In one sense, “the end of Rookie represents another nail in the coffin of small, independent internet publishing. But in another sense, it is an object lesson in how voraciously creative writing is being absorbed by the online marketplace. Maintaining a publication’s integrity in that environment is an exhausting challenge.” – The New Republic
Tag: 12.05.18
I Was An Unhappy, Aging Academic Until Flamenco Transformed My Life
Author and professor Catherine Taylor offers an impressionistic longread, with plenty of video clips, about how her midlife crisis moved her to travel to southern Spain for serious study of the form — and about how its aesthetic and mindset changed her way of being. — The Believer
Alas, Netflix Is Unlikely To Save Art Films
Netflix may seem like a savior to these filmmakers right now, but the promise is illusory. Streaming services are also under tremendous economic pressure of their own, such that they’re unlikely to commit for the long term to arty, mid-budget films like Roma and Buster Scruggs. They may temporarily slow the increasing homogenization of filmmaking in America, but they cannot reverse it. – The New Republic
What Happens When A City Tries For The Bilbao Effect And Fails? Here Are Some Cautionary Tales
“This proves to be a particularly timely question because exactly 10 years ago last month, two of the biggest arts venue headaches of recent times finally opened to the public.” Ike Ijeh looks at those venues and others, including a few that became successes after rather inauspicious beginnings. — Building (UK)
Boat People Of The Mediterranean Form A Theater Company In Sicily
Founded in 2013, Liquid Company, a troupe made up entirely of refugees and migrants from Africa and the Mideast who survived the dangerous sea crossing, has developed, scripted, and performed four plays about their journeys, the asylum system, and human trafficking. — Public Radio International
What We Learned Having AI Analyze A Book
Using AI tools to analyze this piece of literature shed new light on key elements of emotion and memory in the book – but they did not replace the skills of an expert or scholar at interpreting texts or pictures. As a result of our experiment, we think that AI and other computational methods present an interesting opportunity with the potential for more quantifiable, reproducible and maybe objective research in the humanities. – The Conversation
If The World Is On Fire, Is It OK To Talk About Books?
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, has some questions – and some answers. “No one I know is unaware that this is a particularly weird time to make art, rather than to spend every moment calling your senators. But art has always had to exist alongside history.” – Electric Literature
Barrie Kosky: “Opera Is A Dream”
“Opera is an incredibly sophisticated art form that’s developed over 500 years. So there’s no one audience. If you want to just sit there without knowing anything about it and watch the pretty pictures with music at the centre, you are allowed to, great. If you want to do two years of research and study the programme and the libretto, great. And if you want to compare it to the 20 other productions that you’ve seen in the last five years, that’s great too.” – Bachtrack
Must Visit? National Geographic Puts Dundee’s New Waterfront And Museum On Its Worldwide List
Dundonians are said to have developed “a new kind of swagger” thanks to the opening of its V&A museum, which is hailed as “the crown jewel” of its £1 billion waterfront regeneration. The city was rated number 15 in National Geographic’s 2019 “Cool List,” which it says are the destinations set to “hit the headlines” next year. Other locations to make the top 19 included Oslo, Guyana, Bhutan, Corsica, Eritrea and Uganda. More than 250,000 visitors flocked to V&A Dundee in the space of just months after it opened its doors in September. – The Scotsman
Publishing Industry Demands UK End Sales Tax On E-Books
“Digital publications are currently taxed at 20% in the UK; printed publications have been exempt from VAT since its introduction in 1973, ‘on the general principle of avoiding a tax on knowledge’.” Now that new EU legislation allowing member states to cut VAT on digital publications, “a cohort of voices … is now urging the government to ‘axe the reading tax’.” — The Guardian