The Nando story says…
Widespread sharing of songs over the Internet does not reduce the overall amount spent on music purchases, and may even increase it, according to a study released Friday.
The report by Jupiter Media Metrix, a high-tech consulting firm, challenges the assertions of the major music labels that the industry is being victimized by piracy of music over the Internet.
No kidding! Do you know anyone into file-sharing that doesn’t have a CD addiction problem?
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The Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead.
He was an odd one: openly gay, anti-immigrant right-winger. The AP story contains the execrable sentence:
Fortuyn, a former academic and columnist who led an openly gay lifestyle, had dictated debate during the campaign with verbal attacks on the country’s growing Muslim population and strident criticism of the national government.
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We spent a few hours in Williamsburg yesterday, lookin’ at art as one of my college friends always said.
There are 2 cool shows at Pierogi 2000 – a French artist named Christophe Cuzin (conceptual alert – check out the info on him and the drawings in the office), and Lisa Kereszi — a GREAT photography exhibit. She goes on the “to buy” list once I recover from the list of recent benefits.
Eyewash is presenting “Window Shopping” — 30 Brooklyn artists displaying work in shop windows along Bedford. We picked up a map at Pierogi, or you can get the list at Eyewash’s web site.
Finally, there’s a big smart show at Momenta, curated by Deborah Kass. It’s one of the best group shows I’ve seen in a while, ranging from 70s conceptual and feminist work to Hiroshi Sunairi and Eric Doeringer. Go!
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I came across this page while searching for web pages on Ohad Naharin. The Frankfurt Ballet certainly has an interesting approach to photographing its dancers.
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We saw Naharin’s Virus by the Batsheva Dance Company last night at BAM — Fabulous, theatrical work and brilliant dancing by a beautiful international troupe of dancers. It’s a collaboration from the outspokenly political (and anti-war) choreographer Ohad Naharin and the Arab Palestinian musician Habib Allah Jamal, and uses the text of Peter Handke‘s Offending The Audience. There was an amazing lightness, and animal energy, to the movements. I think the NY Times review is pretty good.
There was a Q&A with Naharin in the Times also, but it doesn’t show up in the archives. But thanks to the magic of Google, here it is.
You know, I’m very informed about what’s going on. And I have very clear opinions. Right now, there’s a real clash between my politics and my country’s politics. It’s very tragic what is going on because it’s obvious that eventually there will be one of two possibilities: total disaster in the region or a big compromise and peace treaty. So, if we don’t want to choose the total disaster, then it will be a peace treaty. And if the peace treaty, why wait? Why make all these mistakes? Why not just compromise now?
Obviously there are millions of people in this region who don’t particularly wish well for us. But the present acts of the Sharon government don’t make it safer. It’s not a government that seeks negotiations. It’s a government that has an illusion of power. And that’s something that interests me.
I think a lot of people in Israel live in an illusion, and that Sharon has infected a lot of people with his phobia. The phobia is really a lack of guilt. It’s blaming everybody but yourself. It actually causes you to lose any kind of sensitivity to the suffering of other people. And it’s kind of a chronic thing. That’s the illusion that I’m talking about. So maybe what I’m trying a little bit to evoke an awareness, just the ability to look at ourselves from a little bit of distance and perspective.
The crowd was a very interesting mix, with sexy Israelis, NYC arty people — Jackie Hoffman was in my row, and families with children. There was a smart Jewish family in front of me — mom, dad, and two young daughters — who seemed to get a kick out of the section where a young woman tells her mother, on the day of her Bat Mitzvah, “God is an invention, just like pizza.”
We had to go through metal detectors to enter BAM, and one of the security guards told James that he liked his anti-war button. James told him he would give him one if he would wear it, and he said, “certainly!” James always carries extras for such an occasion, and recently gave one to a man walking with a rescue dog in midtown.
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Last night we saw John Guare’s A Few Stout Individuals at Signature Theatre Company. While not a perfect play (the ending seems to peter out), it’s a very clever rumination on history, and has one of the best casts I’ve even seen in a play. I think he was trying to reach for more surrealism than he was able to pull off — maybe he’s afraid of confusing the kind of audience he has now. I didn’t find it particularly unusual as a play, but the generally 60ish crowd around me all talked about how “weird” it was.
It’s a huge cast (13 actors) and is very well directed. The standouts included Polly Holliday, Donald Moffat, and William Sadler as a perfect Samuel Clemens. I felt like Mark Twain had returned from the dead. The woman who played the great diva Adelina Patti (Cheryl Evans) was a real opera singer — I saw her in Akhnaten a couple of years ago in Boston. James Yaegashi was quite dashing as The Emperor of Japan.
I had never seen Donald Moffat on stage — he has a great presence as a physical actor and made a believable U.S. Grant at the end of his life.
The title comes from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons”.
You can get cheaper tickets right now while it’s in previews. For my impoverished actor/artist friends, I recommend calling to see if you can usher/volunteer to see it. I think it’s worth seeing just for the cast.
One more thing: The actress playing the Empress of Japan, Michi Barall, kept looking at James and me as if she knew or recognized us; we were in the front row. Hmm… other than in plays, do I know her?
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We saw Dennis Cleveland last night. This is the excellent opera — but not a Puccini-type opera — by Mikel Rouse that many of my friends have heard me rave about after it was done at The Kitchen a few years ago. Here’s more info including a link to a video clip. I don’t think the sound is that great on the video clip.
I think I liked it more at The Kitchen — cooler crowd than at something sponsored by Lincoln center, but I still highly recommend going. You’re not going to see a work like this very often.
Here are a couple of MP3s from the CD:
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Check it out! Put an address in MapQuest and you can now get aerial photos of the area, such as… Chelsea Gardens
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Lovely — the site of last weeks’s explosion 3 blocks from here has been declared a toxic waste site.
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Read the page for my friend Misa’s Fragile Art project. Maybe you’ve seen the posters like this on the streets?
Here are some locations from her most recent e-mail update:
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