“Big themes hover around this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. The first has to do with the transition from a monocultural society to a multicultural one, which Ireland is beginning to experience with some ferocity as the success of its ‘Celtic tiger’ economy sucks in more migrants and refugees. Suddenly, this year in Dublin, the youngsters working in the cafes and burger bars are no longer Irish, but North African, Filipino, Russian. It’s a change that has come as a profound culture shock to a country so long used to the experience of mass emigration, depopulation and loss.” – The Scotsman
Author: Douglas McLennan
CULTURE SQUEEZE
San Francisco’s explosive economy, and skyrocketing rents, are threatening the city’s vibrant arts scene. “Artists feel under siege – and many fear that the city that once sent a generation of young people on the road following Jack Kerouac in the ’50s, turned the world on to the Summer of Love in the ’60s and nurtured the creation of the Pulitzer-winning AIDS drama “Angels in America” in the ’90s is in danger of becoming one big office park with Victorian architecture.” – San Francisco Chronicle 10/17/00
ENGLISH AMONG MANY
The English language has spread so far around the world that many expect it to be the dominant language of the future, the international language. But will it be? It’s not at all certain – just as one example, “people who expect English to triumph over all other languages are sometimes surprised to learn that the world today holds three times as many native speakers of Chinese as native speakers of English.” – The Atlantic 11/00
DESIGNING MEMORY
Vienna’s Holocaust Memorial, designed by sculptor Rachel Whiteread, has courted controversy since its inception and will finally be unveiled next week. “It is a library, but it looks like a bunker. I was thinking of brutalist architecture, but I tried to make something sombre and poetic.”- The Guardian
PHILANTHROPIST DEMANDS ARTWORK BACK
Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada recently landed a $20 million private collection of Chinese and Mid-Eastern antiquities, and the donation was seen as quite a coup. But now, after giving the some 1,800 objects to the museum, the donor has abruptly demanded them back. “They couldn’t meet the conditions that I imposed. They weren’t able to meet it, so we said, screw it.” The museum has been under ongoing financial difficulties. – Ottawa Citizen
BYE BYE TO THE LYRICAL PENGUIN
Australian artist John Perceval, a member of the group of Melbourne artists known in the 1940s as the “Angry Penguins,” has died at the age of 77. The group developed modern painting techniques generally unfamiliar to Australia at the time. – Sydney Morning Herald
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
E-books are poised to transform the infrastructures and revenue structures of the publishing industry, but can the developments really be called a “revolution?” “These new technologies will alter the way books are transmitted, but the author’s task will remain essentially the same as when Homer sang the Odyssey and Dickens presented his novels, chapter by chapter, before enchanted listeners.”- New York Review of Books
THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
“Gutenberg’s printed paper book will continue to hold its own,” said an organizer of the Frankfurt Book Fair, dispelling fears that we’ll soon be curling up to read e-book screens. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)
HORRORS – KING DOUBLES COST
Stephen King said if 75 percent of those downloading chapters of his cyber-novel didn’t pay $1 a chapter he would stop offering it. So far fans are paying. But now King has doubled the price of a chapter to $2. – Wired
WHAT PHILOSOPHY SOUNDS LIKE (NOT SO PRETTY)
“If Milton Babbitt and John Cage are to be believed, it is almost beside the point to talk about whether their music sounds good or sounds bad. For both composers would admit that their music does not ‘sound good’ in the ordinary sense: instead, they would challenge that notion, and replace it with highly philosophical views that are meant to undermine our ordinary aesthetic judgments.” – Boston Review