“The problem is that Facebook doesn’t offer free speech; it offers free amplification. No one would much care about anything you posted to Facebook, no matter how false or hateful, if people had to navigate to your particular page to read your rantings, as in the very early days of the site.” – TechCrunch
Tag: 10.20.19
Huang Yong Ping, One Of China’s Most Daring Modern Artists, Dead At 65
“In his sly installations and sculptural work, Huang often melded techniques derived from the history of Chinese art and international avant-garde movements alike. His ability to deftly combine seemingly opposed methods of art-making made him one of the foremost artists in an emergent group of Chinese artists during the late 1980s … [and] allowed him to address taboo subjects in China and beyond with audacity and wit.” – ARTnews
Orange County’s Segerstrom Center Gets A New Leader
He’s Casy Reitz, currently executive director of New York’s Second Stage. “Before taking the position at the Second Stage Theater in September of 2010, Reitz was director of development at the Public Theater and director of individual giving at Manhattan Theatre Club. He holds a master’s in fine arts in theater management from Yale School of Drama and an undergraduate degree in theater from the University of Alabama.” – Voice of OC
Solomon Volkov on Stalin and Shostakovich
On Stalin: “People underestimate the level of control that Stalin maintained. I once tried to count the number of people in the arts that Stalin controlled personally – it was close to one thousand. This was Stalin’s habit.”
On Shostakovich: “I wouldn’t dare to record him [in an interview]. He was mortally afraid of a microphone.” – Joseph Horowitz
A Star Architect Who Recycles And Rebuilds For Those In Need
Shigeru Ban, a designer of houses and visitors’ centers and condominiums and towers, is perhaps more famous as a designer of emergency shelters, for people suffering from earthquakes and floods, for people escaping violence and genocide. For them, he has employed a signature material — recycled paper tubes of variable length and thickness. – The New York Times
Klaus Friedeberger, Abstract Painter Who Found Inspiration In The Australian Outback, Has Died At 97
Friedeberger was inspired by his time as a European refugee in Australia during WWII. “Whereas many abstract painters of the 60s were working on a large scale with fields of unmodulated colour that emphasised the flatness of the surface of the painting, Friedeberger eventually eschewed colour altogether. Working unfashionably on an easel, he made small, modest monochromatic paintings of abstracted forms that advanced, receded or hovered in space within the confines of a square canvas, never quite abandoning the illusion of pictorial space.” – The Guardian (UK)
What Are Theatre Reviews For?
Or, more specifically, whom are they for? “Doing it just for an audience ties criticism to weird stuff about selling a show, which I’m sort of uncomfortable with. But if critics are reviewing just for the maker, then is it really inaccessible to an audience who are maybe not so involved in theatre?” – HowlRound
The Coded Emotional Appeal Of ‘The Matrix’
Seriously, why would anyone go to the movie in theatres 11 times? Sometimes you need distance to figure something like that out. “In The Matrix, I realized, I had found a message about my own life, the life of a closeted gay Mormon boy. It was something I had strained all those times to hear, and now it shot across the screen in letters lit by retrospect: You too will be free.” – The Atlantic
Thousands Of People Stand In Line To See The Revamped MoMA
The revamped MoMA invited people to visit for free on Sunday, before the official opening. Nearly 10,000 people took the museum up on its offer, and they needed to create new mental maps. “As they entered the new expanded lobby, many gravitated toward the electronic information sign — with columns labeled ‘West,’ ‘North’ and ‘South’ — to decide which way to go. Staff members wearing neck lanyards and carrying maps approached visitors with friendly ‘Welcome to MoMA’ greetings and offered to help direct them. But even employees seemed a little unsure of themselves. ‘Is there an elevator that way?’ one visitor asked. ‘I think so,’ answered a staff member, opening one of her maps, ‘Let me check.'” – The New York Times
Malaysia Is The Latest Country To Ban ‘Abominable’ Over Map Scene
The basic problem? A dashed line (one that violates international law as decided by a court at The Hague in 2016). “Malaysia’s censorship board initially agreed to permit Abominable to premiere on November 7, if the image of the map was removed from the version screening in their country. However, Universal Studios, which is distributing the film everywhere but China (Pearl Studio is Abominable’s Chinese distributor) has refused to make the cut.” – Vulture