Scandinivian artists Elmgreen and Dragset, who are behind the project: “For ages the Fourth Plinth was a problem for London. It just stood there, empty. Then it became one of the most fantastic art projects. … Maybe Munich does not have enough problems, so we are bringing them one.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Inside History’s Single Largest Gathering of Humanity
In Allahabad, “at the confluence of the Yamuna, Ganges and (mythical) Saraswati Rivers, as many as 100 million people will participate over the next month in an ancient Hindu festival known as the Kumbh Mela.” Urbanists are studying the logistics of what they’re calling a “pop-up megacity”, and social scientists are finding that participating in these gatherings really does bring long-term benefits.
A Portrait Of Fascism As A Living, Breathing Person
László Krasznahorkai: “To be honest I wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t knocked but beat at the door, or simply kicked the door in, but now that I hear the knocking, it’s clear there is no difference between his knocking and beating or kicking the door in, I mean really no difference, the point being that I am dead certain it is him, who else; he of whom I knew, and have always known would come.”
For The Arts, Social Media Become More Than A Marketing Tool
“Social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others are not only changing the way arts organizations interact with audiences, [a] Pew study shows, they are also helping define how arts are presented. … The study also identified two curious downsides to the rise in social media use among audiences.”
Hollywood Vs. Jihadis: It Didn’t Start With Zero Dark Thirty
Films on this theme “are always informed, and their reception shaped, by politics of the era in which they were created. It’s as true now for Zero Dark Thirty as it was for a series of films in the 1980s that made none of the claims of journalistic rigor that director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have made.” Consider, for instance, Rambo III.
Latvia, A Nation Of Singers
Composer Gabriel Jackson: “And singing is what Latvians do. I don’t know what percentage of the population is in a choir but it must be pretty high; it’s certainly taken very seriously and every Latvian I know can sing, and does. … But it’s not just the ubiquity of singing and the skill of its practitioners that’s impressive, it’s the sheer sound of Latvian choirs that is so remarkable.”
Cellist Yuli Turovsky, Founder Of Montreal’s I Musici, Dead At 73
“Turovsky founded I Musici in 1983, fulfilling a dream he had had since arriving in Canada with little money and few contacts. He was director and conductor of the string orchestra for 27 years. … He made more than 30 recordings and toured internationally with [the ensemble].”
Meet Greece’s National Poet, ‘Feisty’ 81-Year-Old Kiki Dimoula
“Her poetry – spare, profound, unsentimental, effortlessly transforming the quotidian into the metaphysical, drawing on the powerful themes of time, fate and destiny, yet making them entirely her own – has earned her a near-cult following in Greece. One of her Greek writer contemporaries, Nikos Dimou, has called Ms. Dimoula ‘the best Greek woman poet since Sappho’.”
Effing The Ineffable: Love, Vladimir, And Estragon
How did these two men find each other? Why do they stay together? Even they do not know. Or, at least, they cannot say. … When we say that love is ineffable, as Beckett knew, what we mean is that, when we love, we don’t know what the hell we are doing. We can’t stop talking through it, trying to figure it out.”
Where Light Sculpture Meets Astronomy
“The light playing across the 4.5-metre-tall standing stone is that of cosmic particles as they dance through the Earth’s atmosphere. Or rather, as they are detected at the Super-Kamiokande observatory at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Cosmic Ray Research.”