What he and Jeanne-Claude, his wife and collaborator, achieved was so different from the work of anyone else, and on such a huge scale—seventy-five hundred saffron-colored nylon “gates,” in Central Park; the Reichstag, in Berlin, and the Pont Neuf, in Paris, transformed by their cloth wrappings into monumental and sensuous sculptures—that it’s hard to believe it was also ephemeral. Each spectacle drew huge crowds for two weeks and then vanished forever, without a trace. – The New Yorker
Author: Douglas McLennan
Can My Online Choir Give Me What My Regular Choir Does?
I’m not yet sure how much my life will change without choir: without the paper cuts and warmups, the imagistic instructions from conductors (bite the apple, smell the rose, blow the birthday candle), the nonsense vowels (for learning) followed by foreign words (German, Italian, French) twisting in my mouth. The pauses, the frustrations. A dynamic raised and lowered. A tempo sped and slowed. That radical yet practical ethics of ensemble. The chorus says to the individual, you are not important. Blend, modify your vowel, sing a little softer, tune. At the same time, you matter. You must know your part, you must place the “t” correctly, you must practice, and listen. – Commonweal
Why Regional Theatre Matters
The loss of any regional theatre, whether it is Nuffield Southampton announcing it has gone into administration or the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh taking the painful decision to hibernate until next spring, is an immediate tragedy for that local community. But it has consequences beyond the immediate loss of art, including the damage done to the social fabric of that place and the local economy. – The Stage (UK)
Judgment Of Movies Now Includes Backstories Of Their Creators
“Discomfort has now become an essential part of pop culture connoisseurship, and it has forced audiences to become much more sophisticated as they decide what, if anything, is worth salvaging in the films, music and novels they most cherish, by people they find morally flawed.” – Washington Post
How Creativity Works
Creativity can seem like a tool for solving problems: We need a new word for the ocean! But creativity doesn’t just solve problems; it also makes or discovers new problems to solve. Hundreds of years ago, nobody knew the old words for ocean weren’t cutting it, until someone said “whale-road.” And everyone was like, “Wow! It is a whale-road!” Creativity always hides itself — it makes itself disappear. – The New York Times
Austin Symphony Fires Trombonist Over Racist Comments
“We have been made aware that a musician of the Austin Symphony Orchestra has made an offensive post on their social media account regarding the protests across our country. This language is not reflective of who we are as an organization.” – The Violin Channel
On TV, Cops Are The Main Characters. It Shapes How We See Them
“TV has long had a police’s-eye perspective that helps shape the way viewers see the world, prioritizing the victories and struggles of police over communities being policed. Order, a police imposed status quo, is good; disruption is bad. There are many, many reasons why a cop’s point of view has become the default way to frame national unrest, including institutional and systemic racism, the capitalist urge to prioritize property over human life, and a political system that benefits those already in power. But TV plays a role, too.” – New York Magazine
Remembering Six Of Christo’s And Jeanne-Claude’s Best Projects
“In fact, they are very humble projects, very simple projects, but they need to be put together in an incredibly clever way,” Christo once told Artnet News. – Artnet
Publishers Sue The Internet Archive Over Free E-Books
Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available for free online, according to the complaint, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days. Then in March, the group said it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.” – The New York Times
Are We Suffering From Crisis Fatigue?
Of late Matthew Flinders has been exploring the notion of “crisis fatigue,” or the idea that after years of constant bad news, perhaps we’ve grown numb to warnings from politicians of yet more bad news. As the crisis drags on, might that fatigue set in across societies? And now that scientists have been thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic, might the distrust spread toward their leadership as well? – Wired