“We listened on car radios. Mine conked out halfway through. Someone else got a flat battery. Hearing through the window was fine. I saw the admirable second cast led by Nardus Williams and David Junghoon Kim as sympathetic and touching lovers, conducted by Martin Fitzpatrick. The event was well organised if, at £103 per car (plus congestion charge), costly. This was a brave experiment – a starting point, if not yet an arrival. The next venture will be better.” – The Guardian
Month: September 2020
A Sophisticated Livestream Of Dance
Such viewing from afar, once rare in concert dance, has become ordinary. But where most such performances these days are free and prerecorded, this one was ticketed and livestreamed. If you missed the show, you couldn’t catch it later, so it had immediacy. But, unlike most livestreams, this was not a static recording or a glitchy presentation over Zoom. Watching it felt more like watching a movie, immersive and absorbing, yet easily the most technically sophisticated live dance production I’ve seen since theaters closed. – The New York Times
Judge Blocks Trump’s Ban Of TikTok
The Commerce Department originally set Sept. 20 for the TikTok download ban, citing Trump’s declaration that the Chinese-controlled app represents a threat to U.S. national security. The agency delayed the deadline to Sept. 27, given Trump’s preliminary approval of owner ByteDance’s deal to transfer ownership to American firms including Oracle and Walmart. – Variety
Photorealist Painter Robert Bechtle, 88
Best known for his realistic oil paintings that captured snapshots of everyday life in the Bay Area, where he was a life-long resident, his work primarily featured automobile subjects, with occasional people. – ArtNet
Translators Versus Writers
If I don’t write this novel, no one else will. No one will know what hasn’t been written. If I don’t translate Calasso, someone else will quickly replace me. – New York Review of Books
How Language Has Changed During COVID
Most of the coronavirus-related changes that the editors have noted have to do with older, more obscure words and phrases being catapulted into common usage, such as reproduction number and social distancing. They’ve also documented the creation of new word blends based on previously existing vocabulary. – Fast Company
Why Postponing The Philip Guston Show Is Just Wrong
Never mind that Guston, who was Jewish and died in 1980, had a powerful record, going back to his youth, of anti-racist actions and imagery. Never mind that two of today’s leading African American artists, including Glenn Ligon and Trenton Doyle Hancock, have contributed essays to the catalogue (Ligon even praising Guston in his essay as “woke”). And never mind that it’s absurd to require artists to pass such litmus tests in the first place. – Washington Post
Philadelphia’s BalletX Experiments With A Virtual Subscription
To watch them, you have to subscribe to BalletX Beyond, which also gives you access to premieres later in the season, along with extras like interviews and making-of documentaries. The cheapest plan is $15 a month — less than a ticket to a live show but almost as much as premium Netflix. It’s a necessary experiment, especially for companies without huge endowments. Somebody has to figure out how to get people to pay for digital dance. – The New York Times
How Creativity Changes As We Get Older
We tend not to associate aging with creative bursts. Historically, critics saw advancements by elderly artists as peculiar. According to twentieth-century art historian Kenneth Clark, the work of older artists conveyed a feeling of “transcendental pessimism,” best illustrated in the weary lined eyes and pouched cheeks of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits. – The Walrus
David Attenborough Break Instagram Record In First To 1 Million Followers
Attenborough stated the reason he decided to join Instagram simply: “The world is in trouble. Continents are on fire, glaciers are melting, coral reefs are dying, fish are disappearing from our oceans. The list goes on and on,” he said. “But we know what to do about it, and that’s why I’m tackling this new way of communication.” – NPR