Monthly Archives: April 2021

The pandemic suddenly forced millions of workers out of the offices to work from home. Before the pandemic, flexible-office companies like WeWork made up a growing sliver of real estate 2.3% of leasable space in the US as of the first quarter of 2020, according to JLL research, and the sector has grown an average of 23% per year since 2010.

Now, insiders predict a short-term pinch for the industry, as employees fear returning to people filled floors and as some of the small businesses that relied on these spaces have reduced their headcount. Addressing these concerns will be of paramount importance for co-working space providers.

Addressing the elephant in the room

Given the current situation, anyone is bound to think twice before deciding to work out of a co-working space. Addressing these concerns that weigh down on everyones mind will be critical for co-working space providers such as Spacemade and WeWork. How will the companies make sure that users are comfortable enough to return back to coworking spaces?

To make this happen, Jonathan Rosenblatt, co-founder and co-CEO at Spacemade notes that establishing trust is of paramount importance. Businesses dont want to think about building compliance, air quality, sanitisers, extra cleaning and more, but they do want all of that to be taken care of. Thus, the trust rests with flexible workspace operators.

Spacemade is a first-of-its-kind operational partner for landlords looking to provide a bespoke flexible workspace offer directly to their customers. The group has over 100,000 sq ft of flexible office space under operation in London, Leeds and Bristol. The business was founded by Jonny Rosenblatt and Dan Silverman. Recently, the startup also bagged 1 million funding to grow its flexible workspaces in the UK.

WeWork, the most controversial name in this space, failed to become public, last year and got battered hard. Industry experts believed that it was time for the co-working player to make peace with the sunset, but a year and a pandemic later, the office-sharing firm is still standing strong.

UKTN also had a chat with Mathieu Proust, General Manager from WeWork UK and he emphasises how the company is working really hard to make sure their spaces are as safe as possible. The company has invested heavily in doubling up on sanitisation, installing HVAC systems for constant air filtration and regularly sanitising frequently used elements like door handles and lifts.

Additionally, it even changed the layout for some of its offices to enable a roomier environment and to shape users behaviour within a space. WeWork also obtained third-party certification from Bureau Veritas, which ensures that they are actually living up to the high standards of sanitisation.

Overall, establishing trust with consumers, having mitigations in place and delivering on promises of sanitising their spaces will be crucial for coworking spaces to thrive again.

Moving towards the flexible new normal

Both WeWork and Spacemade have numerous buildings available across London. While some of their spaces follow the modern dynamic workspaces landscape, others are collaboration hubs. These hubs are geared towards enabling idea exchanges with no traditional desk or chairs layout and a lot of whiteboards.

WeWork also recently launched All Access, which is its monthly membership. It is different from its standard subscription as one receives their badge, which grants access to any of the companys buildings around the world. Essentially, it makes the entire city your campus. One can open the app and decide if they dont want to work in the same location as yesterday. If they have a client meeting in Victoria, for example, they can work in a location nearby, Proust explains.

WeWorks Growth Campus

WeWork also recently announced an allocation of 15 million for subsiding rents for struggling SMEs. Additionally, in London and other cities, it will provide free mentoring and education opportunities to help SMEs recover.

It is no surprise that the work from home scenario has changed our lives forever. However, it is something that will be difficult to support indefinitely because it hampers collaboration and in turn, innovation. For smaller and even medium-sized companies, collaboration serves as an important tool to fuel innovation. WeWork aims to deliver it through Growth Campus.

Additionally, Growth Campus will also enable a new generation of entrepreneurs to come into the limelight. Proust calls them the COVID generation of entrepreneurs, which is something WeWork wants to be a part of. In the UK, specifically, we witnessed the rise of new entrepreneurs. Last year, new business formations stood at 13% and thats why we created Growth Campus, to do our part and give something back to the SMEs and the entrepreneurial attitude, Proust adds.

WeWork will consider any company under the new program if their employee headcount is below 20 and if they have a vision to scale within the UK or internationally.

Changes for co-working spaces in a post-pandemic world

Rosenblatt predicts that in a post-pandemic world, where almost everything is changing, the short-term outlook will be highly competitive. This is expected to create notably attractive pricing propositions for the customers. If this turns out to be true, it will be good news for end customers as it makes returning to the office even more attractive.

Talking about mid-to-long term changes, he says there will be a pretty seismic shift to a more flexible and hybrid work approach as flexibility also means one can repurpose their office. Flexibility is key and we see most businesses moving towards using space on demand with requirements such as different spaces for different uses throughout the week. This can be difficult for businesses to deliver without professional support from specialist co-working providers, Rosenblatt adds.

The future for coworking spaces

It can be difficult to accurately predict whats going to happen next in any sector at the moment. However, Proust opines that the future for co-working spaces is all about flexibility.

Proust notes, Now that places are reopening, were going back to a new normal. But what is the new normal? This could look something like enabling members to choose how many days they want to work and what can we set up for them. Do they want an exciting office? And those are the kind of problems we are solving.

Rosenblatts thoughts align similarly as well. He says, The question we need to ask is; if youre a team of 10, on the days that youre in the office, would you rather have a small leased space with no amenity, or would you rather have access to thousands of sq ft of the hospitality-driven workspace where you can be surrounded by new people to interact with?

