Category: issues

“The CRTC got it right when they said that, in the digital world, broadcasters need to invest in innovative content that stands out in a global marketplace. So why let broadcasters slash their investments in distinctive, original content by $200 million over five years?” Directors Guild of Canada national president Tim Southam said in a statement.

“The worst thing that we can do is to incentivise local authorities to reduce further their arts funding by saying that we will replace it with central government money. To solve one problem, that at the moment is only in some local authority areas, we would incentivise other local authorities to do the wrong thing.”

“Whatever the intelligentsia nurtures and celebrates in our galleries and academic journals is bound to flow eventually into the nation’s cinemas, through its ballot boxes and toward the swamp of Washington, D.C. The last few months have proven that Trump is not out to drain that swamp. He is its progeny, and we on the left — the artists, the people of culture — have done our part in creating the conditions for him to thrive.”

“The political situation is dire. Nothing really feels important right now unless it somehow connects to it, which leads to all kind of flailing around in cultural commentary. In this case, turning the problem inside out, Melamid ends up echoing the most thoughtless cliché about modern art—’my kid could do that!’—just to construct a credible way to plug art into the Conversation about Trump.”

The item — part of the Chanel spring-summer 2017 collection and priced at $1,325 for US buyers — sparked a heated debate on social media. “Cultural appropriation hits a new low – I sincerely hope that @Chanel is donating all the profits to underprivileged aboriginal communities,” wrote one Twitter user.

It says a lot that the sales of such painfully prescient dystopias as 1984 have increased since November 9, 2016. It says even more that “Moonlight,” an indie with no stars about a gay, black drug dealer, found an enormous audience and enormous accolades at the beginning of this year. More than junkfood entertainment, we need “beautiful resistance,” as I’ve come to call the art that engages us in social justice concerns, human compassion, and values of love, courage, and dissent. We need art that reminds us that the “human condition” encompasses all humans – not just the white, male, straight faces belonging to the people who currently hold most of the highest offices of our government.

A National Health Service regional planning group has issued a manifesto that “says it aims to reinvent health services by encouraging people to engage with cultural activities instead of focusing solely on medicine. … ‘Too many of life’s problems are seen as only amenable to medical treatment. We all too readily turn people into patients. … There are no pills for loneliness and poverty but a rich cultural context can help ensure residents are better connected to each other and feel more able to cope.”

“The arts are an expression of the human condition, and the county is missing out on the voices that make up a significant part of who we are in Los Angeles. In an effort to remedy this, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission has come out with a landmark report on the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII), an 18-month public process that led to the development of 13 recommendations to the LA County Board of Supervisors to improve cultural equity and inclusion for the staffs, boards, artists, programming and audiences in our region.”