“A new archive created to mark the 70th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Festival has revealed how the city’s residents were initially divided about the first event – but ended up ensuring it went ahead by donating rations.”
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Denys Johnson-Davies, 94, Pioneer In Translating Modern Arabic Literature
“In 1967, the term ‘Arabic literature,’ for most Western readers, meant two books, the Quran and The Arabian Nights. But that year, readers were handed a full menu of contemporary fiction in Arabic with the publication of Modern Arabic Short Stories, an anthology that showcased the work of 20 writers, including Yusuf Idris, Tayeb Salih, Zakaria Tamer and Naguib Mahfouz, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.06.17
Janacek’s Vixen is re-thought and hunted down in the backstreets of London
The title, simply, is Vixen. It’s not The Cunning Little Vixen or Russ Meyer’s Vixen!, though it was closer to the former than the latter. And true to the foxiness of the title, you had to hunt it down. … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2017-07-06
Recent Listening: Kurt Rosenwinkel, Fanny Gunnarsson
Kurt Rosenwinkel, Caipi (RAZDAZ Records)
From his emergence in the 1990s, Rosenwinkel has been a relaxed guitar improviser even when negotiating the complex pieces that make him one of the most interesting … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-07-06
Great new jazz photography — Dee Kalea’s campaign
Dee Kalea of Creative Music Photography is old school, in that she’s created black and white images of jazz musicians in performance, closeup, usually one-to-a-frame. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-07-06
Does Diversity Really Improve Creativity?
“Most studies assume that the relationship between diversity and creativity is linear, but recent evidence suggests that a moderate degree of diversity is more beneficial than a higher dose. This finding is consistent with the too-much-of-a-good-thing paradigm in management science, which provides compelling evidence for the idea that even the most desirable qualities have a dark side if taken to the extreme. In other words, all things are good in moderation (except moderation).”
What Philosophy Can Learn From Film
From Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell to Stephen Mulhall and Robert Sinnerbrink, an argument has been made that film can be philosophy. Indeed, that cinema can serve philosophy not in some ancillary role – for example, by providing ‘illustrations’ of philosophical problems in classroom settings – but in its own right, with its own means, and in a manner irreducible to the methods of traditional philosophy.
Hollywood Memoirs Aren’t Necessarily True, They’re Often Weird, But They Can Give The Real Flavor Of History
“Idiosyncratic and biased, obfuscatory and boastful, even unctuous and vain, the Hollywood memoir is not going to portray the past in a clear light. But like Sriracha on the table, it’s going to bring the heat and make the meal better. So much better.”
Hepworth Wakefield Named 2017 UK Museum of the Year
The museum won “Art Fund’s prestigious, £100,000 first prize. The David Chipperfield-designed gallery in the Yorkshire town where the sculptor Barbara Hepworth grew up was competing in a strong field, which included London’s recently expanded Tate Modern.”
1000 Zombies Descend On This Week’s Hamburg G20 Meeting In Unique Protest
“Called 1000 GESTALTEN, which translates in English as ‘1,000 figures,’ it was a performance in which actors covered in grey, crusty clay moved silently and steadily through the city in a transfixed state. For the days leading up to July 5, these figures started appearing all over Hamburg, slowly growing in numbers until culminating yesterday in a giant formation in which a “transformation” took place, the actors breaking free from their clay shells.”
HobbyLobby Hit With $3 Million Fine Over Smuggled Antiquities
The Department of Justice filed a civil complaint in New York, and announced that Hobby Lobby had agreed to the fine and to forfeit thousands of antiquities including cuneiform tablets and clay bullae that prosecutors said were smuggled through the United Arab Emirates and Israel to the United States using deliberately false labeling practices.
Transcendent Experiences – Who Was Right About Them, Freud Or James? And Are They Actually Good For You?
“Transcendence is a fundamental part of the human experience. Since the dawn of our species, people have been losing themselves in ritualistic prayer, song, and dance. Even so, for a long time, the prevailing consensus in psychology was that such experiences were pathological rather than natural. Freud believed that ‘oceanic feelings of oneness’ were neurotic memories of the womb and the signs of a deranged mind. … The person who got transcendence right, [research psychologist David] Yaden says, is William James.”