So often, conservation attempts at Angkor Wat have resulted in disaster. “Between 1986 and 1993 in an attempt to clean the temple of lichen and prevent water erosion, many exquisite details were erased forever. Concrete was used to fill cracks.” and the damage was irreparable. Now there are more plans – some which seem ill-advised. “Who is making these decisions? The Cambodian body nominally in charge of Angkor’s 100-odd monuments is the Apsara Authority, created by Unesco in 1995. But while the Cambodians are the hosts, they are not yet the masters of their legacy: they hold the keys but not the essential resources. Within the tangle of international politics and conflicting philosophies of architectural restoration, Angkor Wat, with its beautiful honeycomb towers is, in reality, a latter-day Tower of Babel.”
Blog
Challenge To Aussie Writers: Quit “Exalting The Average”
Writer John Marr says that Australian writers have become stuck in mediocrity in their “exaltation of the average” and need to develop sharper voices. Marr says what is needed it to “start focusing on what is happening in this country, looking Australia in the face, not flinching, coming to grips with the fact that we have been on a long loop through time that has brought us back almost – but not quite – to where we were.” Marr suggested that political and business elites had “inverted that term and directed it towards mostly poor and marginal artists. In response, literary novelists had retreated from the sharp edge of public debate.”
Aussie Playwright Nick Enright, 52
“Nick Enright, one of Australia’s leading playwrights, died yesterday. He was 52. A prolific writer for stage, film and television, he was also an actor, director and teacher.”
Varnedoe – Life (And Cancer) After MoMA
Kirk Varnedoe epitomized the “stereotype of the contemporary art world in all its unapproachable elan” while he was chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art. But Varendoe left one of the most prominent curatorships in the art world last year. Now he’s preparing for lectures, and being treated for inoperable cancer. “I always thought I’d make it through the Mellon Lectures. I always thought I’d be able to do that. But I just don’t make any predictions about six months from now.”
Room For Politics In Theatre?
Why does the idea of political theatre scare off so many people? “Perhaps the problem is the very term ‘political’: most often it is used to mean theatre with a left-wing axe to grind. So, among other things, the question carries with it a hackle-raising, almost indiscernible whiff of red-baiting: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the…?’ Added to this, there is the fairly mainstream notion that ideas and political theory are limiting for writers, if not downright hostile to talent and the ‘real’, and that truth springs from the individual, unencumbered by the blinkers of politicking.”
Culture Capital – Arts Mean Business
There are six British finalists for the 2008 European Capital of Culture designation. But the honor seems to have less to do with actual culture than an economic shot in the arm. Why? Glasgow, 1990. “Cannily, the run-down Clydeside city used investment in culture as a major tool to revive its flagging economy. It proved, up to a point, that culture could be translated into tourism, business ventures and jobs as well as museums and concert halls.”
BBC And Arts – Got To Be More Than Rolf Eh?
The BBC’s arts coverage is constantly under attack. But the fixer can’t be more down-market pop art, can it? Is the public broadcaster fixated on the large ratings for Rolf Harris’s art odyssey? “What next? Will the Rolf Experience be followed by Cliff Richard on Beethoven? Will audiences of five to seven million become the benchmark – a favourite word of TV planners – by which other arts programmes are judged? Having won such audiences, can they settle for less?”
Urban Cowboy – Lookin’ For Love In All The Wrong Places
With business down, Broadway’s looking for a hit. A bunch of new shows are opening, led by a new musical version of “Urban Cowboy”. So how is it? Terry Teachout isn’t impressed. The story? “By turns cynically maudlin and pointlessly vulgar, it is a tissue of unfunny clichés so implausible-sounding that you wonder how Aaron Latham could possibly have been born in Spur, Texas. And the music? “Have I mentioned the score? Well, there isn’t one, only a jumble of ditties that might have been chosen by randomly punching the keys of an oddly stocked jukebox.”
Theatre – Putting Conflict In Perspective
“The bracing, dizzying state of the world lately has given rise to several plays about politics, and even more articles about plays about politics. The great virtue of plays about political history like ‘Midnight’s Children’ and ‘Golda’s Balcony’ is that they take the seemingly intractable problems out of the realm of finality and return them to contingency, where they belong. They remind us that, although the conflicts in the Middle East and on the Indian subcontinent owe much to ancient grudges and religious rivalries, they are also a product of individual leaders and the discrete decisions that they made.”
How Many Operas Are There? (How Many Worth Listening To?)
How many operas are there? a few hundred? A thousand? Fifteen hundred? We’re aware of more and more from the past as the years progress. “Strange then that the part of the repertoire least certainly alive is the modern, the new, the freshly commissioned. But perhaps 50 years from now people will look back on us and pity us for our ignorance of our contemporaries, who are as obscure to us as Handel was to Dent.”