Nora Krug's visual stories on Ukraine bundled: 'Not just standing idly by'
Heartbreaking diary entries from the Ukraine war formed the basis for Nora Krug's new book. 'The drawn image has the power to provide a different perspective on reality.'
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Make more music yourself! (What I learnt from November Music 2024)
When I think of new music, I have never thought of fun. Rather, you think of seriousness, subtlety, taste to be acquired and listening experiences that you might later find ordinary. But not yet. So this year during November Music, I did laugh a lot. Not roaring (an occasional one), but simply, with happiness. While in the world...
IDFA DocLab - How creative is AI?
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is becoming increasingly pervasive. Artists are also making use of it, as seen in this 18th edition of IDFA's DocLab.
VAT 'off the table for now'. Opposition winged by Wilders cs.
The VAT increase on culture and sports is off the table (VAT increase on culture, media and sports off the table: coalition struck deal with opposition). However happy everyone is, and however holy the cabinet's promise sounds: that message is only half true. During the parliamentary debate on the Schoof?Wilders tax plan, the rather intransigent and laconic minister Heinen...
On mothers, men and children: Rineke Dijkstra 'back in Berlin' with exhibitions at two locations
The Berlinische Galerie is hosting a major exhibition by Rineke Dijkstra. It portrays her as a photographer who looks beyond the times. For her personally, it is a return to Berlin, where she lived for two years at the invitation of the DAAD in the late 1990s.
Culture budget debate: paragon of powerlessness minister and House
OCW Minister Eppo Bruins hopes citizens will buy more books, read more newspapers and go to the theatre more often thanks to the extra spending power hidden in the tax plans of the Schoof?Wilders Cabinet. This would offset the negative effects of the intensely 'ugly' VAT increase on vulnerable culture. During the Legislative Consultation OCW budget, Culture section, held on Monday,...
Why we should never talk about the 'earning power' of culture again.
"Strengthening earning capacity is a necessary condition to improve the labour market position of workers in the sector. Martin Verboom is happy to share what came out of the evaluation of the Cultural and Creative Sector Labour Market Agenda in this area. Platform ACCT is forging a coalition with partners in the sector to take up the priorities for the coming years." This was why...
Finance minister 'not happy with some details in VAT measure', but sees no alternative
After a morning debate in the Lower House, Cabinet Schoof's tactics are clear. At least, when it comes to the controversial plan to selectively increase VAT on culture. In response to all questions from the House about why, Finance Minister Eelco Heinen replied that it should not be about details, but a "total package". Therefore, he wants...
Laura Bowler wrote Advert: on the tattoo as the ultimate expression of your own power
A piece of music in which the vocal soloist is given a tattoo in the last fifteen minutes, live on stage. In Laura Bowler's Advert, performed by Laura herself together with the Hamburg-based Decoder Ensemble, you can experience just that. Not unexpected when you realise that Bowler trained not only as a composer but also as a theatre maker. She studied after the conservatoire at the Royal...
Enno Poppe looks for the most elementary particle of the drum kit #novembermusic
The drum kit is pop music's most important instrument. German composer Enno Poppe, who grew up without pop music, has a fascination for percussion. A new work can be heard during November Music this year: Streik. Composed for 10 drums. I spoke to the 1969-born composer about this work and his inspiration. Listen to the podcast: What immediately...
Ben Okri in Berlin: "I can show you magic in a handful of earth."
With Ben Okri, the Internationales Literatur Festival Berlin (ILB) has brought in the grand master of contemporary literary storytelling. 'See the magic of things around you.'
Circolo turns the growing pains between sport and theatre into something beautiful
Large spinning steel behemoths, mowing blades or relentless hands of a clock, which grind you as a human being if you don't duck, or jump, or roll away in time. There were two of them during Festival Circolo in Tilburg, this year, and it always impresses. It happened at Un Loup pour l'homme in the Spoorpark and at La Chute des Anges in...
Guilherme Miotto: "Dance is an evolution, not a revolution"
"We all want to play, but labels sometimes make that difficult. Then you start doubting your qualities." Instead, Dutch and Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Miotto (45) wants to break down boundaries and make art accessible to everyone. On Thursday 24 October, his double performance 'Unpunished Youth x Poles' can be seen at Festival Circolo in Tilburg. Guilherme Miotto is more interested in what makes us...
