A strike by arts workers threatens France’s cultural summer. “Theatres, films and television have been hit by moves to bring the show business industry to a halt in a dispute over the reduction of unemployment pay for ‘resting’ performing artists and technicians. This weekend, the Montpellier dance festival and the Tours jazz festival were among cancelled events while the opening of the summer’s biggest opera gathering, at Aix-en-Provence, was postponed. Paris’s top theatres called off plays and ballets at the last minute while trade unions prepared for ‘a fight to the finish’ over a decision to make it harder for freelance performers and temporary backstage staff to claim benefits.”
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Muggles And The Missing Wages
A Scottish school whose students were hired as extras for the next Harry Potter movie have been forced to turn over their wages to the school. “Warner Brothers hired 14 children from Lochaber high school, in Fort William in the Scottish Highlands, to appear in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, due for release next year. They earned STG35 ($A86) a day for a four day shoot, but under school rules their earnings had to go straight into a fund used to pay for school activities.”
On Being Canada
What makes Canada different from the United States? Quite a few things, actually, and the differences are growing. “Just when you had all but forgotten that carbon-based life exists above the 49th parallel, those sly Canadians have redefined their entire nation as Berkeley North. It’s like we woke up and suddenly we’re a European country.”
Anatomy Of A Public Art Project
Planners of a project at San Francisco Airport hired Brooklyn artist Vito Acconci to make a piece of public art for the project. But five of his ideas were rejected before one stuck. And drivers coming out of the terminal might not even be aware that they’re looking at public art…
Plans For WTC Memorial Pour In
Monday was the deadline for plans to be submitted for a memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center. “By the 5 p.m. deadline, thousands of proposals, enough to fill a caravan of delivery trucks, had been received at the nondescript, six-story warehouse at 515 West 36th Street in Manhattan. Entries started being accepted on June 9, and the last ones trickled in for more than an hour after the deadline. The contest is expected to be the largest design competition ever, exceeding even the 1,421 designs submitted for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Little more is likely to be heard about the proposals until September, when about five finalists are to be announced.”
Kirov To Get New Home
“The Kirov Ballet is to get a starkly modern glass and marble new home designed by Dominique Perrault of France. His design, of black marble covered with golden-hued glass, won a competition to design the new Maryinsky Theater for the Kirov, and the results were announced on Saturday.”
Sequelitis – Not Paying Off At The Box Office?
In a year dominated by sequels, movie box office is down. “Box-office revenues for the year are down 4% and movie attendance is off 8%. The past three weekends are also down compared to last summer.”
American Movie Ratings: “Infantilizing Censorship”
If your film gets an N-17 rating (no one under 17 admitted) in America, it’s the kiss of death. “The rating board’s inscrutable, often infuriating judgment calls about sexual content are legend. No one, not even maverick Lions Gate, will release an NC-17 film — and with good reason. Key theater chains might not book it; many TV and newspaper outlets would refuse to advertise it; and once it went to video, where the real profits are for most films, major chains such as Blockbuster wouldn’t stock it. ‘American film is being horribly infantalized. If you want to see something adult, you have to stay home and watch HBO’.”
Strad-Tagging
Each year 1 million string instruments are stolen, and only 2 percent are ever recovered. Now there’s a plan to track them. ISIS (Instrument Security Identification Systems) embeds atiny electronic tag into instruments. The company “will send out an alert if a musical instrument has been reported stolen. Part of this business will involve implanting RFID tags in stringed instruments – from violins to cellos and from cheap student instruments to million-dollar antiques that are still being played. The implanted RFID tags will make the tricky business of identifying instruments foolproof.”
ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors
ARTnews names its annual list of the world’s top 200 art collectors.