New coworking spaces in the works

For current and future plans, Both WeWork and Spacemade are opening more co-working spaces across London and the UK. SpaceMade recently launched a new space, Neighbourhood Works at London Fields a few weeks ago and many new spaces are said to be in the pipeline.

As for WeWork, it recently opened up a new space in Shoreditch. It is also in the process of curating new workplaces all around the UK.

Read the rest here:

From dystopia to utopia: How UK co-working spaces are redefining the new normal - UKTN (UK Technology News

Friday April 2nd, the Hollywood Signs O was filled with a cow face painted on an overhanging sheet. To the bafflement of many, there seemed to be no accompanying meaning or promotion behind the stunt. Just a cow. When three of the alleged cow-vandals were arrested, they told the officers at the scene that there was: No political cause whatsoever.

One of the people arrested that day was 21-year-old artist Danny Cole. While he couldnt speak of his alleged vandalism, he did post process photos on his Instagram in the weekend following. Everyone keeps asking what the meaning of the cow is but the whole purpose is for everyone else to make it whatever they wanted it to be, he told Observer.

Cole is an American painter and interdisciplinary artist based in New York. Hes self-taught, getting kicked out of art class in high school and moving to New York at age 18 with the hope of creating a utopian world. One that I can invite people to and where people are able to explore and imagine protected from harms way, he elaborates.

Up to today, the young artist has mostly focused on painting as his medium, creating colorful large-scale paintings and the occasional piece of street art live experiences and community projects.

Speaking to Cole about his work and process can leave you baffled as the cow-painting without context. Building a career around portraying imaginary worlds, its not hard to see how his signature creatures (the figures in his paintings) manifest in his head. He speaks highly conceptually, with his mind in his clouds and his work following suit.

These creatures arent the only creatures in the universe but theyre the ones that I have felt personally connected to, he says. Theres one, in particular, thats been in my mind for two years and Ive been trying to wrap my head around this overwhelming divinity where the first time I met this creature. The exchange, he says, took place at the front door of this palace. Her skin, she adds, was white and shiny and each of her body was divided into sections.

Coles interest in the imaginary stems from his interest in what is real. He says hes often pondering about shared reality and how many people need to believe something for it to become real. Could it just be one person [who decides something exists]? Everything in the world is truly just in our perception, he told Observer. I think it is a phenomenal thing to assess what can reality be and ask ourselves what do I want reality to be and how can I make that a reality right now?

While it can be hard to bring Cole back down to earth for long enough to get a solid answer about his future plans. He will continue to work with his friend Greg Aram from LA-based musical duo Junior Varsity, who was also allegedly involved in the cow incident (along with photographer Landon Yost) and uses cow imagery in their latest release. This, they say, doesnt mean the Hollywood incident was a PR stunt.

Instead, when talking about his future work, Cole swears that hes currently building a spaceship. When asked if the spaceship is metaphorical or another art piece, he laughed then urged persistently: It is a spaceship.

Im very determined that Im going to have a spaceship that will get me closer to being able to more immersively explore and participate in all of these seemingly far away, phenomenal things and define the places in the universe that we are in right now, he says. The spaceship is already under construction and its around 65% done. Meaning youll be seeing it shockingly soon. This timeline, he says, equates to roughly the upcoming summertime in New York.

If youre looking for answers about the cow piece, Cole has very few. In fact, hes establishing himself as the type of artist to come up with a bunch of questions. With this in mind, its natural to expect the same bizarre elements in the next spaceship release and beyond. With work that can leave us all scratching our heads, Coles mission as an artist is complete. After all, hes working to take us on a journey through the imaginary and leave us questioning what is real, and if something even needs to be real to matter or make an impact.

See the article here:

Artist Danny Cole on Dreams of A Utopia of Creatures and Vandalism - Observer

If your 2021 biking goals include tackling a national park, youre in luck: Acadia National Park, New Englands only national park, offers one of the most epic national park bike rides in America, according to Bicycling magazine.

The carriage roads at Acadia National Park are among the 13 best national park rides in America, according to the publication, which called the spot a utopia for cyclists of all ages and levels.

Each park is a national treasure in its own right, and though there are plenty of ways to explore, from hiking to running to scenic tours, were partial to thinking that riding through them on a bike is the best way to reap the great rewards of discovery, history, beauty, and awe, the publication wrote about the list.

Heres what Bicycling magazine had to say about Acadia National Park:

Acadia National Park is a utopia for all ages and levels of cyclistslargely due to the 45-mile network of crushed-rock carriage roads that are closed to motor vehicles. The park comprises most of Mount Desert Island in Maine and offers incredible panoramic views of the Atlantic Coast from the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is famous for being one of the first places in the U.S. where the sunrise is visible each morning. The climb up is smooth and gradual with stunning views. Ride it in the summer when the wind chill at the top isnt so badyoull want to linger and soak in the views.

Check out the entire list of 13 best national park rides.

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New England has one of the most epic national park bike rides in America, according to Bicycling magazine - Boston.com

Kevin Noodles Wasserman knows whats coming even before he calls to chat about the Offsprings new record , Let The Bad Times Roll, its first album of new material in nearly nine years.

What took you so long?

