“Big themes hover around this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. The first has to do with the transition from a monocultural society to a multicultural one, which Ireland is beginning to experience with some ferocity as the success of its ‘Celtic tiger’ economy sucks in more migrants and refugees. Suddenly, this year in Dublin, the youngsters working in the cafes and burger bars are no longer Irish, but North African, Filipino, Russian. It’s a change that has come as a profound culture shock to a country so long used to the experience of mass emigration, depopulation and loss.” – The Scotsman
Tag: 10.17.00
CULTURE SQUEEZE
San Francisco’s explosive economy, and skyrocketing rents, are threatening the city’s vibrant arts scene. “Artists feel under siege – and many fear that the city that once sent a generation of young people on the road following Jack Kerouac in the ’50s, turned the world on to the Summer of Love in the ’60s and nurtured the creation of the Pulitzer-winning AIDS drama “Angels in America” in the ’90s is in danger of becoming one big office park with Victorian architecture.” – San Francisco Chronicle 10/17/00
DESIGNING MEMORY
Vienna’s Holocaust Memorial, designed by sculptor Rachel Whiteread, has courted controversy since its inception and will finally be unveiled next week. “It is a library, but it looks like a bunker. I was thinking of brutalist architecture, but I tried to make something sombre and poetic.”- The Guardian
PHILANTHROPIST DEMANDS ARTWORK BACK
Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada recently landed a $20 million private collection of Chinese and Mid-Eastern antiquities, and the donation was seen as quite a coup. But now, after giving the some 1,800 objects to the museum, the donor has abruptly demanded them back. “They couldn’t meet the conditions that I imposed. They weren’t able to meet it, so we said, screw it.” The museum has been under ongoing financial difficulties. – Ottawa Citizen
BYE BYE TO THE LYRICAL PENGUIN
Australian artist John Perceval, a member of the group of Melbourne artists known in the 1940s as the “Angry Penguins,” has died at the age of 77. The group developed modern painting techniques generally unfamiliar to Australia at the time. – Sydney Morning Herald
THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
“Gutenberg’s printed paper book will continue to hold its own,” said an organizer of the Frankfurt Book Fair, dispelling fears that we’ll soon be curling up to read e-book screens. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)
HORRORS – KING DOUBLES COST
Stephen King said if 75 percent of those downloading chapters of his cyber-novel didn’t pay $1 a chapter he would stop offering it. So far fans are paying. But now King has doubled the price of a chapter to $2. – Wired