It’s the annual conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, which was started 32 years ago by Philadanco founder-director Joan Roberts Brown. “In the mid-1980s, she started cold-calling every dance company she could identify with the word ‘Black’ in its title, to see if they were interested in getting together to talk about the challenges they faced running African-American dance companies. ‘I thought it would be six ladies in my kitchen,’ said Brown. ‘Sixty people showed up.'” This year’s attendance figure: 1,100. – WHYY (Philadelphia)
Blog
MoMA & the Nouvel Kid on the Block: Revenge of American Folk Art Museum’s Demolished Building?
It’s been 10 years since I published what seems to have been some prescient commentary about the now (belatedly) completed Jean Nouvel-designed 1,050-foot tower (known to CultureGrrl readers as The MoMA Monster). – Lee Rosenbaum
Artists Add Value? Here’s a List Of Practical Ways During The Australian Fires
Artists have stepped up in a huge way at this dark time in Australian history by volunteering their talents and resources to support communities and firefighters. They have demonstrated artists and arts practice can contribute to our society with passion, ingenuity, and imagination. – The Conversation
Hollywood Is Turning To AI To Decide What Movies To Make
No, machines aren’t writing usable scripts. (Yet.) But we all know about projects that seemed terrific on paper but turned out to be disastrous bombs — and about sleeper hits that seemed very niche but caught on. Now companies like Cinelytic and ScriptBook say that their AI software can analyze the qualities of a script and cast, compare them with large quantities of data on what films have and haven’t attracted a sizable audience, and predict how well a given project will do. And these companies claim far higher accuracy rates than those of human studio execs. Journalist Steve Rise investigates. – The Guardian
Hysterical Critics, Public Writing, And Making Sense Of Things
Hysterical critics are self-centred – not because they write about themselves, which writers have always done, but because they can make any observation about the world lead back to their own lives and feelings, though it should be the other way round… What seems self-evident to me is that public writing is always at least a little bit self-interested, demanding, controlling and delusional, and that it’s the writer’s responsibility to add enough of something else to tip the scales away from herself. – London Review of Books
Nobel Committee Fought Tooth And Nail Over Whether To Give Prize To Samuel Beckett
“Fifty years after Samuel Beckett won the Nobel prize for literature, newly opened archives reveal the serious doubts the committee had over giving the award to an author they felt held a ‘bottomless contempt for the human condition’.” – The Guardian
James Wood: Technique Versus Effect In Literary Criticism
The first way of reading is non-evaluative, at least at the level of craft or technique; the second is only evaluative, and wagers everything on technical success, on questions of craft and aesthetic achievement. – LitHub
These Musicians Moved To A Dying Village, Hoping To Revive It. They Got Caught In The Culture Wars Instead.
“In 1997, a group of German classical musicians moved to the village of Klein Jasedow, a tiny, nearly abandoned hamlet close to the Baltic Sea. The performers were looking to escape the careerist rat race, and hoped to find a place that united community, art, and nature — which they found, along with suspicion, fierce resistance from the locals, and even accusations of witchcraft. Can music bridge the divides between people? A report from an ongoing cultural experiment.” – VAN
100-Year-Old Bookstore With No Customers Sends Mournful Tweet And Customers Respond
The store hadn’t had any sales that day, perhaps for the first time ever, says the manager. He sent out a tweet and Twitter readers responded with a thousand pounds worth of orders. – The Guardian
UK Funding Cuts Are Hurting Organizations’ Basic Operations, Warns Arts Council
“Funding cuts over the past 10 years are impacting cultural organisations ability to deliver non-artistic operations, such as site maintenance and recruitment, Arts Council England has warned. According to ACE, other areas that are affected outside arts organisations’ main programming, include investment in future technologies and staff training.” – The Stage