The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with a 22-day calendar and 1,541 acts, staged in a record 207 venues, is the largest performing arts festival in the world. But in “unveiling the 2003 Fringe programme, Fringe director Paul Gudgin warns that, without future growth, ‘the law of diminishing returns will kick in’ and the quality and reputation of the Fringe would be undermined.”
Tag: 06.08.03
500 Channels And Nothing To Watch
It wasn’t that long ago that there was genuine excitement about the coming 500-channel TV landscape. So how come now that we have it there doesn’t ever seem to be anything on? “The truth is, as the networks become ever smaller pieces of ever-growing media empires, there is dwindling potential for the kind of risk-taking that gave us breakout programming such as All In The Family or Seinfeld. Imagine some boardroom type green-lighting a comedy about a bigoted, racist right-winger or “a show about nothing.”
Sorting Out Winners And Losers In NY Phil Move To Carnegie
John Rockwell writes that Carnegie Hall gives up something important by becoming home to the New York Philharmonic. “At Lincoln Center, meanwhile, the immediate impression might be that the rats are scurrying down the hawser, fleeing a sinking ship. The New York City Opera is making noises about abandoning the center for a Ground Zero cultural center not yet designed, let alone built. The Philharmonic is on its way out. Who’s next? What is to become of the grand late-50’s and early-60’s dream of a cultural center that would bring everyone together, a dream that spawned imitators all over the world? Not much bad, say I, and maybe something good. The urban-renewal aspect of the Lincoln Center project has long been fulfilled.”
How To Make Sense Of The NY Phil Move To Carnegie?
Anthony Tommasini wonders what’s in it for Carnegie Hall in bringing over the New York Philharmonic from Lincoln Center. “To make sense, this move must be seized by the Philharmonic as a chance not just to enhance its aural impact but to jolt its artistic metabolism. For Lincoln Center, meanwhile, this decision is more than a disruption. It’s a disastrous setback, no matter how much administrators try to spin it as an opportunity for new ventures.”
Hadid’s New American Masterpiece
Herbert Muschamp is unequivocal about Zaha Hadid’s first American building, the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati: “It is an amazing building, a work of international stature that confidently meets the high expectations aroused by this prodigiously gifted architect for nearly two decades. Might as well blurt it out: the Rosenthal Center is the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war.”
The Web – How Audiences Work?
“There are hundreds of millions – perhaps more than a billion – websites out there. If the normal distribution applied, then we would expect that most of them would cluster around an average in terms of size and link density. But this is not what is observed: although the web has a huge number of very small sites, the probability of encountering a big site is nevertheless quite high. up to now we have argued that the concentrations of media power and audience share that exist in the real world are the product of capitalist accumulation or inadequate regulatory regimes. But the web and the blogging culture are completely open. Yet, even in those ideal conditions, we see concentrations of power and audience emerging. Deep waters, eh? And is that curious noise the sound of Rupert Murdoch laughing up his sleeve?”
Poetry-Pushers All
Can poetry be hip? Cool? There sure are a lot of people who want to convince that it can be. “We’ve had Poems on the Underground and the Buses, Poetry in Schools, National Poetry Day, Young Poet competitions and indeed Murray Lachlan Young (remember him, with his Byronic smouldering and his million-pound EMI deal? Ubi sunt…) – all much-needed endeavours, because poetry ought to be seen as lively and relevant. Yet for many people the idea of it remains trapped in shudder-inducing schoolday memories of interminable recitation or forced deconstruction.”
Colorado Arts Commission Fires Director
Completing its gutting of the Colorado Coucil on the Arts, the CCA’s director was fired Friday. “The action effectively completes the elimination of the current CCA staff, a move that could also cost the state an additional $614,000 in federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts because it only distributes its grants through viably functioning state arts councils. On Wednesday, Owens ordered that no more than $40,000 of the council’s 2003-04 budget of $814,000 could be spent on payroll, utilities and all other operational costs. A year ago, the office had seven staff members, each making more than $40,000, Holden said. Since then, the CCA’s state funding has been cut from $1.9 million to $200,000, and the staff had been cut to three even before Friday.”
Movies: Pining For The 70s
The movie business is so big, so powerful, so slick, it seems as though it’s never been in better shape. Consider that “30 years ago the summer blockbuster hadn’t been invented, films weren’t equated with franchises, ‘multiplex’ wasn’t a word, and the people calling the creative shots were the artists, not the bean counters. This situation didn’t last long, but it spawned a group of films so satisfying and challenging that many consider the late-’60s-to-late-’70s to be cinema’s best era.”
Is Free TV Worth Saving?
“Since the 1950s, the free American broadcast system has served as the great galvanizer and equalizer, accessible to anyone in the nation owning a rooftop antenna and a TV. Even today, most Americans get their news from broadcast TV. Yet some critics say the system is irreparably broken and growing more irrelevant in the face of competition from cable and satellite services, even as the federal government has moved to prop up the broadcast industry.”