Arts news

• Mexico’s New President Wants To Fight The Popularity Of Ballads About Drug Lords

  26-11-2024 21:03 via apnews.com
  
  “Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday she has a plan to reduce the popularity of ‘narcocorridos.’ … (She) vowed to launch a campaign to promote other, less violent musical styles that aren’t as linked to drug traffickers in an effort to stop glorifying them.” – AP
  
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• Diva Angelina Jolie’s Take On Maria Callas’ Diva

  26-11-2024 20:28 via newyorker.com
  
  The movie is energized by the emotional implications of the gap between her unflagging devotion to music and, essentially, music’s abandonment of her—the loss of many of the best qualities of her voice. – The New Yorker
  
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• Historic Town Halls In Australia Are Becoming Low-Cost Performance Venues

  26-11-2024 20:04 via theguardian.com
  
  “Beautiful brick early 20th-century town halls were once venues for council meetings, award nights and country dances. But in recent decades many have been under-used or left entirely empty.” Now municipalities are offering them to strapped arts organizations, often without rental fees. – The Guardian
  
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• Nostalgia Used To Be A Bad Thing. Now It Seduces Us

  26-11-2024 19:44 via washingtonpost.com
  Nostalgia is a universal malady for which there is no effective remedy, and throughout its long history it has served politically diverse ends. – Washington Post
  
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• Millions Learn New Languages With DuoLingo. But Do They?

  26-11-2024 19:15 via thedial.world
  “It’s really good for learning receptive skills: listening, reading, learning about grammar and vocabulary, so it can be a great place to start. But oftentimes people struggle with production: speaking and writing. Studies have shown that again and again.” – The Dial
  
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• How An Iranian Director Made His Award-Winning Film In Secret — And Was Then Smuggled Out Of The Country

  26-11-2024 19:02 via nytimes.com
  
  Mohammed Rasoulof had been imprisoned for his work before, and he knew that his The Seed of the Sacred Fig — which ultimately got a 13-minute ovation and a special jury prize at Cannes — would land him there again. Yet he felt compelled to do it. – The New York Times Magazine
  
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• Inside The Haruki Murakami Phenomenon

  26-11-2024 18:44 via esquire.com
  
  Murakami’s approach to consciousness is less representational than literal, with many of his characters literally being transported to a realm created by (or wholly inside of) their minds. – Esquire
  
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• The Real Crisis In Children’s Reading

  26-11-2024 18:31 via vox.com
  
  In 1984, the first year for which data is available, 35 percent of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day,” according to NAEP. By 2023, that figure was down to 14 percent, and 31 percent of respondents said they never read for fun at all. – Vox
  
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• Opera In Its Traditional Role: Innovator, Leader In Technology

  26-11-2024 18:11 via theguardian.com
  
  “Every technology affects the way that we think, behave and interact. AI is not going away. It will become a part of our humanity, and therefore a part of our art-making.” – The Guardian
  
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• Climate-Protesting Art Vandals At DC’s National Gallery And National Archives Sentenced To Prison

  26-11-2024 18:06 via news.artnet.com
  
  The leader of the group Declare Emergency, Donald Zepeda, got 24 months for destruction of government property, while group member Jackson Green got 18 months. They must also pay more than $58,000 in restitution. – Artnet
  
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• NPR Tries Tweaking Its News Magazine Shows To Stanch Audience Decline

  26-11-2024 17:44 via current.org
  
  Eric Nuzum said he’s relieved NPR is trying to “correct audience erosion issues that should have been addressed years ago.” But he also concluded that it’s too little too late and that research shows that listeners say NPR is too boring. – Current
  
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• ‘Films were an escape – to a deeper repression’: Jarman winner Maryam Tafakory on Iranian cinema

  26-11-2024 17:38
  
  The UK-based artist and film-maker reveals how the work that has won her the prestigious award was the result of watching 417 films made in post-revolution Iran, many of which she ‘fell in love with – and felt betrayed by’In the first weeks of the pandemic, Maryam Tafakory set herself the task of watching 417 films made in post-revolution Iran. She soon found something curious: the recurring use of bags. Objects such as bags are often deployed by film-makers as substitutes for
  
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• Taylor Swift’s Book And The End Of The Middleman Publisher?

