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The Director Of ‘Passing’ Says There Are No Easy Answers Here

The movie, based on Nella Larsen's 1929 novel also called Passing, isn't just about Black women supposedly passing as white. Director Rebecca Hall: "The big trick and turn of the whole story is that it’s not actually about the woman who’s passing. It’s about the other one." - Washington Post

Petra Mayer, NPR’s Beloved, Passionate Books Editor Has Died Suddenly

"Mayer was a proud nerd ... shared those passions with readers and listeners through her reviews of sci-fi, fantasy, romance, thrillers and comics, her trusty on-the-scene reporting at Comic-Con, and her contributions to the Book Concierge." - NPR

How Shakespeare Drove Publishing And Publishing Drove Shakespeare In The 1700s

In the mid-1730s, Robert Walker waged a price war with the London publishing establishment, driving the cost of individual play editions down to just one penny each. This led to a significant expansion of Shakespeare’s readership. - The Conversation

Hong Kong’s M+ makes A Play For Global Attention

A decade ago, the international art world derided Hong Kong as a “cultural desert.” The opening of the multibillion-dollar M+ museum epitomizes the city’s ambition to shake off stereotypes by creating “Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture." - ARTnews

Now Venice Is Drowning In Billboards

The giant billboards now or until recently plastered across the churches for products ranging from OPPO smartphones to Recarlo jewellery – signal that these companies are financing the restoration of the fragile facades. - Apollo

Weapon Of Mass Distraction: Why Facebook’s “Metaverse” Is An Illusion

In actuality, Facebook is basically spending $10 billion on a prayer that, in the short run, it might change the conversation. It gives them an opportunity to talk about the metaverse instead of insurrection and teen depression. - New York Magazine

Christopher Walken Paints Over A Banksy On Camera

The spokesperson said in a statement: "We can confirm that the artwork at the end of 'The Outlaws' was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it." - CNN

Cryptopunks: How A Market For NFT’s Was Born

If spending this kind of money on something as flimsy as a JPEG seems absurd, recall that collectors have bought empty space, a closed gallery, and a duct-taped banana. The fine art world hasn’t been held back by such concerns. - Wired

Sylvère Lotringer, Who Founded Semiotext(e) And Brought French Theory To America’s Art World, Dead At 83

We leave it to you to speculate on which direction St. Peter will send him for that, but his work did spark enormous changes in American arts and intellectual life — not least through the riotous 1975 colloquium "Schizo-Culture" he organized at Columbia. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Is Science Fiction An “Inadequate Response” To Existential Threat?

As projections of nuclear fear themselves recede into memory, new fears (of global warming, environmental collapse) have come to replace them, locating such films within the wider context of apocalypse culture. This suggests that we have indeed entered an age of complacence. - PopMatters

In A Time Of Crisis And Pestilence, Vaudeville As Social Critique

Not, in this case, the early-20th-century American genre of variety show. This is 19th-century Parisian vaudeville: popular boulevard comedies depicting simply drawn characters from the bourgeoisie — and sometimes including sharp social satire, as during the cholera outbreak of 1832. - The Public Domain Review

Co-opting Woke

Charles Blow: "Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as “woke,” a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying, be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life." - The New York Times

Writers Ought To Be Trained The Way Actors Are

"Actors in training get to try out different techniques and approaches, learning to develop a character through movement, script analysis, or emotional connection; they take classes honing their bodies and voices. In my MFA writing program, we got … workshop and some books." - Catapult

A New University To “Fix” Education? It Needs A Rethink About What’s Broken

UATX’s founders for years have used their various platforms to bemoan the state of higher education and propose how to fix it. They’re about to get a crash course in the real-life challenges of the job. - The New Republic

Are Some People’s Brains Simply Wired Better For Dance?

Well, there's no point in trying to deny that some people have more natural aptitude. However, writes neuroscientist Gayle Doherty, everyone has the ability to feel and respond to rhythm and can, with some work, dance well enough to enjoy it. - The Conversation

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