Category: issues

“We are at the beginning of a major change in the way people receive their arts, and I believe online will become the source and a major competitor to live arts. And it appears to me that we will see a bifurcation of arts organizations, with the large ones, who will make revenue based on selling performances online, and local organizations who service the community. I am very nervous about the midsize regional organization.”

“A generation emerged in the 1970s that wondered why it was still, so late in the 20th Century, watching men in kilts dancing around swords … when none of us knew anyone who actually did this kind of thing … Scottish national identity began to wrap itself in the cause of social justice – in the idea of resistance to unaccountable wealth and power imposing its will from outside. … This Scotland was also irreverent, self-mocking, and hilariously funny.”

“In France, which houses the biggest Jewish community in Europe, the Ashkenazi legacy has been sadly shrinking.” (What, the Sephardim are chopped liver?) “In the latter half of the 20th century, what French Jews call their imaginary Yiddishland has been reduced to a small patch. … However, there is reason for hope. In Paris, a new generation of entrepreneurs are launching initiatives to perpetuate the Yiddish way of life.”

“Around 800 years after it was razed by foreign invaders, Nalanda University reopened its doors on Monday in an attempt to reclaim its ancient glory of an international knowledge destination. The new university, set up on a sprawling 443-acre campus built near the ruins of the ancient seat of learning in Bihar, aims to rebuild the intellectual rigour of the old school initially with a school of environmental studies and a school of historical studies.”

“Friday’s official peak attendance of 65,922 was within the population cap of 68,000 the federal Bureau of Land Management imposed on the quirky art and music festival 110 miles north of Reno, said Gene Seidlitz, manager of the agency’s Winnemucca District. The number was down from last year’s record peak crowd of 69,613, which resulted in organizers being placed on probation for a second time in three years for violating the limit.”

“The resolution of the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history is likely to set precedents for other struggling cities. At the centre of the conflict is the question of whether a bankrupt city can avoid selling any valuable asset, including its art collection.”

David Lowery of Cracker and Camper van Beethoven: “People worship the Internet like a cargo cult. It’s this thing that they have that brings them free stuff, and they think it’s magic. … They don’t want to hear that behind the way you get this free stuff, some really actually fucked-up things have happened to individuals and their individual rights.”

“The decision to close the park for a for-profit event will be redeemed only if the money Live Nation paid the county to rent it out makes it a better place to visit, over the long term, for the public. Luckily, even as concertgoers were tramping across Grand Park’s lawns and through its flower beds, they were also helping demonstrate pretty clearly where its design might be tweaked and improved. They made up a huge and unwitting landscape-architecture focus group.”

“Touch is the most intelligent sense, Aristotle explained, because it is the most sensitive. When we touch someone or something we are exposed to what we touch. We are responsive to others because we are constantly in touch with them.”

That seems to be what the government hopes, since it has commissioned a 104-episode series about a ten-year-old Uighur princess who works with her Han and Kazakh friends to free her captive father. Problem is, the folk character on which she’s based is seen very differently by Uighurs (who call her Iparhan) and Han Chinese (who know her as “the Fragrant Concubine”).