“By venturing onto the mean streets of hiphop with a dispassionate critique of a multimillion-dollar industry, John McWhorter risks becoming a target of drive-by shootings by enraged academics, book reviewers and bloggers.”
Tag: 07.13.08
The Science Of (Good) Habits
“Through experiments and observation, social scientists have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through relentless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.”
How the Other Tango is Danced
On either side of the Rio de la Plata, a kind of tango-rivalry brews between Argentina and Uruguay: “while Buenos Aires’s tango scene has partly gone the way of dinner shows and canned street acts, in Montevideo tango remains intimate and gloriously authentic.”
Tracey Emin: It’s Art Because I Say So
Emin’s work always seemed like today’s heat: searing, stripped to the bone. A visual cri de coeur. Why, I ask, is my unmade bed just an unmade bed and hers is art? “Because you didn’t say that yours was art and you didn’t feel that it was. I saw it as art and felt that it was. I said that it was and showed that it was. I have transferred what I feel on to someone else looking at it. That’s the alchemy. That’s the magic. I was the person who had to have the conviction in the first place.”
Australia In No Mood For Challenging Art
“Once again, the artist’s role to create work that provokes, questions and articulates society’s beliefs and behaviour is being questioned. But the mood of the community has changed. A series of high-profile pedophile and child pornography cases in recent times, including the conviction of former NSW politician Milton Orkopoulos on child sex offences, has heightened people’s anxieties.”
LA’s Southeast Symphony Looks To A Next Generation Of Players
“The ensemble was founded in 1948 by pianist Mabel Massengill Gunn in what was then the largely black southeast part of town, at a time when blacks were shut out of most major orchestras. Southeast’s mandate of providing a place for black players to hone their skills and receive support from one another is simple, but it has not always been easy to carry out. When Dickerson took over, only four of the 56 players were African American. Now, 82 of the 95 scheduled to play in Disney Hall are black.”
The Art Of Advertising (No, Literally, The Art)
“Artists have been appropriating images from Madison Avenue for decades. But what happens when the tables are turned? In recent years a number of advertising campaigns have seemed to draw their inspiration directly from high-profile works of contemporary art. And the artists who believe their images and ideas have been appropriated are not happy about it.”
Art In The Grip Of An Explanation
“In short, meanings are arbitrary, but compulsory. And this double bind holds almost universal sway. Whenever you learn that a work explores or investigates or raises questions about something, that it’s concerned with issues around this or notions of that or debates about the other, you know you’re in its grip. It’s weird how people can’t resist. If you want to make art sound serious, this is simply the way you do it.”
With No Agreement, Screen Actors Guild Stalls
“Amid the town’s growing consensus that the Screen Actors Guild is not going to strike, SAG is staying in stall mode. The guild offered no response to the congloms’ latest effort to dial up the pressure by warning that they may have to scale back their final offer if the economy worsens.”
Is Theatre A Viable Profession In Colorado?
“They used to say most actors in Colorado perform for gas money. But with the cost of fuel these days, not even that’s true anymore. Colorado has 97 theater companies, but only seven that belong to Actor’s Equity, the union that mandates minimum salaries for its actors, of whom 327 live (but not many gainfully work) in Colorado. Only about 150 people can claim to make full-time salaries in the theater here.”