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Daniel Bertina

/// Freelance cultural journalist, critic, writer and dramatist. Omnivore with a love of art, culture & media in all unfathomable gradations between obscure underground and wildly commercial mainstream. Also works for Het Parool and VPRO. And trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Millennial Poets at Poetry International (@poetry_en) - Social Justice with Self-mockery and Laughing at Rape... Is it possible?

Poets Danez Smith and Patricia Lockwood once broke the internet with their virtuoso wordplay. Smith with a frothy tirade about ineradicable racism and police brutality in America (Dear White America) and Lockwood with a heartbreaking/funny poem about her rape (Rape Joke). Both have outgrown their hypes. They have secretly been doing a fantastic job for years, using Twitter, YouTube, paper and stage... 

Read More "Millennial Poets at Poetry International (@poetry_en) - Social Justice with Self-mockery and Laughing at Rape... Is it possible?

About directionless hipsters, their parents, and the war in Europe (coming) #HF17

Vincent Macaigne is uncomfortable. He looks around nervously every time the waitresses run past with trays full of clinking glasses and slam the doors. He has hardly slept, and the previous evening he had walloped the audience of the Swiss Theatre Vidy with his brutal, inimitable performance En Manque. Braced, he sat down for the interview. "Sorry, I... 

Read More "About directionless hipsters, their parents, and the war in Europe (coming) #HF17

A witty little book about suicide (8 uncomfortable questions to Jente Posthuma and Bas Uterwijk)

Writer Jente Posthuma (1974) and photographer Bas Uterwijk (1968) teamed up to create a booklet about the carefully planned suicide of Uterwijk's father, Henk. Try to think a little good of me is an intimate, searching, resigned and at times hilarious portrait of a loved one who has fallen away. Bas and I met on the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu mat sometime in 2005. We were trying to... 

Read More "A witty little book about suicide (8 uncomfortable questions to Jente Posthuma and Bas Uterwijk)

'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16

Swiss playwright Milo Rau created a theatrical trilogy about the demise of the European ideal. The second part The Dark Ages is now at the Holland Festival. Rau combined his actors' painful, personal life stories with themes from the works of Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies. With a Freudian sauce: 'Countless people who are The Dark Ages have seen ask me: 'Milo, is something wrong with your father?'

Read More "'The European is an orphan' - Milo Rau on The Dark Ages #HF16

Welcome to the Jungle: a catastrophic clusterfuck at the Channel Tunnel

Maaike Engels (video artist and filmmaker) and Teun Voeten (war photographer and cultural anthropologist) made Welcome to the Jungle. A documentary about the utter chaos in the makeshift migrant camp near the canal tunnel in Calais, where some 6,000 people are now waiting in harsh misery for their chance to travel clandestinely to England. Welcome to the Jungle is a painful and bij... 

Read More "Welcome to the Jungle: a catastrophic clusterfuck at the Channel Tunnel

DJ Eddy De Clercq: From 'Nichtenherrie' to Neerlands Export product

Eddy De Clercq, the Godfather of Dutch house and dance culture, wrote his autobiography, Let the Night Never End, together with Martijn Haas. A story about the birth of the DJ scene in the Low Countries, the rise of house music and nightlife with raging parties full of sex, dance, art, booze, swag and snuff. Against the backdrop of the advancing... 

Read More "DJ Eddy De Clercq: From 'Nichtenherrie' to Neerlands Export product

'A drunken panda who wants to have a tussle' - The Loom of Mind on HF15

In The Loom of Mind, Icelandic folk singer Mugison, his bosom friend Pétur Ben, and Flemish baroque ensemble B.O.X. join forces. What does that sound like: melancholic Icelandic blues with 17th-century instruments? Like a stand-up storytelling concert performance? Or like a drunken panda who wants to have a game? How did you find each other? Pieter Theuns, lutenist and founder of B.O.X.: "I found Mugison... 

