In fact, that’s what it was created to do. Installed in response to neighbors’ noise complaints following the opening of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport’s fifth runway, the Buitenschot Land Art Park was designed by landscape architects and acoustical engineers to dampen the noise from passing airplanes. – 99% Invisible
Author: Matthew Westphal
You Probably Don’t Know This Young Indian-Canadian Poet, But She May Be The Writer Of The Decade
“[Rupi] Kaur’s achievement as an artist is the extent to which her work embodies, formally, the technology that defines contemporary life: smartphones and the internet. … I’d argue that many of the writers currently being discussed as the most significant of the last decade write in direct opposition to the pervasive influence of the internet. Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, and Ben Lerner (to name but three of our best) are interested in the single analog consciousness as a filter through which to see the world. If you think their experiment is the most important of the last 10 years, you’re probably (sorry) old.” – The New Republic
‘Beach Blanket Babylon’, A San Francisco Institution, Brings Its 45-Year Run To A Close
Even as the topical revue heads toward its final performance on New Year’s Eve, it still gets tweaked to reflect current news. (Donald Trump’s angry tweet at Greta Thunberg — he said she needed to work on anger management — made it into the script in a matter of hours.) Jo Schuman Silver, widow of Babylon creator Steve Silver, has been producing the show on her own since his death in 1995, and she gets a profile here from reporter Tony Bravo. – San Francisco Chronicle
These Artisans Have Been Hand-Making Cymbals For 600 Years
Cymbals are now mainstays of marching bands, drum sets, and orchestral percussion batteries, but they originally came from Ottoman Janissary bands, and Istanbul can be considered their home city. A BBC crew visits a workshop where Turkish cymbalsmiths forge and hammer the instruments to order. (video) – BBC
Fifty Years Of The Community Museum Movement
“How should museums relate to their surroundings? What are the most meaningful ways for them to connect and work with their communities? … These questions date to the beginning of the community museum movement in the 1960s and remain foundational to the field.” Anna Diamond reports from a Smithsonian symposium on the subject. – Smithsonian Magazine
After Six Years, Broadcasters Of Syrian Exile Radio Station Marooned In Istanbul
Since 2013, Radio Alwan, which started as community radio in a Syria just breaking out in civil war, broadcast politically neutral news and other programming to Aleppo and Idlib on FM as well as online. The U.S. funding that supported the station has been withdrawn by the Trump administration, Radio Alwan is now off the air, and its staffers are stuck in a country that seems not to want them. – BBC
Why Doesn’t Ballet Training Teach Women To Dance Allegro The Way It Does Men?
“With technically demanding feats, male ballet training tends to emphasize jumps and batterie. In general, men are more privy to additional allegro combinations at the end of multi gender classes, as well as male-only technique classes. … And the women? Most female ballet dancers today perform both classical and contemporary repertoire interchangeably, and this can include exuberant jumps similar to traditional male variations.” So why aren’t they being taught the same way? – Dance Magazine
The New Yorker’s Top 30 Cultural Moments Of The 2010s
Troy Patterson’s choices range from Zadie Smith’s essay “Generation Why”?, through Matthew McConaughey’s nihilist scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, David Lynch’s art show, the Kylo Ren lightsaber toothbrush, Greg Tate’s MTV News lament for Prince, Lin-Manuel Miranda doing Alexander Hamilton on Drunk History, artist Cindy Sherman’s Instagram feed, and the La La Land/Moonlight Oscar night fiasco, to Patricia Lockwood’s essay “Malfunctioning Sex Robot” (and 21 — sorry, twenty-one — more). – The New Yorker
Jerry Herman, Who Wrote Some Of The World’s Favorite Musicals, Dead At 88
“The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: Hello, Dolly! in 1964 and La Cage aux Folles in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the Mame cast album and Hello, Dolly! as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.” – AP
The Biggest Art World Controversies Of 2019
“This past year saw no shortage of controversies in both the art world and the real world. And perhaps more than ever before, the distance between those two worlds seemed to collapse, as artists and activists began demanding with unprecedented strength that patrons — both board members and corporate sponsors — answer for their actions outside the confines of the museum. We zeroed in on 11 hot-button issues that ignited heated debate in the art world this year, and the particular questions they provoked.” – artnet