Cultureteca 10.11.19

In an increasingly familiar refrain, the week kicked off with Martin Scorsese having to defend his stance on comic book movies, courtesy of an opinion piece in The New York Times. In an interview with Empire magazine published last month, Scorsese had said that Marvel movies are ‘not cinema’, comments which provoked a fierce backlash. In the Times, Scorsese explained his perspective, noting:

‘Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.

For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.

It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.

[…]

Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.’

After citing some of the filmmakers – Ingmar Bergman, Sam Fuller, Don Siegel, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard – who inspired his love of the cinema, Scorsese followed the likes of Joel and Ethan Coen, Alfonso Cuarón, and David Lynch in decrying the state of the modern movie industry, adding that the elimination of risk among studios and multiplexes has created a situation ‘inhospitable to art’. A variation on a theme, a few days later the British filmmaker Joanna Hogg equally criticised ‘homogenised’ cinema, asking ‘in a few years, even five years’ time […] will I still be able to make films?’.

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On Monday the journalists Ahmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak were released from prison in Turkey after more than three years behind bars. Along with Ahmet’s brother, the economist and journalist Mehmet Altan, who was released from prison last year, both were arrested as part of a widespread media purge following the failed Turkish coup attempt of 2016. They stood accused of attempting to overthrow the government, while aiding the network of the outlawed cleric Fethullah Gülen, and they subsequently received life sentences, in moves decried as an attack on freedom of expression by thirty-eight Nobel laureates and PEN International. While in jail, Ahmet Altan wrote the essay ‘The Writer’s Paradox’, which was published on the eve of his trial in September 2017, and the memoir I Will Never See the World Again which covered his imprisonment. Based on time served, a reduction in Altan and Ilıcak’s sentences on Monday saw the Istanbul court order their immediate release under supervision.

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As anybody with a passing interest who doesn’t believe in magic knows, separating a vocal track from its instrumental backing can be one of the most imperfect and time-consuming tasks facing an aspiring music producer. Source separation – the splitting of a single recording into its component parts, vocals, drums, bass, keys, and so on – has uses which range from amateur remixing, to sampling, to karaoke, to audio mashups. The task has just been made much easier thanks to the French streaming platform Deezer, which this week released an open-source AI tool called Spleeter with pre-trained separation models for two, four, or five stems.

Written in Python, utilising the machine learning platform TensorFlow, the Spleeter source separation package is available via GitHub and requires the use of command line prompts. It offers a relatively accessible and fast means of source separation: the GPU version boasts separation one-hundred times faster than real-time, making it a valuable research tool capable of processing large datasets. The technologist and blogger Andy Baio has tested Spleeter with tracks from Led Zeppelin, Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Marvin Gaye, Van Halen, and Billie Eilish, noting ‘Vocals sometimes get a robotic autotuned feel, but the amount of bleed is shockingly low relative to other solutions’.

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The National Portrait Gallery in London announced this week that it will close for three years as part of its major transformation programme Inspiring People. The project is set to cost £35.5 million, which includes a £9.4 million grant from the National Lottery, and a £6.5 million grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation in the form of offices which will be converted into a new wing of the museum. The NPG will be closed from 29 June 2020 until the spring of 2023, and when it reopens it will be able to boast a new entrance and forecourt, an improved Learning Centre, top-lit galleries on the first floor of the redeveloped East Wing, and a comprehensive rehang of the collection in what will amount to the largest redesign in the museum’s long history. In the meantime, hundreds of works will travel across the UK to be showcased as part of special collaborations and temporary exhibits.

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Awards and nominations aplenty this week, as on Tuesday, Patti Smith, R.E.M., Outkast, The Neptunes, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, The Isley Brothers, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Fuller, Tony Macaulay, and William ‘Mickey’ Stevenson were among those nominated for the 2020 Songwriters Hall of Fame. Songwriters with a notable catalogue of popular songs become eligible for induction twenty years after their first significant release, and voting for the 2020 class closes in December with the hall’s 51st Annual Induction & Awards Gala to take place next June.

