A new book says French psychologists have it all wrong. “The Livre Noir de la Psychanalyse (The Black Book of Psychoanalysis) claims French mind-healers have become ‘fossilised’ in the ‘marginal, discredited’ teachings of Sigmund Freud. The practitioners have been saved from total disgrace, claims the book, only by the complicity of the French Foreign Minister. But France’s 6,000 psychoanalysts question the book’s motivation, claiming that its authors advocate cut-price American-style therapies, of the kind that involve locking up arachnophobes with spiders.”
Tag: 09.25.05
Cleveland Museum – Betting On City’s Future
The Cleveland Museum’s $258 million expansion is one of the biggest cultural construction projects in the city’s history. “Critics say the museum is overreaching. They claim the museum was good enough as it was and should be left alone. And they say it’s questionable whether the museum can raise all the money it needs in a city with a flagging economy, a shrinking population and a school system in financial distress.” But architecture critic Steve Litt writes that “rather than envision a future based on the worst fears imaginable, trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Art are making a huge bet on the future of Cleveland. That, it seems to me, is what they ought to be doing.”
Hard Times For Russian Literature
“Publishing experts admit Russian literature is in a state of crisis and up-and-coming authors have been reduced to asking would-be readers to pay for books in advance in order to make sure they get published. The crisis in Russian publishing has seen the country’s own authors squeezed while publishing companies rely on cheap-and-cheerful detective and war novels and translations of foreign books.”
TV In The After-Life
“It used to be when short-lived TV series were canceled, they went away forever — no syndication reruns, no cable, nothing except an episode or two in the archives of the Museum of Television & Radio. Not anymore. With the proliferation of cable channels hungry to fill time and the new revenue stream provided by TV shows on DVD, lost TV series are a thing of the past.”
When Technology Outstrips Human Intelligence (It’s Coming)
Ray Kurzweil believs that “today’s human beings, mere quintessences of dust, will be as outmoded as Homo Erectus. All this, Kurzweil believes, will come about through something called The Singularity.” What is the Singularity? “It refers to the future point at which technological change, propelled by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, will accelerate past the point of current human comprehension. In Vinge’s prevision, once artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence there will be no turning back, as ever more intelligent computers create ever more superintelligent offspring.”
How Podcasting Can Help Radio
Podcasting is catching on in a big way with radio producers. “It is a phenomenon that could have been a big threat to conventional radio’s business because suddenly they were not the only ones making and distributing programmes. Instead, it is being seen as a big opportunity, for both “professionals” and “amateurs”, according to both the BBC and Virgin Radio.”
A Call To Replace Italy’s Outdoor Art With Replicas
Some of Italy’s most famous public artworks have been vandalized, and experts are calling for originals to be removed and copies put in their places. “It may sound extreme to suggest that cities such as Florence and Rome could be stripped bare in the future, their historic statues and monuments moved indoors and copies put in their place, but calls are growing for a debate on whether many of the most vulnerable works of art should be removed from public locations for their own safety.”
Racial Divide, Some Illumination?
Today’s UK is increasingly becoming racially divided. It’s important to take on political issues like this in art. But how to bring some clarity?
Tate Cancels Display For Fear Of Offending Muslims
Tate Britain has canceled display of John Latham’s God Is Great because the museum says it is afraid of “offending some Muslims after the London terrorist bombings.” The Tate says “that it had to take the ‘difficult decision’ to avoid its motives being misunderstood given the attacks, which killed 52 people in July, and the present political climate. However, it admitted it had not consulted the Metropolitan Police or the Muslim Council of Britain. Latham, 84, who insists that the piece is not anti-Islamic, says: ‘Tate Britain have shown cowardice over this. I think it’s a daft thing to do because if they want to help the militants, this is the way to do it.”
Peter Hall: What Shakespeare Intended
“We cannot be sure of Shakespeare’s intentions. Indeed, some would say we can’t be sure of anything about Shakespeare. Who was he? Did he really write the plays? We are living through a time when a barrage of nonsense is making the rounds about Shakespeare’s supposed or hidden identity. Shakespeare, whose genius uncovers every aspect of the human condition, has been identified as a dry essayist moonlighting as a playwright, or as one or another of a couple of extraordinarily privileged aristocrats, who, for some reason (which varies according to their proponents), could never reveal their involvement in such a lower-class pastime as the theatre. It is true that we don’t know very much detail about Shakespeare’s life, or his theatre, and therefore what he expressed as his intentions.” But, it turns out, there is quite a lot we do know…