“When Griffin first rose to prominence in the ‘90s as an actress and comedian she was, in some ways, the pinnacle of the ‘un-cool’ girl. In her act she talked rapid fire about vapid subjects: friends, dating, celebrities, etc, but she didn’t have the edge of Janeane Garofalo, or the sexual brazenness of Margaret Cho. The only shtick she had was that she was willing to talk about anything with her audience.”
Tag: 09.29.14
The Year Feminist Performance Art Made Its Revival, With A Mattress
“The performance will last until her rapist has left campus. The mattress will only be carried on campus. She cannot ask for help, but can accept it once it is offered. Once a person helps her carry the mattress, they enter into ‘the space of performance.’ By quite literally bringing the site of the crime (in this case an ostensibly ‘safe’ domestic space) into public sight, Sulkowicz’s performance relocates its subject in between the shifting grounds of public and private, personal and political.”
The Swedish Scientists Who Insert Bob Dylan Lyrics
“Five Swedish-based scientists have been inserting Bob Dylan lyrics into research articles as part of a long-running bet. After 17 years, the researchers revealed their race to quote Dylan as many times as possible before retirement.”
America’s Most Pliable, Pernicious, Persistent Myth: The Self-Made Man, From Ben Franklin To Nasty Gal
“The self-made mythology has evolved in its 200 years: from an exuberant celebration of opportunity in the young republic to a stern admonition against excess in the antebellum years; from a naive story of pluck rewarded in the post-Civil War-era, to a brazen defense of money-getting in the Gilded Age; from a beacon to the great wave’s huddled masses, to a pep talk for the young women of the digital age.”
The Daydreaming Disorder: Is “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo” The Next ADHD? (Is It Even Real?)
“The name of [this] ‘new attention disorder’ sounds like an Onion-style parody … It also sounds like a classic case of disease mongering: blurring normality with sickness to boost drug companies’ bottom lines. … Disease mongering is a tough concept to define – but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. What we have here seems to be a duck egg.”
Atlanta Symphony CEO Resigns As Lockout Continues
“I believe that my continued leadership of the ASO would be an impediment to our reaching a new labor agreement with the ASO’s musicians,” said Stanley Romanstein in a press release.
Giving Voice To Syria’s Hidden Dead In New Theatre Piece
Tania El Khoury’s interactive sound installation/performance piece Gardens Speak reconstructs “oral histories of the men and women who are buried not in public cemeteries, but in the back gardens of ordinary Syrian homes” because public burials were too dangerous.
“Children Of A Lesser God” Returning To Broadway After 35 Years
“Children of a Lesser God, a groundbreaking play about the relationship between a deaf woman and a hearing man, who clash over ideas about speech even as they fall in love, will be revived on Broadway during the 2015-16 theater season … The director will be Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in June for staging the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun last spring.”
Leonardo’s “Lady With An Ermine” – Turns Out There Were Three Of Them
“Engineer Pascal Cotte has spent three years using reflective light technology to analyse The Lady with an Ermine … [and] has shown the artist painted one portrait without the ermine and two with different versions of the fur.” (includes video)
Now The Big Guns Are Joining Writers’ Fight Against Amazon
“Andrew Wylie, whose client roster of heavyweights in literature is probably longer than that of any other literary agent, said he was asking all his writers whether they wanted to join the group, Authors United. Among those who have said yes … are Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera.”