He did not recognise himself in it at all, Cees Debets told his Royal Theatre on Monday 16 March. The Het Nationale Theater director was referring to the number of 62% of subsidised performing arts makers who, according to professional body NAPK, ‘experienced pressure or (even) censorship when making art’. The NAPK management responded surprisingly: it was not 62% of all performing arts producers who experienced that pressure or (self-)censorship. They were 62% of the 30 respondents on a survey the professional umbrella had conducted among all its 200 members, most of whom receive some form of subsidy.
So it is press release which we too posted (unabridged, as NAPK is a member), is incorrect. The suggestion made by that post, that there were as many as 124 performing arts producers (62% out of 200 members) who experienced pressure or (self-)censorship, is factually incorrect. It is only 18.6 performing arts producers, who bothered to complete the survey. So, leaving aside the question of who those 0.6 performing arts producers are, we can add considerable nuance to the emergency situation in the performing arts.
Terror
Of course, there are occasional hassles. The Culture Council has investigated this extremely well, and had to find that there are mainly problems at venues, where stand-up comedians are boycotted, punk bands rejected, managements threatened and fuss generated, thanks in part to an anger-fuelled talk show culture. World conflicts like Ukraine and Gaza plus Iran and Israel+US: all too often these are also fought out here via media and stages. Indeed, this sometimes leads to oppressive situations, and even terror.
Paul Knieriem of the Amsterdam youth theatre group De Toneelmakerij therefore also decided to keep a performance centring on a friendship between a Jewish and Islamic boy out of the press. Remarkable, of course, because this is not self-censorship but active censorship. The fear of escalation due to media attention should never lead to ‘keeping out of the press’ art made with public money.
No news?
So at the afternoon organised by NAPK in the Royal Theatre, there was plenty to talk about. But unfortunately so also a lot of noise about something that is also made bigger than it is by the sector itself. The fact that subsidised youth theatre regularly runs up against boundaries is also not from today. Back in 2002, I wrote a piece about it in the Utrechts Nieuwsblad, entitled: The Disaster of CKV. After all, subsidised youth theatre has the task of pushing some boundaries here and there.
What is new is the hardening and polarisation of society, especially ‘since Corona’. Social media offer people with an opinion a much more direct platform than the parents' evening or letter to the editor of the previous years. That global political players such as Russia and the US have also been actively contributing to polarisation via troll armies since the 10s of this century adds to the problem. Polarisation professor Hans Boutelier gave an engaging talk on this.
East Germany
The question remains as to what to do with the ‘toolkit for makers’ that NAPK presented this afternoon. It contains tips and tools that are partly an extension of the much more extensive manual that the umbrella organisation Kunsten ’92 published over a month ago. Bit double, then, but there is, on closer reading, still something wrong.
The toolkit is an adaptation of a German original. NAPK was recently visiting the former GDR, a region where the irresistible rise of the far-right is causing huge problems. I can relate, having spent a few festivals in the same time in Weimar, and saw how creators and producers had to walk on eggshells there.
Deadly
This is also because in Germany, the relationship between politics and art is completely different from here. Subsidy relationships are much more intimate, and political appointments to top cultural posts standard. People who complain here about an abundance of tick boxes and codes should go and talk to artists in Thuringia for fun. That the AfD has dug deep into the art world is terrifying. On the other hand: anyone who dares to criticise Istrael can shake their gig or job too.
All issues that are not remotely relevant here, although the Trumpian front in the Dutch parliament would like nothing better than that. We could all see that on 19 January: Culture legislative consultation was useful stage for Trumpist House factions.
Outside the press?
So for now, a little self-censorship in the subsidised performing arts is not the biggest problem. The checks and balances offered by our rule of law are just a little more robust than those across the Atlantic. But ‘Thorbecke’ is no longer sacred and the rule of law can only survive if all concerned continue to believe in it.
So the question is whether juggling figures, pimped-out percentages and phrases like ‘more and more’ will help things move forward. The question is even more whether things should be kept ‘out of the press’. Above all, let's not start demolishing democracy itself.
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