What exactly is ‘intellectual cool’? For a start, although it includes intellectual trends, or what we sometimes call ‘fashions,’ it obviously is not just this. And here we run up against a very difficult problem – what we call ‘cool’ never describes itself, never declares itself, and never advises who it will be visiting next. People who write about Spinoza will never say they’re doing so because he’s really cool at the moment. Equally, ask a hipster who they hate the most and they will say, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Hipsters! I f*cking hate them!’ – Sydney Review of Books
Old Soviet-Style Cafeterias Are Becoming Popular In 21st-Century Moscow
The ingredients are more consistent in quality and the kitchens are cleaner than back then, but otherwise, the new stolovayas are remarkably like the old ones, with people waiting in long lines to get served mashed potatoes, stuffed cabbage, herring, and borscht by surly workers. Nostalgia for the superpower USSR? Not exactly: it’s comfort food, and far more affordable than most restaurants in Moscow. – Atlas Obscura
This Man Could Have Been The Great American Impressionist Composer
“When composers die prematurely, it’s tempting to imagine what they might have produced had they lived to a riper age. … Consider, for example, the life of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, a man largely — and unjustly — forgotten by the general public today.” – The American Scholar
John Mason, 91, Pioneer Of Abstract Ceramic Sculpture
“[He] was one of a group of artists who … blew past utilitarian definitions of what clay was good for and made experimental, often very large works that ended up in galleries and museums rather than craft shows. A dramatic example was Blue Wall, an abstract clay wall piece 21 feet by 7 feet, created in 1959. – The New York Times
Disability As Strength – Except When Portrayed As Cliche In The Theatre
“Modern thinking around disability looks to a social model: people are disabled by society’s structures, the stairs they can’t climb and the doors a wheelchair can’t fit though are simple examples. It’s the job we can’t get, because having a disability is viewed as an inherent weakness rather than living with it being a demonstration of strength.” – The Guardian
Silicon Valley Tech Says It Wants To Save The World. The Reality May Be Quite Different
At some tech companies, faith in the mission is encouraged to the point that it resembles religious belief. Employees are invited to see themselves as proselytizers for the transformation of society, spreading the ideas of a company and its leaders around the world. What happens, though, when the mission doesn’t accord with the behavior of a company or the values of its employees? – The New Republic
You’re Not Wrong: Pop Music Today Sounds Different – How Science Killed Sonic Nuance
Our ears perceive loudness in an environment by reflexively noting the dynamic range — the difference between the softest and loudest sounds (in this case, the environment is the recording itself, not the room you are playing it in). A blaring television commercial may make us turn down the volume of our sets, but its sonic peaks are no higher than the regular programming preceding it. The commercial just hits those peaks more often. A radio station playing classical music may be broadcasting a signal with the same maximum strength as one playing hip-hop, but the classical station broadcast will hit that peak perhaps once every few minutes, while the hip-hop station’s signal may peak several times per second. – The New York Times
The Oregon College Of Arts And Crafts Will No Longer Grant Degrees
The OCAC’s future is in doubt after negotiations with both Portland State University and the Pacific Northwest College of Art ended without a deal. Meanwhile, with 70 full and part-time staff and a campus that may be about to be sold off, “OCAC serves 137 students, with around 50 due to graduate in May. It has begun transition planning for the remaining 80 in its degree program.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
The Star Of ‘Roma’ Wasn’t Plucked From Obscurity
Here’s some of the real story of Yalitza Aparicio, the first indigenous woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Sure, she didn’t know cinema that well – and here’s why: “She simply wasn’t all that enamored of an industry that rarely depicted indigenous life in a meaningful way. … ‘I never found a representation that seemed similar to me or that touched on the ways I was raised.'” – Los Angeles Times
Books: Not Dead At All, Not Even Dying
So, to quote a great movie whose screenwriter had also written the book, stop saying that! “The reality is that if 76% of any population is participating in a single activity then you are surrounded by people doing that very thing. The article said that books are dying; the research said—to me, at least—that we are a nation of readers.” – Time
How The Weinstein Company’s Bankruptcy Continues To Hurt Native Women
The deal was to take the Weinstein company name off, and donate future from, the film Wind River to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. “For the center, which is run out of a woodstove-heated bungalow in snow-swept Lame Deer, Mont., this was a potentially huge boon. The nonprofit addresses violence against Native American women, runs a national helpline for domestic violence survivors, and provides assistance to tribes and tribal programs across the country.” Now, they’re likely to see nothing. – The New York Times
Why Do We Keep Forgiving Facebook? [AUDIO]
It’s rewriting our brains, maybe? Because “it seems no breach of trust, misuse of data or dissemination of damaging falsehoods rattles the company’s bottom line.” – The 1A (WAMU)
The DNA Test That Led, Perhaps Inevitably, To A Book Contract
Dani Shapiro: “This is my 10th book. Writing it, I was confronted with all of my past writer selves, and all the books that writer wrote. … In my early novels, and as recently as in Still Writing (2013), I found passages about family secrets and lies, about snooping through my parents’ things.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Pop Music Used To Be All About The Album. Now, That Model Has Been Blown Up
“While it does take longer for artists to get to their first album, once they are there, everything accelerates. Suddenly they reach a level that might have previously been reached by album two or three. Are they rising fast to then decline just as fast? Only time will tell.” – The Guardian
Use Your Creativity For… Evil?