  26-11-2024 17:31 via theatlantic.com
  
  Lately, various writers with meaningful personal resources—money, followers, notoriety—have struck out on their own or made nontraditional arrangements. – The Atlantic
  
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• The New AI Slop: Nature As Supernatural Images

  26-11-2024 17:17 via news.artnet.com
  
  My guess is that there are thousands of A.I. accounts, commenting on one another to drum up attention. When the gambit works, it draws real fans of this kind of content. Who in turn are joined by another group clicking in to gawp at rubes interacting with fake stuff or to try to warn people it is A.I. – Artnet
  
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• Amy Sherald: ‘Sublimity in Black life can be seen in our ability to persist’

  26-11-2024 17:10
  
  The portraitist known for paintings of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor is bringing her first major museum survey to San Francisco and then New York CityThe portraitist Amy Sherald is largely known for two paintings she made of Black Americans whose lives have intersected with US history – the first was the official portrait of the former first lady Michelle Obama, and the second was a posthumous image of victim of police brutality, Breonna Taylor, whose murder was a significant factor in
  
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• Australia’s Leading Dictionary Declares “Enshittification” 2024’s Word Of The Year

  26-11-2024 17:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Macquarie Dictionary defines the word as “the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.” – The Guardian
  
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• Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of The Year Is “Demure” (?)

  26-11-2024 16:31 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  The word saw an enormous spike in searches on the site in August, thanks to a TikTok video by a creator named Jools Lebron that went viral. – Smithsonian Magazine
  
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• Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants To Go After NPR, And She Might Just Get The Power To Do It

  26-11-2024 16:03 via salon.com
  
  The Georgia Congresswoman has been tapped by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new House subcommittee working with the pair’s not-yet-created Department of Government Efficiency. She said, “We’ll be looking at everything from government-funded media programs like NPR that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda.” – Salon
  
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• Janet Suzman On Returning Home To Direct “Otello” In Apartheid South Africa

  26-11-2024 15:34 via theguardian.com
  “It was 1987, three years before Nelson Mandela walked free. … We saw apartheid lasting till the crack of doom. It seemed impregnable. The law had once banned ‘miscegenation’. And here I was directing Othello, a play about miscegenation, at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre.” – The Guardian
  
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• Breyten Breytenbach, Author And Activist Against Apartheid, Is Dead At 85

  26-11-2024 15:02 via apnews.com
  
  “(He) was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers (in South Africa) — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990.” – AP
  
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• The 2024 Carol for Nonprofit Arts Organizations

  26-11-2024 15:00 via artsjournal.com
  The holiday tradition continues because we know you won’t read it.
  Photo by Ana Pereira from Pexels
  Each year, we attempt a rather bad parody of a famous holiday poem or song to run on the Tuesday before US Thanksgiving, the least likely time you’ll read it. Let alone sing it.
  This year, we butchered the famous Welsh carol, “The First Noël” (complete with diaeresis). It’s pretty cringe-worthy, but no more so than believing that nonprofit art is a product and no
  
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• Former Shen Yun Dancer Sues Company, Alleging Abuse Of Young Performers

  26-11-2024 14:36 via apnews.com
  
  “The lawsuit brought by Chang Chun-Ko in White Plains federal court sought unspecified damages on behalf of Chang and other alleged victims of Shen Yun, … saying it has subjected some children who perform for it to harsh conditions, including long hours for little pay.” – AP
  
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• Cincinnati Symphony CEO Announces Retirement

  26-11-2024 14:00 via yahoo.com
  
  “After leading the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for seven years, CSO President and CEO Jonathan Martin has announced that he will retire on Feb. 16. He will be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Robert McGrath as the acting president and CEO.” – The Cincinnati Enquirer (Yahoo!)
  
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• Forbidden Territories / The Traumatic Surreal review – coal sacks and furry tongues hit West Yorkshire

  26-11-2024 12:53
  
  ★★★★☆ / ★★★★☆
  Hepworth Wakefield / Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
  Showcasing visions of tiny, sinister vipers and unnervingly hairy hearts, a pair of exhibitions celebrate the centenary of the movement that aimed to go beyond the rational and into the realm of dreams and nightmaresWriting in the years after the first world war, French writer and poet André Breton lamented that under “the pretence of civilisation and progress,
  
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