Perhaps it was a larger mistake to think that a streaming service, even one as quirkily great as FilmStruck, could in any way replace going to arthouses or buying little-known classic movies. “For what is ownership, when it comes to the cultural products we love? Is a digital file purchased from iTunes owned? Is a DVD owned? And if we are not the ultimate owners, can we depend at all on private companies, even ones with as rich an artistic legacy as Warner Bros., to preserve their culture and keep it available?”
Author: ArtsJournal2
The Queens Museum, Which Let Its Director Go In An Ugly Way In January, Looks Abroad For Its New Director
Sally Tannant has worked at London’s Serpentine Galleries and has run the Liverpool Biennial, and now she’ll be the new executive director at the Queens Museum.
The Locked-Up Russian Opera Director, Working From House Arrest 1400 Miles Away
In Zurich, Kirill Serebrennikov directs Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, but not with ease. “Through a relay process that can seem closer to international espionage than traditional theater-making — involving files swapped on USB sticks, a lawyer acting as a courier, and extraordinary patience — the Zurich Opera has found a way for the director to retain artistic control from captivity, 1,400 miles away.”
Amazon-Owned AbeBooks Is Dropping Booksellers From Certain Countries, And Booksellers Are Dropping Abe Books
Amazon suddenly dropped antiquarian booksellers from the Czech Republic, South Korea, Hungary and several other countries from AbeBooks. One bookseller from California says, “The biggest e-commerce giant in the world apparently finds it too complicated to do business in Prague. … You have to wonder who’s next. We’re all vulnerable to Amazon’s capricious actions.”
How Did Los Angeles’ Arts Institutions Survive The Great Recession?
There’s no one way to answer that question. “Skeletons of skyscrapers have risen in city’s core, while unemployment rates have fallen. Occupy is gone from downtown, but homeless encampments have taken their place. When historians look back at Los Angeles cultural landscape in the years after the Great Recession — reflecting on the lives of cultural figures like Argote and the well-being of our city’s arts institutions — they’ll find a strange mix of obstacles and successes.”
People Who Own Apartments Across From The Tate Modern’s Expansion Are Taking The Museum To Court
They’d like to “stop ‘hundreds of thousands of visitors’ looking into their homes from the art gallery’s viewing platform.” The Tate, of course, responds that they should draw their blinds.
Exiled Chinese Writer Ma Jian Says That Those In Supposedly Free Countries Must Remain ‘Eternally Vigilant’
The author titled his new book after Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s slogan, almost daring him to have to censor his own key words. “The reality, Ma acknowledges, is that censorship is now so all-encompassing that the novel will very probably not be allowed to exist in Chinese, even in Hong Kong, which has historically provided a toehold for work by dissident authors banned on the mainland.”
Can ‘The Nutcracker And The Four Realms’ Bring Ballet To A Mass Audience?
Misty Copeland thinks so. “‘[People] feel comfortable sitting in a movie theater rather than walking through the doors of the Metropolitan Opera House; you feel that ‘Oh, that’s not for me.’ Especially as black people, that’s not a space for us,’ Copeland said. ‘Everyone goes to the movie theater, so this is an amazing way to do that.'”
Social Media May Be Squashing Human Spirituality, Not To Mention Hope
At least, that’s one thing that Silicon Valley expert Jaron Lanier claims – and it’s because of, well, Silicon Valley companies. “This whole architecture is on every level based on sneakiness and manipulation, often using weird behaviorist, hypnotic, unacknowledged techniques to get people more and more engaged or addicted and persuaded, or to get them into compulsive behavior patterns that aren’t necessarily in their own interest.”
How ‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’ Found Its Musical Backbone
The two-part show’s movement director was in rehearsals with the cast, using some Imogen Heap music as inspiration. Then he decided that he wanted more. “‘The first I heard about it was pushing my baby at the time in a very muddy field with a pram,’ Heap recalled. She got a call from Hoggett who said he was working on a project for which they had been temping her music in workshops; he wanted to know if he could keep using it.”