Thats been the first question in almost every interview, Noodles says, and laughs. Fair enough. I mean, theres lot a lot of reasons, you know.

We finished our deal with Sony, so we didnt have anyone cracking the whip, the bands guitarist says. We didnt have any deadlines. Dexter (Holland, the bands singer) went back to school, got his PhD. That took a little bit longer than he thought.

Add to that the Orange County punk bands annual touring and the acrimonious departure of original bassist Greg Kriesel in 2018 and the bands 10th album in more than 35 years together just took a bit more time.

Let The Bad Times roll is the new record by the Offspring. Seen here, left to right, are drummer Pete Parada, bassist Todd Morse, singer Dexter Holland, and guitarist Kevin Noodles Wasserman. (Photo by Daveed Benito)

Let The Bad Times Roll is the 10th studio album from the Offspring and its first in nearly nine years. (Photo courtesy of Concord Records)

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Let The Bad Times Roll is the 10th studio album by the Offspring. Seen here, left to right, are drummer Pete Parada, guitarist Kevin Noodles Wasserman, singer Dexter Holland, and bassist Todd Morse. (Photo by Daveed Benito)

Let The Bad Times roll is the new record by the Offspring. Seen here, left to right, are bassist Todd Morse, drummer Pete Parada, singer Dexter Holland, and guitarist Kevin Noodles Wasserman. (Photo by Daveed Benito)

We had been working in the studio, on and off, the whole nine years, Noodles says. Whenever Bob (Rock, the bands producer) was in town wed hook up for a week or two in the studio. Sometimes as long as a month. The record didnt really start coming together until a couple of years ago when we just had a really creative period.

Let The Bad Times Roll displays all the familiar strengths of the Offspring, from Hollands vocals to Noodles crunchy riffing and the strong melodies throughout, across a dozen songs that feel both fresh and familiar.

Given its lengthy gestation, its not surprising that some bits and pieces had been in the works for years, according to Noodles. Coming For You, for instance, was released as the albums first single, complete with a music video of a clown fight club, six years before the album finally arrived.

Thats certainly the oldest one that was finished, Noodles says. Some of the songs are older than that. Like, We Never Have Sex Anymore, its probably a 20-year-old song but its changed a lot. The skeleton was there but the meat and bones, the meat and potatoes part of it has been fleshed out.

And then then some of the songs we steal from older stuff even before Offspring, he says. Theres a guitar break on Hassan Chop that predates, I think, us being called the Offspring. That comes back to our Manic Subsidal days.

Took us about 35 years to get it right, but I think we finally nailed it in this take.

The album is rewardingly diverse in both sound and lyrics, something Noodles says came about through the long process of picking which songs to include and what order to run them.

The album opens with one-two punch of This Is Not Utopia and the current single Let The Bad Times Roll, both of which are about as political as the Offspring get, offering critiques of socio-political dysfunction wrapped in the case of the title track in catchy singalong melodies.

Without having to take sides politically, I dont think anybody has been enjoying the last four years, Noodles says of the title track. I think everyones a little wound up by it. And its really just an observation of what weve seen.

And then something like This Is Not Utopia is far more like, Ah, man, the world, evil people are at odds, he says. Ultimately in that song its, When will love finally conquer hate? Which we kind of think eventually it will. We try to provide some hope its not just all doom and gloom.

We Never Have Sex Anymore, a fun take on the waning of passion, is one of the jazziest numbers the Offspring have ever done, complete with a horn section to accentuate the swinging feel. Hassan Chop is an old-school blast of high-speed punk. Theres even an Offspring-ized cover of classical composer Edvard Griegs In The Hall of the Mountain King here.

The penultimate track on the album, a gentle piano-based reboot of Gone Away, which originally was on 1997s Ixnay on the Hombre, was done as a sort of musical gift for longtime fans.

Weve been doing it live, just a stripped-down piano version, for about four or five years now, Noodles says. And, really, the fans were the ones that said, Hey, where can I get a studio version of the piano Gone Away? I mean, its on Twitter, on Instagram. When we do meet-and-greets we get asked about it a lot.

So we finally decided, lets see if we could pull something together that still sounds like us but maybe purifies the song a little bit, just kind of strips it down, he says.

The album might have landed earlier had the COVID-19 pandemic not turned the world upside down a year ago. Instead of putting out a record that couldnt be supported live the band waited. A wait, Noodles says, that was difficult for a band like the Offspring that plays live so frequently.

I mean, we miss it, he says, laughing ruefully. Weve been rehearsing. And not just getting together in the room and playing through the songs. Weve been doing deep dives and getting into the weeds on how we play some of these things. Making sure Todd (Morse, the Offsprings bassist) and I are locked in our strumming, and making sure that matches with what Pete (Parada) is doing on the drums.

The layoff has also given him time to break bad habits that slipped in over the years, too.

I dont know why, but over like 25 years somehow my strumming has evolved in ways that the song was never intended to go, Noodles says. Like Self Esteem, Ive gotten a lazy right hand and I had to really look at that: Oh (bleep), Im doing upstrokes when everyone else was doing downstrokes, and it doesnt sound as good.

I had to really dial it in. Most people probably wouldnt notice, but its something on my radar.