Southern romance and hushed high spirits: Circolo kicks off in style
Biogas. It works. In Tilburg, they have taken a big step in making circus romance more sustainable. The campfires, from the first edition the anchor of Circus Festival Circolo, have been modified. No longer fuelled by increasingly soggy firewood, beautiful yellow flames now play around glowing chunks. The wood fire became a gas fire, but designed by a pyrotechnician with circus experience. The flames...
Wendell Jaspers and Lotte Dunselman shine in (tentative) last by Madeleine Matzer
Quantum entanglement, supersymmetry. The nerd in me could not get around the mystery of cosmic twins, which hundreds of billions of light years apart yet simultaneously take over each other's state when one of them is seen. Or something like that. In Blood Sister, Matzer's latest play, it's not billions of parsecs, it's an Atlantic Ocean and 17 years of life that those two identical sisters...
Anika Baines: "Burlesque and striptease are a power play for me" #circolo
She sometimes sees people drop out when she tells them that her performance is inspired by burlesque. "They often have certain preconceptions about this and think it's 'something only dirty men want to see'." It remains difficult to convince people to take the first step and attend a burlesque show, says Baines. The twenty-two-year-old South African loves...
'Scenes' only now no longer appears in print. Why that's pretty special.
I remember it well, it was during a meeting of the magazine industry, sometime in 2012 or 2013. A grave mood hung in the Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, because the circulation and turnover figures of the major magazine publishers (plural at the time) had just been announced. The downward trend that had started years back had nothing to do with the crisis, but...
What if everyone is the boss? Acrobats find confidence in working collectively on 'Meander'
It is mouse-still in the studio auditorium of Korzo in The Hague. A few dozen spectators in the stands, a tangle of bodies on stage, shuffling, sighing and exerting their utmost strength, sliding, climbing and balancing on, over and under each other. Impressive, sensual too, this continuous movement that does not run from applause moment to applause moment, but rather lets you breathlessly follow how it...
Eye UNDERGROUND - American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s. Poetry as an act of resistance
Eye Filmmuseum turns the spotlight on the American avant-garde film of the 1960s this autumn. An explosion of form experiments in a turbulent era. A movement that still inspires.
Shakespeare lives and comes from Utrecht
The less real theatre is, the better it works. That insight dawned on me again this weekend, in Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. Twice, in fact. Friday with the reprise of Aluin's Twelfth Night, Saturday with Koning Krump, the masterpiece by Het Nut. Two Utrecht groups, once sprung from the same theatre school, and drunk in the same theatre cafe, where...
An oxygen mask for society: Winnie Sorgdrager and a government case
It was with a certain scepticism, I must confess, that I began Winny Sorgdrager's book "Oxygen of Society. Why Culture is a Government Issue".1 I won't elaborate; let's just say that a book about Dutch cultural policy has been published before. More than once, in fact, and in those books...
NFF Conference 2024 - Strengthening Dutch film with cooperation and trust
This year's Netherlands Film Festival conference for industry professionals emphasises collaboration, transparency and trust. With contributions ranging from a presentation of the Ketentafel Film en AV to a plea for more creative friction.
Conductor turns out to be dancer: Miho Hazama leads KC Jazz Big Band
On Friday 20 September, Grammy-nominated composer Miho Hazama led the Royal Conservatory of Music's big band at the Conservatory Hall in Amare. And how. Dancer in nowhere A leap. A plié on one leg. A relevé on the toes. A plié on two legs. The head to the side and rhythmically to the other side and back like clockwork. A half arabesque...
'Cabinet still allocates extra money for Twente museums', Tubantia cried. But that is not so
It was a remarkable report, this morning. According to newspaper Tubantia, the new cabinet was still willing to make extra money available for regional museums in Twente. It would be a sum of 1.5 million euros, earmarked to set up a joint presentation of Twente's history by De Museumfabriek in Enschede and Techniekmuseum Oyfo in Hengelo. According to...
VAT on underpaid artists benefits 'working middle income'
There are finer ways to wake up than with the finance minister. This Eelco Heinen was speaking to the Radio 1 News on Wednesday 18 September, and he really felt like it. Cheerful, perky, and full of good cheer, he told how they were going to energetically implement VVD policies in the Schoof Cabinet. And then followed the next...
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