While new is always (well, often) fun, what is most important to me about this website upgrade is the opportunity to share many more resources with the community engagement field.
Month: July 2018
Monday Recommendation: Pillow’s ‘Electric Miles’
Charles Pillow Large Ensemble, Electric Miles (Mama Records)
Whatever the title Electric Miles might lead you to expect, chances are that it wouldn’t be an album of non-electric big band music.
Critics Charge Bahrain Art Fair Suffers From Mismanagement, Failure To Pay Bills
It was supposed to be Bahrain’s flagship cultural initiative, an art fair with international programming that would raise the profile of the Gulf State’s artists, diversify the economy and boost tourism. But after only three editions, Art Bahrain, now renamed Art Bahrain Across Borders, is facing accusations of unpaid invoices and chronic mismanagement from both exhibitors and former collaborators.
Why ‘Drunk History’ Is The Ideal Corrective To Most Documentary TV
Emily Nussbaum: “It’s informational, but it doesn’t mind that you don’t know everything, because it gets that nobody does. This openheartedness makes it educational television in a broader, emotional sense — it’s like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, or Schoolhouse Rock!, if those shows had more orgies and Nazis.”
Forbes Pulls Article In Which Writer Argues That Amazon Should Replace Libraries
On Monday, amid growing criticism, Forbes pulled the article, releasing a statement that said, “Forbes advocates spirited dialogue on a range of topics, including those that often take a contrarian view. Libraries play an important role in our society. This article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed.”
Cambodian Dance Begins To Take Root In (Of All Places) South Philly
Three years ago, Lanica Angpak started a social program to provide young women from Philadelphia’s Cambodian-American community with a safe place to deal with issues their traditional families might not handle so well. Now that program has become – at those young women’s request, not out of nudging from their elders – a class where an art form that barely survived the horrors that the late 20th century inflicted on Cambodia is being passed on.
What Orwell Knew: We’d Be Eaten By Our Screens
What’s most striking about the telescreen’s ubiquity is how right and how wrong Orwell was about our technological present. Screens are not just a part of life today: they are our lives. We interact digitally so often and in such depth that it’s hard for many of us to imagine (or remember) what life used to be like. And now, all that interaction is recorded.
Preserving Cuba’s Musical History Is No Easy Matter, Even In 2018
EGREM, the state recording label, has sound archives capturing thecomplete history of Cuban history from 1964 onward as well as a lot of what came before the Revolution. Maintaining those archives remains a struggle, thanks to very tight money and the still-not-lifted U.S. embargo. Even a clogged air-conditioner filter presents a major danger: if it can’t be repaired or replaced quickly enough, EGREM’s tapes and records could literally melt.
St. Louis Rep Gets A New Artistic Director
Hana S. Sharif has been named artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. She will succeed Steven Woolf, who is retiring at the end of the 2018-19 season after more than 30 years in the position. Currently, Sharif is associate artistic director at Baltimore Center Stage, where she has directed productions including “Pride and Prejudice,” “The Christians” and “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Sophie Calle And The Ethics Of Using Unwitting Subjects To Make Art
“Since the 1970s, Calle has repeatedly invited us to question whether artists should be held to the same standards as other people. In viewing her work, we must ask whether invading someone’s privacy or betraying their trust is an acceptable emotional cost to art.” Natasha Bell looks at some of Calle’s most famous projects, similar work by other artists such as Arne Svenson, Dries Depoorter and Santiago Serra, and a graduate-school project of her own that got her an A and lost her a close friend.