“It was torture with a creative flair — build tiny cells that kept prisoners from sleeping, sitting or pacing, and decorate the walls with mind-bending art. These chambers operated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and were the work of Communists fighting for the government side as it battled troops under fascist Gen. Francisco Franco. Their existence is a bizarre, little-known footnote to the conflict and is now the focus of historians and artists. Researchers say the Soviet-inspired cells were the size of a walk-in closet, with terra-cotta bricks sticking up from the floor at sharp angles. A cot and a seat attached to the walls teased prisoners with the lure of rest, but tilted so far downward that they were useless.”
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Nice Timing
On the same day that Colorado arts advocates had scheduled a special day of lobbying on behalf of their profession, the joint budget committee the Colorado legislature voted to completely eliminate public funding for the arts. If the plan passes in the full legislature, Colorado would join Oregon and New Jersey in becoming the only states to zero out cultural funding. (None of those states has yet finalized its decision to kill the funding.) Colorado already ranks dead last in the nation in per capita arts spending. The proposed cuts would eliminate about $1.5 million in arts spending.
Finally, Legal MP3s!
Ever since the record industry began cracking down on illegal file-trading services like the now-defunct Napster, consumers looking for a legal way to download music online have been stymied by an industry which seemed more interested in stonewalling the digital music movement for as long as possible than in finding a way to turn the new technology into profit. Now, a new site called MusicNow has been launched, aimed at 30-to-50-year-olds who want digital music, and won’t mind paying for it. The fees are reasonable – $10 a month for unlimited downloads, and 99 cents for a single song – and the company behind the site hopes it will finally begin to attract music consumers with money to spend.
Truly Cerebral Music
“Hook a whole bunch of brains up to a computer, capture and play the sounds they make, and you get, well, not quite music, but certainly some interesting noise. That’s exactly what happened at the Cyborg Echoes Deconcert in Toronto over the weekend. The concert was billed as a participatory event, and it certainly was: Audience members’ brains were scanned, the scans were transformed into sounds, mixed with a solid little backbeat from some heart scans, combined and played back to create Music in the Key of EEG.”
‘Lost’ Goyas To Be Auctioned
Two paintings discovered in the home of a wealthy Madrid family have been certified by Spanish art experts as original Goyas, and will be put up for auction shortly. “The auction house admitted it was puzzled there was no record of the paintings but suggested the reason could be because they formed part of a religious triptych – three panels usually hinged together.” The works are expected to bring up to 5 million euros ($5.36 million).
UK – Finding All The Public Art
Britain is initiating a national campaign to catalogue all the oil paintings in all the public collections in England, “down to the last dusty alderman hanging in a council waiting room.”
War Pushes book Promotion Out Of Spotlight
Publishers rushing to promote war-relevant books, are abandoning other books as TV promotion concentrates on the war on Iraq. “Books, perhaps even more than movies or music, depend on the news media for publicity. And for now, TV news is all war, all the time. That means some authors are being unceremoniously bumped, while others who had trouble attracting publishers a few years ago suddenly are welcomed as experts.”
Poetry Jury Fails To Field Shortlist – Poetry Fans Protest
Poetry fans are protesting that the jury for the new $10,000 Trillium Prize for poetry in Canada were unable to come up with a shortlist for the prize. “There were very few titles published in 2002 that met the criteria of a first book of poetry by a poet resident in Ontario for three of the last five years.” Only ten books were submitted, but protesters want a new jury to be chosen and the deadline to be extended.
Library Workers File Complaint About Porn Access
Some employees at the Minneapolis Public Library have filed a complaint against the library for allowing free access to porn sites on public computers. The say that “the library’s policies have attracted hard-core pornography users who monopolize the library’s computers and ‘would react angrily and at times violently if any effort was made to interfere (with) or halt their access to pornographic materials’,” in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
Russian Prosecutor Threatens Culture Minister Over Plan To Return Art
The Russian Prosecutor’s office has informed the Russian Culture Minister that he will face criminal charges if he goes ahead with a plan to return an art collection stolen from Germany after World War II. “The prosecutor’s office, which has been investigating the matter over the past few weeks, said the Culture Ministry does not have the authority to decide to hand over the 362 drawings and two paintings that once belonged to the Bremen Kunsthalle.”