Laypersons and academics alike have largely viewed creativity as a positive force, a notion challenged by the philosopher and educator Robert McLaren of California State University, Fullerton in 1993. McLaren proposed that creativity had a dark side, and that viewing it without a social or moral lens would lead to limited understanding. As time went on, newer concepts – negative and malevolent creativity – included conceiving original ways to cheat on tests or doing purposeful harm to others, for instance, innovating new ways to execute terrorist attacks. – Aeon
Bookseller Has Emergency Surgery, And His Competitors Get Together To Keep His Store Open
Seth Marko, co-owner of the Book Catapult in San Diego, came home from a winter convention with chest pains and went straight to the hospital; his wife/co-owner had to help with his recovery, and the only full-time staffer came home from the same convention with bird flu. So the owners of four other San Diego bookstores (plus a bookseller couple from Los Angeles) pitched in to staff the Catapult rather than allowing it to close. — Publishers Weekly
Despite Charges Of Fabrication, Dan Mallory’s Second Book Still On Track
Despite the opprobrium, a spokesperson for HarperCollins UK confirmed on Thursday that there was no change to its publishing plans. A second novel from AJ Finn has been slated for a January 2020 release. – The Guardian
Woody Allen Sues Amazon Studios For $67 Million For “Breach Of Contract”
The new complaint states: “Amazon has tried to excuse its action by referencing a 25-year old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen, but that allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen — and, in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract. There simply was no legitimate ground for Amazon to renege on its promises.” – New York Magazine
Netflix’s New Horror Movie Set On The Art World
The newest entry into the canon of bad art-world satires is director Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw, which premiered on Netflix last weekend. All the familiar grotesques are here: greedy gallerists, ruthlessly ambitious assistants, tax-dodging collectors, a critic so accustomed to churning out self-serving aesthetic pronouncements that he can’t help but bitchily opine about a dead colleague’s casket. – The Baffler
Dance Companies, Stop Making Dancers Pay To Audition! (An Open Letter)
Teacher and former dancer Sara Bibik: “When we ask dancers to do it, we say to ourselves, ‘We are a struggling company trying to make ends meet. We are incurring an expense and so we have to try to make that up.’ This doesn’t hold enough water … because you pay this business expense when finding new employees or contractors for all other positions.” (Such as controller, stage manager, or executive director.) — Dance Magazine
Now *This* Is Subversive: Staging ‘Hair’ With A Cast Of Old Folks
“This joyful staging is the first by Theater 55, a new Twin Cities company that celebrates elders as artists. And it requires more than an average suspension of disbelief. The 26-member cast singing about the Age of Aquarius is distinct for its abundance of unapologetic wrinkles, dad bods and artificial joints. … And that, they might tell you, is the point.” — The New York Times
The Symphony Orchestra Of India (And Why There’s Only One)
Western classical music, and orchestral music in particular, has caught on in a huge way in East Asia, but it has only ever had the most tenuous of holds in the Indian subcontinent (which has a long and still-vibrant classical tradition of its own). Writer Simon Broughton looks at the history of attempts to establish orchestral music in India — culminating in the Symphony Orchestra of India, founded in Mumbai in 2006 and about to make a tour of the UK. — Gramophone
Birmingham Reduces Its Latest Round Of Arts Funding Cuts By Half
Last October, the city government announced its third round of cuts in cultural spending in the past four years. Those cuts amounted to just over £1 million, a third of the already reduced budget. After complaints and a petition, the council’s latest budget plans show a cut of only £500,000. — The Stage
We’re outliers
Sometimes people say, not very pleasantly, that a classical concert can be too much like a museum. But it’s been true for quite a while that this isn’t true, because museums are far more oriented toward the current world than we are. — Greg Sandow
What’s An Idea Versus What’s Real
The notion of reality is one of the most basic and most abstract ones we have. Raising questions about the very idea of what’s real has led to some of the most important, classic work in philosophy – from Parmenides to Aristotle to Avicenna to Aquinas to Immanuel Kant. It also, however, has a tendency to produce the kind of frustrating, easily caricatured work that leads people – including many philosophers – to wonder whether certain questions are simply pointless or even illegitimate, and to adopt a kind of skeptical stance towards abstract questions in general. – Aeon
Minnesota Opera Purchases 350-Seat Theater
The Lab Theater, a converted warehouse, is right next door to the company’s own rehearsal and office space (called the Opera Center) in Minneapolis’s North Loop. Since 2006, independent dance and theater troupes have performed there, and Minnesota Opera expects to continue renting to such groups when not using the space itself; the company also hopes to expand its youth training program there. — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Treasures From The World’s Largest Archive Of Dance Materials
That would be none other than the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. “It regularly films dance productions in the city, preserving the present for the future; it aims to have a copy of every dance book ever published; it possesses treasures going back centuries. And its doors are open to the public as well as to specialist researchers.” Alastair Macaulay looks at a few of its gems, from a 1453 treatise to 1933 films of Balinese dance. — The New York Times
Ford Foundation To Open Art And Social Justice Gallery
The foundation in recent years has focused itself around social justice and equity issues. But this is the first time it has got into programming itself.
“Art fosters representation, and we want to show artworks that have a global perspective on issues that we face as a society. We’re really looking for artists that may not be given a platform in a traditional art space.”
Meet the “New MoMA,” Same as the Old “New MoMA”
It was déjà-vu-all-over-again when I returned yesterday from a California sojourn to the “news” about how permanent-collection installations in the new MegaMoMA (my sobriquet, not theirs) will contrast with those in the current iteration of the ever-expanding Museum of Modern Art. — Lee Rosenbaum