“It feels like we’re leaving this decade light years ahead of where we entered it. In 2010, salacious stories about queer people were still routinely seen in tabloids and on TV. Today, LGBTQ+ people are heralded for being themselves, and our stories are being normalized and told with a broader range of diversity and experiences than ever before.” Writer Jill Gutowitz talks with four leading queer media creators about how it happened. – them
Tag: 12.20.19
What Defined 2019? Ideas? People? How About Stuff?
“Look at the stuff. The Things. Objects. The products that overflow our commercial marketplace, designed for our consumption, that we loved, loathed, mocked, coveted, worried about, or just found so baffling we couldn’t stop obsessing about them.” – Medium
The Quiet Death Of A Legendary Paris Bookstore (And The Rising Rents That Are To Blame)
Inside the last days of Le Pont Traversé – and the economics of a flashy Paris encroaching on the heart of the literary city. The shop is especially known for its poetry. “A few months ago, a gang of young women came in looking for female poets like Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Yanette Delétang-Tardif—considerably lesser known than their male contemporaries, but now revived thanks to French bloggers writing on poetry ‘Their enthusiasm is extraordinary,’ marveled Josée. ‘I feel that when young people fall in love with writers today, they fall hard.'” – Literary Hub
Banksy’s Depressing Holiday Mural Taken Off View By Welsh Government
“The Welsh first minister has defended his government’s handling of the festive Banksy work Season’s Greetings, which is to be locked behind closed doors in a former police station after being briefly put on show to the public.” – The Guardian
The Best Take-Down Reviews Of Terrible Books This Year
“Our friendly neighborhood book review aggregators put on our black hats and seek out the most deliciously virulent literary take-downs of the past twelve months. It’s a ritual blood-letting exercise carried out in an effort appease the Literary Gods, thereby guaranteeing a good book review harvest in the year to come, and we take it very seriously.” – LitHub
Insurers Are Very Reluctant To Cover Art Basel Hong Kong
“As dealers struggle to insure works of art bound for Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protestors continue to clash with police, Art Basel in Hong Kong organisers say they are working with a local insurance broker to offer cover — at 20 times the normal rate.” – The Art Newspaper
Why Paul Bowles Drew Such A Long Shadow On Morocco
I have tried not to think too often about the long shadow that Paul Bowles casts over Tangier, but this year’s commemorations have made it hard to avoid: the twentieth anniversary of Bowles’s death and the seventieth of The Sheltering Sky’s publication. In Tangier, celebrations to mark this “existential masterpiece” are under way, including balls and masquerade parties. And so I’ve found myself again asking how this genteel American writer came to be so bound up with Morocco, and how, in recent years, he has become a figure of both nostalgia and contention. – New York Review of Books
US Justice Department Dings Live Nation For Consent Decree Violations
The DOJ investigation found that Live Nation had repeatedly violated the 10-year consent decree signed after the merger, in which the company agreed to refrain from monopolistic practices such as withholding valuable shows from venues in order to force them to contract Ticketmaster for ticketing services. – Pitchfork
Workers At Mexico City’s Institute Of Fine Arts Protest Over Delayed Wages
The issue of delayed wages has been a thorn in the side of arts workers for months – or years. While unionized workers have shut down several museums over it, this protest was organized by non-unionized workers. “Among the texts written on the placards held up by Villalba and his colleagues were ‘Exhibitions are always on time, why aren’t our payments?’ ‘NO to work without rights;’ and ‘The love of art should not mean unpaid work.'” – Hyperallergic
At A Quasi-Secret Film Festival In Belarus, Trying To Stay Ahead Of The KGB
The organizers of the festival, almost all women, had to come up with Plans C and D after the Belarus KGB said no to showing films in the theatres or bank buildings. “The confidence to cover the screen in black, to ask such serious questions about liberty and cinema. Compared with this, most film festivals look meagre and transient.” – The Guardian (UK)