“Fears are growing over Hong Kong’s artistic freedom, including instances of self-censorship, as China rolls out its Greater Bay Area integration scheme. The controversial plan aims to merge Hong Kong and Macau — its fellow Special Administrative Region (SAR) — with nine nearby cities on the mainland into a mega-hub, encompassing around 68 million people with a shared GDP of US$1.39 trillion.” – The Art Newspaper
Category: issues
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 To Explore Issues Of Social Justice Worldwide
“This year’s [EIF] will explore gender politics, racism, masculinity and homophobia in a response to political challenges around the world. The festival’s director, Fergus Linehan, said many theatre and opera productions in this year’s programme were an artistic response to contemporary questions and tensions, including environmentalism through Tibetan mythology, women’s rights in Nigeria, and the upsurge in authoritarian populist leaders.” – The Guardian
Successful Public Art Projects Can Transform A City (Sometimes In Not Good Ways)
Take San Antonio, Texas: Advocates say that the “Decade of Downtown” policies launched under the administration of Mayor Julián Castro—who is now running for president in part on his mayoral record—aren’t working for marginalized communities. New developments like the Latino High Line, plus the city’s rising economic fortunes, are putting inadvertent pressure on the Mexican and Mexican-American communities that these projects celebrate. – CityLab
Prescribing Art As Medical Treatment
The museum prescription was inspired by a movement in what’s called social prescribing. This has kind of taken off more in the UK. And in looking at the literature, we see that doctors were prescribing, in addition to things like eat better and get out there and walk more often, they were prescribing social activities within the patient’s community, with the belief that that was going to accelerate their healing and give them opportunity for more agency, that I am a participant in my healing. I’m not just waiting for something to be fixed for me. – Hyperallergic
Why Arts Orgs’ Boycott Of Sackler Money Makes A Difference
Philip Kennicott: “What matters is that sometimes lightning strikes, and there is hell to pay, and suddenly a name is blackened forever. That kind of justice may be terrifying and swift and inconsistent, but it sends a blunt message: When the world finally learns that what you have done is loathsome, it may not be possible to undo the damage through the miraculous scrubbing power of cultural detergent.” – The Washington Post
Are We Now To Subject Every Major Arts Donor To A Moral Purity Test?
Mark Lawson: “What would count as an acceptable way of having become rich enough to have some spare to dish out to the arts? Sponsorship by BP and Nestlé has been questioned because of environmental or ethical concerns about the nature of the patrons’ business. Airlines, which have consistently been generous to the arts, are now on the wrong side of history, as, in a post-crash era queasy about capitalism, are most makers of money. … And if the funding of buildings and exhibitions is subject to ethical scrutiny, then why not their content as well?” – The Guardian
Those Kids Whose Rich Parents Bribe Their Way Into Elite Colleges? Here’s What It’s Like To Teach Them
“I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known … In this setting, where teaching quality is at a premium and students expect faculty to give them extensive personal attention, the presence of unqualified students admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster.” – The Guardian
A Revolution In Foodie Culture
Josephine Livingstone: “I am not a foodie. I don’t even know the difference between a meuniere and a mirepoix. But from the outside looking in, it’s clear that foodie culture is roiling with a new awareness of social politics, undermining some of that culture’s unspoken tenets: that taste and pleasure are neutral, universal concepts; that the kitchen is an apolitical zone. Being a foodie now, in 2019, requires thinking with more than your tongue.” – The New Republic
Artificial Intelligence Can Now Write Fiction. Should Novelists Be Worried?
Maybe not, not yet. Garbage in (this AI was fed a lot of Reddit recommendations, ahem), garbage out: “Right now, novelists don’t seem to have much to fear. Fed the opening line of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’ – the machine continued the narrative as follows: ‘I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Barbra Streisand Said Some Pretty Bad Stuff In An Interview
Today, she apologized for much of the interview wherein she blamed the parents of the men who say Michael Jackson abused them when they were kids, and saying such things as “You can say ‘molested,’ but those children, as you heard say, they were thrilled to be there. … They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.” – The New York Times