Input from members: that's what drives this club. Take note. Yesterday, I wrote this piece:
Jerome Bel is quite something. The man who identifies himself as a choreographer has banned himself from flying for sustainability reasons, which is why he could not come to Amsterdam from Paris to read his own autobiography. Noble as the non-flying is, I can't help but point out to the man who has been taking conceptual dance art to a new dimension for the past 30 years that electric trains exist.
But that, of course, is also the pitfall of conceptual art: before you know it, you become part of the concept with your criticism, and this is evident at the end of this exactly two-hour-and-ten-minute self-kick with light images. Bell understands that there is a slightly populist side to his refusal to fly. All the more so because, as in a meaningful scene in the 'Euphoria' screened elsewhere at this Holland Festival is pointed out, the Western penchant for sustainability and self-sufficiency is also a very luxurious idea: large parts of the world have no choice but to survive on their own vegetables, and would have to save three lifetimes for a cheap flight on a budget flyer to a holiday destination, incidentally also something that exists only in the rich West. Sustainability has decadent edges.
Local artists
But Jerome Bel has thus written out his autobiography and is sending the text around the world to be read by local artists, including attached YouTube videos. Ideally, this should be done in the local language, but since our higher art schools are very international, the Amsterdam version opted for two English-speaking performers: Pankaj Tiwari, an artist from the poorest part of India, and Polish performer Maria Magdalena Kozłowska.
The duo does not hide their criticism of Bel's saintliness. Maria Magdalena Kozłowska portrays him as a clichéd woolly Frenchwoman (quite rightly so) and Pankaj Tiwari decides that he must reincarnate quite often if he is to be Jerome Bel and starts the first death scene on the spot.
Puddles
Does that make this evening a Hollandfestival-worthy product? I must say that I watched reasonably enthralled until the end, although they had better not have started in the first half-hour about a Bell piece in which peeing on stage was the main act. The undersigned's bladder commented on that. Remains that Jerome Bel is an interesting artist, and some of his works sound extremely exciting.
I concluded with this paragraph:
What is irritating about such a 130-minute text is that, incidentally as in the extended TED Talk by Lynette Walworth, no voices other than those of the makers themselves can be heard, because the voices of the performers are also part of the programme. As such, this project fits well into the current era in which people prefer to take to the (social) media themselves, rather than be critically questioned by others.
And then I got this email from the former director of Frascati:
Dear Wijbrand,
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
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