my kingdom for a runcible spoon

Tonight at the Palazzo Zenobioin in Venice is the last night to catch Margaret Leng Tan giving the world premiere of an Allan Kaprow piece as part of a 3-day program dedicated to John Cage and Kaprow. The sneak preview of the score and the performance I was luckily granted boded well for the evening.
Margaret on YouTube
Her DVD

Boris Johnson's piano plan hit the right note for London?
The novelist Susan Hill argues on Start the Week that we have failed to teach our children how to appreciate silence. Silence, Please is in the June edition of Standpoint magazine.

Blood, oil and designer rugs: the world's top artists get set for the Venice Biennial
Video art triumphs at the Venice Biennale
Steve McQueen presents a new 30 minute film Giardini (timed entry and restricted seating for the British Pavilion)
Steve McQueen preview in The Telegraph
The Guardian's Adrian Searle gives an atmospheric 8 min audio review
Front Row talks to UAE pavilion curator Tirdad Zolghadr and to Dubai-born artist Lamya Gargash about her photographs of one-star hotels in the Emirates.
Meet the British (BBC4) are films made by the government between the end of the war and the 1980s in order to promote Britain abroad.
Last days of Kuniyoshi at the Royal Academy of Arts until 7 June

'Birdsong' radio station taken off air
Where have all our birds gone?

Yet another minister quits Gordon Brown's UK Government but last week the Prime Minister found time to phone Simon Cowell to check up on Susan Boyle
Who's to blame for Susan Boyle's distress?
Her sadness - and our shame
"I hate this show" she screams before going to rehab

Sugar (from Half Nelson writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden) opens in London today. GreenCine's New York podcast interview


Roberto Benigni brings the beauty of Dante to North America in TuttoDante
BBC bosses almost lost faith in 'disgusting' Monty Python
Trash the blue or green screen for Stephen Colbert who lands in Iraq reality for his new shows. Some of us like being color coordinated, though.

And for something completely different classical tenor Mark Padmore on the enduring appeal of Britain's musical bard of bleakness, John Dowland
Simon Schama celebrates the life and work of love poet John Donne
The Telegraph interview

The Guardian on why Wildworks staging the end of the world in Devonport's docks
The Trial of Charles I on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time (June 4)
Interview with Stephen Daldry (The Film Programme) coinciding with the DVD release of The Reader
Lawrence Anthony tells the story of how he took on a herd of traumatised elephants in his book The Elephant Whisperer. And Jerry Springer on his West End debut on BBC Radio 4's Midweek. Now there's an aural segue.
A discussion with the neuroscientist author of a book imagining forty different scenarios for the afterlife, and with Brian Eno, who has written a musical score for a live performance of Tales from the Afterlife.

meanwhile, I will try to compose my pensées...