He and Holland have launched a series of short how to videos online, some, like the debut How To Catch a Wave, made for a laugh, others, like a future one on breaking down a guitar solo, more serious.

And, slowly, signs of future life on the road are surfacing. Like many bands, the Offspring had some of its pandemic-postponed dates pushed back a year into late 2021 or 2022.

But were looking at setting up shows that werent ever booked before, Noodles says. And maybe as early as the end of the year. Hopefully well have some announcements to make sooner rather than later about those dates.

Link:

Offspring guitarist Noodles explains why the bands new album took 9 years to finish - San Bernardino County Sun

In the context of the global climate in the 1960s, Yuri Gagarin emerged as a new ideal of a Cold Warrior. As the first human in space and the first human to orbit the Earth, Gagarin served as the exclamation point on Soviet space achievements in their competition with the United States. He was the human embodiment of Sputnik: a walking and talking demonstration of the superiority of Soviet mastery of space technology. Yet, there is another role that Gagarin played that historians frequently ignore. He was a domestic hero who was leading the way for post-World War II generations of Soviet youth to a future that attempted to recapture the optimism of pre-World War I and Early Soviet revolutionary artistry. There is no better example of the expression of this re-discovered optimism than in the song, Gagarins March (Gagarinskii marsh).

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin waves to crowds lining the street as he rides in an open car during a parade; circa 1961. (NASM 00159149)

Every year in Russia during the week of April 12, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight in space, also known as Cosmonautics Day, one hears Gagarins March replayed on radio and websites. The 1961 musical piece has music and lyrics by composer and science fiction poet Oleg Aleksandrovich Sokolov-Tobolsky. Popular baritone Eduard Labkovskii sings the song with the backing of the civilian Soviet Song orchestra. When listening to it for the first time, one can recognize that the title is a misnomer as it is a musical break from the traditional celebratory songs that retell heroic battles of previous generations. The March differs from previous patriotic songs dedicated to aviation. It has neither a civil defense nor a military theme. Gagarins March does not speak of wartime but paints a picture of a bright and enthusiastic trek into the Soviet future with Yuri Gagarin at the lead. In this case, Gagarin is leading the homeland to a new optimistic world.

The lyrics are as follows:

We're leaving for space to work,

Seated in orbiting ships

And everything starts from the first flight,

Gagarin's first turn around the Earth.

Commander of the ship, as clear-eyed Russian guy,

He gave his whole universe a smile,

No, it was not for nothing that Gagarin first visited space,

He opened new roads for us.

Space miracle machines

Explore Venus and the Moon,

And it will be necessary, and we take off guys,

We will life up any virgin land in the far space.

Commander of the ship, a battle brave guy,

With the crew will go to Mercury and Mars,

No, it was not for nothing that Gagarin first visited the space,

He opened new roads for us.

The Earth is sweeping the expanses of the Universe,

Around the Sun its habitual way keeps,

And we live, earthlings, dreaming of daring

Throughout the Solar System, walk one day.

The ships commander, the son of the Earth, is a great guy,

Cosmonauts, scientists will deliver to Pluto.

No, it was not for nothing that Gagarin first visited the space,

For the future to come the feat is accomplished.

The ships commander, the son of the Earth, is a great guy,

Cosmonauts, scientists will deliver to Pluto.

No, it was not for nothing that Gagarin first visited the space,

For the future to come the feat is accomplished.

The songs first three lines echo a poem written by Russian futurist avant-garde poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1925. The Flying Proletariat was a utopian science fiction-themed long poem set two centuries into the future in the year 2125. Just as Mayakovsky began his poem, Gargarins March anticipates a utopian technological future in space, free of long hours of backbreaking, dirty work. The difference between the poem and the march is tone of immediacy. The song gives the impression that the technological utopia will follow quickly with the occasion of the Yuri Gagarins first spaceflight around the Earth. As the story unfolds, Gagarins importance to the future unfolding is repeated throughout in three ways. First Gagarin is described repeatedly as a Russian guy. This is a reference to him personifying the ideal of an overall good guy, a friend to everyone. Throughout the song, his good-guy image is modified as being clear-eyed, brave, and great as the crescendo of the song builds.

The second way that Sokolov-Tobolsky reinforces the importance of Gagarins flight to the future of the USSR is the repetition of the refrain, No, it was not for nothing that Gagarin first visited space. Although grammatically awkward in English, this is a classic Russia language expression. It translates to mean that his flight is the launch vehicle on which the future is mounted. His flight leads to opening the new road to spacea phrase used by early Bolshevik space futurist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. With him, Gagarin leads the Soviet people to the future, including exploration of the solar system and the creation of a Soviet economic and agricultural ideal on other planets.

And finally, the composer focuses on Gagarins most favored physical attributehis smile. This is the ubiquitous smile that everyone recognized and for Russians it indicated an open and honest character.

Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin surrounded by a crowd of children, circa 1961. (NASM 00159145)

I encourage you to take the opportunity to listen to the Gagarin March this week. It is widely available on YouTube and other websites.

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Gagarin's March: 60th Anniversary of the First Human in Space - National Air and Space Museum

Get ready to get your game face back on, as Leeds-based megabrand Roxy Ball Room is set to return bigger, better, and bolder on Monday 17th May when it reopens its doors to reveal a supersized gaming utopia spanning three floors.

