“Historians have long been stumped at how people with relatively primitive tools managed to transport the estimated 800 tonnes of material every day from Aswan, 500 miles to the south. Now ancient papyrus, a ceremonial boat and a system of waterworks have revealed the complex infrastructure created by builders to complete the structure.”
Tag: 09.25.17
Oh, But It’s Fun To Mock Futurists. But Then…
“A futurist is a person who spends a serious amount of time—either paid or unpaid—forming theories about society’s future. And although it can be fun to mock them for their silly sounding and overtly religious predictions, we should take futurists seriously. Because at the heart of the futurism movement lies money, influence, political power, and access to the algorithms that increasingly rule our private, political, and professional lives.”
What Exactly Is ‘Cultural Memoir’? Margo Jefferson Explains
“For me, cultural memoir is a mutating definition. I first began to think in that way when I was working with the boundaries between criticism – literary, cultural, or whatever – which I had done for so many years, and memoir. I realised that I needed, in some way, to merge and to keep those two forms in dialogue, interrogating – as we like to say – each other. So, I began to think of cultural memoir. Initially I was just working obviously with non-fiction but, as you can see, fiction and theatre make their way in here, too.”
The Guy Who Auditions Dancers For Cirque Du Soleil Explains What He Looks For
Rick Tjia: “Little do the dancers know how many tens of thousands of dancers I have seen and auditioned to get to this moment in time, little do they know the complexities and the enormous number of hours needed to cast one show, much less 22 at the same time – all the time – and counting. Little do they know how much audition ‘success’ is out of their control and how much of it actually is. But they wouldn’t know, and I guess I wouldn’t expect them to. During this wait time the question going through the dancers’ minds is, what is the secret? … There is no mystery, there is no secret.”
Poets: Lost In Academia
Academic institutions are now the biggest steward of poets, who teach everything from freshmen composition courses to graduate workshops. While the financial viability of this arrangement for writers seems to be waning, as universities and colleges find it easier and cheaper to exploit the labor of academics, it is still the uncomfortable status quo.
A New Theatre Magazine To Launch
“Part of the calculus behind The X is TodayTix’s customer base—3.5 million people across 11 cities, with an average age of 29—which gives the magazine a considerable audience and opportunity for monetization right out of the gate.”
Gisèle Casadesus, Dean Of France’s Classical Actors And Matriarch Of Its Great Performing Arts Dynasty, Dead At 103
Daughter of conductor Henri Casadesus and harpist Marie-Louise Beetz, mother of conductor Jean-Claude, composer Dominique, painter Béatrice, and actress Martine Casadesus, Gisèle joined the Comédie-Française in 1934 at age 20, where she played 120 roles over almost three decades. Afterwards, she had an extensive career in both theater and film; her final screen performance, at age 96, was with Gérard Depardieu in the 2010 film La Tête en friche. (in French; Google Translate version here)
Some Advantages To Being Mis-Translated?
In 1980, Henry Kissinger (the former US secretary of state and a non-native English speaker, originally from Germany) told Arianna Huffington (the Greek immigrant and entrepreneur/writer who would eventually start The Huffington Post) not to worry about [her] accent, ‘because you can never, in American public life, underestimate the advantages of complete and total incomprehensibility’.
A Rediscovered Essay By A Carolina Slave
In the early 19th century, the young George Moses Horton used to create impromptu poems for students at the University of North Carolina. “He also began publishing more serious poems, like ‘On Liberty and Slavery,’ in newspapers, and in 1829 became the first African-American in the South to publish a book. His efforts to gain freedom through his writing failed. But he was able to buy his time from his owner. … And now, from the archives, comes a previously unknown essay by Horton, which sheds oblique but suggestive light on his possible role in campus controversies over race, power and free speech that sound strikingly similar to those raging today.”
Guggenheim Pulls Three Works From Show Following Protests (And Some Threats) From Animal-Rights Activists
“The museum, in Manhattan, made the decision after it had come under unrelenting pressure from animal-rights supporters and critics over works in the exhibition, ‘Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World.'” The museum’s statement said, in part, “Although these works have been exhibited in museums in Asia, Europe and the United States, the Guggenheim regrets that explicit and repeated threats of violence have made our decision necessary.”