Cultural journalist since 1996. Worked as theatre critic, columnist and reporter for Algemeen Dagblad, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Rotterdams Dagblad, Parool and regional newspapers through Associated Press Services. Interviews for TheaterMaker, Theatererkrant Magazine, Ons Erfdeel, Boekman. Podcast maker, likes to experiment with new media. Culture Press is called the brainchild I gave birth to in 2009. Life partner of Suzanne Brink roommate of Edje, Fonzie and Rufus. Search and find me on Mastodon.
The play La Democrazia in America (to be seen at the Holland Festival on 4, 5 and 6 June) is of course about democracy in America, but actually more about The Democracy in America. And the two should not be confused. For The Democracy in America is a 1,200-page book by French jurist De Tocqueville. This...
One of the most wonderfully successful programmes on Dutch radio is Radio Kunststof. Every weekday on Radio 1, between seven and eight o'clock, it attracts a bizarre number of listeners, especially for that time of day. And especially for an art programme. On TV then is DWDD, also called art programme on its public broadcasters, but with Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and millions of viewers. How...
Something is changing considerably in the world of literature. Libraries are closing or turning into flex spaces for poor freelancers. The sold circulation of an average successful novel remains in four figures. Young people no longer watch TV or listen to the radio, but make their own well-watched and generously paid films on YouTube. Or they sit the...
The SER report published on Friday 21 April rubs it in nicely: the cultural sector is on the verge of collapse. It is even worse than a year ago. This shows that the patience of a PvdA culture minister over the past four years has not helped. Indeed, Halbe Zijlstra's multiplier of misery is doing its job entirely as expected....
For those who like to be around art, politics has become a bit more fun again, since 15 March. Since the 2017 elections, Thierry Baudet has been in the House of Representatives. Thierry Baudet knows a lot about art, he thinks, and we will come to know it, too. In fact, Thierry Baudet is the best thing about art these days...
In a discussion (on facebook, where else) about NRC Handelsblad's departure from Blendle, an editor of that newspaper made very disparaging remarks about a reader who had paid 30 cents for one of his articles. In a recent article on Frankwatching, an expert concluded that investigative journalism could only survive if we started subsidising newspapers....
What happens when you take someone's head off? Little, you will say, since the accompanying body dies. But then you are wrong. Because at the first GRIP evening at Utrecht's Theater Kikker, Steven Michel showed that the rest of the body then just takes over. Fascinating to notice how you go from a bare back to...
The first bare female breast I consciously observed in my life was the happily swishing boob of the girl in the Fa advertisement. It must have been sometime deep in the 1970s. The same time the Pacifisties Socialistiese Partij also did something similar with a cow in the background. Now, a good forty years later, the...
By now, we are a little surrounded by voting guides and electoral compasses. There is one for every area of policy. What to vote for if you have a beating heart for art? The Correspondent gave a nice little overview the other day. It showed that art is indeed a hobby of mainly left-wing parties, at least when it comes to subsidised art. Art...
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Ruth Mackenzie has achieved an enormous amount in the short time she has been boss of Holland Festival. I've experienced the festival now since the late 1990s and watched it evolve from something very personal and sometimes obscure (under Ivo van Hove), to an ethereal feast of sizzling aesthetics (with Pierre Audi), to what it...
There are those, including in the arts, who still think the world has not changed for good. Who suspect that a vote for a culture-friendly party will at a stroke turn back the clock eight years. Those people will wake up after 15 March to a new world, even if the Netherlands has suddenly chosen whether or not...
Bart Rutten becomes the new artistic director of Utrecht's Centraal Museum Bart Who? Bart quite an important figure. Bart Rutten was the man behind some great blockbusters at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. That he is going to Utrecht after Malevich and Matisse says a lot about the good work of his predecessor Edwin Jacobs. It says even more...
Five art experiences will always stick to this bizarre year for me. And one thing really scared me. Whether the worst is now behind us? At least the most extraordinary is still on view until 5 February 2017. A chronological overview of what was unbelievable, unthinkable, inconceivable, unbelievable and perhaps untrue. Much of it, by the way, will be in 2017...
On 20 December, the general membership meeting of Coöperatief Cultureel Persbureau unanimously decided to accept a cooperation offer from The Co-operative/House of Journalism and Reporters Online. This is an important step in the development of independent cultural journalism. Culture Press, as the Cooperative Cultural Press Agency is known on the internet and social media, is growing significantly as a result. The...
In art, you work because of your passion, not because of the money. That's so, that was always so. In art, it's even suspicious if you care about money. And if you do worry about money once, it immediately comes out rotten. Are you going to shout about culture, march der your...
Yesterday, the chamber made €10 million available for the arts. This brings the tally of government cuts to at least €190,000,000 still. This hard-won extra is the last that could be asked for. Everyone agrees, the new system has been definitively embraced. The protest has made itself redundant now that the compromise has been made. And what have we got...
If the shock of 9-11 in 2016 highlighted anything, it was the yawning gap between the higher and lower educated in our neoliberal society. White, less-educated and angry male America elected a racist and war hitter as president. We can't help but conclude that democratic, liberal, highly educated and bigoted America refused to see the blow coming. In the spring ...
Een van de sterkste argumenten van de tegenstanders van kunstsubsidies is, dat de gewone man niets aan kunst heeft. Dat argument is nu door wetenschappelijk onderzoek weerlegd. ‘Geluksprofessor’ Ruut Veenhoven presenteerde deze week een onderzoek waaruit bleek dat vooral lager opgeleide mensen gelukkiger worden van kunst. Ze worden er zelfs gelukkiger van dan van sport, zowel passief als actief, of…
I wrote this story in 2003, following the publication of a major historical study on theatre attendance. I return to it often, this research. Because it keeps me with both feet on the ground while screaming for culture. And because it underlines the need to overhaul the system anyway. 'Nothing so constant...
Theatre group Aluin celebrates its 25th anniversary. The company, which originated at the Utrecht acting school, celebrated at the place where it all started: Utrecht's Theatercafé De Bastaard. On Sunday 23 October, they reprised their first ever performance, a play entitled 'It', based on the novella The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James. About a man who thinks he is destined...
This play is going to cost me a lot of friends, but it needs to get out. After all, the theatre industry is doing badly. And I can see more and more clearly where that is due to. And for once it's not Halbe Zijlstra. Or the VVD, or the population, or the Netherlands in general, or the zeitgeist. And it's not because of Netflix either...
That 10 million is officially in. The art world is doing its best to sound grateful. The employers in the performing arts, gathered in the NAPK, have sent Bussemaker a thank you. Because she is not cutting 300 million from culture, but only 290 million. The extra money raked together last year by various lobbyists and parties is now anchored in the...
'Have you really been listening to poems for three hours?' Asaf Avidan had not yet experienced anything like that. The musical headliner of the 34th Night of Poetry has yet another story to take with him on his tour. In the Netherlands, you can quiet a full hall by reading a poem. This year, that even succeeded ...
'At the time, under the influence of the populists, we perhaps went too far in our attack on art subsidies.' So declared Jeroen Hatenboer, VVD member and culture alderman of the municipality of Enschede, during the annual Paradiso debate at the end of the Uitmarkt 2016. In the context of the current cabinet's sorry campaign, quite an interesting footnote, and entirely appropriate in the upcoming...
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