All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Always thought art was something of creative wildlings, obsessed autistics, genius tinkerers in spite of themselves? Wrong. Art is something where 'strong communicators' call the shots. At least if it is up to minister Jet Bussemaker, and her oh, so progressive idea of letting art be useful above all. For society. Just watch the horror video above. What we fear...
You can watch television again without guilt. After a two-and-a-half-year conflict, television broadcasters, producers and cable companies are coming to terms. This is going to make for a lot of happy TV, because after two years of waiting, the makers, actors and writers of television programmes will finally get the money they were entitled to all this time. And more. So does the lobby just make sense...
Last week, the Metaalkathedraal was celebrating. This 'creative breeding ground' in the picturesque no man's land between Utrecht and Leidsche Rijn can, thanks to a loan from a bank, grow into something that might become great fun for the neighbourhood, but also for people on the other side of town. The Metal Cathedral is an initiative of two artists. They...
#1 Salzburger Festspiele / Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz / Katie Mitchell, The forbidden zone (theatre/performance) - Dutch premiere 11 February, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam British director Katie Mitchell is this month's 'arsonist' at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. With performances that are as scintillating as they are transgressive. The forbidden zone is about areas long off-limits to women: science and war. The...
Contemporary choreographer Sibi Larbi becomes the new director of Ballet Flanders in Antwerp. A striking and unorthodox choice. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, meanwhile, may stay away from De Munt in Brussels. What's up Belgium?
A few months ago, the Council for Culture advised Minister Bussemaker to maintain the law on fixed book prices. And that while the functioning of the law has not been proven at all. For enterprising booksellers, this law is a block. This law earned erotic department store Christine le Duc a €15,000 fine. They came up with a playful...
Ingres, Cimabue, Memling, Tiepolo, Goya, Van Eyck, Constable. Pure top names in art history and many of them hardly ever hang in Dutch museums. But now they do. The Mauritshuis in The Hague is showing no fewer than 36 works from the famous Frick Collection in New York from 5 February. And that museum has never before lent so many art treasures. Therefore, the Mauritshuis has...
After a nerve-wracking final and precise assessment of votes, the winners of the 2014 Dance Audience Award have been announced. Favourite Dance Performance is FADO of International Dance Theatre, Favourite Dancer is Merel Janssen of Introdans Ensemble for Youth.
Municipal cultural politics are often about 'bricks and mortar'. People put up a cultural building and then pray/hope that great things will happen there, which the city council in turn has no money for/power over. Take Enschede. In a council meeting in which it was decided to reinvest in cultural bricks by means of a €475,000 loan, there was actually some unrest. No, not about those bricks, but about...
Just over a month earlier than usual, the Holland Festival is presenting its new programme this season. There is every reason for this. With the arrival of Ruth Mackenzie as artistic director, a fresh wind is blowing through the festival. Annet Lekkerkerker talks about the changes in the video below. The presentation of the brochure - finally readable thanks to a new design - shows...
Radio Netherlands World Broadcasting no longer exists. The subsidy was withdrawn because no one in the VVD knew what it was: shortwave. And because the PVV, which was also in government at the time, finds everything scary that contains the word 'world'. Bad for those who miss calls from the ANWB emergency centre at breakfast for the Alpenkreuzer, even worse for...
We write day 6 of the IFFR and take an intermediate view. In the deluge of films, the short films (1 to 60 minutes) always fall away a little in attention. This is a shame, because there is a lot to discover within this format. We list for you. 1 - The IFFR is the festival with one of the...
Film and film criticism. Image versus the word. But what happens when the critic starts using visual language too? Well, something like this, for example: Transformers: The Premake, by Kevin B. Lee. Romance or amour fou It seems so obvious in today's digital online world. Is the video essay an answer to the crisis, perceived or otherwise, in art criticism? Film critics...
How do you get back home mentally after a war? David van Reybrouck in conversation with Stefan Hertmans and Ian Buruma Carrots, potatoes, maybe some celery and a dash of lard, this was the monotonous winter diet of the underclass in rural Flanders in the late nineteenth century. But, outlines professor and guest speaker Louise O. Fresco in her opening column, these days it is the...
The children introduce themselves one by one. They build sets, make music and play scenes. A catastrophe is imminent. They speculate loosely: will it be a nuclear or biological attack, a plane or a missile, a tsunami or a bombing? In Next Day, shown last weekend at Theatre Frascati, they rehearse an attack by 'aliens'. That...
He had had a TED training. It couldn't be otherwise. Bart Moeyaert, poet, writer and multiple award winner, sometimes literally wriggled into numerous corners to warm up the Dutch literary guild to his plans for 2016. That year, for the first time in a long time, the Netherlands will host the Frankfurter Buchmesse again, the Art Basel of the literary world....
'Do you not agree with me that many of you - like members of Roman Catholic curia - are already trying to make yourselves immortal and indispensable? That you are suffering from severe mental and spiritual petrification?' Kees 't Hart measured himself a papal role on Sunday 18 January, when delivering The State of Dutch Literature,...
Rarely have I seen two female artists at a table more different from each other than Dominique Goblet and Leela Corman. Two female comic artists, on either side of Peter Breedveld who is flown in every year as a connoisseur of the comic genre at Writers Unlimited. Corman, a comic book artist as well as a dancer, writes her stories in a fairly recognisable style. Impressive stories, historically, like her latest...
Writers Unlimited's Friday night kicked off with an Islam debate. In no uncertain terms, religious historian Karen Armstrong argued that Islam and jihad are not the same thing. There are only 41 jihads in the entire Quran, most of which are the peaceful struggle to help the poor when one is destitute oneself. But after the Paris attacks...
"Everyone who writes will sooner or later run into a wall, a limit of what cannot, should not and should not be written. And almost everyone will flinch at that moment and refrain from writing it. Because that wall is there to protect us from what we don't want." Karl Ove Knausgård, already compared by some to Marcel Proust,...
The Official Nominations for the first Dance Photo of the Year election have been announced. From 43 entries, Hans van Manen (choreographer) and Thomas Cott (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) compiled a top six. We couldn't think of a better jury for a preselection. Now we are curious to hear your vote. The Dance Photo of the Year election puts dance photographers and their work in the spotlight. Because.
An upstairs room on an abandoned industrial estate becomes a cosy jazz club, a 43-year-old girl from the Achterhoek becomes a black jazz diva and her band makes a comeback after the demise of its musical director. With Masha Bijlsma, the wonders are not yet out of the world. Music can make time stand still. That happens lol but sometimes; I make it...
The Official Nominations for the 2014 Dance Audience Award have been announced. Check out the 10 favourite dance performances and 10 favourite dancers of 2014. You can also vote for them. Varied entries For the Dance Audience Award, almost 800 dance performance visitors sent in nominations of no fewer than 105 dancers and 65 dance performances. From Igone de Jongh of the Dutch National Ballet to the young Carlos Puts in...
This morning, Anita Ekberg died in a hospital in Italy. She turned 83. But for us, she actually always remained 28 and stood forever in the Trevi Fountain. Ekberg began her career as Miss Sweden and left for the US armed with that title. There, she played a number of small film roles in which she was mostly beautiful and...
Toneelgroep Centrum, Utrechtse Theater Inititatieven, