France will officially become the first nation to allow owners of theaters and concert halls to install cell phone jamming equipment. The devices will still allow emergency calls to be made from the premises when necessary, but will block all other signals to and from the building during performances. Similar devices are explicitly banned in other countries, but the French decision could be a harbinger of things to come elsewhere.
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Will Jelinek Get Her Due On UK Stages?
Nobel prizewinner Elfriede Jelinek’s work has always been confrontational and decidedly political. What it has not always been is commercially viable. But now that her name is everywhere, at least temporarily, English-language theaters may well decide to take another look at Jelinek’s work, especially in this season of ultra-political productions.
The New Generation of Protest Art
“Inspired by the war in Iraq and the upcoming presidential election, painters, sculptors, graffiti artists, guerrilla poster makers and aspiring artisans have been showing an unprecedented level of political outrage… Nothing to date has been created on the scale of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 apocalyptic mural Guernica, considered one of the most powerful anti-war statements in modern art. But the amount of political art being produced recently has been unprecedented, even exceeding the anti-administration views displayed during the Vietnam War.”
Iraqi To Design Scottish Museum
Iraqi architect Hadid has been tapped to design Scotland’s new £50 million riverfront museum. “Glasgow, a former European city of architecture and design, is bracing itself for the arrival of one of Hadid’s avante-garde designs which will occupy one of the most symbolic sites in the city.” Hadid, an avowed deconstructionist, is promising that her building will be, of all things, “fun.”
Boston’s ICA Breaks Ground, Defies Critics
Boston’s new home for the Institute of Contemporary Art is under construction on the city’s riverfront, defying the expectations of critics who doubted the organization’s ability to raise the necessary funds. “The new ICA is not just a museum, but a museum that aims to define a new district. Boston’s waterfront is slated for billions of dollars in construction over the next few years, as land that is now parking lots and lobster shacks is turned over to housing, hotels, restaurants and shops.” Still, the ICA must still overcome Boston’s notorious conservatism when it comes to the arts, and convince the local populace that new art is just as good as old.
So Why Won’t Anyone Admit To It?
Lip-synching is back in the news, thanks to a recent Elton John tirade against Madonna’s acceptance of an award for “best live act.” But as pop stars continue to protest that they would never think of miming their songs, a consensus is building that, for the most part, it doesn’t actually matter whether the biggest stars sing or not. After all, in today’s world of high-gloss glitter pop, no one is really buying a ticket because of the vocal talents of the performers. A Britney Spears (or Madonna, or Christina, or Ashlee, or whomever) show isn’t about music – it’s about selling an image, and the singing is well and truly secondary.
Liverpool Phil Tries Some Executive Control
A rescue effort is underway for the beleagured Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, led by veteran record producer Andrew Cornall, who has been named the orchestra’s executive director and given wide-ranging power to make changes in the organization. The appointment is seen as a move away from a structure which placed responsibility for programming largely in the hands of the music director. The Phil’s current MD, Gerard Schwarz, was recently informed that his contract would not be renewed.
New Paris Museum Set To Rival Bilbao, Tate
The French billionaire François Pinault would like to build a grand new contemporary art gallery in Paris, but true to form, he doesn’t see any need to do it the easy way. After all, this is a man who once bought a chapel in Brittany, dismantled it, and moved it to his home, all to house a sculpture he had just bought. The Pinault museum is slated to cost $270 million, and will be built on an island, on the site of an abandoned Renault car factory. “On the island’s western tip, six machines are scraping away at the factory’s concrete ruins; later this year, construction will begin to replace the derelict shell with what could become Europe’s most avant-garde contemporary art museum.”
The People’s Poet
The UK’s poet laureate is a kindly gentleman named Andrew Motion, but the poet who best defines Brit culture today may just be a man who has refused all the trappings of the aristocracy, told the queen to “stick it,” and encouraged his countrymen to “stop going on about the empire. Let’s do something else.” The poetry of Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is a fascinating blend of high culture and hip-hop, and he has become a legitimate star with the type of audience that most poets shy away from: the working class.
Guggenheim Taiwan Looking Likely
Taiwan is a step closer to bringing a Guggenheim museum to the island nation after the legislature approved a first-year budget, and an economic council signed off on a plan to fund the $180 million project. The funding plan still needs to be approved by the legislature and the executive, but success appears likely by the end of the calendar year. The Guggenheim would be part of a larger cultural district in the city of Taichung, slated to include a new City Hall designed by Frank Gehry, and a Jean Nouvel opera house.