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[interviews]
 stephen beaupre
Steve Beaupre has been active on the Montreal scene for more than ten years. Having cut his teeth in......read more
 jarrah gurrie
Jarrah is a director, cinematographer and editor. His filmmaking prior to studying at the Tisch School......read more
more interviews >>
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Underground currents of fertilization. When one thinks of the 20th century artistic movements, one still tends to name those who got the most press at their time, gaining thus "historical importance", and those who were widely copied, garanteeing their inheritance. Certain movements remain unsung, or seen as "just experiments" which did not have much consequence. Gertrude Stein is famous, alright, but regarded sometimes as an isolated anomaly, despite the fact that she gave us works as "Tender Buttons" in 1914 or the "Stanzas in Meditation" of 1932. How people can waste time saying that Jack Kerouac "invented" a "more spontaneous and experimental prose" in "On the road" of 1957, with its extremely conservative narrative, when Gertrude Stein had already written the "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", is something that escapes my comprehension. A poet like Mina Loy (1882 - 1966), who published her outrageous "Songs to Joannes" in 1917, is still a secret tip among passionate readers. The dadaists of Zurich are many times mentioned only as forerunners of the "more important" surrealists, who were also very conservative when compared to the much more iconoclastic works of the dadaists. The surrealists kept syntax untouched, in their literary works, and the models of representation tied to realist techniques in their paintings. Their work is seen as "more serious", easier to catalogue and file under "High Art". The extremely innovative and groundbreaking poems of Hans Arp remain forgotten, as the work of Kurt Schwitters or Pierre Albert-Birot. The paintings of Salvador Dali look better in calendars, of course, than those of Max Ernst. But it was these artists, along with Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Theo van Doesburg, plus Hans Arp, or Schwitters, who kept an underground flow of iconoclasm and refusal to settle or sell, which influenced some of the most exciting writers in the post-war era, such as Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery in the United States, or the Vienna Group (HC Artmann, Ernst Jandl, Gerhard Ruhm, Konrad Bayer), with visual art influx on the Actionists, also in Vienna (Otto Muehl, among others), or the Flux artists in New York. These destructing creators, non-artists, anti-artists, predict the death of the artist-demiurgue, and invoke the need of what I call cultural interventionists. Someone to piss again on the standards of good taste, as Bruce Nauman or Paul MacCarthy have done, or Kate Bush and Yoko Ono, or as Adilia Lopes and Angelica Freitas are doing. It is deadly serious how most have no sense of humor. Lets piss on them. - Ricardo Domeneck
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| NEWS |
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| 09-19-07
Building As Digital Image
Boston public broadcaster WGBH has a new home. "This is the first serious example in Boston of a kind of architecture we're beginning to see elsewhere, in Times Square, for example, in which the architectural façade of a building is no longer made of the traditional brick, stone, steel or glass but is, instead, an ever-changing, programmable image. Call it digital architecture. Architecture and media become one... That nightmare, though, is in the future, and for now, here at WGBH, digital architecture looks pretty good. Find out more on Boston Globe.
| 09-19-07
Why Don't Politicians Celebrate The Arts?
Politicians worry, I suppose, that an enjoyment of the arts will mark them out as elitist. And yet, statistics tell us, far more of us are attending live performances than are going to football matches. Get more information on The Guardian.
| 09-18-07
The U.S Versus The Musicologist?
A musicologist who worked in the US for ten years was suddenly barred from the country last year. Her case has become a cause célèbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgar's music. Get more information about this on The New York Times.
| 09-18-07
Poetry For The Computer Age
What happens to poetry in the Digital Age? In one of the first academic works in the field, Swedish researcher Maria Engberg has studied how the ability of the computer to combine words, images, movement, and sounds is impacting both writing and reading. More about modern poetry on Science Daily.
| 09-18-07
French President To Architects: Audacity Please!
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would benefit from more 'audacious' designs at the opening of a new $111-million museum dedicated to French architecture, located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Read all about this on CBC news.
| 09-17-07
An Army Of One (None Alike)
There are 8,000 warriors in the Terracotta Army and yet no two figures are alike, and it is not just a matter of superficial detail. No scarf or moustache is exactly alike, and every pair of shoes is slightly different. But what is far more astonishing is that every warrior is his own man: that every man stands out from the next. Surely the terracotta soldiers are in some sense actual portraits? Read all about it on The Observer.
| 09-17-07
Women Filmmakers Thrive - Just Not In Hollywood
Hollywood is male-driven and the women directors who made it on to the list of the 250 top-grossing American films in 2006 comprise only 7 per cent of the total number of directors, according to an annual survey conducted at San Diego State University. The number was the same in 2005. Women screenwriters made up 10 per cent of the total - but that number is going down. In 1998, it was 13 per cent. The Toronto International Film Festival, and by implication the international film world, presents a different picture. This year's tally of 52 women directors on the list of 332 new films amounts to more than 15 per cent. Read more on Toronto Star.
| 09-17-07
Does Less Work + More Slacking = Greater Creativity?
