Our Struggle With The Idea Of Scientific “Progress”

“Accelerating scientific invention does not make human beings any more good-natured or reasonable but simply increases their capacity to achieve their goals. In practice, this means the groups that are most powerful will increase their hold over the rest. Schemes for improving the human animal by technological means will not alter these facts. What counts as improvement will be decided by existing human beings, with the most powerful among them having the biggest say. The result is more likely to be enlarged versions of human vanity and cruelty than a higher version of the species.”

What Happened To The $2 Million Marina Abramovic Raised For Her Institute?

The edgy artist, who became world famous for staring down people in her blockbuster 2010 MOMA show, The Artist is Present, touted her multi-million dollar Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art as a place for artists to conduct grand experiments. The Yugoslav-born Abramovic also said it would “change the local economy” in Hudson, NY, in much the same way the Sundance Film Festival transformed Park City, Utah, and the Guggenheim Museum changed the Spanish city of Bilbao.

Again, Why Is There So Much Rape And Violence Against Women In Ballet Lately?

Six months ago, critic Siobhan Burke raised the issue in The New York Times. Now, in Britain’s The Observer, Luke Jennings writes, “In the last few seasons the Royal Ballet stage has seen record numbers of female characters brutalised and killed. … Consider this body-count alongside the number of recent abstract works in which women are split, splayed and otherwise manhandled, and certain embedded attitudes reveal themselves. None of these works, in which female characters are defined by their passivity and victimhood, was created by a woman.”

Welcome To This Year’s Art Auction Giga-Week

Impressionist, modern and contemporary art with an estimated value of least $1.6 billion will be offered at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips. The value of these consignments, which include works by Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Fernand Leger and Franz Kline, as well as, incongruously, a Ferrari racecar, represents an increase of more than 46 percent over the equivalent auctions last November.

The Company Behind ‘Love, Actually’ Is Opening A School In London

The point, for the school for 16-19-year-olds that will teach film production alongside the British national curriculum? Increasing diversity in film. “We want to ensure we get an absolutely diverse set of students from diverse backgrounds into the industry. We don’t have a quick fix, but we want to help them realise the opportunities in the hope their voices will multiply.”