Camila Prins says she first realized she wanted to be a woman at a Carnival party at age 11, when, like the other boys, she was allowed to dress like a girl as part of the burlesque festivities. Now, in the final minutes of Saturday, she became the first transgender woman to lead the drum section of a top samba school in either of the renowned Carnival parades put in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. – Washington Post (AP)
Blog
What Is Liberalism? (Whatever It Is, It Seems In Decline)
Recent debates have tended to confuse rather than clarify matters. In left-of-center discourse, “liberalism” and “leftism” are often invoked as respective shorthand for neoliberalism and social democracy. Neither of these positions sits outside the boundaries of liberalism, broadly construed, and most of the positions currently marked as leftist have been supported in other times and places by those we’d describe as liberals. Still, even if this confrontation doesn’t signal a verdict on liberalism tout court, it does at least provide clear battle lines in a conflict with real stakes. – Dissent
The Globally Networked Museum – Could It Be The Museum Model For The 21st Century?
Greece and Britain have the opportunity to renew their respective stories by leading the way in creating a museum for the 21st century. How it would be organised would be open to discussions. But at a minimum, it would be a consortium of museums from around the world prepared to contribute works from their own collections to tell the story of human history. The exhibits would depict the way that past thought, religion, politics, art and history has formed a platform for each stage of human development. – The Guardian
Construction Of Trump’s Border Wall Is Endangering Ancient Heritage
“This turn of events has been both somehow shocking and predictable. In June of 2019, archaeologists surveyed some of the area awaiting construction, which would include replacing existing fencing erected under the Obama Administration with a 30-foot-tall steel palisade, roadwork, and surveillance equipment. The team spent five days walking just a portion of the construction area. ‘Numerous previously unrecorded archaeological resources were identified, plotted, and evaluated,’ the survey report summarised. ‘These include 35 isolated [artefacts], 20 isolated features, and five archaeological sites.’ ” – Apollo
The Streaming Wars Are Bringing On A New Media Dystopia
The return to piracy is both a bit of a meme and a bit of a reality. And its return is absolutely the result of a market that giant companies have built to intentionally trap customers into either a single-company ecosystem (one ISP, one easy streaming service) or an annoying, expensive patchwork. And while piracy signals discontent with the system, it’s quite unlikely that these companies will react by changing their approach, let alone lowering prices. – Slate
Remembering Tobi Tobias
Tobi was among the first group of writers I invited to blog on ArtsJournal. I had read her for years and appreciated her elegance, clarity and erudition. Though her judgments were crisp, they were never made lightly. She knew the art deeply and it informed her judgments. – Douglas McLennan
In Memoriam: Tobi Tobias (1938-2020)
Alongside the the wonderful, illuminating dance criticism she wrote for decades, she wrote wonderfully well about fashion, and only when I became a mother did I realize that while Tobi was raising her offspring, she was writing dozens of children’s books. – Deborah Jowitt
From caftan to opera hat: the greatest living playwright takes on the Jewish bourgeoisie and its destruction
There’s something a bit ho-hum, mean and pinched about the reception of Sir Tom Stoppard’s new (and, he says, perhaps final play), Leopoldstadt. – Paul Levy
Behind The US Government’s Algorithm That Denied Forensic Architecture’s Eyal Weizman A Visa To Enter
Two days before Weizman, a professor at London’s Goldsmiths College, was due to fly to the US from Britain, he received an email from the US Embassy telling him that the visa waiver on his British passport had been revoked. When he went to the embassy in London last week, an official would only tell him that an algorithm had identified a related “security threat. That association could involve any aspect of his work with Forensic Architecture, which painstakingly pieces together evidence from a variety of sources when investigating human-rights violations and miscarriages of justice, often challenging the official versions of fatal events. – Artnet
Did Internet Pioneers Blow It When It Comes To Free Speech?
Increasingly, I’m hearing from politicians, activists, and people like my journalist friend who say that maybe we 1990s-era internet activists blew it. The story goes that we were so shortsighted in our focus on things like internet free speech and digital privacy that we overlooked a whole spectrum of long-term threats posed by digital technologies, the companies that sell them, and the governments that deploy them. This perspective suggests that the internet freedom my colleagues and I championed has instead chained us all by corrupting democracy and poisoning relationships. In recent years, my views have evolved. – Slate