This is a Snippet in which I ask myself why it seems so hard to be original in the field of contemporary art/theater/music and possibly introduce you to the term “flameout,” coined by anthropologist David Graeber. Link to David Graeber’s lecture (very recommended): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF-8OQj0RE David Graeber’s website: https://davidgraeber.org/ The Institute for Experimental Art (co-founded by Graeber): […]

An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar is a new segment of the Artists ont he Verge podcast. It features your host, opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas, talking to comedian-and-TV-writer turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony. We’ll be having conversations from across the high/low art divide with the goal of being honest about what a life centring […]

I learned the term “scriptlessness” recently and realized it was why I started the Artists on the Verge channel. Here’s part of the video script: There seem to be two narrative about being an artist. You’re probably familiar with some version of both of them:  Narrative No. 1: You are a talented and/or hard working […]

I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t until 2020 that the G20 held its first Cultural Ministerial Meeting to discuss the importance of the creative sector to the economy and it wasn’t until 2021 that they established the Cultural Working Group, the purpose of which is to address issues relating to the creative economy. […]

This is the second part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?” In the first part of the essay, Ellen Dissanayake explained why she thinks it’s helpful to think of art as an adaptive function and lays out some of the existing hypotheses of how art may […]

This is the first part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?” The author, Ellen Dissanayake, is best known for three books on art anthropology: What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992) and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began […]

This is an under-3-minute summary of the three-part essay “Another Artworld” by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber, which examines the fraught legacy of “high” art. I start with a summary of “Another Art World” – in less than 3 minutes. Then I give my overall reaction – I ask how one would fund this, think […]

This is my honest review of the colossal undertaking that was the TV opera Everything for Dawn by Experiments in Opera. The review was “commissioned by” Theorema Review, a recently-started multi-lingual journal in which artists review other artist. Link to my review in Theorema Review: https://theorem-a.org/2023/06/21/everything-for-dawn-by-experiments-in-opera/ Link to Experiments in Opera’s Everything for Dawn: https://experimentsinopera.com/portfolio-item/everythingfordawn/ Live […]

We’re finally here – at the third installment of reading “Another Art World” by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber. Even if you’re a new listener, you can start here because in the last segment, the author’s promised to finally get to the heart of the matter: What might “another art world” look like? But – […]

This episode is a conversation with composer and Web III researcher Reilly Smethurst – who thinks the internet is just about the worst thing that happened to artists. Is it a pessimistic episode? I actually don’t think so. My take: The fact that the internet does not replace real-life communities and live gatherings around art, […]