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BACH TO THE FUTURE

In the great muddy field of British summer festivals, the Manchester International Festival stands out like a dry tent. The reason is simple: every event is an event, presenting either new work or bold new pairings. For his second biennial line-up, the director, Alex Poots, has got Zaha Hadid designing a typically voluptuous “chamber-music hall” (pictured) for pieces by Bach, the camp crooner Rufus Wainwright writing his first opera, Kraftwerk playing the Velodrome in tandem with Steve Reich, the audacious documentarist Adam Curtis making immersive theatre with Punchdrunk and Damon Albarn, and the rock band of the moment, Elbow, playing with the Hallé Orchestra—“the original Manchester band”, as Guy Garvey calls them. All this and Carlos Acosta too.

Manchester International Festival, July 2nd-19th 

~ TIM DE LISLE

GERMAN GIRLS ROCK!

Jule Juergensohn has a dream. As a drummer for Berlin's Itchi Sun and self-proclaimed music nerd, she would like to see more women get their hands on instruments. “We want a music scene with more girls and women on the stages. Not just singers but drummers and bass players," she tells me in her flat in Berlin. "When I switch on the TV on a Saturday evening show I want a band with a girl on drums.” 

Some day, perhaps, the stages and screens will be flooded with female musicians of all kinds. To help things along there's Ruby Tuesday Rock Camp für Mädchen, Germany's first rock camp for girls. Following a model set by several camps in America, it is scheduled for the first week of August in Cottbus, 100km south-east of Berlin.  read more »

"PRIVACY IS DEAD—GET OVER IT"

"This is an age which happily invades its own privacy," writes Charles Nevin in "Taking liberties" an alarming feature in the summer issue if Intelligent Life. We have become so cavalier about our privacy (on Facebook and Twitter, for example) that we don't seem to mind that the British government is constantly watching us, recording everything we do--in shops, classrooms and on the street. The cameras are everywhere. (The quote of the title came from Scott McNealy, of Sun Microsystems, after September 11th 2001.)

Julia Belluz crunches the numbers:

SURVEILLANCE:

44  Percentage of Britons who said most people can be trusted in 1981         

31  in 2006

41,900  Number of stop-and-searches in England and Wales to prevent acts of terrorism in 2006/2007

480  resulting arrests

45  Number of criminal justice laws introduced by the British government since  1997--more than the total passed in the previous century

3,000  Minimum number of criminal offences these laws have created

£110,000  Cost of removing a one-man anti-war protest against Britain’s  operations in Iraq in 2006

6  Number of days a student at the University of Nottingham was detained in 2008 after his college monitored his downloading of al-Qaeda material for a dissertation  on terrorism  read more »

PAINT IT RED AND MAKE IT HAPPY

Like any commodity, art is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it. But unlike anything else, its value is entirely subjective. For brand-name artists to emerge and command breathtaking price-tags, a makeshift consensus is necessary. How does this happen? Or, as Robert Cottrell once asked: "Why $73m for a Rothko--and not $7.3m, or $173m?"

There is no real answer to this riddle. But the patterns of precedent are fascinating. Sarah Thornton (an occasional contributor to The Economist) attempts to dissect the hype in "Seven Days in the Art World", a clever look at the weird culture of the contemporary art market. Though rooted in the art boom (the book was released in November 2008), it features some timeless insight into what sells, what doesn't and who the players are.

In a chapter dedicated to an evening sale at Christie's, an interview with Keith Tyson yields the following gem: "Everything else is trying to sell you something else. Art is trying to sell you yourself." He also seethes: "The auction is the symptom of something much more complex, like a rash. It is vulgar, in the same way that pornography is vulgar."

It does get a little icky to read about all the buying and selling of aesthetic real estate (if not so titillating as pornography). When it comes to what does well at auction, Thornton discovers the following. Artists looking to make a buck should take note:  read more »

CONFESSIONS OF A 26-YEAR-OLD NEWSPAPER READER

The story of the demise of print journalism, and its greying readership, is well-trodden. Less common is the sad tale of the 20-something print reader caught between rising subscription rates and supercilious glances from blogging, twittering contemporaries. "Did you pay for that?" They ask this with their eyes as their lips turn into a vague sneer.  Indeed, I did. I am 26 years old and I subscribe to a print newspaper, an expensive one, seven days a week. I am part of a dying breed, fatefully attached to a dying medium: the print-loving progeny of the internet age.  read more »

A SCEPTIC EVALUATES "FOOD, INC"

"Food, Inc" seemed like it was going to be a punitive film. I expected a lecture set against horrific images that promised to make my next burger slightly less tasty. It was the kind of film that appeared destined to be seen by a sympathetic audience, who would then go on to zealously recommend it to indifferent acquaintances.