Goofing off is not a waste of time -- well, not always. Exhibit A: Albert Einstein. He was a world-class loafer. In 1905, he was working as a clerk at a Swiss patent office, spending a lot of time spacing out. A 'respectable federal ink pisser' is how Einstein described himself. Yet it was at work, daydreaming one day, watching a builder on a nearby rooftop, that he experienced 'the happiest thought of my life' -- a thought that soon blossomed into his 'special theory of relativity. Find out more on Los Angeles Times.
| 09-14-07
The Politician As Actor
You may have noticed that Americans get very excited about the nexus of performers and politicians. Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the two leading examples, and what about actor-turned-senator-turned-actor-again Fred Thompson's recent entry into the presidential race? Read the rest of this article on The Guardian.
| 09-14-07
Male Nudity Increasing On Screen
Slowly but surely a seismic shift is occurring across the entertainment landscape: men are dropping trou, and penises and testicles are seemingly everywhere, flapping in the breeze. This year, major franchise players like Lord of the Rings’ and X-Men’s Sir Ian McKellen (“Gandalf’s Gonads!” cheered the British press) and Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe have continued the theater’s (always ahead of its cinematic cousin) tradition of disrobing on the stage. Find out more about male nudity on New York Observer.
| 09-14-07
Chinese Warriors Break British Museum Ticket Records
The British Museum has smashed ticket sales records with an exhibition of China's terra cotta warriors. By 10 AM the museum had sold 150,403 tickets, breaking all previous records for advance sales. Organisers are frantically calculating how they can extend opening hours until April, to admit a total now expected to reach half a million. More about this on The Guardian.
| 09-13-07
Architecture In The Service Of Beautiful Luxury
A new apartment building in San Francisco puts paid to the idea that there's nothing new under the sun. The building "has a square, 50-by-50-foot facade with floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors, all shaded by the exterior louvered blinds. Above the ground floor, a four-story high, 12-foot-wide light well spanned by glass or metal bridges, cleaves the middle of the structure, front to back. It is a remarkable addition to the streetscape." More importantly, it's functional, allowing homeowners to create uniquely beautiful combinations of light and shade at the push of a button. Read all about this on San Francisco Chronicle.
| 09-13-07
Riccardo Muti - Freelancer
Having previously led the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the London Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and, for 19 years, Milan's La Scala, he is now, 'How do you say? A free sword. A free lance. What can I tell you? I am a Southern Italian man, which means that by nature I am lazy. So I am enjoying my freedom'. More about this on Chicago Sun-Times.
| 09-13-07
Bronx Film School Looks To The Future
The Bronx's aptly named Ghetto Film School might seem like an experiment in art and populism, but for its young participants, who give up their summers and weekends to learn the craft of filmmaking from some of the biggest names in the business, it's a lifeline. The school is opening a spacious annex near its original location, financed by a $1.2 million grant from the city. Ghetto Film is also working with the Department of Education to develop a cinema-themed high school that would join the elite ranks of specialized schools like the La Guardia High School for the arts. Find out more about this on The New York Times.
| 09-12-07
Where Did The Intellectuals Go?
Once, we are told, a hardy species of freelance thinker roamed the landscape of the mind. This breed was independent, fiercely so. It practiced social and cultural criticism but never used jargon, and its accessible manner won a large audience. It prospered until not much later than the 1950s. Indeed, it is possible to speak of that decade as a kind of golden age. But then something happened. More particularly, the 1960s happened, and the 1970s-- an era of disintegrating consensus, of proliferating theoretical schemata, of perverse refusals to follow the guiding example of one's elders. Smart young people decided not to write well.
Read more about this on Bookforum.
| 09-12-07
In Museum's Galleries, A Bombardment Of 9/11 Images
It isn't memory that is the issue. It is commemoration. Memory, at least right now, is readily summoned. Commemoration is something else altogether. The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, for example, is not a commemoration. 'Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,' which opens today, is exclusively about memory.... Find out more on The New York Times.
| 09-12-07
Digital Era Made For Classical Music
Musically speaking, the classical genre has proved to be ideal for a digital era. The classical customer is technologically savvy and more likely to buy in bulk, and the viral nature of the Net has allowed the music to be heard by new audiences, fueling overall sales. Get more information on Newsweek.
