“In the room we have a whirlwind of physical states. This whirlwind contains a lot more than a human being could ever perceive—atoms, neutrinos, photons, quarks, strings, quantum fields; a huge range of possibilities. When the body comes into the room, its sensory capacities carve out one possible subset of that whirlwind. Or, looked at the other way round, one possible set within the whirlwind finds, relative to the body, a suitable causal path along which to roll. So the table and the apple are born! My body brought them into existence in the sense that it selected them and only them from the whirlwind. Entirely ignoring all kinds of other stuff.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Argument: Kill The NEA To Help Art And Artists
“Our cultural bureaucracies, from the NEA down to the local organizations and institutions it supports, are the great enemy of American art, distorting tastes, careers, and patronage. They are a major factor in the malinvestment that has employment in cultural institutions growing significantly more quickly than that of the overall labor force. I am sure the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is terrific — but 400 employees Eliminating the NEA is not a program for punishing artists but for liberating them — from bureaucracy, from mediocrity, and, above all, from subservience to politics.”
How Killing The NEA Would Hurt Alabama
“The first step before diving down this rabbit hole should probably begin with a few real facts. Contrary to the European model where ‘the state and/or central government’ supports the arts and culture almost totally, in this country support of the arts is a partnership between the private sector and government, local, state and federal. Clearly the private sector is the dominant player in this partnership but all the partners play and important role in what has become a very successful model.”
Threats To World Music In The Age Of Travel Bans
“The situation is an active threat to the ability of global music artists to tour the United States— something that is often already complicated—and arrives, paradoxically, at a time when audiences are more easily immersed in international sounds than ever before. It seems like an opportune moment to consider the meaning and relevance of what has been called “world music,” as a global refugee crisis and a rise in nationalistic fervor in Europe, Russia, and the United States newly threatens open cultural exchange.”
Should Anything Offensive Be Off Limits For Comedy?
“Comedy requires passage into the ugly, uncomfortable areas of the human heart, particularly in a live forum. So, in the manner of jesters before medieval kings, comics need a temporary pass, a stay of execution, to do their work. Calling oneself a comedian is tantamount to issuing a personal-injury disclaimer. Like philosophical BDSM, the audience’s response gives signals to the performer in play.”
Alex Good: We’re In The Age Of The Intentional Non-Reader (What’s That About?)
“Many believe we live in a post-literate age, one in which, writer Douglas Glover concludes, “books have become irrelevant.” Others disagree, some vehemently. His point is not, however, one I want to enter into a debate over. I don’t want to beat up on the degraded tastes of the common reader, analyse the impact of the digital revolution on reading habits, or make an appeal for the government to do more to address stubbornly high rates of illiteracy. What I find of most concern and significance is the rise in aliteracy—the growth of a population that can read but simply doesn’t want to.”
Are Our Classrooms Set Up Wrong? Studies Show Kids Need To Move!
“We fall into this trap that if kids are at their desks with their heads down and are silent and writing, we think they are learning. But what we have found is that the active time used to energize your brain makes all those still moments better,” or more productive.
Siobhan Burke Talks About How Dance In America Is Changing
“Dance tends to be marginalized in our culture. For many people, it’s not as much a part of everyday life as movies, TV, music or books. I have friends who are incredibly knowledgeable about art and literature, but when I mention major dance figures like Isadora Duncan or Merce Cunningham, they don’t know who they are. For dance writing to be more viable, dance needs to be more centralized somehow, so it’s not seen as esoteric and inaccessible, or, on the flip side, as purely fun and entertaining — though it can be all of those things.”
Did An Artist Opportunity High Atop The World Trade Center Turn Into Artist Exploitation?
“To do a project on the 69th floor of the World Trade Center has been beneficial to a lot of us. You’ve gotta be pretty dumb not to think the floor’s not going to get rented out eventually, and that whoever probably took it wasn’t going to want the artwork. Of course they’re going to want the artwork. But never did Silverstein say they were ever going to use it for marketing to rent the place.”
Deborah Borda On Leaving LA And On Saving The NEA
Here’s the great irony: the budget of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is now about $120 million a year. The total amount of money we get from the National Endowment for the Arts is about $150,000. So it’s less than one percent of our budget. So we — the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic — both of these orchestras will move ahead because that’s about the level that big orchestras receive from the NEA. Who is going to be terribly hurt are the smaller organizations in this city and especially in rural America.