ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

ISSUES

French Switzerland’s Second City Just Built Itself A Massive New Cultural Center

"A vast new arts hub called Plateforme 10 has opened in the Swiss city of Lausanne with the aim to revitalize the surrounding area through culture. Poised to become a new 'arts district,' Plateforme 10 spans 25,000 square meters, the equivalent of five football fields." - Artnet

Culture As A Weapon Of War, Or Division, Around The World

"Culture really does become a matter of life and death, then, when a society is under pressure. This can be for good or for ill: how narrative is shaped can, of course, be damaging – or dishonest." - The Guardian (UK)

The Right-Wing Religious Website Telling Its People To Ruin Library Pride Month Displays

"This right wing strategy of attacking visibility isn’t limited to LGBQT+ books. According to Ginny Wehrli-Hemmeter, director of events and marketing at Anderson’s Bookshop, a large independent bookstore in Naperville, Ill., 'Any book with a cover showing a person of color on it gets covered up.'" - LitHub

The Crypto – And NFT – Crime Wave Is Here

"Financial losses specifically from NFT crimes just through May this year were already more than 600% higher than for all of 2021, with the space seeing twice as many hacks and bigger and bigger heists. ... For many victims, there’s little hope of getting their lost art back." - Los Angeles Times

Architecture Students Deserve So Much More Than A Toxic Culture Of Overwork

"For years, both have been susceptible to a hero complex where the cause of great architecture is so exalted that almost no sacrifice is too much to be made in its name." It's simply got to end. - The Observer (UK)

Who’s Making And Selling Racist Coins On Ebay?

Like the one that celebrates the U.S. Border Patrol's whipping, from horseback, of Haitian refugees? "Unofficial coins ... are funded independently and reflect a more clandestine tradition among agents to valorize their jobs. CBP agents allegedly promote them in a secret Facebook group." - Hyperallergic

Dark Mofo, Tasmania’s Wild Winter Arts Festival, Learns From Last Year’s Disastrous Mistakes

"For those who know Dark Mofo for its gothic bombast, weird surprises and controversial headlines, this year's festival ... may feel a little different. But after a programming controversy last year which led to public outrage, calls to boycott and an eventual apology, perhaps it had to be." - The Guardian

Why Singers And Actors Often Don’t Get Treatment For Injured Voices

Voice disorders carry a stigma among performing artists. This has made performers hesitate to seek proper and timely medical help. - The Conversation

Can An Artist Really Make A Living Online With A Thousand Serious Fans?

That was the proposition of Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired: if you can amass 1,000 people who'll each spend $100 annually to support your work, that's a good middle-class living. That didn't work out in the '90s or '00s, but might it be possible now? - The New Yorker

How BAM Expanded Its Audience During The Pandemic

“BAM isn’t just for one audience. We were consistently sold out this season and more often than not had a standby line. That’s because the programming is doing lots of different things. And that diversity of programming allows us to reflect the diversity of this borough.” - Variety

Russia’s Cultural Brain Drain, In The Words Of The Brains Who Have Drained

Actress Renata Litvinova: "I suddenly realized that maybe I'm never going back." Director Kirill Serebrennikov: "I continue to allow myself the illusion that my departure was not a permanent escape." Scientist Ilya Kolmanovsky: "With time, people will come to understand that Putin's invasion was also an attack on Russia." - GQ

What Types Of Conflict Are Good For Democracies?

In order to live together, and to acknowledge each other and engage each other in a democratic society, conflict is necessary. Otherwise, we risk "not just forms of suppression but also extermination, expelling and annihilating those who are viewed as the source of conflict." - Aeon

MAMGA! (Make America’s Malls Great Again)

With Rick Caruso, developer of upscale "lifestyle centers" (that is, malls without roofs), being one of the finalists for mayor of Los Angeles, Carolina A. Miranda considers the history of shopping malls, their purposes, and how the could recover from their widely-noted decline. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Tourists Are Long Gone From Timbuktu. Here’s How Some Tour Guides Are Piecing Together A Living

With a years-long civil war in Mali cutting off access, you simply cannot get to the historic city from abroad.  But you can still send postcards to loved ones from there. - Atlas Obscura

Just Like Its Protagonist, The Story Of Pinocchio Keeps Changing

Joan Acocella reminds us how utterly different the character and narrative in the original novel by Carlo Collodi are from Walt Disney's 1940 movie. The story has been remade and adapted dozens of times since; Hollywood has two more on the way and a third in the works. - The New Yorker

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