Artists shouldn't talk, they should do. Unless their art is talking, of course. Although again, actors who talk about their craft are often insufferable. Can't help it, they are not trained or moulded for an existence as media personalities. It does make art programmes on TV often a challenge for broadcasting bosses - and viewers.
Also Mondo, the programme that replaced Boeken (talking about writers with writers) and Vrije Geluiden (talking about music with musicians and composers) is quite a challenge. Even a professional art watcher like me sometimes found myself disengaged by the often outrageously arrogant appearance of the male guests in particular and the continually impotent treatment by presenter Nadia Moussaid. She has more up her sleeve, but it does not always show in Mondo.
Design as a solution?
So on 18 October 2020, something did happen. Mondo had suddenly become an upbeat broadcast. And this in these times, when lamentation and mourning over lockdowns and impending bankruptcies dominate everywhere. What was going on?
It was about Design. The word we have been allowed to write with a capital letter in the Netherlands for a few decades now. Because of Dutch Design Week, this year to be experienced entirely online for some well-known reason, Mondo featured artists whose main job is to think of solutions. And if there is a crying need for anything in this day and age, it is thinking of solutions.
Intimate
We saw an artist in search of the natural pigments that make the work of Rembrandt and Van Gogh so irresistible. Claudy Jongstra's work is world-famous for a reason: it combines aesthetics with form and an inspired story about a sustainable future. Pauline Van Dongen's Body Wonders Vest provided the most intimate moment of the evening, as it did things to Nadia Moussaid that were not prepared and agreed upon.
All brakes seemed off after that scene, in which indivisible sensations swept through the host. That it was possible to lean against a stop-light afterwards, which could now be coronaproofed to green that way thanks to Govert Fliint, made it all even more tactile.
Mold
What made me most happy was Bob Hendrikx's Micellium death box. Now that every Allerhande has a recipe that involves fermentation, it was only a matter of time before we could also think of it as a solution to death. Why hide a corpse in a coffin full of chemicals when you can already introduce it to the fungi that will convert it into useful nutrients for nature.
'When I look at you, I mainly see a big bag of compost,' I thought I heard Hendrikx say to Nadia Moussaid, and that was meant as a compliment. With that, humour was back in VPRO's sometimes too serious art hour, and it was more than welcome.
Ischa Meijer
It may be the zeitgeist that I crave it so much, but that lightness that Mondo had yesterday is rare. When it comes to books, theatre or visual art, there is almost never room on TV for a light touch. It can be done, because old greats like Ischa Meijer and - of a different order - Adriaan van Dis did bring lightness to serious, complicated subjects. Not that art is complicated, but artists can sometimes be difficult about it. Then you need one of those relatable hosts to lighten things up.
That disruption is also what makes Podium Witteman so fine. A depressed comedian with above-average musical talent and a young dog are just enough to make host of all hosts Paul Witteman uncomfortable. That makes for looseness.
So for VPRO, the question is who is going to unsettle Nadia Moussaid and her guests? Maybe that Body Wonders Vest by Pauline van Dongen is a solution?
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