A spectre of evaluation is haunting the arts. The relationships between artists and their audiences are being mediated by an ever-more complex system that determines the value of art. It’s a system driven…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Arts + Culture – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 4926 - 4950 of 5165 articles
Can we predict which films will turn a massive profit? Studio honchos would surely like to think so. In fact, an empirical and scientific study of the feature films that returned the highest rate of profit…
We Shall Overcome became the theme song of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. It is most identified with Pete Seeger, the great American musician who died January 27. Yet as Arlo Guthrie…
An exhibit by the Australian fashion company Perks and Mini (PAM) on display at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as part of its Melbourne Now exhibition has been accused of expropriating and exploiting…
Today is the Chinese Lunar New Year – the Year of the Horse – according to the Western Gregorian Calendar. All good? Light the firecrackers! But wait … According to last year’s Southern Hemisphere Australian…
Earlier this week, New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O'Connor – AKA Lorde – won two Grammys, including best song for the sleeper hit Royals and – almost – topped Triple J’s Hottest 100 (her song Royals came…
When Downton Abbey finally returns to our tellies for a fourth season (we hope it will be “soon” but Channel Seven is keeping its powder dry) it’ll be sans its scheming troublemaker. Australian fans are…
When, some eight or nine years ago, I began researching the responses of Australian and refugee theatre makers, filmmakers and writers to asylum seeker debates it was very easy to share the hopes for political…
** **We’re all, it seems, familiar with the terms “Dreamtime” and “The Dreaming” in relation to Aboriginal Australian culture, but – as I noted in the first part of this series – such terms are grossly…
“Alex Chilton’s dead!” exclaimed a friend of mine when I told him I was going to a concert devoted to a Big Star album at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre. It’s easy to see the line of reasoning: tickets are being…
Godfrey Reggio’s film Visitors, which screened last week with a live Philip Glass score at the Sydney Opera House, represents the continuation of an aesthetic project that began with the landmark Koyaanisqatsi…
Academy Award nominations rarely enter into the domain of politics, and certainly have not delved into Indonesian politics in the past. This year, however, is different. US-British director Joshua Oppenheimer’s…
Australia’s national youth station, Triple J, has come in for some criticism lately, with a spate of articles accusing it of homogenising Australian music tastes or excluding too many local acts from the…
In August 2012, I was invited by the Sydney Festival to work with Wesley Enoch, Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, to assist in developing Black Diggers, currently playing as part of the…
Australia Day looms. Across the country, ceremonies large and small will stand for the national anthem. Lots of golden soil, nature’s gifts and girting by sea. The national anthem is ubiquitous now at…
The Wolf of Wall Street is Martin Scorsese’s Scarface – and that isn’t meant as a compliment. I watched Brian De Palma’s 1983 film again recently. I had been looking forward to it: the Blu-ray edition…
On Sunday, “music’s biggest night,” the 56th Grammy Awards, will be held in Los Angeles – no doubt with the customary level of humility and circumspection so characteristic of the music industry. Commentators…
In 2002, Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi, formerly a Warlpiri teacher at the Lajamanu School in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory, where I worked for many years first as a linguist and then as school…
We’ve all heard — or heard of — Mongolian throat singing and Peking Opera. But a new Chinese musical tradition is beginning to reverberate around the world – and will be showcased this week at the Sydney…
Pope Francis announced this month he will visit the Middle East in May this year. While it has been foreshadowed since the first weeks of his papacy, this event will place the Church’s first South American…
The recent outcry in Sydney about “alcohol-fuelled violence” has many people asking whether young men are out of control, or whether alcohol, or our hyper-masculine culture, might be to blame. Now the…
The rules of Cadavre Exquis are basic. Four directors, each responsible for 15 minutes of material. Each brings one actor. This is the basis of Cadavre Exquis, a performance staged at Sydney’s Carriageworks…
Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper that, breaking out in hideous violence, would not afford you an abode on earth … What would you think to be thus used? This is the strangers…
The mass media invented the teenager during the 1950s and 60s – and thus emerged a whole new audience for popular culture. What we’re seeing now is the recognition of children as an ever more important…
We could blame it on The Ashes. Last week, media outlets reported the Brits’ use of the Aussie accent might hurt their chances of promotion. But take a deep breath and two steps back from the 24-hour news…