All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Following Denmark, the Netherlands now has its own Dogma manifesto. A modest but also ambitious statement from two young filmmakers who present a surprisingly clear plan after a season full of noise and concerns about Dutch cinema. Whether it is a pebble or a big pebble in the pond remains to be seen. In any case, they are going to do something,...
We treat our cultural heritage too casually. This is evident from the report 'Reserved and Involved', presented on Monday 30 September, drawn up by the Pechtold committee at the request of minister Van Engelshoven. In 110 pages (with pictures), it says that the current design of the Heritage Act leads to arbitrariness and uncertainty. This means that unsavoury situations like...
Our administrators and elected representatives will not openly admit it, but they do not really care about a healthy cultural sector, let alone the position of individual creators and artists. Indeed, making a Fair Practice Code compulsory without increasing the budget for culture is a slap in the face for everyone working in the arts sector. 'Then be...
'Poignant to see how a lack of decisiveness, clarity and leadership - at both the Utrecht municipality and the management of the KLA - could lead to a split and even rupture among employees.' Karin Boelhouwer of the Kunstenbond is stuck with it, and she has a point. The Utrecht Centre for the Arts (UCK) recently went officially bankrupt. A major...
Members of the States General, This year about 72 years ago we had the first Holland Festival. After years of enslavement and tyranny, hope for a better future literally came from above, in the form of Maria Callas. Eyewitnesses who saw the lights in the Stadsschouwburg turn red that day would never forget that image. 72 years later, it seems...
The puppets will dance, the turnips are cooked and the shit has hit the fan. The Amsterdam Museum is replacing 'Golden Age' with the neutral '17th century'. A typical example of oikophobic repopulation and politically correct language purification, or a useful adaptation to a changing zeitgeist? Time will tell, but explosive it is. For me, it raises questions. That...
This weekend, there was some fuss on Twitter. Something about a Nazi comparison that didn't quite work out. Now there is quite often a fuss on Twitter because of a Nazi comparison that doesn't quite work out, but this time it concerned one of our cultural figureheads. Kees Vlaardingerbroek, artistic director of the NTR Saturday matinee and former head of programming at the Rotterdam...
Amersfoort has some catching up to do when it comes to culture. Festivals like Spoffin, for instance, have no money to pay real fees for performing artists. So they are there with the name recognition as a reward. The same is not true for tennis players, it turns out. Indeed, Amersfoort's alderman for sports decided to enrich this year's atp tennis tournament with a €50,000 subsidy to, for instance,...
'If we continue at the current rate, the fund will be exhausted in the foreseeable future.' This can be read in the 2018 annual report of the Performing Arts Social Fund. Plenty of reason to sound the alarm, indeed. Is this yet another victim of the cabinet's cuts? Not really, it turns out. When you look at the documents in detail, you see mainly that...
This is a letter sent in by Wim Claessen, who founded Boulevard in 1984, and passed the baton to Geert Overdam in 2002, who was succeeded by Viktorien van Hulst in 2014. "It is a disgrace that we are still standing here," spoke Viktorien van Hulst at the opening of Theatre Festival Boulevard at the Theater aan de Parade. "How...
Theatre Festival Boulevard is a highlight of the festival summer every year. Because there are no barriers and because it carries the casual atmosphere of the city in every fibre. But it goes even further. Here are my seven learning moments: 1: Boulevard is more accessible than the city itself Some people find it verging on the hysterical, but...
It is actually a footnote in the press release that lobby organisation Kunsten '92 sent out into the world today. But, as always with footnotes, it did contain the most important news. Because Kunsten 92, the club in which organisations in the arts sector polder, is "exploring cooperation" with the Creative Industry Federation. The latter is the Arts '92 of everything that is also culture and creativity,...
Canadian Emily Molnar is the new artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1) from season 2020/2021. Looking at her track record, she has everything going for her: a loyal ten years as artistic director of Canadian BC (British Columbia) Ballet, a good reputation as a choreographer, acclaimed as a visionary, innovator and coach and she has a...
‘Hier ga ik niet iedereen blij mee maken.’ Deze woorden sprak minister Ingrid van Engelshoven uit tijdens het debat over haar uitgangspuntennota, vorige week donderdag. Ware woorden. De glans van haar ministerschap is er inmiddels inderdaad wel af. Van Engelshoven is, na Bussemaker, de tweede cultuurminister die Mark Rutte’s cultuurbeleid moest uitvoeren, en niets anders te bieden had dan een…
The 2019 batch of the Film Academy shows graduation work. What do students think of the changes needed at the academy?
Wim Hupperetz, director of Amsterdam's Allard Pierson, has resigned his position as chairman of the museums and heritage advisory committee to the Council for Culture. In protest, he says, against the irresponsible way in which the minister is now implementing the Culture Council's advice. 'If this continues, we will soon be giving millions of euros to a few...
The 2019 Holland Festival was the best in decades. At least in the 25 years I have consciously witnessed it, I cannot recall a national festival that coupled so much impact with so much prestige. Whether visitor targets were met or not will be of no concern to me in this regard. It is, as Volkskrant colleague Hein Janssen once remarked,...
Vanmiddag is er een hoorzitting in de Tweede Kamer over de uitgangspuntennota van Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven. Die nota waarvan iedereen inmiddels doorheeft dat het een sigaar uit eigen doos is. Insprekers hebben hun mooiste speeches voorbereid, en er zal na afloop zeker het een en ander viraal gaan binnen de verschillende culturele social media-bubbels. Ik werd een beetje moedeloos…
De piek van de festivalisering van Nederland lijkt achter ons te liggen. Het aantal festivals is in twee jaar tijd met ruim 10% teruggelopen. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam naar het festivallandschap in Nederland. Verantwoordelijk lector Harry van Vliet (Crossmedia): “De daling in het aantal muziekfestivals was al zichtbaar in 2017, maar de afname is het…
'I think they understood.' Faustin Linyekula says it, very quietly, a little apologetically almost, to his fellow actor at the end of the performance Congo. A slightly relieved laugh can be heard in the main auditorium of Frascati, where Princess Beatrix is also seated. Shortly before, Daddy Moanda Kamono had erupted in an increasingly desperate tirade against our shared past....
How harrowing the payment of artists, musicians and theatre actors, screenwriters and all those other 'creators' is, became clear again in recent weeks. In newspaper Trouw, a musician - finally - came out of the closet of poor working conditions. Against the prevailing mores, she revealed how much she earned. What transpired: top national institutions like the Concertgebouw allow musicians to perform for free, orchestral musicians...
The much nudity and sex in Angelica Liddel's adaptation of Hawthorne's famous novel are a bit old-fashioned. The Spanish language is the real attraction. In his review of Angélica Liddell's play 'The Scarlet Letter' on this website, Wijbrand Schaap calls the scene with a naked black man "a painful low point". According to Schaap, the man is treated by Lidell as...
Put 15 or so bouncy balls from the first grade of primary VMBO in an antique cabin of a few square metres and you can be sure there will be a hundred of them. Music they will make and they themselves had thought it should be about a forest. Protoon's accompanist is going to arrange that for them. There are pads ready,...
It's quite daring. To take a classic Italian opera and give it a 'primal version'. I know a small army of militant opera critics who would prefer to take up arms against that. If that comes from Iran, you soon have the puppets dancing. To get right to the first...
The ground beneath your feet is sacred. It is, in these times of left-wing identity politics and emerging right-wing blut und boden thinking, quite a risky remark, but Faustin Linyekula used it anyway, in an answer to a question from the audience. That question was about the need, to defend your own place in an increasingly globalised world. Because.
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