Then on Thursday Julianne Moore, Eddie Murphy, and Tyler, The Creator were among those honoured by The Wall Street Journal, whose annual Innovators Awards were hosted at a star-studded event at the newly reopened MoMA. Jerry Seinfeld and A$AP Rocky were some of the names on hand to present the awards to this batch of breathtaking innovators, which also included the Italian designer Riccardo Tisci for fashion, criminal justice activist Bryan Stevenson for social justice, self-portrait photographer Cindy Sherman for art, and music video and nascent film director Melina Matsoukas for film innovation.

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Coming soon to a parking lot near you, this week Sebastian Coe and the IAAF in their infinite wisdom announced more cuts to the Diamond League. The annual series is the lifeblood of elite track and field, the brand with the biggest names and the most prestige outside of the Olympics and World Championships, and for athletes a vital source of income. Diamond League champions receive prize money of $50,000, while each meet offers $10,000 to the winner of each discipline, down to $1,000 for athletes who finish in eighth place.

Following a year-long review, back in March the IAAF announced the first spate of changes to the Diamond League, cutting the number of meets from 14 to 12, cutting broadcast times down from two hours to ninety minutes, eliminating the long distance events beyond 3000 metres, while stressing a desire to hold field events out-of-stadium in city centres and public spots. When a javelin skewers your picnic, blame Sebastian Coe. It was clear that there would be an overall reduction in the number of disciplines contested as part of the Diamond League, from 32 down to 24: the 5000 metres was definitely out, and athletes waited with bated breath to find out what the IAAF had in store next.

The answer came on Wednesday, when the IAAF announced that for the 2020 Diamond League season, the discus, triple jump, 3000 metres steeplechase, and 200 metres will no longer be part of the core event. The 200 metres and the steeplechase will still be included in ten meets, while two meets will host the discus and triple jump, but none of the disciplines will feature as part of the Diamond League final. Apparently market research showed that the discus, triple jump, and steeplechase were among the least popular of disciplines, while the 200 metres was deemed ‘too congested’ alongside the 100 metres, ‘particularly in an Olympic Games year’.

Reaction to the news was swift, with expressions of anger and incredulity from some of the affected athletes, including one of the faces of athletics in the form of men’s 200 metres world champion Noah Lyles. And there was a significant response, with two-time Olympic and four-time world triple jump champion Christian Taylor launching The Athletics Association, a union which aims to give athletes greater say in the future of the sport. The Athletics Association immediately received the backing of other athletes, including women’s 200 metres world champion Dina Asher-Smith.

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Iceland Airwaves, unquestionably one of the coolest music festivals in Europe, took place from Wednesday until Saturday this week. After financial troubles this was a stripped-back version of the popular festival, in a handful of venues across downtown Reykjavik, but it still brought stellar names from Iceland and abroad on a bill which for the second year running achieved a 50/50 gender split. Those names included hometown favourites Of Monsters and Men, Ólöf Arnalds, Gabríel Ólafs, Mammút, and Eurovision stars Hatari, an import in the form of John Grant, Scandinavian starlet Girl In Red, and acts from further afield like Whitney, Snapped Ankles, Shame, and Georgia. There was still plenty of space left for Mac DeMarco and JFDR, two artists who feature on Culturedarm’s list of the best albums of the decade.

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The World Para Athletics Championships got underway this week, the ninth iteration of the event which now runs biennially. With the host this time round the awkwardly named Dubai Club for People with Determination in the United Arab Emirates, the championships were record-setting even before the first starting pistol went off, as they became the first showpiece event to provide a platform for United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with broadcast coverage spanning all continents and eighty-eight countries.

