Category: issues

Art is naive. There’s something painfully innocent about the attempt to forge a meaningful statement out of nothing; to stand up in front of people and sing or play or speak with all your heart, knowing you may look foolish, knowing you may spectacularly fail. Our big institutions, the mighty choruses and orchestras and theaters that offer Verdi Requiems and King Lears, generally insulate us and themselves from this kind of failure

Luckily, 2018 avoided a total repeat of last year’s Fyre Festival debacle (phew), but several festivals did go up in flames. Retire your flower crowns, rompers, and drug stashes for the winter and let’s pour one out for all the festivals we lost this year — some gone for good, others on hiatus, and a few on death watch.

Massacres like this were a major part of what some historians call a forgotten genocide during the colonization and settlement of the American West. The perpetrators of these massacres were sometimes honored with mountains, valleys and towns.

Link taxes are a bad idea. In an era of fake news, anything that limits the ability of internet users to link to reliable news sources deals a terrible blow to our already weakened public discourse. Copyright filters are an even worse idea. Not only will these both overblock and underblock, they’ll also be ripe for abuse.

“We call it scratch architecture,” says architect Steve Tompkins, referring to the process of scratch theatre pioneered at BAC, where ideas are tested out live in the early stages of development, with audience feedback used to evolve the performance. “It’s not about a perfectly authored finished product, which is a difficult idea for architects to stomach,” he adds. “But we wondered if we could do a parallel process by insinuating ourselves into the productions. What would it mean for us to relinquish tyrannical control over the project?”

“When I got the job as artistic director if you’d told me that the centre I run would have bedrooms, a co-working space for 150 businesses and a family play room, I might not have believed you. But cultural venues are changing. And they need to change more.”

Last year, the conservative mayor’s office, backed by Netanyahu’s controversial national culture minister, Miri Regev, began moving against the Barbur Gallery, which has been operating in a city-owned building for 13 years. The reason? Barbur hasted several events by Breaking the Silence, an organization founded by former Israeli soldiers who oppose the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. Last week a judge approved an eviction request, even as he acknowledged that the request was blatantly political.

The conservative state government that took over in Adelaide in March has announced cuts of nearly $5 million in state spending on culture and reduced the number of employees at Arts South Australia by 42%.

Ronan Farrow reported a long piece in The New Yorker on the accusations against him in July and added a follow-up report Sunday, September 9, days after the HuffPost’s Yashar Ali reported that the CBS exec wanted Janet Jackson’s career “destroyed” after the infamous “wardrobe malfunction.” Moonves is now gone from the network.