The revamped venue will still focus heavily on the ball games, food, and drink that the brand has become famous for, whilst unveiling some exciting new gaming options to make it the citys premier gaming bar.

Former sister venue Roxy Arcade has been completely ripped out and refitted as Roxy Ball Room, creating one mammoth gamers paradise with its spacious basement area. Here, a diverse range of entertainment will be available offering endless hours of fun, along with a shiny new bar area.

Competitive streak

The basement will also feature two newly installed Duckpin Bowling Lanes, where players can flaunt their competitive streak with a game that splices ten-pin bowling with skittles. Another game to make its Leeds debut is Bank Shot Shuffleboard, which twists the popular game with a board that loops back on itself, making it even more challenging to get the puck into the scoring zone. The basement area will boast two Bank Shot Shuffleboards, as well as a ping pong table.

Also new to Roxy Ball Room are three hi-tech private karaoke rooms, where budding performers can order a round of drinks at the push of a button,and a selection of iconic arcade machines, including the ever-popular basketball.

The ground floor bar will feature no less than five beer pong tables, whilst the light and airy first floor will boast 4 full-size American pool tables, two shuffleboards, two beer pong tables and two more ping pong tables.

Guests can expect the same stellar selection of draught lagers and craft beers as before, including Roxy Lager, Camden Pale and ABK Weissbier.

The Roxy bar team will be on-hand across the venues three bars to shake up both classic and signature cocktails, including the bestselling Ping Star Martini and the Tropical Rumbull. Hungry gamers will be able to hit up Roxys bold and tasty food menus, which spans loaded nachos, chicken wings, pizzas, and burgers.

Iconic nightlife scene

And, whilst Roxy fans will have to hold on until May the 17th to get their game on, they can get a taste of their signature food and drink menus from Monday 12th April onwards at the Merrion Street party.

Roxy has joined forces with neighbouring bars including Mojo, Verve and Yard & Coop to create the citys biggest outdoor hospitality area. A roof spanning the full street will ensure guests are kept both safe and sheltered from the elements, whilst DJs will be on hand with a diverse party playlist to suit the highly anticipated return of the iconic nightlife scene synonymous with Leeds.

Roxy brand development manager Joel Mitchell had this to say ahead of the re-launch: We are all extremely excited about taking our Merrion Street venue to another level! The people of Leeds are long overdue for a big night out on the town. Roxy Ball Room is coming back in a big way to help create memories that can make up for all those special occasions that weve all missed out on.

The bar is ready to go from Monday 17th May, and Im looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, from our loyal customers to co-workers and friends from our neighbouring bars. Im confident the people of Leeds are going to love our new-look, supersized venue when it finally reopens, and I know jaws will drop when they check out the new basement bar and see the massive selection of gaming that is now on offer.

With Bank Shot Shuffleboard, Crazy Pool, Karaoke, Arcade Machines and Duckpin Bowling thrown into the mix, Roxy Ball Room Merrion Street is going to be the citys number one gaming hotspot, with an unrivalled selection of entertainment options. 2021 is going to be a year to remember for sure.

Find out more and book your spot at the Roxy Ball Room as part of the Merrion Street party from the 12th or reserve your chance to play indoors when the full venue opens in May by visitingRoxyballroom.co.uk.

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Roxy Ball Room Merrion Street set to reveal supersize gaming utopia | TheBusinessDesk.com - The Business Desk

Svetlana Kana Radevi, a socialist Yugoslav architect who effortlessly moved between and drew influence from Philadelphia, Tokyo, and the Montenegrin capital city of Podgorica over the course of her celebrated career is the subject of a comprehensive exhibition opening May 22 at the Palazzo Palumbo Fossati as one of 17 collateral events at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Titled Skirting the Center: Svetlana Kana Radevi on the Periphery of Postwar Architecture, the exhibition is organized by the APSS Institute, a research- and education-focused urbanism and design platform based in Montenegro. Its cocurators are Dijana Vuini, founder of the APSS Institute and interdisciplinary architectural practice DVARP, and Anna Kats, a New York-based architectural historian, curator, and critic who served as curatorial assistant of the 2018 Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia: 1948-1980exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. As Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss noted in his review for AN, Radevi and other socialist Yugoslav female architects were largely present in the exhibition.

Skirting the Center turns the spotlight exclusively on Radevi, the first Montenegrin female architect, by displaying an extensive collection of drawings, photographs, and newly discovered correspondences that make it possible to contextualize and historicize an exceptional, but overlooked figure of postwar architecture, as stated in an exhibition press release.

The exhibition is the first major survey of Radevis built work, which includes bus terminals, housing blocks, business centers, Brutalist hotel towers, and anti-fascist memorials. Also highlighted is the Hotel Podgorica, a spectacular convergence of indigenous materials and radical modernist forms that melds into its verdant site along the banks of the Moraca River. (And yes, you can still very much book a room there.) The competition-winning hotel design earned Radevi the Federal Borba Award for Architecture in 1967. Radevi, who relocated to Philadelphia to study with Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright fellow pursuing her Master of Architecture several years after the landmark hotel was completed, was just 29 when she was bestowed with the prestigious Borba Award. She remains the awards youngestand only femalerecipient.