It was the same story on field and track, with a slew of world records starting on Thursday as Jaryd Clifford managed a time of 3:47.78 to win the men’s 1500 metres T13 final. He was followed on Friday by Sandeep Chaudhary in the men’s javelin F64, before on Saturday the floodgates really opened with world records from Lisa Adams in the women’s shot F37, Corey Anderson in the men’s javelin F38, Abdeslam Hili in the men’s 400 metres T12, Nassima Saifi in the women’s discus F57, Ihor Tsvietov in the men’s 200 metres T35, Andre Vdovin in the men’s 400 metres T37, and Yiting Shi who broke the women’s 200 metres T36 record twice in succession, lowering the time to 28.54 then 28.21 seconds. The action didn’t stop on Sunday, with world records coming from Roman Danyliuk, Hannah Cockroft, Johannes Floors, Xiaoyan Wen, Ahmad Hindi, and James Turner in the men’s shot F12, women’s 100 metres T34, men’s 100 metres T64, women’s long jump T37, men’s shot F34, and men’s 100 metres T36 respectively. The World Para Athletics Championships continues through next Friday.

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Following a revolutionary wave across Central and Eastern Europe, freely contested elections in Poland, the increasing departure of refugees from East Germany through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and political changes, demonstrations, and protests in East Germany itself, on 9 November 1989 a hasty press conference, the opening of checkpoints between East and West, and crowds of citizens precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall. On Saturday, Germany and the world remembered and marked the thirtieth anniversary.

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On Saturday the Supreme Court of India sought to settle a longstanding dispute over a plot of land in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, which both Hindus and Muslims consider holy. Hindus regard the site as the birthplace of the deity Ram, the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu and one of his most popular incarnations, but from the sixteenth century and the time of the Mughal emperor Babur, it was the home of the Babri Masjid, a Muslim mosque. Tensions, with occasional physical conflict and court disputes, have persisted over the site since the eighteenth century, before on 6 December 1992 a group of Hindu activists demolished the mosque. The rioting which followed killed approximately 2,000 people.

At stake for the Supreme Court was the ownership of the land, and the question of whether archaeological excavations indicated a Hindu temple on the site prior to the construction of the mosque. In the end the Supreme Court of India decided to give the Ayodyhya site to Hindus, who will be able to commence the construction of a temple to Ram. The Muslim community will be allocated a separate five-acre site for the construction of a mosque. The verdict was met with a mixture of relief and celebration, but overall the response was fairly muted, with the Sunni Waqf Board representing the Muslim community vowing to respect the judgement while weighing its next steps.

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France won the Fed Cup, the premier international team competition in women’s tennis, on Sunday as Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic beat Ashleigh Barty and Sam Stosur of Australia 6-4, 6-3 in the rubber match. This was France’s third title after victories in 1997 and 2003, while for Australia the wait goes on, with the seven-time winners having last won the competition back in 1974. Playing on home soil – or at least the hard courts of Perth Arena – world number one Ashleigh Barty had earlier proclaimed a ‘perfect match’, following a 6-0, 6-0 triumph over Garcia in the first round of singles matches. But a surprise three-set loss to Mladenovic set the tie up for a decider, and though Stosur came in for Ajla Tomljanović, fresh legs weren’t enough as France prevailed.

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Two major European elections took place on Sunday, and first up was Romania, with the country looking to elect a president to serve the next five-year term. The past few months in Romanian politics have been particularly tumultuous: following European election losses in May and the upholding of a conviction against Social Democratic Party (PSD) leader Liviu Dragnea, who was jailed for three years and six months for employing two party members in fake jobs paid out of state funds, in early October the Romanian Prime Minister and the PSD’s new leader Viorica Dăncilă was ousted from power, after her government lost a no-confidence vote. She was replaced as prime minister by Ludovic Orban, the leader of the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), who was sworn in just last week after a narrow parliamentary vote.

