Category: issues

The Bizarre Russian Big Money Culture Machine

Those who are familiar with the state’s cultural agenda in Russia are no longer surprised by these kinds of events, but it’s still difficult to get used to. You’re a good artist if you earn a lot, and preferably, have a wide audience. For the BraVo prize, as written on the website, any artist could be nominated, so long as they had the potential to “reach an audience of three billion.” In a state where culture, whether serious or for entertainment, still belongs to the service sector at the legislative level, more is more.

Small Study Suggests Childhood Trauma May Lead To More Intense Creative Experiences

A study of 234 performing-arts professionals found those who experienced intense childhood trauma—about 18 percent of the participants—reported higher levels of anxiety and internalized shame. But “they were also more fantasy prone, a factor that may enhance creativity,” write Paula Thomson of California State University–Northridge and S.V. Jaque of York University.

Athenian Symposia And Parisian Salons, Reinvented For Millennials

“On a mild spring evening, ten people gathered for dinner in a converted brewery in east London to speak of serious things. The event was hosted by Norn, a hospitality company that describes itself as an ‘offline social network’. Members can stay for a month or more in its houses in London, San Francisco, Berlin and Barcelona, and take part in salons and meals which come with conversation menus that prescribe high-minded topics for each course.”

Does Ethical Arts Funding Make The Arts Unfundable?

The Arts Professional Ethics survey tells us that 73% of arts organisation employees consider their employer to be at reputational risk through association with a sponsor or major donor whose own reputation is subject to criticism. That’s a staggering indicator of how uncomfortable we are feeling about particular funding associations right now.

Ethical Arts Funding? Fine. But Whose Ethics?

The survey findings raise the question of ‘whose ethics’ arts organisations should adopt. “It is important to look across the whole of society and not the organisation’s own immediate echo chamber to make this judgement,” writes one. Another points out that while public consensus agrees cigarettes shouldn’t be advertised, “it is not yet the case that the general public think that mining and selling fossil fuels is unethical”.

Are The Middle East’s Grand New Cultural Buildings European Imperialism?

Can the arrival of Western culture in the Middle East be equated simply with European imperialism? Is this how the European bourgeoisie, as Marx would say, ‘creates the world after its own image’? First, let us consider the question of power. The Khedivial Opera House and other new Western-style cultural spaces represented authority to ordinary people in the streets of Cairo. The intention of European states to enforce their economic interests on the Ottoman Empire, Egypt included, is also crystal clear throughout modern history: just look at the Suez Canal.