Radevic subverted hierarchies that privilege cosmopolitan centers over provincial peripheries by locating her personal practice in Montenegro. Yet her architecture was ultimately supranational, simultaneously digesting vernacular building traditions as well as her global study and work experience, wrote the Skirting the Centers curators. By positing how to re-center a historical figure and geopolitical context that have long been at the peripheral fringes of architectures normative history, this exhibition recovers her distinctive role as a negotiator of the spatial contractbetween state and citizenry, between center and peripheryas a case study in facilitating social consensus and cultural exchange for contemporary practitioners.

Radevic was born in 1937 in Cetinje, Yugoslavia, the former royal capital of what is now Montenegro. She died in 2000 at the age of 62. Prior to relocating to Philadelphia to study with Kahn while simultaneously maintaining her independent architectural practice in Podgorica, Radevic attended and graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Belgrade. Throughout her globe-spanning yet ancestrally grounded career, Radevic frequently collaborated with her sister Ljiljana Radevi, who was also an architect.

As mentioned, Skirting the Center opens on May 22 in Venice. It runs throughout the entirety of the biennale, closing on November 21. The organizers of several national pavilions (Singapore, Switzerland, and the Netherlands among them) at the biennale, which has already been postponed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic, recently announced their intentions to hold guest-free silent openings during the invite-only preview period in reaction to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Italy.

The rest is here:

Yugoslav architect Svetlana Kana Radevi is saluted at the Venice Architecture Biennale - The Architect's Newspaper

Accused of pandering to the far-right ahead of Frances federal election in 2022, President Emmanuel Macron attempted a balancing act. In January 2021, the leaders party said it would create a memories and truth commission on Frances painful colonial history and war with Algeria. In March, it released a report on the positive contributions of individuals of immigrant backgrounds called Portraits of France.

These initiatives are part of a broader effort to find alternative solutions to growing demands for the removal of statues and street names honoring historical figures that are connected to Frances colonial past, including its slave trade. Yet, at the same time, Macron and some of his ministers have been igniting emotions as they publicly denounce forces that they see as stoking so-called separatism, including what many see as US-style political correctness and cancel culturethe latter of which is a largely unpopular but growing concept in Franceas well as a perceived US-version of multiculturalism.

Recent events within and outside of France have further stoked this fire. The #MeToo movement has been met with uneven hostility. The October decapitation of a teacher who showed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad during a course on free speech has led to a new bill against separatism, which aims to combat Islamic radicalism. And the protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the US last year have prompted renewed conversation about the nature of racism in France, and put the countrys old ways of cultural assimilation on trial.

Against this backdrop of a culture war that shows little signs of abating, artistic projects remain a powerful place for progressive discourse in Franceeven as some factions in the country move to denounce what many have called an importation of Americas discourse on identity politics.

President of France Emmanuel Macron. Photo: Jean Catuffe/Getty Images.

As warring factions argue over how to integrate populations of citizens descended from former colonies, a new resurgent left, notably marked by young people from within the very populations at the center of the issue, has been pushing back against the countrys universalist social model, which traditionally downplayssome would say ignorescultural differences between citizens. The traditional style of governance aims to avoid what is often viewed as an Americanized version of warring ethnic and religious groups.

In a Le Monde editorial from March, supporters of the presidents Portraits of France project said that playwrights, filmmakers, and painters should seize upon these life stories and make works of art out of them that speak to our society and our world. They added that by ignoring a part of our shared past, we have made it harder to understand our present and to write our future.

But these cultural in-roads are not always met with open arms. The executive branch of French government has specifically singled out academia, including the social science fields of post-colonial and intersectional studies, saying that these areas are under risk of influence from radical agendas that are pitting communities against each other. It also announced in February a sweeping investigation into the presence of Islamo-gauchismea term loosely referring to extreme-left activists who are complacent toward radical forms of Islamism or who apologize for terrorismin universities. As a result, many are worried about censorship in schools and that scholarly research into the darker chapters of Frances history is under threat.

Emo de Medeiros notwithstanding the forces at hand (2018).Collection MACAAL / Fondation Alliances ADAGP, Paris, 2021. On view with the exhibition Ce qui soublie et ce qui reste currently on view at the Palais de la Porte Dore.

This debate spewed over into the art world when a government-commissioned portrait series of women publicly displayed in March in Paris, which was designed to celebrate diversity by featuring images of professionals from an array of different fields, sparked a vicious response. The photographs in 109 Mariannes became fodder for controversy due to the inclusion of the young astrophysicist Fatoumata Kb who was singled out for her headscarf. Angered that Kb was chosen to emblematize Marianne, the personification of the French Republic often seen interpreted in art or on stamps, former spokesperson for the right-leaning Republican party, Lydia Guirou, was among the angry tweeters: Marianne is not and will NEVER wear the headscarf!

The sentiment dovetails with a draft bill that the Senate amended this month to forbid chaperones on school field trips from wearing Muslim headscarves. The bill has been strongly criticized for stigmatizing Muslims and called an overreach of Frances already strict secular laws, which forbid the wearing of clearly visible religious symbols in schools, and by civil servants.