Read More "'A drunken panda who wants to have a tussle' - The Loom of Mind on HF15

The whole world is a fan of the UFC, now the Netherlands

Two men in a cage. Super trained and muscular to the marrow. Small gloves, bit in, tok on for protection. Scantily clad except for bermuda shorts. Some reinforcing tape wrapped around a joint here and there. At Stockholm's Tele2 Arena, a 30,000-plus crowd screams like mad. This modern gladiatorial spectacle is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Read More "The whole world is a fan of the UFC, now the Netherlands

We had coffee with the uncrowned king of Iranian war photography

Moshen Rastani (1958) grins broadly, looks at me penetratingly, gestures, and puts his hand on his heart. "What is happening now, here, between you and me, in this conversation. That's what matters to me. We meet face to face. We communicate. Through each other's faces, we can visit the other's secret world. Such a camera is just a tool to make that contact."

Rastani was thrown into photography by the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war. He emerged as the uncrowned king of Iranian war and documentary photography with his beautiful, hushed black-and-white portraits. He also did reportage in Lebanon and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and captures everyday life in Iran in his ongoing Iranian Family Project. Together with eight compatriots and kindred artists, his work is now on show at Francis Boeske Projects.

Read More "We had coffee with the uncrowned king of Iranian war photography

Wat doet kunst met je hersens? Mark Mieras legt het uit in 4 zinnen, donderdag meer op Radio Futura

Je moet echt een hardcore debatliefhebber zijn om vrijwillig naar een gesprek over educatie te willen luisteren. Toch wordt de uitzending van Radio Futura deze donderdag interessant, want het gaat over Radicale Educatie en hersenen. Hersenen zijn hot, dankzij Dick Swaab en inzichten uit brain based teaching.

Read More "Wat doet kunst met je hersens? Mark Mieras legt het uit in 4 zinnen, donderdag meer op Radio Futura

Paul Ruven only rents himself a venue

Leedvermaak is iets prachtig en diep menselijks. Regisseur, scenarist en filmproducent Paul Ruven – bekend van de ene Neerlandse filmkraker na de andere, zo noemen wij Het Bombardement – kreeg onlangs een imposante bak kritische stront over zich heengestort naar aanleiding van zijn nieuwe baksel De Overgave. Zó veel, dat de Amsterdamse bioscopen zich er niet aan wilden branden.

Toch laat Ruven zich niet kisten.

Read More "Paul Ruven only rents himself a venue

John Jansen's jihad - Zeitgeists Publishing

John Jansen is squatting in front of his immense printer. Holding his breath, he very carefully places a piece of paper in just the right place. The inlay for the black metal band's new cassette Northward. Black typography on black board. Monk's work. He sighs with relief. "And so I have to do 88 of those. All by hand. Do you understand how many hours go into a tape like that?"

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Silent hakas, blood and grim nudity at The Crimson House

Prinses Beatrix kan wel tegen een stootje hedendaags theater. Twee jaar geleden zat ze nog (als koningin) in de zaal bij The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic, en dit jaar bij The Crimson House van Lemi Ponifasio / MAU. Zo ongeveer één van de meest radicale – want luid, rauw en tamelijk ondoorgrondelijke – voorstellingen van deze editie van het Holland Festival. We kwamen er overigens niet helemaal uit, maar

Read More "Silent hakas, blood and grim nudity at The Crimson House

Hunting for art in the Bijlmer with Google Maps

After co-organising FATFORM, a radical series of art events in Amsterdam Southeast - with furious crossover exhibitions and performances on the roofs of an abandoned shopping centre and a car park, the collective around creative production agency Vinger.nl has thrown itself into the new edition of the Open Art Route 2014. And it will be something.

