poet resident in Ontario for three of the last five years.” Only ten books were submitted, but protesters want a new jury to be chosen and the deadline to be extended.
Library Workers File Complaint About Porn Access
Some employees at the Minneapolis Public Library have filed a complaint against the library for allowing free access to porn sites on public computers. The say that “the library’s policies have attracted hard-core pornography users who monopolize the library’s computers and ‘would react angrily and at times violently if any effort was made to interfere (with) or halt their access to pornographic materials’,” in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
Union Files Complaint Against SF Opera
The American Guild of Musical Artists has filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against the San Francisco Opera. In February the companay, which is having big money problems, announced it was cutting its annual Western Opera Theater tour because “the costs, scope and purpose of the Western Opera Theater tour were no longer in line with the Opera Center’s need for fiscal responsibility.” The union says that the company violated the National Labor Relations Act “by taking such action without prior notice to or bargaining with the union.”