Month: April 2004

Celebrating Boredom

“We’re terrified of boredom and simultaneously sunk up to our knees in it, a post-“Seinfeld” generation running as hard and frantically as we can to avoid a condition we increasingly regard as inevitable. Not so fast. As more and more people seem to recognize, the universal experience of being bored — unengaged, detached, afloat in some private torpor — may be far more precious, fruitful and even profound than a surface apprehension might suggest. As ordinary as gray skies and equally pervasive, boredom deserves its own sun-splashed attention and celebration.”

Canada Dance Fest Almost Shut For Lack Of $100,000

The Canada Dance Festival, the country’s largest dance event, was almost canceled this year because of a $100,000 funding shortfall. But the biennial festival will go on in June, reduced to 14 performances, “less than half its previous scope. The festival had budgeted receiving about $100,000 in private sector sponsorships and support, but its requests were turned down.”

To Share Or Not To Share, That Is The Question

Recording execs are blasting a Canadian judge’s decision that allows music file-sharing. “But ask anyone else connected in some way with music — from artists and small record company managers to listeners and file sharers themselves — and you’ll get myriad views on the matter, pro and con. The decision Wednesday in a Toronto Federal Court against the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s attempt to sue file sharers in Canada doesn’t seem to have changed opinions much.”

Minimalism – Maximum Impact

Minimalism seems to be everywhere these days, including a new retrospective show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Someone might surmise from all this that Minimalism’s time has come, but it has always been around in architecture, music, dance, theater, literature, the ascetic impulse hard-wired in us. That is an implicit message of “A Minimal Future?,” which includes Dan Graham’s 1966 photographs of postwar tract housing, all of it identical except differently colored, illustrating how the Minimalist aesthetic of serial form is just out there, waiting to be noticed.”

Age Of The Producer

We are living in the age of the producer. That’s the guy who takes the music and wrestles it around until it comes out a hit. Producers are now stars in their own right, and their status is only increasing now that anyone with a laptop computer can do what formerly took a roomful of mixing boards. Four producers talk about how their business has changed.

Lebrecht: Why American Arts Journalism Is So Bad

Norman Lebracht doesn’t think much of American arts journalism. “The failure to challenge is a fundamental flaw in US arts journalism. The tone in US arts coverage is uniformly respectful, uninquiring, inherently supportive.” And how did this happen? Because there are few cities with multiple critical voices. “This monopoly places an unhealthy burden on critics. If theirs is to be the only voice to pronounce on a new show or the fate of an institution, they are obliged to wear a mantle of responsibility that is antithetical to good journalism. A critic is licensed to get it wrong from time to time. Restrict that license and the reviews grow safe and solemn. An era of incorporation fostered a pontifical tone in American arts criticism.”

Cincy City Council Deletes Theatre Company From Grant

The Cincinnati city council has taken a theatre company’s name off a list of grants. Last summer the company staged a production of Terrence McNally’s “Corpus Christie.” No protesters appeared before City Council during recent discussions about the grant, but a local group — the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati — sent a mass e-mail entitled, ‘Cincinnati City Council Subsidizing Blasphemy.’ In the e-mail, CJC’s leader, Nathaniel Livingston Jr., wrote: ‘This is America, and everyone has a First Amendment right to free speech, even if the speech is offensive. There are, however, consequences to your actions. And there should be no reward for the producers of ‘Corpus Christi’.”