Read More "Hunting for art in the Bijlmer with Google Maps

On M2M and genius theatre makers who completely miss the mark

One of the rules of thumb of contemporary theatre art reads as follows: There is no middle ground in a production with an insanely long title. Such a production is either fantastic or dies of its own pretensions. At Judson church is ringing in Harlem (made to measure) / twenty looks of paris is burning at the judson church (m2m) is the latter.

Read More "On M2M and genius theatre makers who completely miss the mark

To hear Andrès Neuman speak is to want to buy his book #WU14

Tijdens Writers Unlimited mengen schrijvers zich vaak clandestien onder het gewone volk. En dan vooral de jongere, internationale auteurs, in tegenstelling tot de Adriaan van Dissen van deze wereld die geen stap kunnen verzetten zonder bedolven te worden in een scrum van literaire groupies. Zo kan het dus gebeuren dat je meerdere malen bier staat te drinken met iemand die ineens, geheel onverwacht, een geniaal auteur blijkt te wezen. Zoals Andrès Neuman.

Read More "To hear Andrès Neuman speak is to want to buy his book #WU14

Antjie Krog and Andries Samuel drive a tractor over your heart #WU14

"Of course she can write!" seems the mother of the award-winning South African poet Antjie Krog ever having exclaimed. "Because I can do it too, right? There's nothing special about that."

Blood creeps, even for Krog. After a ten-year career as a successful architect - and secretly grinding on words - her own son debuted Andries Samuel with the crushing, heartbreaking collection of poetry Wanpraktyk (2011). 

Writers Unlimited brought mother and son together on stage. Late at night. For the first time ever. And Wende sang to them. And god almighty how beautiful that was. By the way, you have to take it from us, because on pain of caning, pitch & feathers and fines from here to Siberia, it turned out that it was forbidden to film Wende singing (but we did, and the video was online for a while, but has now been removed from the internet).

Read More "Antjie Krog and Andries Samuel drive a tractor over your heart #WU14

No happy sex, but bitter sex #WU14

Sometimes a Writers Unlimited programme can catch you off guard. Last year, the late-night talk show on literary sex was a hilarious highlight - pun intended - of the festival. This time, the programme dropped Let's talk about sex bar little to laugh at.

Forget the connotations with Salt N Pepa. Indonesian Linda Christanty writes not about 'happy sex, but about bitter sex as a means of power, as a form of coercion and violence.' That made us quiet for a moment. 

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‘De uitgerangeerde Marokkaan en de Vlaming mogen het weer uitvechten’ #WU14

In de rijke traditie van schrijvers die elkaars bloed wel kunnen drinken en de ander schuimbekkend met de pen te lijf gaan, orkestreerde Writers Unlimited een ‘polemiek’. Abdelkader Benali verwoordde in dit debat de stem van het volk, en Saskia De Coster die van de elite. Beiden hakten op elkaar in met hulp van moderator Elsbeth Etty. Resultaat: veel onsamenhangend getreiter.

Read More "‘De uitgerangeerde Marokkaan en de Vlaming mogen het weer uitvechten’ #WU14

'Shéda', insane chaos with a glimpse of genius @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

If after only the first 15 minutes, half of the middle row flees the auditorium, and you look at your watch, thinking, my god we still have over five hours to go, there is something thoroughly wrong with the performance. 'Shéda', by Congolese playwright Dieudonné Niangouna, is an insane tub of chaos of incoherent tirades. Declaimed screaming at a stretch by 12 hyperactive African and European actors, each with a fixed character, who return as gods to apocalyptic worlds, à la Mad Max, beating each other up with bizarre lyrics. Goodness, it is impossible to make sense of it all. Yet it continues to fascinate. Why?

Read More "'Shéda', insane chaos with a glimpse of genius @hollandfestival

Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

It's a tricky genre, which drone, or ambient. Or, what do you call the avant-garde cello experiments of the Icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir (1982). Very slow, very repetitive, very minimalist. Abstract sound art that leans heavily on loops, resonations and buzzing, über syrupy tones that swell into a large, layered sound collage.

Read More "Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

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