“There are hundreds of artists and works in the Venice Biennale, which opened to the public last Sunday. So many voices and idioms, so many fractured dialogues, so many languages. Everyone comes to Venice, but everyone comes from somewhere else. There can be no totalising critique or curatorial stance, nor any shared artistic value we can depend on. Only one thing is certain: that pain is universal.”
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Lala, The Artistic Chimp
One of the more entertaining artists at this year’s Venice Biennale is Lala, a 20-year-old chimpanzee. Not just any old ape, but a simian Sophia Loren, known for her “classic” Italian caper movie Bongo Bongo, and now the star of the biennale’s most bizarre happening, Spelling U-T-O-P-I-A. Her installation turns on assembling six-lettered dice to spell Utopia.”
Monumental Decision
Proposals are being considered for a memorial on the site of the World Trade Center. Such competitions are necessarily good, writes Christopher Benfey. “In the end, we’re likely to get a celebrity sculptor who burnishes his or her reputation with an idiosyncratically designed?and inevitably ‘controversial’?monument. Or a sentimental and crowd-pleasing idea like the ‘soaring’ memorial envisaged by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. So, I have a simple proposal. My proposal is that we put nothing at all in that space?that it be left as a hollowed-out void.”
Who Makes Money From Music Sales
Even at 99 cents a song for online music downloads, there’s lots of money to be made selling music. So how big a cut do artists get at this rate? Try 12 percent, on average. Here’s a breakdown of who gets what cut when you buy recorded music.
The Making Of Helen Keller
“Fifty years ago, even twenty, nearly every ten-year-old knew who Helen Keller was. ‘The Story of My Life,’ her youthful autobiography, was on the reading lists of most schools, and its author was popularly understood to be a heroine of uncommon grace and courage, a sort of worldly saint. Much of that worshipfulness has receded. No one nowadays, without intending satire, would place her alongside Caesar and Napoleon; and, in an era of earnest disabilities legislation, who would think to charge a stone-blind, stone-deaf woman with faking her experience? Yet as a child she was accused of plagiarism, and in maturity of ?verbalism??substituting parroted words for firsthand perception. All this came about because she was at once liberated by language and in bondage to it, in a way few other human beings can fathom.”
Recording Industry Beginning To See Value Of Downloading
Apple’s iTunes has been a big success so far. “And because of the store’s early success – more than 3 million songs sold in the first month after it opened April 28 – other technology giants like Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo and Amazon.com are considering similar ventures. Record executives believe they are finally on the right track.”
Swiss Artists Win Top Prize At Venice Biennale
Peter Fischli and David Weiss won the Golden Lion for best work exhibited in the international exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale.
Hume Cronyn, 91
Veteran actor Hume Cronyn has died of prostate cancer. “He was known for his versatility as an actor, playing a wide variety of characters on stage. Mr. Cronyn, a compact, restless man who was once an amateur boxer and remained a featherweight 127 pounds all his life, was at home in everything from Shakespeare and Chekhov to Edward Albee and Beckett.
Iraq’s Archaeological Sites Still Being Looted
Looting of Iraqi archaeological sites is continuing, accoring to a survey of the country. “The worst looting is taking place in the south of Iraq. Umma, Isin and Adab – Sumerian settlements of the 3rd millennium BC, north west of Nasiriyah – are still being pillaged on a massive scale.”
Gioia: Better Times Ahead
NEA chairman Dana Gioia spoke to the Theatre Communications Group meeting in Milwaukee last week and said he “took the NEA chairmanship on the condition that President Bush was committed to rebuilding the agency, and he pointed to a 50% increase in NEA theater funding this year as evidence that better times are ahead.”