| 09-11-07
Trumbo Documentary Eyes Red-Scare Era's Complexity
Sixty years after a Congressional panel grilled 10 uncooperative writers, directors and producers about their supposed Communist connections, Hollywood still quarrels over the heroes and villains of its Red Scare. ... But on Monday night in Toronto, one of the era's acknowledged heroes, the jailed and blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, was expected to deliver some posthumous words that might finally put to rest the hunt for good guys and bad. The admonition occurs in the first few minutes of 'Trumbo,' a documentary.... More about this on The New York Times.
| 09-11-07
The "Miracle" Of El Sistema
Such adjectives are bandied about so often in the classical music world that they have lost their true meaning, but miraculous is the only possible word to describe performances that reached the highest professional standards, given by teenagers from a country which - before El Sistema - had no meaningful tradition of classical music. One man's dream has ensured that Venezuela is not only the first South American country to play classical music better than football but that its youth orchestra is the finest advertisement any country could wish for. Read more on The Telegraph.
| 09-11-07
Music Industry Making Peace With Internet Broadcasters?
The music industry and online broadcasters have been duking it out for months over the royalties that should be paid to record labels and artists, but there are signs that the logjam could break as early as this month. Find the entire article on Los Angeles Times.
| 09-10-07
Would Any Other Artist's Death Lead The News?
When Pavarotti died last week something very unusual happened. The death of an artist - no. It was that the death of a classical practitioner of an elite art form led many news bulletins here in, and no doubt around much of the world. All right, Pavarotti was a special case, someone who transcended the rigid categories which divide music. ... But the ability to command the news headlines is unusual. When was the last time it happened in this way? Read all about this on The Guardian.
| 09-10-07
At The Movies, Boy Nerds Rule.
Hollywood is fat and happy, but the Summer of 2007 left many feeling oddly alienated, as if the big party had been going on somewhere else. More than ever, if you don't belong to one of Hollywood's cherished demographic groups, you're simply not invited to the dance. This summer, teens ruled, especially teen boys. Read more about the dominance of teen boys on Washington Post.
| 09-10-07
In Creative Realm, Gods And Artists Sometimes Clash
"The very idea that art purports to be a creative activity can offend a man of faith," Peter Conrad notes. But is it really nonsensical to praise a man of genius for creating a painting, a poem or a tune, just because he did not invent the canvas and the colours, the words or the notes? Art is a magical activity, and anyone who creates the likeness of a man seems to be exercising the power that created man in the first place. More about this on The Telegraph.
| 09-07-07
Ambassador Jazz
The US State Department has long made use of American artists, writers, and musicians as "cultural ambassadors," sending them around the world to (hopefully) improve the image of the larger country just by doing what they do. In recent months, the program has been focusing on exporting jazz, that quintessentially American musical form. Find out more on The Christian Science Monitor .
| 09-07-07
Apple, Starbucks Unveil Major Partnership
Over the next couple of years, nearly 6,000 Starbucks coffee shops will be turned into digital entertainment centers selling music and movies on Apple's behalf -- the perfect complement to Apple's wildly successful chain of retail stores. If the rollout proceeds as planned, the deal could be a paradigm shift, a big nail in the coffin for the CD, and for brick-and-mortar music stores. Get more information about this on Wired.
| 09-07-07
Two New Electronic Book Initiatives
In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year. Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database. Read more about e-books on The New York Times.
| 09-06-07
Venice honours director Burton
Director Tim Burton, whose films include Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, has been honoured with a career award at the Venice Film Festival.
Festival organisers called Burton "one of America's bravest, most visionary and innovative film-makers".
Burton received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award from his long-time collaborator, actor Johnny Depp, in a red carpet event. More about this on BBC.
| 09-06-07
Opera legend Pavarotti dies at 71
Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti has died at his home in the northern city of Modena, his manager has announced. The singer, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, was 71. His charismatic performances - particularly alongside fellow tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras - helped bring a new audience to opera. Pavarotti had cancer surgery in July 2006 in New York, five months after his last performance. He had not made any public appearances since then.
Pavarotti was truly legendary. His unmistakable tenor voice caused opera, particularly Italian opera, to soar to new heights of awareness and appreciation around the world. Off stage, he reveled in the good life, was urbane, witty and had a mesmerizing ability to attract great looking young women.
Flasher.com publisher Ran Jak said, "Dining with Pavarotti was a rare treat. He had something highly worthwhile to say about almost any subject, and constantly used his famously good humor to soften the effect of his most searing comments."
