Category: issues

The Chinese Communist Party would love to keep the same tight lid on the Web, blogging and tweeting that it generally has on print and broadcast media. But that’s not easy: there are ways around The Great Firewall; and with 400 million or so users, local blogging and tweeting platforms are too big to censor and too popular to shut down.

While it’s true that Queen Victoria and her successors have reigned but not ruled, “[the] modern monarchy is not just a subject for biography,” says one historian. “It has so much more use as a window onto broader cultural trends, attitudes and the way people imagine themselves as citizens.”

Malcolm Sinclair: “The almost lethal combination of the economic crisis, our industry’s globalisation, rapid developments in new media and the consequent shrinkage of earnings and opportunities for work, are forcing us to make some extremely difficult decisions.”

During NATO protests, who could see Chicago’s art? Very, very few. Downtown sculptures got boarded up and guarded, and “the directors of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute and the Fine Arts Building closed their institutions for the weekend.”

“During the Ben Ali era, Tunisian customs services prevented the importation of books that could harm the government’s reputation. These books were confiscated at the airport … Now, this form of literary censorship has become indirect” – and based largely in religion.

“The director of a China-based art shipping company that had two employees detained by Chinese customs officials at the end of March says he is concerned for their health and has not heard from them since police took them into custody. The pair are being held as part of a probe into alleged undervaluation of works of art imported into the mainland.”

In Azerbaijan, the Eurovision Song Contest has touched off several crises. One advocate for a boycott: “Modern show business is indifferent to violence. There will be happy people singing happy songs where others are beaten, tortured, and where houses are demolished.”

Defending the powerful work – Wes Anderson’s films about the precocious progeny of dysfunctional families; David Vann’s novels about men who build their own wilderness cabins where terrible things happen; John Banville’s first-person narratives of articulate and alienated men; even Philip Glass’s perpetually repeated minor thirds – of creators who consistently mine the same material.

Due to its own financial troubles as well as those of its resident companies, the arts center “is shifting away from being a distinct presenting entity, relying more on partnerships with commercial outfits such as AEG and Live Nation” to present popular jazz artists as well as Broadway shows.

“Arts Minister Simon Crean … [now] has a suite of reviews of the cultural sector that may shape the [National Cultural Policy] … The federal government has yet to respond formally to any of these reports and recommendations; but in the event they are adopted in full, what would this cultural utopia look like?”