“In 1709, the London journalist Ned Ward published an account of a group he called ‘the Mollies Club.’ Visible through the homophobic bile (he describes the members as a ‘Gang of Sodomitical Wretches’) is the clear image of a social club that sounds, most of all, like a really good time. Every evening of the week, Ward wrote, at a pub he would not mention by name, a group of men came together to gossip and tell stories, probably laughing like drains as they did so, and occasionally succumbing to ‘the Delights of the Bottle.'”
Tag: 12.08.17
Smellscapes: Mapping A City By Its Scents
Smellmaps, developed by English artist Kate McLean, “can come in handy for people interested in new ways of exploring both the cities they live in and the ones they visit. So far, McLean has led small armies of urban explorers on ‘smellwalks’ around 12 other cities, including New York, Singapore, Barcelona, and Kiev.”
Can We Really Take Pleasure From Music That’s The Product Of Suffering?
Music is a product of a particular time and place and the context in which it is created can be dark, violent, exploitative, and even demonic. To think seriously about music it is necessary to reckon with the problematic role it can play in culture.
Is Culture In The Americas In Big Trouble?
That was the title of a panel discussion at Art Basel Miami Beach that “included artist Jordan Casteel, Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston director Bill Arning, and writer and photographer Teju Cole. While there weren’t many concrete solutions drawn, the conversation offered a clear diagnosis of the key issues facing art and culture and, at the very least, a starting point for how we can understand and address them going forward.
A Problem For Museums: How Do You Keep Your Images Compelling?
Museums in the 21st century face particular and special challenges: in an age of digital communication, when an image – almost any image – can be summoned up effortlessly on an electronic device, why go to the trouble of visiting an actual institution just to see the supposed “original”? Does the word “original” have meaning any longer in this context? In other words, the mere displaying of objects, even uniquely valuable objects, no longer, of itself, justifies a museum’s existence; something more is required to render a visit to a museum worthwhile.
The Most Likely Place To Get A Parking Ticket Is London’s Theatre District
Theatregoers and shoppers who parked illegally in Westminster – which includes the West End – amassed a total of 125,727 parking charge notices between July and September 2017, the data suggests. This amounts to almost a quarter (23%) of all fines issued in London during the period.
The 25 Most-Read New Yorker Stories Of 2017
How an earthquake would kill the Pacific Northwest leads the list.
Here’s What Science Fiction Written By Artificial Intelligence Looks Like
Their program can identify dozens of structural and stylistic details in huge chunks of text, and if you give them a collection of great stories—stories that maybe you wished you had written—they are able to identify all the details that those great stories have in common.
The Battle (And Now A Petition) To Remove Statues In New York City
In a city with more than 800 public monuments, four in particular have irked artists and academics, who have signed a public petition. The 500 signatories are advocating for the removal of monuments of Christopher Columbus, James Marion Sims, Theodore Roosevelt and one adjoined honouring Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval. “For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy,” reads the petition, in a city which “preaches tolerance and equity”.
The Cult Of The Maestro Is A Problem For Classical Music
“The cult of the maestro has thrived precisely because of the uniquely difficult demands of the music: great power and privilege is sycophantically bestowed on those perceived to be geniuses, and behaviour that would be unacceptable in other contexts may be excused or swept under the carpet; different moral standards can be applied to them by virtue of their artistic brilliance.”