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What would the world be like if art had had the power that book burners and iconoclasts have attributed to it over the centuries? In the fascinating documentary series 'Our Man with the Taliban', Thomas Erdbrink takes a rather perilous journey through an Afghanistan abandoned by the 'civilised' West. We see a world where book burners and iconoclasts...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: training as a learning process for a sector. Driving licences and absenteeism policy The youth theatre company was a collective of actors. They were jointly responsible and they kept as much control as possible over everything, including transport to their performances. So an actor with a driving licence was then...
Assault and finally rape of a 14-year-old girl by a bonkers vet. An enjoyable evening at the theatre is different, until the applause of this arguably (once again) best Dutch theatre production of the year relieves you of the harsh struggle. Author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and director Ivo van Hove emphasise that both 49-year-old vet Kurt and his minion, the farmer's daughter, are heavily traumatised...
Of the 1910 self-employed people still working behind the scenes of the performing arts in 2019, only 1090 will be left in 2022. So what we suspected turns out to be true: technicians have gone up onto the roof to install solar panels and heat pumps, audience workers found a destination in healthcare. Although the Culture Monitor does not capture this migration, it is clear
'Dutch-language music has been unabatedly popular for years in a variety of genres; from pop to hip-hop, competing with English-language music. That's where you see what you can achieve with attention. The same can happen with books.' This quote by author Gustaaf Peek, recorded in a press release from the Authors' Union, is quite inspiring. The press release, in which the advocate of 1,750 Dutch writers...
Sometimes you suddenly discover a gem of culture, banished from playlists by the tough theatre market. Like Wil van der Meer with his French chanson programme of translated songs by Annie Schmidt. As an actor, singer, director and teacher, Wil van der Meer is not first rate, but equally indispensable to Dutch culture. The countless, indispensable roles...
IFFR 2023 is not only a platform for filmmakers with their own voice, but also makes cross-connections with other arts. What else can cinema be?
With The river is a wound full of fish, Colombian Lorena Salazar Masso makes a powerful literary debut. What does it mean to be a mother, when do you actually BE a mother? Can you be a mother even if you did not give birth to your child yourself? As a mother without a child, are you still a mother? That is the theme of the...
The Dutch government distrusts citizens. And that stands in the way of a healthy art sector. This emerged on 17 January during a well-attended symposium at Amsterdam's Veem House. The occasion was the essay published in book form by Renée Steenbergen, who also published articles on this site. At the event, co-organised by Veem and Platform Beeldende Kunst, many makers were...
The 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off on 25 January. Four questions to the artistic director on the course set.
Nice message from the Theatre and Concert Visit Promotion Foundation: last year, we went out again quite often after the lockdowns, and also gave each other a unique experience as a gift quite often. 138,000 stage visits were gifted. That earned the SPTC a nice 6.6 million. That means the Pokadoka (Podium Gift Card) included an average gift of 48 euros....
Jacqueline Blom and Mark Rietman immediately arouse laughter and sadness as desperate children of divorced parents at the beginning of Family Game. However, the sharp tragicomedy gradually becomes more of a farce good for an evening of laughter. In Family Play, Jacqueline Blom, Bas Hoeflaak and Annick Boer show their best side as actors, and I enjoyed the...
Scored a new bullshit bingo card, today. 'Art must no longer tingle, I quit'. Big headline in a quality newspaper, with below it the terrible story of gallery owner Jeanette Dekeukeleires of Gallery Art Kitchen. The 60-year-old says she is quitting her job because nothing more is allowed. (Read the story here) For instance, she received complaints from young people about the famous PSP poster with that naked woman....
This is a pre-publication from the book The Art of Different, which will be available from 17 January 2023 via the author's site The arts sector is vulnerable, as was unmistakably demonstrated during the pandemic years. It is also clear that these are not just temporary setbacks, but problems of a structural nature. These were already in play before Corona but were anticipated...
At the New Year reception, the Dutch cinema industry announced its 2022 results. Solid recovery, but we are not quite back yet. Top Gun: Maverick is the best-attended title, Soof 3 scores highest among Dutch films.
The Rotterdam Council for Arts and Culture (RRKC) has been disbanded from 1 January 2023. I wrote about this in June this year2, and earlier the editor-in-chief did3. At that time, formal decision-making in Rotterdam had yet to take place. Given the question marks in the city council, it is safe to say that the college finally pushed through the dissolution. The...
This site became big thanks to Twitter and Facebook. We were also created at roughly the same time. In 2009, Twitter was just getting off the ground, and the Netherlands still thought Hyves was going to be the be-all and end-all, while Belgium was already on Facebook. Anyway, tl;dr: social media was still fun. Only in the years that followed did...
A story about love, but above all an ode to imagination. Perfect Days by Spanish writer Jacobo Bergareche is a passionate novel. Deadly marriage With the excuse that it is necessary for his work, Spanish journalist Luis visits a conference in Austin, Texas. But actually, the trip is mostly an excuse for his dead-blooded marriage to Paula...
What do you hold on to when not only the world is tottering, but also your own life? Where then can you find a safe place, a future? That is what Tasmania, Paolo Giordano's new book, is about. Crisis What came first: the worries about climate change and other world crises, or the crisis in his own life? The first-person narrator in Tasmania, a...
The website where the Dutch umbrella organisation of museums, the Museum Association, keeps track of audience and number of people employed by its members was unreachable today. Perhaps that is because today the leading website Artnet also came out with revealing figures on the arts sector in the US. The report, titled The Burns Halperin Report, includes an overview of the...
Since Roberto Saviano published his book Gomorrah and incurred the hatred of the Italian mafia, he has been living in hiding. What that is like, the graphic novel I'm still alive shows and feels razor-sharp. Roberto Saviano is 12 when he witnesses at first hand the murder of a man in his neighbourhood by the mafia. Fifteen years later,...
Her debut novel The Sound of the Night, in which simple seamstress Sira Quiroga became a spy for the British secret service, became a global bestseller a decade ago. Now Spanish writer María Dueñas (58) is out with a new novel in which she takes Sira to task. 'She did have to suffer a little.' Second part Because of the somewhat...
1: The artificial distinction between pros and amateurs encourages exploitation. In the Netherlands, 115 writers can live off the sale of their books. The rest of the people who call themselves writers do so as a side income. In pop music, the figures won't be much different. Writers with a few euros earning on their Lira statement will not...
Why is the largest retrospective on Italian designer Gianni Versace yet on show in Groningen? "Why not?" jokes Andreas Blühm, general director of the Groninger Museum. Indeed, it seems like a bizarre choice, but if you look a little closer, you will discover a few commonalities between the museum in the down-to-earth north and the maximalism of Gianni Versace, who on 2...
Culture Press' new series of geek podcasts is about how to make theatre connect with your audience, and what happens when professional viewers continue to watch in their own way. And it's about the ambitions of 'the region'. So we also talk to Bran Remie, author and creator of the successful Enschede theatre series 'Huize Enschede', elsewhere on...
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