One of the most enjoyable, interesting and fun cultural events of the year takes place at the very beginning - this is the New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Every year at about 13:00 on January 1, it is shown on our television - live from Vienna.
The concert is made as light entertainment: classical music (as a rule, a lot of Strauss) and musical jokes - for example, one of the musicians portrays a steam locomotive, everyone laughs, winks, works for the public and for themselves.
This year, under the new rules, the hall was empty.
For whom did the Viennese orchestra players play?
For a public they haven't seen.
Apparently, the main feature of the culture of the new time will be its aloofness, the absence of a direct connection between the one who makes art and the one who consumes this art.
Thanks to universal digitalization, the world has become accessible to everyone and in all its diversity.
But only through the screen of a laptop, tablet, smartphone.
Some time ago it seemed that this was good: why go somewhere if you can visit the gallery online?
Now it is clear that full-time enjoyment of the visual arts is an exceptional luxury.
The same goes for music - how many concerts have you attended in the past year?
Think you can visit more in this?
Hopefully.
But like this, two, five, ten years will pass - and the very culture of attending events will begin to wash out, disappear.
Theater, circus, concert music - those art forms where the process of creation is inseparable from the process of perception.
An artist needs a live audience on stage.
But now he is already learning to do without it: they play in front of an empty hall or in front of a camera for broadcast.
In the past season, all artists have mastered the profession of webcam models.
Apparently, they will improve in it in 2021.
At the same time, such an industry as cinema suffers much less from innovations - they have learned to monetize online views.
In fact, why go to the cinema if a new film is released in an Internet cinema: you pay 200 rubles to watch it online, and popcorn will be brought from the nearest supermarket.
It seemed to us that we were impermissibly closely connected with our gadgets, but now 2020 has come and has already gone - and we realized that that addiction did not mean anything at all compared to the current necessity: except for a gadget, nothing is needed, but life is without it , including cultural, instantly ends.
No need to get off the couch and exercise or drive to a meeting.
There is a need not to forget to charge your smartphone in time and put on at least a T-shirt to meet in Zoom.
What was good about the old cultural life?
She allowed herself to be in control, to remain human, to watch herself, to work on herself.
Not only to the theater, but also to the cinema, you cannot go in sweatpants.
If this same cinema is brought to your bed, then there is no incentive to put on pants at all.
At the same time, 2021 has a chance to be remembered in the cultural field.
There is something to expect from this year.
Maybe Rotterdam will host the Eurovision Song Contest, canceled in the outgoing year.
In the spring, we jokingly said that our victory was stolen - the absurdist punk band Little Big was supposed to go to the competition.
They are shocking to such an extent that, regardless of the musical preferences of the public, there was no shame for them (for the team).
If the competition takes place, the same group will go to it, and, probably, we will have one more reason for short-term national pride.
Taylor Swift's single and Paul McCartney's new album will be at the top of the charts at the beginning of the year (this is already clear now).
But the fashion for music is fleeting - they listened and forgot.
Surely within a year there will be new artists writing all alone on a home computer and selling something through online music stores.
This is no longer even a sign of the times - it is an ingrained reality.
Probably, Victor Pelevin will write another novel in accordance with the terms of his contract.
There is only one problem here beforehand - in terms of the degree of frightening absurdity, the reality in which we live has overtaken all Pelevin's plans and almost caught up with the plots of Vladimir Sorokin.
But, let's hope, Mikhail Elizarov will write the second volume of the book "Earth", which this year was bypassed by the main literary prizes.
We can say for sure that in 2021, most likely, everything will be fine in the cinema - the industry is large, heavy and expensive, it will fly on the knurled one for some time, even if people are finally banned from going to cinemas.
For example, Guillermo del Toro's Noir Noir with Cate Blanchett and Wes Anderson's French Gazette - a comedy featuring Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton - awaits us.
And there will be something interesting in Russian cinema.
I, as the father of a family, am waiting for the release of the film comic strip “Major Thunder.
The Plague Doctor ”is something about justice, which the hero takes in his hands in the midst of corruption chaos.
Children's, apparently, a story.
Danila Kozlovsky is to release a film about the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
After the British TV series on the same topic, we have something to compare with.
Once again, they filmed "The Master and Margarita" - there is little hope for success, apparently, the work, potentially cinematic, does not lend itself to our directors.
To gallery page
There will also be two at least interesting film adaptations of modern Russian prose - Empire V based on the aforementioned Pelevin and Heart of Parma based on Alexei Ivanov.
In general, last year they calculated and found out that the volume of everything produced by man finally exceeded the volume of biomass.
That is, people have already produced more than there is and was on Earth: stones, water, trees, animals - now there is less of all this than artificial, that is, there is less nature than culture.
This means that no matter what the new year turns out to be, we will find something to do with ourselves this time.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.