According to an investigation by the newspaper La Stampa, “the ‘ndrangheta and Camorra mafia groups in southern Italy … are reportedly handing over to [ISIS] weapons smuggled out of Moldova and Ukraine by Russian criminal groups in exchange for Roman and Greek artefacts illegally excavated from ancient sites including Leptis Magna, Cyrene and Sabratha in Libya – all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.”
Tag: 10.17.16
David Antin, 84, Known For His ‘Talk Poems’
“Identified by the Poetry Foundation as part of ‘a group of artists and poets who brought new definitions and ambitions to poetry in the early 1970s,’ Antin won acclaim for his signature ‘hybrid of criticism, poetry and storytelling that involved Antin discoursing freely on a subject in front of an audience,’ as the foundation described his talk poetry.”
When Attention Is Always Demanded, How Do We Still Think?
“Where the human gaze goes, business soon follows.” When that gaze eventually shifted to the smartphone—portable, social, location-aware, always on—whatever last reserves of human attention were still left unexploited were suddenly on the table. The smartphone would become “the undisputed new frontier of attention harvesting in the twenty-first century, the attention merchants’ manifest destiny.”
What Apple Learned About Innovation From Glenn Gould
The Canadian pianist was an innovator, a maverick who went his own way. But he had some ideas about innovation not being just for the sake of innovating…
Louis Menand: What Has Cultural Criticism Become In The Age Of Crowds?
“The cultural critic’s conceptual enemy is the smoothing formula known as ‘the wisdom of crowds.’ On that theory, it must be the case that the person whose favorite song is the No. 1 song, whose favorite book is a best-seller, whose favorite food just switched from kale to quinoa, is the luckiest person in the world, because the culture is producing exactly the goods that he or she enjoys. This rule would apply right down all the rungs of life-style choices within your demographic: the kind of car you drive, the number of kids you have, where you take your vacations. On a wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, what most people who are like you choose to do should be the optimal choice for you.”
Detroit’s Motown Museum Plans Big Expansion
The 50,000-square-foot project will rise around the existing museum, housed in the humble Hitsville, U.S.A., building where Berry Gordy Jr. launched the careers of stars such as the Supremes, Temptations and Stevie Wonder.
Ambitious Miami Museum/Theatre Project Collapses As College Pulls Out
Miami Dade College’s grand plan to build a massive downtown cultural center imploded Monday when college trustees chose to cancel the project rather than proceed amid a declining real estate market and an escalating feud with a local art dealer.
What Will Pop Culture Look Like In The Future? Here are Some Projections…
“The act of going to the movies itself will likely become an expensive, high-culture sort of ritual, like the opera. Hollywood classics will be digitally retooled as VR environments and shown in restored out-of-town multiplexes. And ex-movie stars, desperate for cash, will perform the movies live.”
Actors Union Threatens Video Game Makers With Strike
“The union said that it has tried for more than 19 months to negotiate a new deal with prominent employers in the video game industry and that performers have been governed by a two-decade old contract still in place.”
Anne Midgette, Classical Music Critic, Turns Her Reviewer’s Eye And Ear To Art
“The work of the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson is all about the quest for beauty and the ways in which that quest is doomed to failure, bogging down in mediocrity or kitsch, or, in these works, the trappings of Las Vegas. But the work radiates so much theatricality and glitz and humor that it feels like a big party. For a show about failure, it sure is having a good time.”