UK arts must not be sacrificed for speculative AI gains, peers say - The Guardian

‘Stop sleeping on gen X.” I heard this on TikTok recently. I misinterpreted it, with a guilty start, as: “Stop sleeping, gen X,” because I am 51 (peak X), so always tired; while not sleeping at the time, I may have been resting my eyes. In fact, Joel Marlinarson, a marketing guru, was suggesting my generation have become a powerful, if underrated, force online. Aged between 46 and 61, gen Xers with proper jobs are peaking, career-wise (although it’s a different story for those out of work, as a report last month on the struggles of over-50s jobseekers made plain). We’re more likely to own homes than the following generations; we’re emerging from the trenches of childrearing and, the argument goes, ready to indulge in some me-time. “If gen X were a country, it would be the world’s second-largest consumer market,” the World Economic Forum reported last year, with gen X women in particular influencing 70% to 80% of all consumer spending. That makes us great customers – witness the tidal wave of menopause-washed wellness guff (Which? reported last month that many pricey supplements were no better than a cheap multivitamin) and beauty brands for people suddenly horrified by their necks.

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In August 2019, Omar Rajeh sat in his bedroom, listening to the sound of pounding percussion with his world in crisis. In the midst of political instability, Citerne Beirut, a theatre and cultural centre Rajeh had founded in his native Lebanon, was forced to close, dismantled by order of the local government, who planned to build an incinerator on the site. Heartfelt … Omar Rajeh in Dance Is Not for Us. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the GuardianRajeh tells us that as a teenager, coming of age at the end of the Lebanese civil war, dance had always seemed like the most revolutionary thing he could do. Now here he is, more than three decades later, still dancing – out of frustration, defiance, resistance and a desire to connect. As the percussive score gains momentum, Rajeh’s busy body builds up a sweat. In this danced stream of consciousness, Rajeh is not always an especially elegant mover, but he dances like it’s a necessary thing to do. Part of this year’s Dance Umbrella festival, Dance Is Not for Us is a solo that appears at times like an explosion of physical instinct, but it is mostly calm, considered musings on the nature of choreography, with all its workings exposed.