“We’re talking about building into the architecture a critical thread. A dark space. A line going through the museum in which you can make critical commentaries on the art, by using photography, film, drawing, etc. So a complex cellular idea starts to develop in my mind–and I have no damn idea of what this will be architecturally.”
Tag: 12.01.09
All May Not Be Lost For Borders UK
A new “Save Borders” Facebook has spring up; management and support staff have been laid off, but in-store workers still have their jobs for now; “considerable interest has been expressed [by potential purchasers] either in the business and/or certain stores”; even the chain’s book-buying is “running with a skeleton staff.”
An iPhone Orchestra In Ann Arbor
Stanford, Helsinki and Berlin have already heard ensembles that use the iPhone’s Ocarina app, but the University of Michigan has made a course out of the endeavor. The 11 students, who had to write software as well as music for their “instruments,” give their first concert next week.
Dance Still Suffers From The Absences Wrought By AIDS
“Not so long ago, I was chatting with a friend who is a dance critic. We talked about all the talented dancers and choreographers … who’d been lost to AIDS. As she saw it, there is a void in dance choreography because so many young men didn’t make it out of the plague. … What if they’d all lived?“
In Australian Aboriginal Arts, More Money For Fewer Groups
“A reorganisation of Australia Council funding of indigenous arts organisations will result in 10 ‘outstanding’ groups receiving more money for up to six years and 25 other groups losing out.”
Eva Tanguay, ‘The First Rock Star’
“To call Tanguay a ‘rock star’ is anachronistic but appropriate. She was not just the pre-eminent song-and-dance woman of the vaudeville era. … She was the first American popular musician to achieve mass-media celebrity, with a cadre of publicists trumpeting her on- and offstage successes and outrages.”
Govt. Document: Should UK Libraries Sell Books, Too?
A new document on the future of libraries in the UK “advocates reforms to the library service up to and including everything from Lovefilm-style delivery, national online borrowing and the ability to return a book wherever you are. … In the document, [arts minister Margaret] Hodge raises the prospect of libraries being allowed to sell books as well as lend them.”
Let’s Focus On The Art, Not The Artists’ Lives
“The images hold you; the ongoing lives of the artists rarely do. And yet, the entire system of art today is geared towards the idea of the individual creative genius. Never has the myth of the artist been more powerful.”
When A Yogurt Lid Is More Than Just A Yogurt Lid, Or Is It?
Putting together its upcoming Gabriel Orozco retrospective, the Museum of Modern Art went in search of four Dannon yogurt caps from a 1994 installation — which, alas, were sold years ago and replaced by Orozco with decoys. “What does it matter if those in the MoMA show aren’t the same ones that Mr. Orozco used when he first mounted the piece 15 years ago?”
Aussie Songs Square Off: Did Men At Work Rob The Cradle?
“Down Under,” the 1981 pop hit by Men at Work, and “The Kookaburra Song,” the classic 1934 children’s tune, “now reside at the center of a fierce intellectual-property battle raging in Australia. The copyright holder of ‘The Kookaburra Song’ says it’s unlawfully sampled in ‘Down Under.'”