Category: issues

“We need to engage the business sector in a fundamental reworking of the model in which the not-for-profit arts sector is now expecting to exist. We are hoping the arts will be able to become more sustainable, so the business brains need to be a part of the equation as much as the business money does.”

“The original trial of the punk band, who were sentenced to two years in a penal colony for performing a ‘punk prayer’ against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s main cathedral, was heavily politicised on both sides of the pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin divide. … It was a circus of grandiose proportions and with sinister overtones for the defendants and their families. When the appeal hearing came round, Samutsevich probably reasoned that it was time to switch tactics.”

“I argued that a critic no more exists for artists than a paleontologist does for the Dinosaurs on whose fossils he expatiates, and that, though artists happen to create those exciting objects which are the matter of a critic’s discourse, that discourse is all for the benefit of the critic’s readers.”

“In the absence of any far-reaching reforms the public space has become, since Morsi’s election, the focus of a wild drive to patch up appearances. Apparently inspired by some unrealistic desire to turn over a completely new leaf, the Muslim Brotherhood is determined to clean up the streets of Egypt, before even beginning to purge the rotten apparatus of state.”

After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement.

“We observe an organisation with a confused and intrusive management style married to a corporate ethos that seems designed to set artist against artist and company against company in the search for resources. This letter is not about money. This letter is about management.”

“Slow breathing may have clinically relevant effects for performing musicians who suffer from anxiety.”

“[An] emerging movement of critics, theorists, writers, and artists argue that techniques of appropriation and quotation are inherent to the creative process. Not only are the concepts of originality and innovation obsolete, they’ve always been myths. … ”

“What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber.”