“Sefton has joined the Adelaide Festival at a critical juncture. Since its foundation in 1960, the arts jamboree has been held every two years. From next year it will become, in Sefton’s word, “annualised”, raising the stakes with at least two other interstate festivals, and with Adelaide’s highly popular Fringe and WOMADelaide events.”
Category: issues
Claim: WikiLeaks Didn’t Usher In New Era Of Transparency
“That basic idea — leak, publish and wait for outrage — is an old idea. The premise of this recent episode was that new technologies were basically supercharging the process. It was easier to leak, easier to publish, and by implication, more likely to produce substantial policy change. But in the grand scheme of things, the scope of these leaks was perhaps not that much larger than similar breaches in the pre-Internet.”
Bahrain’s Culture Chief In Hot Water Over Comments
Bahrain’s culture minister is facing demands for her dismissal after calling conservative lawmakers “not real men” for opposing an annual arts festival under way in Manana.
The “New Aesthetic”
“This is one of those moments when the art world sidles over toward a visual technology and tries to get all metaphysical. This is the attempted imposition on the public of a new way of perceiving reality. These things occur. They often take a while to blossom. Sometimes they’re as big and loud as Cubism, sometimes they perish like desert roses mostly unseen.”
American Education Is In Great Shape. So Why Don’t We Know That?
“By many important measures – high school completion rates, college graduation, overall performance on standardized tests – America’s educational attainment has never been higher.”
Suffering For Art? Who Needs It?
“I have been trying to write for at least a quarter of a century, and I can say very firmly that in my experience, suffering is largely of no bloody use to anyone, and definitely not a prerequisite for creation. If an artist has managed to take something appalling and make it into art, that’s because the artist is an artist, not because something appalling is naturally art.”
British Actors Call For Withdrawal Of Israeli Theatre From Festival
British actors, including Emma Thompson, have asked the Globe Theatre to remove an Israeli theatre troupe from an upcoming Shakespeare festival because of issues around Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
Stop Calling Copyright Infringement ‘Theft’
Pirating a book or movie is not the same as stealing one, but “seeing it as theft makes it easier to steamroll right over issues like ‘fair use,’ which is an incredibly important principle and one that is unique to copyright law.”
Game of Thrones: Is Fantasy Truly Ready For The 21st Century?
Both in book and T.V. form, Game of Thrones inherits the conventions of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – shifty, savage dark people surround the British-like Westeros. But there’s a catch: The white people are at least as savage.
Report: One In Ten Arts Companies Losing Arts Council England Funding Is Closing
“Dance companies are suffering most from the cuts, with 36% of respondents in this field saying they are closing. None of the respondents from the dance sector described themselves as healthy financially. In addition to the cuts to their arts council funding, 30% of respondents from all sectors said they were also facing reductions to their local authority grants. This “double whammy” of ACE and local council cuts has been one of their biggest concerns.”