Blog – Page 2295 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Syria’s First-Ever Oscar Contender Is Actually Banned In Syria

When Aleppo-born director Sam Kadi was making the documentary Little Gandhi, it was too dangerous for him to return to Syria from abroad, so he directed his cameramen via Skype as they tried to avoid sniper fire. And he says that if the film were shown inside Syria now, he would be executed.

Putting Life In The Calais Refugee Camp Onstage

In 2015, two young English playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, traveled to the notorious shantytown known as the Jungle and ended up establishing a theatre tent for the migrants there. Two years on, with the Jungle now bulldozed, the two Joes have created a play dramatizing a year in the life of the camp, and it’s about to open at London’s Young Vic.

Quincy Jones And The Netflix Of Jazz

“Qwest will operate like a highly specialized version of Netflix: Members pay a small fee each month for access to the full video library. It also resembles more boutique streaming platforms like Mubi, the art-film streaming service, or Boiler Room, an organization that archives its own underground-music concerts on its website.”

A Startling Decline In Admissions At London Museums

Between June and August 2017 a record 11.5 million overseas visitors came to the UK, up 6% on the same period last year. Among holiday-makers the increase was greater still, with 13% more choosing to spend their vacations in the UK. Despite this, a year-on-year comparison shows that visitor numbers from June to August were down at: British Museum (-3%), National Gallery (-19%), National Portrait Gallery (-41%), and Tate Modern (-37%)

The Science Of Art Of Science And The Creative Impulse

The optimum complexity principle is just one of many examples that Wilson rallies in The Origins of Creativity, his latest plea for the grand unification of the sciences and the humanities. The two camps are often viewed as enemy combatants, or at least paisley and plaid—best kept apart—but Wilson is deeply impatient with academic partitioning. Artists, he argues, should have a grasp of basic neuroscience and how the brain evolved. Scientists must appreciate the humanities for infusing human life with meaning.

Are These The Next Models For Arts Criticism?

Is this caste system the future of theatre criticism? On one side a wading pool of compensated pros, on the other a swarming mass of unedited amateurs with domain names and hot takes? There must be alternatives. Luckily, new models have emerged to pick up the slack left by local media and elevate arts writing above snarky, thumbs-up-or-down consumer reporting.

How The Trisha Brown Company Is Reinventing Itself After Her Death

The continued growth of the company is rare, given what often happens to dance organizations after their founder dies and there is no new repertory to tour. Ms. Brown, part of an influential generation that ushered in postmodern dance — she was an original member of the experimental 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater — was a maverick.

A War Over Cuban Culture Is Playing Out In Miami

“At the end of September, county commissioners voted to remove $550,000 from the $4m grant promised to the Pérez Art Museum Miami (Pamm) for the current financial year. The money was allocated instead to the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, a small institution in Coral Gables, which opened in January.”

Egypt Is Cracking Down On Reading

“Nothing seems to disturb Egypt’s ruling cadres more than the written word. The recent litany of bans and shutdowns, including blocking hundreds of web pages online, illustrates what Cambridge University’s Khaled Fahmy, a prolific historian of the Middle East, called “an alarmist moment of crisis,” one in which Egypt’s authoritarian state of emergency laws have turned something as simple as reading into a dangerous act.”