Visitors look at The Slave for sale (1873) painting by Jean-Leon Gerome during the press visit of the exhibition Black models: from Gericault to Matisse at the Musee dOrsay in Paris on March 25, 2019. Photo: Francois Guillot/ AFP) via Getty Images.

Despite instances of incendiary reactions, the cultural sphere is being won over by a new wave of progressive viewpoints and views are indeed changing. A younger generation has become eager to more openly focus on the topic of race and difference. French citizens of immigrant descent are raising their voices to say that, in practice, their identities are under-represented in a society that discriminates against them for their inherent differences. With a sense of irony, they describe a society which claims to be blind to those differences while demanding that any outward signs of that differencefor example, hijabsare avoided, to best fit a cultural mold.

We like the idea of universalism, because its a kind of utopia But its easier to go to Mars than to the land of universalism, Nadine Houkpatintold Artnet News. She is co-curator with Cline Seror of a show that includes work by artists from Africa and its diaspora called Memoria: accounts of another Historythat is on view until November at the Frac-Nouvelle Acquitaine MECA in Bordeaux. Houkpatin notes that while a new generation has indeed been inspired by some of the woke political ideas stemming from the US, the theorists behind many of these left-leaning ideas are often of French origin.

Views of the exhibition Memoria: Tales of another History at the Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MCA. Photos: Galle Deleflie.

The curators of the Bordeaux show surmise that, when it comes to discussing these issues through art, people have an easier time accepting more progressive, controversial topics. I think that through art, we can address these questions that are essential, said Seror. Art gives a certain liberty that enables us to express ourselves about these subjects, she added.

Indeed, it seems that the art world has been somewhat shielded: Responses were overwhelmingly positive to the two shows, despite the debates going on in the public realm. The show at Muse dOrsay even received a nod from a critic who supports the governments investigation into academics. I saw the exhibition, and very much appreciated it, said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who has published work on contemporary art. She is in favor of the French governments recent stance against radical intellectual currents that come from elsewhere and a signatory in an editorial in Le Monde that described them as feeding a hatred for whites.

Immigration Museum director Pap Ndiaye, a French historian, poses during a photo session, outside the museum in Paris on March 5, 2021. (Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP) (Photo by MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images)

Pap Ndiaye, the historian and new director of Frances immigration museum, the Palais de la Porte-Dore, recently told reporters that he too is concerned by the pushback on academia. It comes at a moment when post-colonial and intersectional questions are beginning to find their very small space in French universities, he said. If we stop teaching them, where will the students go? The Paris museum he oversees is currently showing an exhibit on the immigrant experience that includes 18 artists from Africa and its diasporait is a poignant explorationof artistic diversity and it falls on the 90th anniversary of the museum, which infamously opened with an exhibition to celebrate the colonies and included human exhibits.

The title of the show at Ndiayes museum, Ce qui soublie et ce qui reste, which translates to What is forgotten and what remains, also seems to ask what traces of this dark past remain in the popular subconscious today. It is on view until July.

While the government and certain factions of the population continue to rail against the universities, art institutions are set to become an increasingly singular voice for pressing questions about post-colonialism in France. When an artist presents [their work] in a museum that is open to the public, then we can start talking about colonialism, decolonization, and its impact on society, said curator Seror. Thats the power of art.

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As a Cultural War Continues to Cause Waves in France, Art Has Become a Lighthouse for Progressive Views - artnet News

On the stage of an empty concert hall, the Austrian-born composer Peter Ablinger sits in a chair and begins to tell the time. At the third stroke, it will be twenty oclock precisely, he says, adhering to the hallowed formula of the BBCs Speaking Clock. He accompanies himself with a simple C-minor sequence on a keyboard. After continuing in this vein for twenty minutes, Ablinger cedes the floor to the young German actress Salome Manyak, who speaks over an atmospherically bleeping soundtrack by the Finnish experimental musician Olli Aarni. The ritual goes on for nearly twenty-seven hours, with an ever-changing team of artists, curators, composers, singers, and d.j.s announcing the time in German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Oromo, Mandarin, and twelve other languages. A rotating assortment of prerecorded tracks, usually electronic, provide accompaniment. Most of the reciters maintain a crisp, cool demeanor, even when their Web sites lead one to expect something more uproarious. The Swedish dancer and costume designer Bjrn Ivan Ekemark, for example, gives no sign that he also performs under the name Ivanka Tramp and leads a sticky and visceral cake-sitting performance group, called analkollaps.

We are, needless to say, in Berlin, witnessing the finale of MaerzMusik, an annual bacchanal of sonic extremes that falls under the aegis of the Berliner Festspiele. This years edition was streamed online, meaning that you could absorb it from the banal comfort of an American home. In keeping with European practice, there was an imposing but vague central theme: Zeitfragen, or time issues. The programming emphasized experiences that sprawl beyond conventional time frames and engulf the consciousness. The most potent example was liane Radigues Trilogie de la Mort (1988-93), a three-hour soundscape of darkly hypnotic electronic drones. It had the feeling of an indecipherable monument outside time.

