Category: issues

“In a move that seems inspired as much by pragmatism as by artistic vision, [festival director Jonathan] Mills announced EIF debuts for four companies from China, Vietnam and South Korea, while indicating that the ‘To the Far West’ theme for next August’s event will also include artists from India, Taiwan and Japan.”

“The heads of some of Britain’s most prestigious arts institutions have warned that government plans to slash funding for teaching humanities subjects could drive future designers, artists and musicians overseas and put vital collaborations between science and the arts at risk.”

“Among fans and artists, of course, Ticketmaster is widely despised. It extracts high service fees but has offered very little innovation in ticketing over the past 30 years. In offices around the US, startups staffed with veteran ticketing executives and backed with millions of dollars in venture capital are working to find new ways to sell seats to fans.”

“It has the ambition, with the stated aim of becoming one of the world’s top five cities by 2030 and a leading cultural centre in just three years’ time. And that money has helped it get the names.”

“The historic district is known as a family tourism area, which means parents will be hit in the pocketbook if they want to visit anything other than free sites run by the National Park Service. For a family of four, costs are going to get serious. Is anyone worried?”

“Disbelievers in genius are hereby invited to prove their point by sitting down and creating an equally great work of art. You have until 2020 to comply. Any takers?”

“The most effective polemic, I have always found, is actually a kind of musical reinterpretation of someone else’s argument. Arguments are rarely wrong. Rather, they are ethically or intellectually unfinished.”

“It is being called Moscow’s answer to New York’s Tribeca or London’s Docklands, and it would take a writer such as Vladimir Sorokin, the king of contemporary Russian literary grotesque, to imagine the scene.”

“Financial crises keep happening–the list is long. Could they be avoided if economics and finance were science? To paraphrase financial observer James Grant: science is progressive, but finance is cyclical. But why should this be?”

“When what had been a gentrifying neighborhood’s most successful art walk devolved into a bloody street fight, it raised embarrassing questions for a city celebrating its status as a 2010 European Capital of Culture.”