Read more about the loss of Pavarotti in The New York Times Online.
| 09-06-07
The Dictator And The Movies
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is obsessed with movies. He's taken personal interest in production, and there's even a museum dedicated to his movie activities. His infatuation with film is obvious from the museum's first room, where an entire wall is covered with a massive list of every occasion when Mr. Kim gave an order to North Korean movie producers. It turns out Mr. Kim has issued an incredible total of 11,890 instructions to North Korean filmmakers since the 1960s. More about this on Boston Globe.
| 09-06-07
Coming: Games You Control By Thinking
Several makers of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs -- devices that facilitate operating a computer by thought alone -- claim the technology is poised to jump from the medical sector into the consumer gaming world in 2008. More about this on Wired.
| 09-05-07
Klaxons Win Mercury Album Prize
The "new rave" group from south London scooped the £20,000 prize for their debut Myths of the Near Future.
Singer Jamie Reynolds said they deserved to beat Winehouse because she made a "retro record and we've made the most forward-thinking record". more about the Klaxons and the Mercury album prize on BBC.
You can also find a videointerview with The Klaxons here.
| 09-05-07
Is Being A Rock Star Is Bad For Your Health
Do rock and pop stars really die young or simply slip from public attention and die decades later, uncelebrated? A team of public health doctors from Liverpool John Moores University put the issue to the test. They assembled a list of 1,064 famous musicians, including Elvis Presley and Eminem. Then they worked out how many had died, and at what age, comparing their mortality with that of a matched sample of ordinary citizens from the US and Europe. Read more about this study on The Times
| 09-05-07
Hugo Chavez Puts Up Millions More For Music Ed
The Venezuelan leader announced the creation of 'Misión Música', a government-funded effort to give tuition and instruments to 1 million impoverished children. He made the announcement on his Sunday television show, Aló Presidente, after reading out rapturous British reviews of the youth orchestra's performances last month at London's Royal Albert Hall. Find out more on The Guardian.
| 09-04-07
Who Should Pay For Music On The Radio?
This summer's lobbying effort by a new recording industry-sponsored group, MusicFirst, has breathed new life into the drive to make radio pay artists -- and not just writers and publishers -- for playing their songs, but the issue is as old as Top 40. What's different now is that the music industry, in deep trouble, is casting around for ways to make up for the steep decline in revenue that hit the recording business after digital downloading changed the business's basic structure. Read the entire article on Washington Post .
| 09-04-07
Researchers uncover Leonardo da Vinci's method stroke for stroke
Italian researchers say they have been able to reconstruct for the first time, stroke by stroke, how Renaissance master painter Leonardo da Vinci created his works of art.
Investigators at the University of Florence have uncovered Leonardo's method of creating his works by using a scientific device to analyze the painting Madonna of the Yarnwinder. Find out more about this on CBC.
| 09-04-07
That Song Thats Stuck In Your Head
Scientists call songs that get stuck in your head 'earworms' after the German Ohrwurm. We don't know a lot about how or why they happen -- it's hard to get funding to study this type of thing -- but we know a little. Like, it tends not to be a whole song that gets stuck in your head, just 15-20 seconds of one, and it tends to be a simple song that even non-singers can hum without effort. More about earworms on Washington Post.
| 09-03-07
Burning Man And Black Rock Intelligence
Paul Addis, the San Francisco playwright arrested Tuesday for allegedly torching Burning Man's giant effigy five days early, won't admit to setting the icon on fire. But he effusively praises the action -- whoever did it -- calling it a badly needed "reality check" for the desert art festival. Addis, 35, says Burning Man has turned into an 'Alterna-Disney,' while the early burn acted as a protest aimed at the event's increasing commercialization. Read the interview on Wired.
| 09-03-07
Recirculating The Classics
Despite all the talk of a classical recording glut, enthusiasts know that many of the greatest recordings from decades past are all but lost, unavailable to the public at any price. ArkivMusic, an online retailer that launched in 2002, is out to reverse that trend and restore as much of the deep catalog as possible. In addition to stocking every classical CD in print, it now offers what it calls ArkivCDs: reissues of out-of-print CDs produced on demand for the consumer. More about this on Boston Globe
| 09-03-07
Hollywood's Hot Summer
The movie industry had a great summer of '07, despite critical complaints about the quality of many blockbusters. By parsing out high-profile movies every week, including through most of August - a throwaway month in past years - the overall box office soared to a record $4 billion... Another record was broken when four movies hauled in more than $300 million apiece. A fifth is close to crossing that threshold by the end of Labor Day weekend. Read more about this on San Francisco Chronicle.
| 08-31-07
Japan Embracing Canadian Music
A maple-leaf logo has been added to Canadian CDs in Japan since 2004 as part of an ambitious campaign to create a distinctive Canadian brand here. And while revenues for Canadian pre-recorded music are collapsing at home, Japan is emerging as a crucial market for many Canadian performers, from top-name singers to smaller independent bands. Find out more about this on The Globe & Mail.
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