The gulf between our solitary thoughts and the words that would convey them to others constantly confronts us all. The thoughts we struggle to articulate might be as momentous as a transformative moral epiphany or as ordinary as an insight into a movie or the hurtful behaviour of a friend. – Aeon
Tag: 09.14.20
How Do London’s Theatre Workers Feel About Reopening Before The Virus Is Contained?
Relieved. Worried. Excited. Frustrated. In short, ambivalent. “Performers are constantly living on the edge, even without COVID so now there’s even more pressure than ever to get back to work.” – The Guardian
London’s West End Starts Announcing Reopenings, Even As COVID Cases Rise
The theatrical corporation Nimax announced that it would open the doors of six of its West End theatres, restarting such shows as Six (the pop musical about Henry VIII’s wives), The Play That Goes Wrong, and Magic Goes Wrong at roughly half the usual seating capacity. – The New York Times
For First Time Since The 1980s Vinyl Outsells CDs
A report on the first half of 2020 across the recorded music industry reads: “Vinyl album revenues of $232m were 62% of total physical revenues, marking the first time vinyl exceeded CDs for such a period since the 1980s.” The report acknowledged that vinyl records accounted for only 4% of total recorded music revenue. – The Guardian
Museum’s Plans To Sell Pollock To Diversify Trivializes An Important Issue
The museum’s origins date back more than a century, when it became the first to be dedicated specifically to American art. It’s shocking that the Everson has now chosen to sell off an irreplaceable artifact — a rare formative work by the first American painter with profound international impact. – Los Angeles Times
Dvořák and the American Experience of Race — An Antidote to “Checkbox Diversity”
Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony may not have been the work of a Black composer. But Dvořák embraced the African-American experience to a degree that would be controversial today. – Joseph Horowitz
‘She Has Developed A Completely New Video Language That Warms This Cool Medium Up’ — On Pipilotti Rist
“She has done more to expand the video medium than any artist since the Korean-born visionary Nam June Paik. Rist once wrote that she wanted her video work to be like women’s handbags, with ‘room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness.’ If Paik is the founding father of video as an art form, Rist is the disciple who has done the most to bring it into the mainstream of contemporary art.” – The New Yorker
A New Yorker Writer Watches Herself And Her Mother Get Turned Into Chinese Propaganda Grotesques
Jiayang Fan: “I find a story about my mother and me in the Global Times, a state-controlled Chinese newspaper with twenty-eight million followers on Weibo. It has been picked up by the country’s most popular news aggregator and then energetically disseminated on various platforms. The more I read, the more fascinated I become by the creation of this alter ego. I am watching a portrait of myself being painted, minute by minute, anonymous hands contributing daubs and strokes, the more lurid the better.” – The New Yorker
The Artist Trap: How Do You Get Paid In The Digital Age?
There’s still plenty of money to be made in art, or writing, or music. It’s just not being made by the creators. Increasingly, their quest for personal artistic fulfillment is part of someone else’s racket. – The New Yorker