Art is activism! Here’s an exciting look at some creative humanitarian art projects happening around the world, from sandbag subterfuge to cellphone camera-wielding teenagers. Academic activism is not without its charms, as well.
A is for Art is for Activist
Regietheather
Is that a severed prostitute’s nipple in my Mozart? At City Journal, Heather MacDonald mourns the rise of slick, irreverent productions of classical operas in Europe known as Regietheater (director’s theater), a theory of opera direction that holds the director’s take on an opera to be as (0r more) important than the artist’s text.
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Dog Eat Dog
“I haven’t been able to write since the moment I started thinking I could or should be making money as a writer.” Meritt Tierce with a refreshingly candid piece on writer’s block and how success doesn’t always negative the likelihood of failure.
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Deep In Yakuza Territory
Photographer Christopher Jue journeyed with People Who Eat Darkness author Richard Lloyd Parry into the four-story headquarters of the Kudō-kai, a Yakuza group headquartered on the Kyushu island of Japan. “My mental note to myself,” says Jue, “was ‘once I step foot into their property, anything can happen.’”
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Bolaño At the Movies
Writing for Slant, Bill Weber reviews Il Futuro, a film is based on an as-yet-untranslated novella by Roberto Bolaño. Previously, JW McCormack expounded on the prospect of adapting the Chilean author’s masterpiece, 2666, into a motion picture.
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Toni Morrison in Her Own Words
A new documentary pays tribute to Toni Morrison's illustrious, inspiring career and gives the author a chance to reflect on her decades of writing.
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