Of particular interest would the November 9, Open Space Forum, which organizers say “will explore several key factors in the development of contemporary culture that we consider important. They are: the development of international partnerships, the establishment of independent art spaces, as well as the development of new audiences and international mobility of artists and creative products.” Continue reading »
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IN EXHIBITION | Philip Smith’s psychologically-charged canvases on view at New York’s Jason McCoy Gallery
Painter Philip Smith works the canvas like a physicist’s blackboard. Using found imagery, he can postulate new image formulations and equations. The paintings in this Philip Smith: Sign Language, on view at New York’s Jason McCoy Gallery starting November 17, are characterized by slightly visible erased imagery. The effect is akin to memory and ghost-like. Continue reading »
ART & POLITICS | Hope lingers in Sarajevo’s Festival MESS, one of the Balkan region’s most important festivals
Dino Mustafic, director of Festival MESS, describes this year’s Festival as conquest for happiness and hope. Mustafic, one of the most important theater directors in the region, adds that the theater in the Balkans is “struggling to survive.” Over the last five years, Festival MESS’s budget was slashed by 73 percent. Continue reading »
INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM SEMINAR | LGBT issues and human rights coverage explored at Boston’s LGBT Media Summit
My aim is to emphasize opportunities and strategies for the LGBT Media here in the U.S. to cover international issues and human-rights concerns that affect LGBT communities around the world. LGBT journalists have had few opportunities to work as foreign correspondents. That’s especially the case in today’s media environment, with sharp cutbacks by many news outlets in their international coverage. Continue reading »
BRAVE OR SUICIDAL? | What happened when a Russian gay rights activist staged a lone protest on an annual military holiday
Often it is worth questioning the democracy of social media by just re-viewing a second time and digging a little bit deeper. The video below which documents Kalugin’s confrontation with Russian airborne troops has gone viral. What’s also spread like wildfire is the outraged and sometimes ill-informed commentary on it. It is easy to lash out at Russian government officials. If you look closer at this story though, the surface is not what it seems. Here, the Russian special forces turned out to be the good guys. Continue reading »
PRO VS. CON #DUMPSTOLI | How does the boycott of a Latvian vodka change Putin’s anti-gay laws and save lives of Russian LGBT youth?
The #dumpstoli campaign has been a global public-relations success. But have the protests for public awareness of repressive anti-gay laws in Russia been misdirected and unfairly targeted a long-time ally of the LGBT community? Will the Dump Vodka protests actually change the minds of the Russian parliament? Here is my on-the-ground investigation of yesterday’s protest in front of the Russian Consulate in New York. Continue reading »
FESTIVAL WATCH | Documentary theater seeks social change via international “Theater of the Voiceless”
To track this creative upswing, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Goethe-Institut Washington, Embassy of Switzerland and Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics have launched “Theater of the Voiceless,” an international symposium and festival on documentary theater that runs June 16 to June 19 at various venues in Washington, D.C. Continue reading »
Postcards from the Inge interview, Part 3 | A Ripple Effect
The following interview originally appeared in Postcards from the Inge, a blog. It is re-posted here with the kind permission of the author. Interview by AMANDA WHITE THIETJE Well, here it is, friends—the final installment of the Randy Gener trilogy. Thank you for tuning in this week to read Randy’s words, and many thanks to Mr. Gener … Continue reading »
Putin’s Pussy problem | Feminist punk group Pussy Riot calls Vladimir Putin’s Russia “repressive” and “totalitarian”
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of the three women, said, “If this political system throws itself against three girls … it shows this political system is afraid of truth.” She called the charges against them a “political order for repression” and denounced Putin’s “totalitarian-authoritarian system.” Continue reading »
Deadlines | New York’s “hotINK at the Lark” seeks foreign scripts for 2013 festival by Oct. 15
“hotINK at the Lark 2013″ is seeking to present new work by six playwrights from outside the United States in public readings at the Lark Play Development Center, April 17-22, 2013. Continue reading »
GPS | ROMANIA: Horia-Roman Patapievici, curajos erou, a declarat că va demisiona de la conducerea Institutului Cultural Român”
A gallery exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York displayed the Cărtureşti spirit. Cărtureşti is a cultural venue that functions as a bookshop, tea studio, and project space, taking direct action towards revitalizing the Romanian artistic life, urban pleasures and social responsibilities. Continue reading »
Currently in production | Play excerpt, models, design sketches for Pacific Beat Collective’s “Tala” at HERE Arts Center, July 28 to 31
“Tala” will perform in a workshop production July 28th to 31st at HERE Arts Center in downtown SoHo in New York City. The play, a work-in-progress, is a critique on the nature of political revolutions. Click here to read a play excerpt and see the work of the designers and actors as they prepare for the production. Continue reading »
Putin’s Pussy problem | Amnesty International demands that Russia release anti-Putin punk singers detained after church performance
Three young women are being detained by Russian authorities for allegedly performing a protest song in a cathedral as part of a feminist punk group Pussy Riot. If found guilty, they could be jailed for up to 7 years just for exercising their free speech. The three women are currently in pre-trial detention, which has been extended to January 2013. Continue reading »
Romania’s gypsy brass music phenom, Fanfare Ciocarlia, tours North America in September
Everyone who has heard Fanfare Ciocarlia agrees on one thing: No brass band plays as fast. Their breakneck speed, technical chops, ripping rhythms and sweet’n sour horns are different from any other brass band on earth. Continue reading »
Slideshow | How to walk over a Balkan performance artist
Want to see how they built Igor Josifov’s “2-Dimensional”? Click on my slideshow. In this unusual performance, the artist is an observer as much as he is observed while the spectator becomes a performer. Continue reading »
Performance review | Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine breaks glass, sexual taboos in his intimate video of a disabled friend
Takamine was Kimura’s caretaker for five years during the 1990s. Takamine says that he had learned to communicate with the disabled Kimura through gestures. He realized that Kimura’s sexual desires could not be met without the help of other people. Aiding Kimura in the satisfaction of his sexual needs was a gesture of friendship and affection of Takamine’s part. Continue reading »
Performance review (NSFW) | Italy’s Ricci/Forte serves up queer fantasia in “Macadamia Nut Brittle”
Macadamia Nut Brittle is excoriating, sexy, hallucinatory, viciously funny. The plot steals from the mode of a reality-TV show, but its stance is subversive and punk. As the noisy evening unfolds, Ricci/Forte detonates, again and again and again, the illusory logic of this TV genre Continue reading »
Iranian painter fuses kabuki, Bosch, Persian folklore in Dubai solo show
Judging from Zad’s paintings in the catalogue, I would add that his work draws a great deal of its energy from the lush anarchy of the 15th-century paintings of Hieronymus Bosch Continue reading »
Soho gallery presents performance art by Maria Jose Arjona, a Colombian
“Sound as fluid, sound as connector, sound as image, sound as memory, sound, body, sound…time suspended in and by a gesture…also a sound…a minimal voice.” Continue reading »
Plight of the Roma surfaces in leading Kosovar playwright’s latest political drama
Kosovar playwright Jeton Neziraj describis his play: “This is a political drama about chaotic post-war Kosovo, but, before all, it is a drama about unwanted Roma in Europe. Away from those common stereotypes about Roma, away from that exoticism which usually accompanies Roma topics.” Continue reading »