Issues

Last week The New York Times reported in detail on YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which is “capable of drawing users deeper into the platform by figuring out ‘adjacent relationships’ between videos that a human would never identify.” The Crusades are a plum example of a topic that turns into a thread, leading the viewer through a labyrinth towards potential radicalization. You can search “Knights Templar” on YouTube and reach conspiracy theories (“Ten Secret Societies Ruling The World”) within three intuitive clicks.  – The New Republic

“The museum, one of Europe’s most ambitious and expensive current cultural projects, has been burdened … by accusations from academics and activists that it hasn’t done enough to determine the provenance of its objects that were acquired during the colonial era or to address whether it is appropriate to hold onto them. The opening of the permanent exhibition had already been delayed to 2020; the Forum was slated to open in stages, beginning with a temporary exhibition of ivory objects in November.” – The New York Times

“[The phrase is] a nickname, coined by fans, for young, delicate-featured, makeup-clad male entertainers.” (The Chinese Communist authorities, it seems, prefers to call them niangpao — “sissypants.”) “These well-groomed celebrities star in blockbuster movies, and advertise for cosmetic brands and top music charts. Their rise has been one of the biggest cultural trends of the past decade.” – The New York Times

A Q&A with Chidi and Chika Nwaogu, twin brothers from Nigeria and the creators and chiefs of Publiseer. As Porter Anderson observes,”What’s at issue … is the question of where and how emerging markets are being surfaced in African publishing today. A part of the premise of the program is that ‘digital transformation is allowing these developing publishing markets to leapfrog into the future,’ something that a combination book-and-music platform’s creators surely know something about.” – Publishing Perspectives

The report said “cultural diplomacy” — the exchange of ideas, art and culture across borders outside of official political channels — should take a central role in Canada’s relations with other countries alongside traditional considerations, such as the economy and trade. – CBC

“We laid out some pretty bold premises when The Commons Crit, a collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts’ Commons festival, began. Here’s how they look from the other side.” – Indy Week (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC)

“In part, what’s surprising is how long that process took: After all, the impulse to devour cool for profit is just capitalism. Like camp, which began as a private joy, an in-joke for outsiders, drag has become an open buffet for mass consumption. … RuPaul now regularly appears on talk shows, and the most successful queens from [Drag Race] have their own makeup lines, TV shows, and fashion campaigns while shilling everything from Starbucks to vodka to McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches.” – New York Magazine

“Some members felt that the proposals were signalling a profound shift from ‘Great Art and Culture for Everyone’ to ‘Everyone has the right to access some art and culture’.” They “felt very strongly that the outcomes suggested the only justification for publicly funded arts and culture was public demand”. – Arts Professional

In support of what’s arguably a good idea (giving media companies an antitrust exemption so they can band together and bargain for revenue sharing with Google and Facebook), the News Industry Alliance released a study claiming that Google News alone earns more than $4.7 billion for the search engine. That is, argues Jordan Weissman, “a stunningly flimsy conclusion. … This effort is so amateurish that I’m guessing it will probably do more harm than good for the industry’s cause.” – Slate

“Among the changes [to the “Rouanet Law“] due to come into effect next year is the reduction of the annual funding cap per project from 60m reais ($15.44m) to 1m reais ($257,000), but museums, material and immaterial heritage projects, conservation initiatives and some entertainment productions will be exempt.” – The Art Newspaper

For 15 years, MAKE: guided adults and children through step-by-step do-it-yourself crafting and science projects, and it was central to the maker movement. Since 2006, Maker Faire’s  200 owned and licensed events per year in over 40 countries let attendees wander amidst giant, inspiring art and engineering installations. – TechCrunch

The U.S. permits shocking abuses of privacy online. Why? Well … “Congress’s earliest attempts to regulate computing in the 1980s and 1990s were embarrassing.” – The New York Times

Reading the history of this week of YouTube announcements, discussions, demonetizing of right-wing accounts, and the subsequent high-profile, high-volume, high-intensity harassment campaign against Vox journalist Carlos Maza, well … “In short, YouTube’s big policy announcement ended up acting as incitement to harassment against one of its own creators.” – Vice

Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson: “Am I chagrined and shamed that when I wrote my book I couldn’t push myself to acknowledge that this damaged man was almost certainly a sexual predator? Of course I am. As a critic I’m invested in believing I’m not in the grip of naivety or denial. … [But] the crises that have created #MeToo and similar movements show how little we knew and how little we chose to know.” – The Guardian (UK)

After 70 years, most people still don’t live within easy reach – in any sense – of the artistic riches enabled by Arts Council funding. After 70 years, most artists still earn very little for their creative work. Changing both situations involves redistribution, and that necessarily has losers as well as winners. One criticism that can be fairly made of Arts Council England is that it has not used the increases it gained in the past 25 years to change the underlying principles or pattern of its support.  – Parliament of Dreams

They sold money they printed themselves as art works, and used the funds to buy up £1.2 million of debt on the secondary market, where lenders sell bad debts. – The New York Times

Thirteen out of 34 members of the board of directors, including chairman John Svoboda, resigned this week following a disagreement with Roosevelt University, which owns the building, over the hiring of a new CEO. – Crain’s Chicago Business

“A delegation from the festivals has this week met with Caroline Nokes, the Minister of State for Immigration, in a bid to ease the apparent clampdown on visiting artists to the UK … [that led to] the visa crisis experienced by artists at last year’s festival.” – The Herald (Scotland)

Leila Jancovich: “When managing the [2002] Commonwealth Games cultural programme in Manchester, both myself and our independent evaluator were asked to remove learning points from our reports for fear they might appear negative. Instead, we were encouraged to focus on celebratory facts and figures. But I strongly believed then – and believe now – that we learn more from failure than success. ” – Arts Professional

“A survey from the Pew Research Center in 2016 found that, among US workers employed part-time, 64 per cent prefer it that way. Meanwhile, 20 per cent of full-time workers – that’s almost 26 million Americans – would rather work part-time.” – Aeon

“Despite the constant avowal and assertion of the intrinsic value of arts and culture, funding for art and culture is still often treated as a discretionary spend which is somehow secondary to the needs of what are defined as being more essential services like the NHS. But art and culture do not only make a huge contribution in their own right to the taxation which funds those essential services. They are also the principal reason for the constantly acclaimed commercial success of the creative industries, which make an even larger contribution to the public purse, which funds those essential services we all value.” – Arts Professional

Gov. Jay Pritzker’s infrastructure spending bill, the state’s first major public works program in more than ten years, just passed the state legislature, and it includes over $60 million in money for capital projects at various arts institutions. And there’s another $50 million for capital projects to be allocated by the Illinois Arts Council. – Chicago Tribune

Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart made the case in the 1990s: “What kind of a role model was he, this eunuch duck, who sought only fame and fortune, who ignored the plight of the working class, who accepted endless suffering as his lot? “Reading Disney,” they wrote, “is like having one’s own exploited condition rammed with honey down one’s throat.” – The New Yorker

This is no small shift. For the past quarter-century, the charter school movement has been a juggernaut. Charters were originally devised by technocrats hoping to inject “free market dogmas into the public sector,” as Rachel Cohen wrote in the journal Democracy. The idea was expertly packaged and sold for a broad audience — as a low-cost way to advance the twin aims of excellence and equity. – Washington Post