The New York-based performance artist David Datuna recorded for Instagram (of course) the removal and eating of the banana, a much-discussed artwork by Maurizio Cattelan. But, plot twist: “Gallery officials replaced the banana with another one, saying that the artwork was not destroyed and that the banana was simply an ‘idea.'” – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
This Nobel Prizewinner Says The World Demands A New Narrative Style
Olga Tokarczuk, in a lecture in Sweden, said it’s time for a sort of fourth-person narration: “We can regard this figure of a mysterious, tender narrator as miraculous and significant. This is a point of view, a perspective, from which everything can be seen. Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.” – Washington Post (AP)
Accidentally Becoming The Real-Life Mrs. Maisel
When a woman in a close-knit Jewish family gets divorced and moves in with her parents, her friends tell her she’s just like Mrs. Maisel. But she’s no comedian, she thinks. And then the first open-mic night beckons. – The New York Times
The First Gay Dance Company In Cambodia [VIDEO]
Khmer dance has ancient Buddhist, Hindu, and animist roots – and though it’s mostly performed by all female groups today, it used to be performed both by men and by women. Now, Prumsodun Ok wants to revive the male dances and to provide a means of expression for gay dancers. – BBC
People Who Make Moral Claims In Public Are Not, For The Most Part, Merely Signalling That They’re Virtuous
In other words, there’s little hypocrisy to be seen – and the accusation of “virtue signalling” itself might be a signal from those who make the accusation to like-minded others. That’s because “the accusation does exactly what it accuses others of: it moves the focus from the target of the moral claim to the person making it. It can therefore be used to avoid addressing the moral claim made.” – Aeon
Is Martin Scorsese’s Irishman Killing The Box Office?
Was it Scorsese on Netflix? Just Netflix in general – and Disney Plus, and Hulu, and and and? Or the weather? Whatever it was, the Thanksgiving box office took a sharp hit this year. – The New York Times
Artist Agnes Denes Still Has Hope That Humanity Can Change, And Alleviate Climate Change
Denes, who has a new show up at the (oft-maligned) Hudson Shed, says that “Environmental art spreads like wildfire and now everybody wants to partake in its production. It’s okay, but do some good, make people think and act effectively. … We are becoming robots. I would like to make people think and feel good about themselves. Inside, even in a misguided fool, lurks a good person. My art touches on that secret spot.” – Fast Company
It’s Been 20 Years Since Britain’s Millennium Dome Was A Big Bust
Do you remember ‘Cool Britannia’? If you don’t, or if the idea makes you cringe, that might partly be because of the PR disaster of the Millennium Dome’s opening night. “For a government famed for its supposed mastery of spin, it was about as bad as it could get. It crystallised the doubts that floated around the New Labour project: this spectacular container of not very much made an easy emblem of the government’s preference for style over content, its attachment to vacuous statements of modernity, its use of messaging and focus groups to deliver meaningless platitudes, its tokenistic approach to regeneration.” – The Guardian (UK)
Irving Burgie, Calypso Hitwriter For Harry Belafonte, Has Died At 95
Burgie, known professionally as Lord Burgess, said that the calypso hits he adapted and wrote for Belafonte “‘revolutionized music’ by introducing Afro-Caribbean rhythms to the pop mainstream.” – The New York Times
How Music Made Its Way To The Soviet Union On X-Rays [VIDEO]
Evading state censorship made some music extra cool – and risky: “Bans on Western genres such as boogie-woogie, jazz and, later, rock ’n’ roll, as well as other styles deemed threatening to the political order, extended not only to public radio waves, but to private listening too. This prohibition, and the subsequent demand it created, gave rise to a black market of banned records carved into used X-ray film – contraband items colloquially known as ‘ribs’ and ‘bone music’.” – Aeon