Serenity, sometimes, blooms wherever you make it. Late yesterday afternoon, I stopped by the Chelsea storefront of Miya Shoji, a boutique Japanese furniture store that sells elegant wood tables, tatami mats, and lanterns, for an impromptu traditional Japanese tea ceremony.
Daily Archives: January 8, 2013
Documentary Tells the Stories of Forgotten Immigrants
HONG KONG — As big as the world may be and as connected as it may seem, there are invisible worlds that most of us know nothing about. Take Greece, for example, a country that, aside from its well-documented economic crisis and accompanying five years of straight recession, has been dealing with the consequences of an EU treaty ratified in Dublin in 2003. The Dublin II Treaty says that applications for EU asylum seekers can only be evaluated in the country where migrants enter. Because of geography, this has essentially forced Greece into becoming the main processor of all asylum seekers and political refugees flooding into the European Union in the past decade.
Kickstarter Raised $274M Last Year
Here and there in recent months, there have been grumblings about Kickstarter burnout. There have also been Kickstarter indecision crises — how do you know when to pledge, and how much? — and Kickstarter skepticism. But to all the naysayers, nonbelievers, and doubters, Kickstarter might now present this: stats from 2012, which show that the crowd-funding platform raised the impressive sum of $274.4 million last year. And that’s just the money raised — some $319.8 million was pledged, which I feel compelled to point out is more than double the National Endowment of the Arts’s fiscal year 2012 budget ($146 million).
How Do Arts Organizations Use the Internet?
Museums sometimes seem to have a split identity — some institutions are on the bleeding edge of innovation, taking full advantage of the internet and technology in spreading access to their collections and programming. Others are stuck in the past, operating just how they might have decades ago with administrations unwilling to push technological initiatives. A report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on “Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies” provides a fascinating insight into just how museums and other cultural institutions view their relationship to the web.
Video Artist Tony Oursler Turns David Bowie into a Doll
“Where Are We Now” is the first single from “The Next Day,” David Bowie’s first studio album in 10 years, and the surreal pop star is breaking the silence with something memorable — a music video created by Tony Oursler, a British video and installation artist known for projecting body parts onto suspended spheres. It’s a match made in spacey art heaven.
Connecticut Town Plans to Collect and Burn Violent Video Games
You may have thought (hoped?) book/media burning was a thing of the past, but this Saturday, a town some 30 miles from Newtown, Connecticut, the site of a horrific elementary-school shooting last month, will hold a violent video games drive. Organizers will collect violent video games, throw them in a dumpster, and then destroy them, probably by incineration.
Art Rx: Brooklyn/Montreal Edition
This week, the doctor wants you to focus, and her suggestion is the exciting Brooklyn/Montreal art exchange to cure your ills.