No, says China’s starchitect, Wang Shu. “Modern Chinese cities don’t have memories, but in their deep heart they need memories.”
Tag: 12.16.12
How Did The Rude Mechs ‘Build Audience’? By Engaging In Chaos
“It has never been part of our mission to explore a singular form, or a particular set of performance ideas, or any through-line to our content. Our plays are wildly different from each other in terms of content, style, and form. Culturally, we have always seemed to be most attracted to the thing we’ve never done before.”
Newcastle’s Cuts To The Arts Will Be Disastrous, Say Stars
Sting, Mark Knopfler, and others from northeast England: “The ‘blanket and pre-emptory’ cuts could result in ‘generations of young people denied access to the opportunities we were given and, without the council’s support, the arts will simply become a pursuit for the most wealthy.'”
Paperwork’s History: Riveting (And LIfe-Saving)
“The unofficial hero of Mr. Kafka’s book is Charles Hippolyte Labussière, a French government clerk who in 1794 purportedly saved hundreds of people from the guillotine by dissolving the relevant paperwork in Paris’s public baths (or, as one version of the story has it, eating it).”
Audience Participation In The Tate Modern’s Kraftwerk Ticket Cock-Up
“I imagine they were delighted to be distracted from trying to fix the problem by a thousand querulous messages arriving every minute. Did we really think that through, Twitter?”
How to Build A Reality TV Empire
Thom Beers’s work “is the reason that viewers who have never worked a day away from an Aeron chair may know the dimensions and weight of a crab pot or the freezing point of synthetic transmission fluid.”
Whose History Will This Museum Tell?
“Competing visions for the renovation of the history exhibits at Canada’s most visited museum pit conservatives who favour political history of the kings-and-battles variety against liberals who prefer the museum’s past emphasis on social and multicultural history, but want a lot more of it.”
The Kind Of Theatre Audiences Truly Get Into
“The audience gets as perilously close to the action as the company’s insurance providers will presumably allow – which, in this brave new world of pure-performance theatre, is very close indeed.”
Best Place To Learn Haitian Dance?
Brooklyn, of course.
Is Literary Life Long-Dead In Manhattan?
“Not long ago I installed myself at the Algonquin, the Midtown hotel where Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott and others once traded juniper-infused barbs, and used it as a launching pad to crisscross the island for a few days, looking to see what’s left.”