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You must be a white man of a certain age. Some of us are so fed up with being blamed for everything that they voted PVV or worse in the last elections out of sheer desperation. That is why it is good that playwright Erik Snel, himself a white man of a certain age, has written a play about the archetype of the Dutch...
"In the short term, the threat comes from black-racial activists and their leftist slaves. A very small group of activists with an obsession with skin colour have opened the frontal attack on the symbols of Western culture. They claim to speak for all of black Holland. This must eventually end in reparations because of slavery and job quotas against whites, like in South Africa....
In North Brabant, the annual provincial subsidy for professional art will go down by €629,000 a year from 2025. Whereas prestigious, and very vital, organisations such as Boulevard, Bosch parade and Matzer could count on an amount of 8.25 million until now, from the new culture plan period it will be only 7.6 million. The Brabant cultural institutions, united in The Art of...
It is one of my worst guilty pleasures. Egg salad from the better-filled mayonnaise manufacturer from Twente, with a close second to their tuna salad. I can't get enough of those. And now let them have both of those on the table at Het Kerstdiner in Theater Kleine Willem in Enschede. Chic is different, but in the...
"Listening, not always understanding, but trying to go along with (the black) voices ensured that, in my opinion, there was a beautiful text at the heart of the performance Ik zeg toch sorry." If a short preface to a play has as much meaning as this quote by Raymi Sambo, the text itself must offer much more....
"The unease of the voters who gave Wilders 37 seats is not solved by the position of power the PVV has now achieved." Roy Kemmers (43) is an associate professor at the sociology faculty of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. On Tuesday 28 November, he wrote an opinion piece in De Volkskrant, commenting on the rise of populism. He obtained his PhD...
I used the word 'revolutionary' when a camera crew from Theatre Rotterdam asked me what I thought of Closed Eyes. I don't know if my otherwise extraordinarily enthusiastic response will make it to the final edit, but a day later, that feeling is not gone. What Alida Dors, artistic director of Theatre Rotterdam, has shown is a revolution in the world of...
Our intended prime minister wants to abolish almost all cultural subsidies. Only art that can be properly understood by 'real Dutch people' still deserves financial support. Wilders targets cultural subsidies from an ideological background. Anyone visiting the exhibition 'Art in the Third Reich - Temptation and Distraction' at Museum Arnhem cannot escape seeing disturbing comparisons. Wilders sees art as a...
It may sound a bit dramatic, but fans of Dutch youth film may feel that this is the end of an era. I just read the mail with the sad press release that writer, radio producer and film and television producer Burny Bos (1944) died on 1 December. It was not entirely unexpected. Last year (and not before...
1. During 9/11, I was in Salamanca with two friends. The day Geert Wilders managed to amass 37 seats (thank you VVD and normalising media), I was in Rabat, attending the Visa for Music music conference, with which the European Jazz Network (one of the best-functioning networks within European cultural funding, I say as a new kid...
It was 2000 and Wim Kayzer, of the VPRO, brought a series of television evenings that went against everything commercial. It was called 'Of Beauty and Consolation' and featured evening-long interviews with people like Jane Goodall, J.M. Coetzee, Karel Appel and George Steiner. Intellectuals, artists, thinkers. On 23 November 2023, the day after 22/11, when the Netherlands held an open...
The research is there, and the figures are not uplifting. In the arts sector, underpaying especially freelancers and not honouring overtime is standing policy. If this is to be made up from now on, with the existing budget, small institutions and festivals in particular will fall over immediately. The study on this was presented yesterday to outgoing Culture Secretary Uslu. Principal Arts...
"Sales of children's books during Children's Book Week edition 2023 are higher than in 2019, 2020 and 2021. This applies to both sales through physical shops and e-commerce." KVB-Boekwerk, the research institute of Dutch Booksellers, has been publishing trend reports on the book market for a few years now. This year, for the first time, these include figures on sales of children's books,...
"But in the next week, can't you still come up with a law that enshrines art education in primary education?" A striking moment in the 'Collective Creative Culture Debate' held in a packed Herz of TivoliVredenburg on Wednesday 15 November. The Creative Coalition and Kunsten '92 made one last attempt to put arts and culture on the agenda of the...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: policies for jazz and improvised music. From the Oude Schans to Rijswijk May 1983, Monday morning, a quarter past eight. Location: the soulless office tower in Rijswijk housing the Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture. Minister Brinkman addressed the members of the Working Group on...
"There is something strange going on. Municipalities have no money to build or furnish such a theatre, and companies have too little money to make productions. So it is chafing on both sides." Huub Huikeshoven, trained as an interior designer, works at Theateradvies, an organisation that advises on the layout and design of theatres. There, it turns out quite...
Does something get better when it is sanded? Art as the grindstone of the mind? The age-old concept of dialectics, the clash of opposites from which something new emerges? This 17th edition of IDFA's DocLab, the programme full of digital art, interactive work and virtual worlds, is themed 'Phenomenal Friction'. Technology is mostly focused on efficiency and convenience, but DocLab invites us to...
At half past eleven on a Sunday morning, it might be a bit much: Maya Fridman, improvising on her cello. Watching her play, together with pianist Maarten van Veen, is an intense experience. She becomes one with her instrument, it overwhelms her, it is almost too intimate to watch. But what warmth waves through the audience....
It had been hanging in the air for a while, but now there seems to be fairly incontrovertible evidence that Marcel Duchamp did not invent his urinal artwork himself. A book to be published next month claims that the inventor of 'conceptual' art nicked his thing from German artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. That in itself was a longer-running ...
Whether it could be a little less superficial was the question from an audience member halfway through the first part of The Utility's Great Holiday Show. Greg Nottrot, in the role of quizmaster of this pastiche on the great 1980s television show, promises there will be another layer. Because he is obliged to, since he gets subsidy. Welcome...
There it is, the long-awaited election manifesto of the 'Who Says A, Must Say B' party New Social Contract. Until now, Pieter Omtzigt has not been known as an art lover. Nor are there any notable culture people on his candidate list, so the fact that it contains anything about culture at all is a bonus. It's 9 points, I'll highlight 2 of them: "To promote the creation of...
Ten days of circus, this year in truly autumnal conditions for the first time in ages. Storm and patches of rain, flooded lawns really only enhance the fun between and especially in the tents set up in the Railway Park. I take home three lessons from it. 1: Circus is a lonely profession Was once a circus performer someone who was one...
The other day I had an unpleasant conversation with a public relations officer of a medium-sized festival. He thought it would be a good idea if I came to write about that fantastic festival because of that unique opening event. I asked, "Are you members?" He said, "No." I said, "Then I don't know if I will be able to, because during that time there are also activities....
Tobogganing teenagers. If you don't have them at home, you read and hear about them in the media. The phone provides them with thousands of impressions a day, but the constant in history remained: for Generation Z, little attracts attention as much as sex. Or Sex? This language question begins the performance by HNTjong, the youth company of Het Nationale Toneel in Den...
"What I really like is that Lot Vekemans, the writer, sees and hears how some texts just don't go, or don't do it. I would grant that to more writers." Actress José Kuijpers plays alongside Helmert Woudenberg in Lot Vekemans' play Blind. The play will premiere at the Brabant company Matzer on 22 October. Vekemans is...
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