Yet MaerzMusik offered more than an escape from aesthetic norms. In a high-profile, well-funded festival such as this, time becomes a political question: Who gets to speak, and for how long? In the European cultural sphere, the long-unquestioned dominance of the white-male perspective is receiving nearly as much scrutiny as it is in America. MaerzMusik, which is led by the arts curator Berno Odo Polzer, has taken a sharp turn away from the usual suspects. The African-American composer and scholar GeorgeE. Lewis was invited to organize a concert devoted to Black composers. Several events paid tribute to the eclectic Egyptian-American composer Halim El-Dabh, who died in 2017, at the age of ninety-six. Two Berlin-based experimental groups, phnix16 and noiserkroiser, presented a multimedia evening in collaboration with the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos, a Bolivian ensemble that seeks new contexts for traditional Andean instruments.

The ever-formidable Lewis, who is based at Columbia but is currently a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (the Wissenschaftskolleg), has led the way in confronting the German new-music world with the question of race. A few years ago, he assembled statistics showing that the venerable Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music had featured only two Black composers in seven decadesamounting to 0.04 per cent of all the compositions selected. In response, Lewis has argued not only for greater numerical diversity but also for a different vision of musical culture itselfone of a creolized world in which histories and identities circulate freely. The word creole is often used to denote racial mixing, but for Lewis, and for post-colonial theorists who have embraced the term, it denotes a broader confluence of languages and values.

The young Swiss composer-drummer Jessie Cox, who is studying with Lewis at Columbia, exemplifies what such a hyphenated future might look and sound like. Cox grew up in the majority-German-speaking town of Biel, but his family has roots in Trinidad and Tobago. At an early age, he took up djembe and Latin drumming; later, he turned to a serious study of modern composition. At MaerzMusik, he appeared during the tribute to El-Dabh, playing drums alongside the guitarist Nicola Hein and the sheng player Wu Wei in a partly improvised piece titled Sound Is Where Drums Meet. He was also featured on an Ensemble Modern program called Afro-Modernism in Contemporary Music, which included works by Hannah Kendall, Alvin Singleton, Daniel Kidane, Andile Khumalo, and Tania Len.

The idea of a creolized music was most obvious in Sound Is Where Drums Meet, with its implicit fusion of deep-rooted world traditions. (The sheng, a Chinese free-reed instrument, is at least three thousand years old.) The piece was hardly an ethnomusicological exercise, though; the performers adopted an experimental lingua franca, ranging from delicate washes of timbre to furious spells of collective pandemonium, which reminded me at moments of duos between Max Roach and Cecil Taylor. No less commanding was Existence lies In-Between, Coxs contribution to the Ensemble Modern project. This is a fully notated score that nonetheless offers some freedom to the performers. The bass clarinet, for example, is sometimes asked to engage in wild, free-jazz-like playing in the manner of Marshall Allen, the longtime saxophonist of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Coxs style might be described as dynamic pointillism, with breathy instrumental noises giving way to mournfully wailing glissandi, and then to a climactic stampede of frantic figuration.

The two pieces still seemed to dwell in separate worlds: one in the experimental zone, the other in the concert hall. Online, Cox has undertaken projects that collapse such distinctions by creating their own virtual acoustic spaces. Just after his visit to Berlin, he presented, in league with issue Project Room, a ninety-minute work titled The Sound of Listening, which invites spectators to visit an array of rooms where various musical activities are unfolding. The mood here is spacious, ruminative: an opening solo, for the bassist Kathryn Schulmeister, comes across as a restless, questing meditation. Far more fraught is Breathing, a kind of video aria that Cox made for the Long Beach Operas Songbook series, in November. The Black bass-baritone Derrell Acon vocalizes as he wanders through city and forest landscapes, his voice fractured by pain and rage. At the end, he exhales while birdsong fills the soundtrackan idyllic turn that appears to astonish him as much as it does the viewer.

Amid a general trend toward ad-libitum frenzy at MaerzMusikthe event with the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos swelled to an impressively apocalyptic roarthe premire of Jrg Freys Fourth String Quartet provided an oasis of focussed stillness. Frey, who is from Aarau, Switzerland, about forty-five miles from Coxs home town of Biel, writes chamber music that seems to pick up where Shostakovichs left off, in a realm where Romantic harmony has decayed into beautiful, half-buried ruins. The Fourth Quartet is especially notable for its coda, in which a soft, low C-sharp is plucked out more than a hundred times on the cello, like a muffled clock, while the violins and viola grasp at ghostly chords.

The festivals epic speaking-clock finale had its own bleary pleasures. Titled timepiece, it built on Ablingers 2012 work tim Song. Lewis appeared as a reciter in the first hour; a few hours later, the Bozzini Quartet accompanied the speakers with Michael Oesterles Consolations, which is not unlike Freys quartet in mood. Long past midnight, the Irish composer-performer Jennifer Walshe took over the broadcast and wreaked havoc, as is her wont. She switched to Dublin Mean Time, which has not been in active use since 1916, and diverged from the script with such announcements as At the third chime, it will be arse oclock. Above all, it was mesmerizing to hear the time told in so many languagesa multiplicity that testified to Berlins cosmopolitan nature. According to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, diverse world cultures should take pride in their distinctive features while seeking the higher truth of a shared humanity. For a day or so, this utopia seemed to come into being, as the people of many nations came to agree about at least one thing: the time.

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The Sonic Extremes of the MaerzMusik Festival - The New Yorker