“Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ first published in 1798, is … the dream-poem of right now.” It’s currently appearing on YouTube in short daily installments read by a nebula of quirky stars (Jeremy Irons, Marianne Faithfull, Willem Dafoe, Hilary Mantel, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, etc.), and James Parker explains why the project reflects our zeitgeist so well. – The Atlantic
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why The Pandemic Has Seen Shakespeare Popping Up Everywhere Online
Alexis Soloski: “The glut of new content speaks to the reach and ubiquity of his work, the open-source accessibility of his plays, the confidence that if you do share a snippet of pentameter, you will be heard, recognized and retweeted. The plays — and the humanist values they intimate — offer a [common] cultural touchstone when the rest of our lives feel unsteady.” – The New York Times
Coronavirus Or No, Demolition And Construction At L.A. Museums Goes On
“In California, all construction — including museum expansions — has been categorized as essential. While much of the art world is standing still, expansions at LACMA, the Hammer, and other museums are prompting both questions and criticisms.” – Hyperallergic
Facebook’s New Content Oversight Board Could End Up Overseeing A Lot More Than Facebook
“In designing this new organization, Facebook’s leaders … formed a separate legal trust with an initial $130 million investment from Facebook. But they also empowered that trust to both accept funding from sources outside Facebook and to form companies of its own. That structure would ensure Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t just shut down the board if he didn’t like its decisions. But it also opens up the possibility that the trust might some day spin off additional oversight boards for, say, YouTube, Twitter or any other platform that makes content moderation decisions.” – Protocol
‘The New Facebook Review Board Will Have No Influence Over Anything That Really Matters In The World’: Siva Vaidhyanathan
“It will hear only individual appeals about specific content that the company has removed from the service — and only a fraction of those appeals. The board can’t say anything about the toxic content that Facebook allows and promotes on the site. It will have no authority over advertising or the massive surveillance that makes Facebook ads so valuable. … It won’t dictate policy for Facebook Groups, where much of the most dangerous content thrives. And most importantly, the board will have no say over how the algorithms work and thus what gets amplified or muffled by the real power of Facebook.” – Wired
The Satellite Company That Helps Transmit Everything To Everyone Has Just Gone Bankrupt
“Set up in the 1960s via international treaty, Intelsat SA has played a critical and often-overlooked role providing connectivity infrastructure for more than a half century so that humanity could witness everything from Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969 to Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes’ recent victory in [this year’s] Super Bowl. But thanks to technological evolution, shifting FCC priorities and the latest COVID-19 pandemic, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday.” – The Hollywood Reporter
A New Kind Of Corona-Concert: Ten Minutes, One Musician, One Listener, One Empty Airport
Flutist Stephanie Winker has been organizing these very intimate events at the airport and in other locations around Stuttgart — inspired, she says, by The Artist Is Present, the project in which Marina Abramović sat in a chair and, one at a time, stared into people’s eyes. – The New York Times
The Case Of The Revered Scholar, The Chain-Store Mogul, And The Stolen Papyri
Dirk Obbink was perhaps the world’s most admired expert in Greek-language papyrus fragments from the early centuries of the Christian era — which is why he was recruited by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green around a decade ago to work on acquiring material for his major project, the Museum of the Bible. Now, almost ten years later, Obbink stands accused of stealing and reselling papyrus fragments under his care at Oxford and trafficking in other pieces that were looted. – The Atlantic
Kinetic Art Pioneer Abraham Palatnik Dead Of COVID At 92
“Most often associated with the Grupo Frente movement of the 1950s and ’60s, Palatnik was among the first Brazilian artists to take up a style called Concretism, which envisioned formalist geometric abstraction as a pure style of art-making that referred to nothing other than itself. … While he was a member of that group, Palatnik produced works that he called ‘Kinechromatic Devices’. … Composed of lights and industrial materials such as metal, fabric, and wood and positioned somewhere between painting and sculpture, these objects seemed to make lush abstractions lurch into motion when activated.” – ARTnews
Can Slapstick Comedy Work On Zoom? Bill Irwin’s About To Find Out
“‘Oh, I hope it holds together,’ he fretted the other morning, between rewrites and rehearsals of In-Zoom, his new 10-minute play. Performed by Irwin in New York and Christopher Fitzgerald, in North Carolina, it will have its livestream premiere Thursday evening on the website of [San Diego’s] Old Globe [theater].” The Tony- and MacArthur award-winning clown talks to Laura Collins-Hughes about how he’s putting it together. – The New York Times