“You can do what you want to a classic – set Hamlet in outer space or have a monkey play the prince – and it will bounce back. It can be stretched and pummelled and it will always return to its original shape. The classics are classics because they are foolproof. Plagiarism enhances them. Satire strengthens them. The internet proliferates them.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
British Library Puts Its Sound Archive Online — For Free
“The British Library revealed it has made its vast archive of world and traditional music available to everyone, free of charge, on the internet. That amounts to roughly 28,000 recordings and, although no one has yet sat down and formally timed it, about 2,000 hours of singing, speaking, yelling, chanting, blowing, banging, tinkling and many other verbs associated with what is a uniquely rich sound archive.”
Jerry Saltz To Glenn Beck: Don’t Like NY Art? Try Curating It
Fox News’ Glenn Beck plays paranoid art critic? A challenge to him, then: “Curate two exhibitions in New York,” one of “images (or actual artworks) that exist in New York City that he would like to see demolished,” the other “a show of CONTEMPORARY ART that he approves of.”
Downloader Links To ‘$675K Mixtape’; Labels Not Amused
The songs Joel Tenenbaum was fined $675,000 for illegally downloading are now available on Pirate Bay as “The $675,000 Mixtape.” “Although there is no evidence that Tenenbaum was responsible for putting the playlist” there, “the record companies have accused him of defiantly encouraging further illegal downloading by linking to the service directly, from a website created for his defense.” They want a court order to make him stop.
The Station Fire Vs. The Observatory
“There is nothing quite so wild as a fire that, as of Wednesday morning, had spread across 140,000 acres — an area roughly as large as the City of Chicago. … And there is nothing quite so man-made as a domed observatory sitting on a mountain — a small, human presence dwarfed by its natural surroundings. … [Daniel] Burnham and the architects are all about permanence. The Station Fire is all about eradicating permanence.”
Pushing Accordions (And Why Not?) In Oak Lawn, Illinois
“‘I am going to sell you an accordion,’ said Anne Romagnoli,” the octogenarian proprietor of the Italo-American Accordion Co. “‘Not right — ‘ began the teenage boy. ‘No, listen, I’ve got to sell you an accordion. Why can’t I sell you an accordion? You need an accordion. Look at you.’ … You need an accordion? She sells accordions. You need a leather strap to shoulder that 30-pound instrument? She sells the leather straps. Need anything else? She sells nothing else.”
Artists Protest Toronto Film Fest’s Spotlight On Tel Aviv
“An international group of more than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics” are objecting to what they call “the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of … an apartheid regime.”
Budget-Crunched Seattle Libraries Go Dark For The Week
“The city’s entire library system – from its branches to book drops to Web site – is shut down to save money. … All city departments have been told to reduce spending to make up a $43 million gap in Seattle’s 2009 budget. The public library is trying to cut 2 percent, or about $1 million, and the weeklong closure of its downtown central library and 26 branches aims to save $655,000.”
In Need Of Upgrade, Sydney Opera House Hunts For Cash
The iconic Sydney Opera House is seeking an estimated A$600 million (£300 million) “for what it says are much-needed renovations. The backstage equipment is in a state of dilapidation, and the orchestra pit is so small and acoustically compromised that players have to work in rotas to safeguard their hearing. The stage is so narrow that stage hands have to wait in the wings to catch the ballet dancers as they hurtle off stage.” (With video tour.)
Paul Robeson, The Peekskill Riots And Public Fears In 2009
The infamous Peekskill Riots, perpetrated by mobs at Paul Robeson concerts in 1949, were “long ago, so long that community and religious groups in town caused nary a stir when they put together plans for a concert to be held Friday, 60 years later. … [W]hat those long-ago events mean today, what resonance the fears and angers of 1949 have for the fears and angers of 2009, well that’s a subject as rich and complicated as the man who set the events in motion.”