Josephine Ramirez: “Those of us who work in arts and culture are primary caretakers of an absolutely essential public value. We have a crucial role as facilitators, creators, nurturers, promoters and producers of arts experiences — ones that connect people, address their emotions and stories, ignite precious human imagination and deepen our ability to understand others unlike ourselves. The past months have also reinforced my belief that the arts field must evolve so we can deliver impactful experiences and processes that strengthen society. Evolving towards this end means
rethinking and retooling so we can more fully support emotional, psychological and intellectual health.” – KCET
The Evolution Of The Quizbowl, From Radio To Screen To Zoom
“Technology and trivia may not be obvious bedfellows. But trivia enthusiasts in the postwar-trivia boom of the 1950s would surely look in envy at technologies we take for granted today: word processors, search engines, wikis, videoconferencing services. In today’s Tedium, I take you through the technological evolution of a trivia format called quizbowl.” – Tedium
Instead Of Canceling Its Next Production When COVID Hit, This Theater Completely Reimagined It
Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is was the last show of the season at the
Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, and when the shutdown came, there was still time to figure something out. “We then went through at least four different iterations of what the production could be,” said managing director Leigh Goldenberg, “so that we could still tell the story, share the art and employ the folks involved.” The key problem was that what most theaters were doing (reading plays on Zoom) would not work with this script. So the Wilma folks got a better idea. – NPR
All The Flags Now At NYC’s Rockefeller Center Were Custom-Designed By Artists (Some Of Them Quite Famous)
“Hundreds of New Yorkers submitted proposals earlier this year to design eight-by-five-foot flags. This past Saturday, the 192 winning designs were unfurled on the [flagpoles] surrounding the plaza’s ice rink. In addition to the open call, 13 well-known artists” — among them Laurie Anderson, Faith Ringgold, KAWS, Marina Abramović, Hank Willis Thomas, Jenny Holzer, Sanford Biggers, Sarah Sze, and Carmen Herrera — “were also commissioned to create flags.” – Artnet
An App For Serialized Novels Draws Tens Of Millions In Investment Dollars
“Radish, which has offices in Seoul and New York, says it has seen significant revenue growth since its 2016 launch, and that it has produced more than 6,500 episodes across 30 original series. Genres currently available on the app include romance and paranormal/sci-fi, but growth is planned for the LGBTQ, young adult, horror, mystery and thriller categories.” – Deadline
Virtuosity Doesn’t Mean Playing Lots Of Notes
You don’t think minimalists can be virtuosos? Tell it to Ernest Hemingway. Tell it to Thelonious Monk. Tell it to the Japanese calligrapher who spends his entire life perfecting a straight line, or drawing a flawless circle. – https://psyche.co/ideas/true-musical-virtuosos-are-minimalists-who-put-roll-before-rockPsyche
Tracing The Ancient Art Of Bullshit
If we want to trace bullshit back to its origins, we have to look a lot further back than any human civilization. Bullshit has its origins in deception more broadly, and animals have been deceiving one another for hundreds of millions of years. – Lithub
Seattle Children’s Museum In Turmoil Over Black Lives Matter Post
Staff posted to social media but the museum’s director later deleted “Black Lives Matter” from the posts. Some museum staff went on strike, and then were laid off. – The New York Times
Disney Posts A Near $5 Billion Loss In Q2
The Burbank entertainment giant posted a net loss of $4.72 billion for the three months that ended in June, Disney said Tuesday. That’s compared with the $1.43 billion in net income the company reported for the same period in 2019. – Los Angeles Times
The World’s New Favorite Refugee Writer Tries To Get Comfortable With Freedom And Fame
Far from his native Kurdish village, escaped from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, now released from the Australian internment camp in Papua New Guinea where he wrote his award-winning No Friend but the Mountains on a cell phone, Behrouz Boochani has received asylum in New Zealand and is settled in safe, pretty, tranquil Christchurch, where most Kiwis seem thrilled to have him. It’s driving him a little nuts. – The New York Times Magazine
Report: Hollywood Has A Problem With Chinese Censorship
Washington Post’s Theater Critic Ends Up With A Hairdressing Degree (What Twitter Hath Wrought, Part MMMDCLXII)
Peter Marks: “Some people warn that you enter the bilious environs of social media at your peril. But I say, power up your device and be Zen about whatever transpires. Because you just might innocently scroll down one morning and end up with an honorary doctorate in hairdressing from a large chain of salons in Ireland.” – The Washington Post
Call For More Transparency In Choosing Public Art
“There is a cultural revolution happening in the United States, and people are realizing that they have the power to be more engaged with how public art is decided,” explained Patricia Walsh, who helps run the Public Art Network, a membership group of more than a thousand public art professionals organized by the nonprofit Americans for the Arts. “Best practices need to be reinvented to become more equitable and diverse.” – ARTnews
The Forgotten Black Musician Who Helped Create Bossa Nova
João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim were just two of many Brazilian musicians who considered pianist-singer-composer Johnny Alf a genius and his “Rapaz de Bem” the first bossa nova song. So why isn’t he as famous as they are? Racism was certainly a factor, but not the only one. – The New York Times
Why ‘Norma Rae’ Is, After 41 Years, As Relevant As Ever
What remains powerful, writes Naomi Fry, is “the movie’s suggestion that no struggle can take place alone. Norma Rae is heroic, but she comes into her own, as a woman, because she is fighting for class solidarity — a struggle that, in turn, could not happen without a breaking down of long-standing ethnic and racial barriers.” – The New Yorker
Installation Art As Big Business Proposition (Think Of Kusama Infinity Rooms, But For Profit)
“Superblue, as [the venture] is called, will open a series of experiential art centers (EACs for short) that won’t sell precious objects, as conventional galleries do. They’ll present art experiences: deep dives into all-encompassing works by such artists as JR, the French photographer who focuses on issues like migration, displacement and imprisonment; and James Turrell, the celebrated Light and Space artist.” What are they selling? Tickets, of course. – The New York Times
Even The ‘Veep’ Showrunner Says Trump’s Axios Interview Outdid ‘Veep’
David Mandel: “At the end of the day, this is why we ended the show. … Sometimes I have the horrible thought of if we had filmed a show last fall that was supposed to be on right now, and between when we were done filming and began editing, the pandemic and all of this stuff happened. I think you’d have to throw the show in the garbage.” – The Washington Post
Trey McIntyre Project Is Back, But It’s Not A Dance Company Anymore
“Six years after shuttering his popular dance troupe …, its eponymous founder is relaunching the company as a conduit for digital dance films, with a project called FLTPK. … He sees his film work more of a continuation of his work as a photographer rather than as a choreographer. … ‘It’s not a company of dancers,’ McIntyre insists. ‘It’s a community of artists.'” – Dance Magazine
Princeton’s Existential Crisis
Groups of students have variously described the composition of Princeton’s faculty and its “institutional culture” as “pillars of its oppressive past,” declared that their education failed to prepare them to vanquish racism, and urged a “comprehensive transformation” of curriculum, programming, and faculty. More notable, roughly 350 faculty members and staff signed an open letter, published on July 4, that set forth nearly 50 demands. – The Atlantic
Do We Really Want Brain-To-Brain Communication?
Let’s face it: we’ve all had second thoughts about language. Hardly a day goes by when we don’t stumble for words, stagger into misunderstandings, or struggle with a double negative. It’s a frightfully cumbersome way to express ourselves. If language is such a slippery medium, perhaps it is time to replace it with something more dependable. Why not cut out the middleman and connect brains directly? – Psyche