November Culture and Society

Read the articles selected in November 2016

Water of life

by Philip Kennicott

Source: The Washington Post, 24 November

An exposition in Washington exhibits 11 works of Bill Viola, the great video artist who represents the resilience of humanity in the people, inspired by Eastern philosophy, Christian and Greek thought, and with a reflexive consciousness of the cumulative meaning of art history and video art.

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Plus rien ne m’appartient

by Marlène Duretz

Source: Le Monde, 20 November

Without the burdens of propriety, the consumption of goods today expresses itself in the lease of every kind of wares. The rental, differently from propriety, can follow the fast step of technological evolutions and tastes. The dematerialization of goods into services allows a more disengaged consumerism.

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The uncanny physics of empty space

Source: The Economist, 19 November

A history of physics by a philosopher, who defines the theories on the universe that humanity has known as ups and downs in the empty and dialogs with nothing, implying the scientific legacy of many philosophical concepts. Pity that it is a whole male story.

The changing face of global trade

Source: The Economist, 23 November

Globalization is not a process that softens the reality of losers and winners, in shifting competitiveness in the long chains of international production, where imported components are re-exported. The result is the inequality between an high-skilled and -wage industry, and a labor-intensive and low-wage one.

So sah das grösste Kunstwerk der Antike wirklich aus

by Berthold Seewald

Source: Die Welt, 16 November

Susanne Muth and Luca Giuliani from the Berliner Humboldt University have reconstructed the history of Laookon’s sculpture, the classicistic model of “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” as an original work and not as a copy of an Hellenistic sculpture, made up of seven parts and not as a unique block.

Obituary: Leonard Cohen died on November 7th

Source: The Economist, 16 November

His songs sang an unkind world, a future as a blizzard, warmed just by love and women. He was not only the lover who all women dream but a tormented man in search of his God.Ebraic soul, his music didn’t pretend to be perfect, and nothing could happen to its beauty.

“Mere” speech has powerful consequences

Source: The Economist, 12 November

Politicians exemplify the speech acts theory, described by J.L. Austin in “How to do things with words” and after which words can perform actions and change the world. But after another theory, political speeches in an electoral campaign can be considered as a performance untied with the truth of their promises.

“Lili Marlene”: the song that united Allied and Axis troops

Source: The Economist, 11 November

“Lili Marlene”, the German song of planetary success during the Second World War also thanks to Marlene Dietrich, was a pacifist testament played on a military basis to comfort soldiers despite Goebbel’s prohibition, and popular also in peace times for its celebration of life and futility and irremediability of war.

Consulta l’articolo:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/11/enlightening

The search goes on

Source: The Economist, 5 November

“The evolution of the West” by Nick Spencer affirms the role of Christendom in the actual world. The revolutionary parable that opened the deep dimension of the individuum, beyond the belonging to a group, is a still actual discourse about human dignity, that made us free and equal.

X marks the spot

Source: The Economist, 5 November

A new exhibition in London retraces through the widest variety of maps from the past 100 years an history of wars, scientific and spatial enterprises and daily life, stratified in the passage from land-based surveys to aerial photography to the GPS.

Raoul Coutard

by James S. Williams

Source: The Guardian, 10 November

Raoul Coutard, the cinematographer and lighting cameraman who made possible with his technique based on fast photographic film and a light 35mm camera the Nouvelle Vague aesthetic revolution, is dead. His use of natural lighting has marked movies like Godard’s Passion and a style assimilated in Hollywood too.

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Vingt ans d’engouement photographique

by Claire Villot & Roxana Azimi

Source: Le Monde, 10 November

On the 10th November opened Paris Photo a universal exposition of photo shoots from collections and artists from all around the world. At its 20° edition, this Salon has contributed to ascribe in the history of art photography, for a long time considered too near to the spectator to be an art form.

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What is at stake in the first Supreme Court case on transgender rights

Source: The Economist, 1 November

The Supreme Court decided to take a case on transgender rights, namely of a teenager who had won on appeal her cause for sex discrimination against his school. The mere stay of the appeal sentence, decreed by the 8 justices of the Court sets no precedent, so it would be necessary a vote of courtesy to decide on merit.

Cambridge gets a memorial for Syd Barret

Source: The Economist, 31 October

An initiative of Cambridge Corn Exchange remembers Syd Barret, the musical genius co-founder of the Pink Floyd devastated by LSD and then vanished in the oblivion. Today we don’t know everyone this eccentric and gifted artist of the Sixties’music, who has now to be remembered in this way.

Werner Herzog marvels at the internet

Source: The Economist, 28 October

“Lo and behold, reveries of the connected world”, latest Werner Herzog’s documentary on the terrible magnificence of the Internet, describes the marvel that swallows and transforms everything, the global sphere that connects our lives, and will end up connecting our dreams and desires.

Consulta l’articolo:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/10/head-cloud

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Pubblicato il : 20/12/2017
Modificato il : 04/04/2019

November Culture and Society

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