It says a lot that the sales of such painfully prescient dystopias as 1984 have increased since November 9, 2016. It says even more that “Moonlight,” an indie with no stars about a gay, black drug dealer, found an enormous audience and enormous accolades at the beginning of this year. More than junkfood entertainment, we need “beautiful resistance,” as I’ve come to call the art that engages us in social justice concerns, human compassion, and values of love, courage, and dissent. We need art that reminds us that the “human condition” encompasses all humans – not just the white, male, straight faces belonging to the people who currently hold most of the highest offices of our government.
Tag: 05.11.17
Pub Theatre In Britain Faces An Identity Crisis, Even As It Grows
For a start, there are growing pains (though “pains” isn’t really the right word): really successful pub ventures morph into actual theatres, even as established theatres (including subsidized ones) open their own pubs with separate stages. Even so, writes Matt Trueman, there’s still a lot of vitality in the movement.
Elizabeth Streb On Fear (Which Is Something Her Dancers Would Know About)
“[Fear] is a messaging system that we have more work to do before we try something. … You can’t hedge your bets.” She also says, “Failure of flight is the most exciting moment.” Wow. (video)
Maybe It’s Time To Quit Talking On And On About ‘Audience Engagement’ – There Are Already Engaged Audiences Out There
In an editorial that concentrates in the dance scene in Philadelphia but could apply to any of the performing arts, Steven Weisz argues that there are plenty of smaller companies and organizations “already firmly entrenched in the communities they service … [and] tend to attract younger and more diverse audiences as a result” – and that, instead of throwing grant money at large organizations for “engagement” programs, funders should send that money their way instead.
Do You Believe The World Keeps Getting Faster? Then You’re An Accelerationist
“Over the past five decades, and especially over the past few years, much of the world has got faster. Working patterns, political cycles, everyday technologies, communication habits and devices, the redevelopment of cities, the acquisition and disposal of possessions – all of these have accelerated. Meanwhile, over the same half century, almost entirely unnoticed by the media or mainstream academia, accelerationism has gradually solidified from a fictional device into an actual intellectual movement: a new way of thinking about the contemporary world and its potential.”
Claudia Rankine On Katrina, ‘Get Out,’ And The Current Administration
“I have to give a convocation talk at Wesleyan, and so I’m working on The Talk—that’s what it’s called. I’m thinking, what do you say to these twenty-year-olds, these twenty-one-year-olds? What occurs to me is that it’s not about how powerful we are, it’s about how powerless we are. And in the face of the lack of power, what do we do then? What do we do then? That’s really the question. Are we willing to fail and fail in order to continue to say no to this? Because that’s what we should be doing.”
In Search Of Robert Rauschenberg
Deborah Solomon travels to Lafayette, La. to meet the artist’s sister and learn about his dyslexia and their fundamentalist Christian upbringing, talks to a classmate at Black Mountain College from whom he stole a quilt to use in an early artwork (“The next time I saw it was at the Leo Castelli Gallery”), and has coffee-with-Häagen-Dazs in a Williamsburg loft with Susan Weil, Rauschenberg’s ex-wife and the woman who taught him how to make photograms.
Report: Here Are The Cities That Spend The Most On Culture Worldwide
It suggests that a high proportion of national culture budgets is spent on capital cities because they have large ‘sunk investments’ that create a revenue and capital legacy. By contrast, in cities in China, which have less ‘legacy’ cultural infrastructure in which to invest, “it appears that Chinese cities are placing a greater priority on investing in newer and more commercial cultural forms”.
Why Gustavo Dudamel Has Angered Venezuelans
“The idea that art and politics don’t mix, and that silence is therefore perfectly acceptable, is prevalent in Europe and North America, leading to more indulgence towards Dudamel. But this view is based on a profound misunderstanding of the conductor and the program behind him. El Sistema and politics have been mixed since the arrival of Hugo Chávez in power in 1999, and Dudamel’s career and program have been heartily supported by the Bolivarian Revolution. The idea that silence equates to political neutrality is therefore misguided, as many Venezuelans are well aware.”
American Pop Culture’s South Asia Awakening
“In the past few years, entertainers of south Asian origin have gone from being a minor footnote in American popular culture to a headline event. You can see a snapshot of this new America in a picture British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed tweeted this month at the Met Gala, the annual gathering of pop-culture royalty.”