After her government collapsed, Viorica Dăncilă put herself forward as a presidential candidate, set to challenge the incumbent Klaus Iohannis, a former PNL leader who has built his presidency on a platform of anti-corruption. Under the semi-presidential system in Romania, the president officially designates and appoints the prime minister, consults with the government on major policy issues, and can veto bills and ministerial appointments once, while maintaining prestige roles in defence and foreign affairs. Opinion polls prior to Sunday’s election made Iohannis the strong favourite, with Dăncilă lagging in second place. And despite the challenges posed by Dan Barna, a parliamentary deputy and leader of the Save Romania Union party, and Mircea Diaconu, briefly Minister of Culture and a former MEP, it was Iohannis and Dăncilă who emerged from Sunday’s first round of voting with 37.79 and 22.32% of the vote. As neither candidate obtained an overall majority, they will face off in a second round of voting on 24 November.

Meanwhile Spain headed into its fourth general election in four years. In December 2015, the emergence of the left-wing populist party Podemos and the centre-right Catalonia-based Citizens upset the traditional balance of power in Spain, the two-party hegemony enjoyed by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the conservative People’s Party (PP). The result was the most fragmented parliament in Spanish history. After months of negotiations, neither the conservatives nor the socialists were able to secure a majority, leading to fresh elections in June 2016. The PP under Mariano Rajoy increased their share of the vote, and as the PSOE was beset by internal crisis and Podemos stalled – now under the brand Unidas Podemos after forging a broad alliance on the left – by October 2016 Rajoy was able to form a government.

That government lasted twenty months, until corruption scandals, constitutional crisis over the issue of Catalan independence, and a resurgent PSOE under a restored Pedro Sánchez brought Rajoy down in a no-confidence vote. That vote – the first no-confidence vote in Spanish history – allowed Sánchez and the PSOE to briefly form the most tenuous of governments, but parliamentary opposition and dwindling regional support led to a snap election last April. Sánchez helped the PSOE to their first election victory in eleven years, as Podemos faded and the PP suffered their worst ever election result. By contrast Citizens saw a surge of support, and the right-wing populists Vox entered Congress despite failing to meet pre-election expectations, but the overall outcome of April’s election left the country just as divided as before. The PSOE and Podemos failed to conclude negotiations after four months of talks, leading us to Sunday’s vote.

Helmed by the same array of figures – Pedro Sanchéz and the PSOE, Pablo Casado and the PP, Pablo Iglesias of Podemos, Albert Rivera of Citizens, and Santiago Abascal of Vox – on Sunday the PSOE again emerged as Spain’s most popular party, with 28% of the vote. The PP shored up their vote after April’s dismal showing, while Unidas Podemos lost another handful of seats. The big losers however were Citizens, whose share of the vote fell by more than nine percentage points as they were reduced from 57 to 10 Congress of Deputies seats. In their stead, Vox gained 28 seats thanks to a swing of almost five percentage points, making them the third largest party in Congress in a boon for the far-right.

Finally in election-based news, amid ongoing protests over the handling of October’s presidential election, Evo Morales resigned as the President of Bolivia. Morales had held the post since 2006, making him the longest-serving head of state in Latin America, but despite significant reductions in poverty and illiteracy, his rule had been increasingly marked by accusations of authoritarianism – especially after he went to Bolivia’s Supreme Court in 2016 to overturn the result of a referendum, thereby enabling him to stand for a third term.

Morales claimed victory in the aftermath of October’s election, but a stalled count which belatedly showed Morales ahead of challenger Carlos Mesa by the 10-point margin necessary to avoid a runoff vote prompted internal protests and international concern. As protests continued on the streets of La Paz, earlier on Sunday Morales had promised fresh elections to be overseen by a new electoral body, partly a response to a preliminary report by the Organization of American States which found irregularities in the earlier vote. But the intervention of the military, who had already begun siding with the protesters, seemed to force Morales’ hand. On Sunday General Williams Kaliman, the commander of Boliva’s armed forces, suggested that Morales should step down to restore ‘peace and stability and for the good of our Bolivia’.