“For art critic Tom Lubbock, language has been his life and his livelihood. But in 2008, he developed a lethal brain tumour and was told he would slowly lose control over speech and writing. This is his account of what happens when words slip away.”
Tag: 11.07.10
Syria’s Artists and Performers, Unsure of Political Climate, Stifle Themselves
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is considered somewhat less harsh than that of his father, under whom “there were clear red lines of intolerance” toward artistic as well as political expression. “Now those lines are no longer clear, increasing, not diminishing, the sense of uneasiness and tendency toward self-censorship.”
What Gives Slurs Their Power to Offend?
“We may at times convince ourselves, as Dr. Laura may have, that there are inoffensive ways to use slurs. But a closer look at the matter shows us that those ways are very rare. … [But how] How do words become prohibited? What’s the relationship between prohibition and a word’s power to offend? And why is it sometimes appropriate to flout such prohibitions?”
Artist Ai Weiwei Publicly Calls for Western Support of Human Rights in China
“Now all the nations of the developed world are trying to do business with China. Of course, it’s an arrangement in which both sides profit. But on the Chinese side it means more unfairness to labourers and damage to the environment. This kind of business is done through the sacrifice of basic values and human dignity. … China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people’s rights.”
The Brits Figure Out That Chekhov Is Funny
“Since his death in 1904, the Russian has certainly ascended to the pantheon of great writers, but he would be dismayed to see that his plays are still widely thought of as forbidding chronicles of human misery. Yet now, 150 years after his birth, a group of comedians, including Steve Coogan and Johnny Vegas, are appearing in productions of his short comedies – to prove Chekhov can be funny after all.”
Harvard Tries To Diversify The Paintings On Its Walls
“Of the approximately 750 oil portraits that grace the libraries, dining commons, and undergraduate residences of the nation’s oldest university, roughly 690 were of white men, as of a 2002 inventory by the curator of the university’s portrait collection.”
Oxford Researchers Build Hieronymus Bosch Instruments. And They Sound…
Musicologists in Oxford have made exact replicas of instruments featured in the The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. And, apparently, they sound ‘horrible’
Study: UK Kids Aren’t Reading Outside School
“More than half of the adults polled said they had difficulty getting their children to read books outside school.”
Poet Festival Was “Vulgar Nonsense”?
What could be less controversial than a distinguished gathering of poets reading on London’s South Bank? Not much, you might think. Extraordinary then – in the week of the 2010 International Festival of Poetry – to discover that when the first poetry festival was launched, in 1967, Donald Davie wrote an article in the Guardian headed: “Go home poets” and dismissed the festival as “vulgar nonsense”.
A Plan To Save Dis-used Words
Hundred of words such as ‘suffarcinate’, ‘jobler’ and ‘welmish’ have fallen out of everyday use. But they’re not dead yet . . .