This spring, composer Wieland Hoban pitched the third in a series of pieces addressing the 2008-09 Israel-Gaza war to the Donaueschinger Musiktage. Last month, artistic director Björn Gottstein responded that he would allow no piece critical of Israel to be performed at the festival. Hoban went public, and the new music community in Germany (and beyond) has been arguing ever since.
Tag: 08.15.18
Mary Pratt, 83, Canadian Painter Who Rendered The Everyday Extraordinary
“Pratt painted items she saw around her, transforming them. A jar of currant jelly glowed from within. The aluminum foil holding a meal of fish seemed to have eerie qualities. The flowers she picked outside became beacons of strength.”
Cuban Gov’t Introduces Sweeping New Law Censoring Cultural Activities
Decree 349, as the law is known, requires all performances and other artistic activity to have a government contract which forbids a wide range of content, including any “that violates the legal provisions that regulate the normal development of our society in cultural matters.” Violations can result in shutdowns, fines, and confiscations.
Bahia Ramos Named New Head Of Arts At The Wallace Foundation
At Knight, Ramos led the strategy for a $35 million annual investment in arts funding across the country. Among her notable accomplishments: leading national partnerships and initiatives with organizations such as ArtPlace and Sundance, and working on the local level to bring more high-quality arts experiences to diverse audiences and neighborhoods.
How Twitter Went Wrong? When It Tried To Be The Community Of Everyone
The internet of old — composed largely of thousands of scattered communities populated by people who shared interests, identities, causes or hatreds — has been mostly paved over by the social-media giants. In this new landscape, basic intelligible concepts of community become alien: The member becomes the user; the peer becomes the follower; and the ban becomes not exile, but death. It is not surprising that the angriest spirits of the old web occasionally manifest in the new one. But what’s striking is how effectively they can haunt it, and how ill-equipped it is to deal with them.
No, Your Costco Card Can’t Be Used To Check Out Library Books (Yet)
And also, the circulation desk generally doesn’t have fake moustaches to check out. Or chalk. “How can you guys not have sidewalk chalk? This is the worst library!”
Risking Death To Sing Pop Music
Aryana Sayeed on the pushback when she performs despite Taliban death threats in Afghanistan: “I am very aware of the danger. Nobody can really protect me there. But if I give up hope to millions of people who feel lost because everyone else has left, then it is worth it.”
Why It’s Sometimes Important To Be Cruel To Do Good
Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong. Now research from my team at the Liverpool Hope University in the UK sheds light on how the process works.
In 1914 The Arts Seemed On The Verge Of New Things. Then The War Happened…
As Rupert Brooke, a very different kind of sensibility, put it, many artists welcomed the onset of war “as swimmers into cleanness leaping”. A short and sharply brutal conflict was just what art needed finally to euthanise the past and slough off the fusty clutter of landscapes, nudes and the strictures of the academy. A new and modern art lay just on the other side. Of course, as it turned out, these brave new movements turned out to be just another casualty of the trenches.
From Meme To Movies To Attempted Murder: A Brief History Of Slender Man
“Slender Man is scary not because of what you know about him but because of what you don’t know. … The character is a blank canvas for our fears but also for online storytelling. Now the namesake of a new horror film, Slender Man started to take shape in an online forum nearly a decade ago, at a time when daily life was shifting to social media and the border between the online world and the real one was starting to blur. Here’s a look at Slender Man’s evolution.”