The unstoppable takeover of the art world by the biennial form is evidenced by the nearly 250 biennials operating globally, listed by the Biennial Foundation’s Directory of Biennials. More than this number, it is the five-fold increase over the last ten years that warrants a certain slack-jawed response.
Tag: 09.15.18
In Troubled Iran, Audiences Are Packing Movie Theatres, Looking For Comic Relief
“Iranians are flocking to the cinema in record numbers, attracted by relatively affordable ticket prices and a slew of mood-lifting new comedies.” One director compares the current Iranian movie boom to the screwball comedies popular in the U.S during the Great Depression: “The reason why people are flocking to watch comedies is because they’re so depressed.”
Seattle Remembers Deceased Homeless People By Placing Engraved Bronze Leaves On Sidewalks
In all, 281 bronze leaves are in 15 locations around the city. They serve as headstones for those who all too often can’t afford them. The leaves are paid for by donations, engraved with names and dates, and usually placed on sidewalks near where their namesakes lived. The only requirement is that the remembered person was homeless in Seattle and also died in Seattle.
The Grand Park NY’s Central Park Might Have Been
By 1856, the commission had adopted a plan by its engineer-in-chief and landscape design expert Colonel Egbert Ludovicus Viele, and they were preparing to start construction on the grand new park. But their plan hit a road bump. An architect named Calvert Vaux had recently relocated to the city and had gotten a glimpse of the proposed design. It was a disaster.
An Artist Takes On Borders As ‘Anathema To Art’
Mary Kelly, who has been creating conceptual and feminist art for decades – often with compressed lint from the dryer – says closing borders is devastating for artists. “Living all over very different places gives you insight about how different cultures and political systems work, but it also shows you in some way how things are connected. … Internationalism is, I believe, always connected to movements that are progressive and the opposite goes for closing down.”
Does Technology Make For Far, Far Better Piano Lessons?
Online lessons have changed the way many students learn the piano, especially jazz – and maybe made learning better and faster. Perhaps there is “something about the peculiar intimacy of the online lesson — the way it permits a student to scrutinize a teacher’s subtlest movements — that has transformed the learning process.”
The Cleveland Orchestra Suspends Another Player, Its Principal Trombonist, For Harassment
The trombonist, Massimo La Rosa, has filed his own lawsuit “accusing two people of defamation for alleging that he ‘had committed and was criminally culpable for multiple sexual assaults on numerous college campuses [where La Rosa] had been invited to serve as a guest instructor.’ The orchestra did not specify whether the current suspension was related to the same or similar allegations.”
The Netflix Morning Meeting (A Satire Of Sorts)
Ahem:
“It’s just what we need. Ryan Murphy will be showrunner. It’ll be about a sexy horror alphabet.”
“I think it’s about apartments.”
“Even better. Give apartments $4 billion, tell them to get campy fast.”
“Which ones?”
“Ones in Seattle. Big ones. Two-bedrooms or bigger.”
Sarah Waters On How Her Novel – Now Movie – ‘The Little Stranger’ Is A Perfect Metaphor For Brexit Britain
The author says of her horror novel and new movie: “After Brexit is Britain going to be a kind of Hundreds Hall, a decaying place with a big wall around it, with an inflated idea of itself, endlessly trying to keep alive a mythical kind of world?”
Why Would An Adult Author And Journalist Decide To Write A Series Of Books For Kids?
Saadia Faruqi is a Pakistani-American author who decided to step up her interfaith writing after 9/11. She wrote journalism, op-eds, and an acclaimed book of short stories. Then she had kids, and she noticed an issue: “Here we are in multicultural America, where in many cities, including my own hometown of Houston, brown and black is the majority skin color, and yet an overwhelming percentage of children’s books feature white kids. There were certainly not any Muslim or South Asian main characters in early readers, and that’s the age kids are just learning their own identities and deciding if they love reading or hate it.” So, she thought, why not help change that?