I was wrong. For one thing, it is visually glorious, full of sweeping pans of farmland, shifting dunes of corn kernels and happily roaming hogs. Early footage of hamburger-serving carhops on roller-skates mix with hypnotic views of modern supermarkets (which, we learn, contain an average 47,000 products on their shelves). There are also clips culled from hidden cameras in factories (or on willing factory workers), and segments that capture both the beauty of American farmland and the cost at which these farms are run.  read more »

WHAT IS AN ALIEN ARTIST TO DO?

Obtaining a visa to study fine art at an American university is easy. Staying on after graduation, however, is a different matter. All across America, thousands of freshly minted MFA students are scheming of ways to stay in the country after graduation. Authorities are reluctant to issue work permits to aliens when so many Americans are out of work, and it can take years to obtain a resident “green card.”

This can be a serious setback for fledgling artists who rely on networks of former professors and fellow students for everything from studio space to gallery referrals. Art can be extremely provincial and incestuous, and the first few years after graduation are often when connections matter most. A failure to obtain a visa can be tantamount to truncating a promising career.

But there is a loophole. Artists (and researchers, scientists, celebrities and occasionally models) are eligible for a special expedited visa status (O-1) that allows them to live and work in America, provided they can prove that their talent is “extraordinary”. Lacking an official method for judging the quality of art on offer, adjudicators rely instead on paperwork.
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THE Q&A: DJ BETO, LATIN MUSICOLOGIST, PRODUCER, WRITER

About two years ago I got a copy of a CD called Panama! Latin, Calypso and Funk on the Isthmus 1965-75, a compilation of mestizo folk music, Afro-Cuban rumba, mento and calypso, all performed by Panamanian musicians. The CD quickly became a household favourite for two reasons: first, the music had strong funk, rock, blues and jazz influences that made it incredibly infectious and rebellious; second, the CD came with extensive liner notes that read like an enthusiastic travelogue. Someone hadn't merely thrown these songs together. They had done their homework to find out why this music sounded the way it did: a collage of funky island rhythms from all over: North and South America, Colombia, the Caribbean and Africa. Yet the music, which evolved during a time of political upheaval and regime change in the country, is precisely Panamanian.

The album was assembled by DJ Beto, aka Roberto Ernesto Gyemant, a 38-year-old San Francisco-based DJ and writer who has spent years travelling to Panama and the region interviewing musicians and digging through album crates. His travels resulted in a second album, Panama 2! Latin Sounds, Cumbia Tropical & Calypso Funk on the Isthmus, 1967-77, released in June by Miles Cleret's Soundway Records.  read more »

KING OF POP? ONLY BRIEFLY

The careers of pop-culture icons tend to fit into certain moulds. There’s the meteor who burns bright and dies young (Marilyn, JFK, Diana). There’s the bright young thing with stamina who never goes away (Dylan, Madonna). There’s the cult figure who plays the tortoise, sneaking up on the snoozing hares (Leonard Cohen). And there are the hares who tire early in the race (Brooke Shields, George Michael).

Michael Jackson was none of these. He was a child star who stayed big: he was famous for 39 of his 50 years, which is nearly twice as long as Elvis. Tragedy usually goes with brevity, but Jackson’s tragedy was played out in slow motion. He peaked with Thriller (1982), which really did thrill people, in vast numbers. Its excellence masked the fact that for the second half of his life, he was largely famous for being famous.
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AN EVOLUTIONARY REASON TO GIVE UP

Evolutionary predisposition is the analysis du jour when describing all of human behaviour. These days everything we do--from appreciate music to donate to charity--evidently boils down to our desire to lure a mate and make many babies.

Now it seems a scientific study has proven an evolutionary reason for depression:

Dr [Randolph] Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

A study published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests this clever idea might even be true.  read more »