“She was able to pursue her desire to build because she was independently wealthy, unmarried and locally influential, and she acquired the knowledge to do it because her older male relatives honored and encouraged her intelligence.”
Month: January 2013
Making Theater Without Sight Or Sound
“The Israeli theater ensemble Nalagaat, which is made up of deaf and blind performers, tells stories through pantomime and by baking bread.”
Munich To Get Its Own Fourth Plinth
Scandinivian artists Elmgreen and Dragset, who are behind the project: “For ages the Fourth Plinth was a problem for London. It just stood there, empty. Then it became one of the most fantastic art projects. … Maybe Munich does not have enough problems, so we are bringing them one.”
Inside History’s Single Largest Gathering of Humanity
In Allahabad, “at the confluence of the Yamuna, Ganges and (mythical) Saraswati Rivers, as many as 100 million people will participate over the next month in an ancient Hindu festival known as the Kumbh Mela.” Urbanists are studying the logistics of what they’re calling a “pop-up megacity”, and social scientists are finding that participating in these gatherings really does bring long-term benefits.
A Portrait Of Fascism As A Living, Breathing Person
László Krasznahorkai: “To be honest I wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t knocked but beat at the door, or simply kicked the door in, but now that I hear the knocking, it’s clear there is no difference between his knocking and beating or kicking the door in, I mean really no difference, the point being that I am dead certain it is him, who else; he of whom I knew, and have always known would come.”
For The Arts, Social Media Become More Than A Marketing Tool
“Social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others are not only changing the way arts organizations interact with audiences, [a] Pew study shows, they are also helping define how arts are presented. … The study also identified two curious downsides to the rise in social media use among audiences.”
Hollywood Vs. Jihadis: It Didn’t Start With Zero Dark Thirty
Films on this theme “are always informed, and their reception shaped, by politics of the era in which they were created. It’s as true now for Zero Dark Thirty as it was for a series of films in the 1980s that made none of the claims of journalistic rigor that director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have made.” Consider, for instance, Rambo III.
Latvia, A Nation Of Singers
Composer Gabriel Jackson: “And singing is what Latvians do. I don’t know what percentage of the population is in a choir but it must be pretty high; it’s certainly taken very seriously and every Latvian I know can sing, and does. … But it’s not just the ubiquity of singing and the skill of its practitioners that’s impressive, it’s the sheer sound of Latvian choirs that is so remarkable.”
Cellist Yuli Turovsky, Founder Of Montreal’s I Musici, Dead At 73
“Turovsky founded I Musici in 1983, fulfilling a dream he had had since arriving in Canada with little money and few contacts. He was director and conductor of the string orchestra for 27 years. … He made more than 30 recordings and toured internationally with [the ensemble].”
Meet Greece’s National Poet, ‘Feisty’ 81-Year-Old Kiki Dimoula
“Her poetry – spare, profound, unsentimental, effortlessly transforming the quotidian into the metaphysical, drawing on the powerful themes of time, fate and destiny, yet making them entirely her own – has earned her a near-cult following in Greece. One of her Greek writer contemporaries, Nikos Dimou, has called Ms. Dimoula ‘the best Greek woman poet since Sappho’.”