Category: issues

Manohla Dargis: “How could it be otherwise given that the history of American cinema is also the history of American racism?”

“One might then assume that Silicon Valley and the surrounding Bay Area would be the ideal place for a tech-focused nonprofit to set up shop. After all, the region is packed with tech talent, and its local tech companies regularly boast about their commitment to helping nonprofit organizations in their communities, as it helps attract talent and can be good for business overall. But in reality, the skyrocketing cost of living is taking its toll on vital community institutions, while a war for talent continues to drive tech workers’ salaries beyond the reach of the nonprofit sector.”

ACE is pressing ahead with a roll-out of the scheme despite the feedback. Organisations across all artforms will be “required to use a specified system to complete an agreed number of evaluations each year and support each other by providing peer reviews”. This will be mandatory for NPOs receiving more than £250k a year in regular funding, while those funded below this level will be encouraged and supported to use it.

“A game-changer for global performing arts is certainly the powerhouse taking shape in Hong Kong: the West Kowloon Cultural District. Spread across 40 hectares of land reclaimed in the 1990s as part of the HK$200 billion (£20 billion) Airport Core Programme, the hub is run by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and will include 17 core arts and cultural venues, as well as space for arts education.”

“A vast dance club housed in a former East Berlin power station, Berghain has somehow managed the impressive feat of becoming world famous while still retaining a reputation as having an underground edge. Now, a regional court has to an extent enshrined its status in law, by ruling that it may join the city’s museums and concert halls in being taxed not as an entertainment business, but as a venue for culture.”

“Music and theater students face a significantly greater risk than their non-arts peers of reporting being the victims of bullying behavior,” write Kenneth Elpus of the University of Maryland and Bruce Allen Carter of Florida International University.

“Officials in charge of an Australian writers festival were so upset with the address by their keynote speaker, the American novelist Lionel Shriver, that they censored her on the festival website and publicly disavowed her remarks. The event, the Brisbane Writers Festival, which ended Sunday, also hurriedly organized counterprogramming, billed as a ‘right of reply’.”

“I’m afraid the bramble of thorny issues that cluster around ‘identity politics’ has got all too interesting, particularly for people pursuing the occupation I share with many gathered in this hall: fiction writing. Taken to their logical conclusion, ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all. Meanwhile, the kind of fiction we are ‘allowed’ to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we’d indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with.”