“My research finds that a prize’s long-term success actually depends on these kinds of low and embarrassing episodes, which attract public investment into the very market for symbolic capital that makes prizes necessary and keeps them afloat.” James English explains how this phenomenon plays out. — Public Books
Tag: 12.06.18
How Words Change Their Meaning
Language is a system. Sounds, words and grammar do not exist in isolation: each of these three levels of language constitutes a system in itself. And, extraordinarily, these systems change as systems. If one change threatens disruption, another change compensates, so that the new system, though different from the old, is still an efficient, expressive and useful whole. – Aeon
Twin Cities Theatre Company Fires Director After #MeToo Complaints
Theater Mu, a St. Paul-based company focused on Asian-American work, cut ties with artistic director Randy Reyes after a board investigation “discovered conduct that did not reflect the culture we strive to achieve at Mu.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Can Art Help The Families Of Opioid Crisis Victims? This Museum Is Finding Out
“The Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire has created an unprecedented program that uses art as a healing tool for those affected by the epidemic in a state that’s ranked third in the nation for drug overdoses.” — Hyperallergic
Documenting The Civil War Damage To Yemen’s Cultural Heritage
The good news is that there’s been very little ideologically-based destruction of the kind ISIS perpetrated in Syria and Iraq; the damage is almost entirely “collateral,” the by-product of the warring sides shooting at each other. The bad news is that the worst of the damage has been caused by Saudi Arabia with American and European weapons. — Hyperallergic
City Versus Country: How Much Of The World Is Urban?
The current level of global urbanization is high: It estimates the world to be 84 percent urban already. The EC research team, led by Lewis Dijkstra, used satellite images to assess the share of the world’s population that is urban. While traditional estimates from the United Nations and elsewhere find Asia to be 50 percent urban, the EC team’s analysis of satellite images finds it to be 90 percent; while the UN estimates Africa’s urban population at 40 percent, the EC research team finds it to be 80 percent. – CityLab
Competitive Dance Is Thriving In Colleges, Even At MIT
The co-captain is a senior majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, and he isn’t kidding when he says, “Although we are all MIT students, dance is an outlet for us where we can be carefree and have fun.” – MIT News
The Future Of Television
Binge watching? That’s passé. But what’s next isn’t entirely clear. – The Wall Street Journal
Debt Bubble: Borrowing Against Art
Borrowing against art poses specific problems because of its portability, its heterogeneous nature and difficulty in establishing a reliable price. And yet, according to a report published last year by Deloitte and ArtTactic, in 2017 the global total of loans outstanding against art was eye-popping: between $17bn and $20bn. – The Art Newspaper
I’m Tired Of New Plays! I Want Something More
“In a word: I’m against the New Play. New Plays take many forms and have been around for years, but they seem especially prized lately. They’re plays with budget-friendly cast sizes, simpler stories with watery stakes, forward-slashes to indicate overlapping, a pretty strict adherence to the fourth wall, “ordinary” unaffected language, and an authorial injunction to either “play it fast” or “respect the beats”—or both. Further, all of the matter onstage is matter of the theatre (i.e. no video, film, poetry, live musical interlude, non-diagetic dance, opera, or lip-sync).” – Howlround