- Artists are being forced out of San Francisco by the high-rent dot-coms. “Estate agents in San Francisco say that in the past 12 months rents for prime start-up space have doubled from about $45 per square foot to $90 per square foot. According to official statistics less than 1% of commercial real estate in San Francisco is unoccupied. The organisations that can least afford higher rents have been hardest hit. Non-profit organisations such as charities and the city’s artistic community are being forced out of their space.” – London Evening Standard 09/01/00
Month: September 2000
SPEAKING OUT IN SALZBURG
Since he resigned and then unresigned, Salzburg Festival director Gerard Mortier has been uncharacteristically quiet about the new ultra-right-wing elements in the Austrian government. Until last week. “When I go out of my office and I see members of the right-wing party in the office next-door, I feel it in my stomach, like a pain.” – Los Angeles Times 09/01/00
FOLLOWING THE BREADCRUMBS OF THE PAST
We seem to be perpetually fascinated with the past; trying to figure out how Stonehenge was built, whether or not the Romans and Greeks read out loud or silently to themselves, how King Tut died. The only way historians and archaeologists have back into the past is the order on which things were built and the clues left behind. What kind of trail are we leaving for our successors? – The Atlantic 09/00
THE BOLSHOI’S HARD TIMES
Its theatre is crumbling, it’s artistic reputation has been battered, and its subsidies from the Russian government have fallen off. It’s probably not much of a surprise that the Bolshoi’s regime was sacked this week. – The Times (London)
POP GOES THE ART FILM
As our diversions become more and more tied to audience numbers and popularity, can difficult or subtle art films survive? The evidence is mixed. – New York Times
WHAT THE FALK?
An Argentine actor/director goes to the Falklands with a crew posing as tourists and without permission and films a movie covertly in nine days. The movie “tells the story of an Argentine man visiting the islands with the aim of… umm … impregnating as many British women as possible, thereby achieving the takeover that 72 days of fighting at a combined cost of 891 lives and $2 billion could not.” – Inside.com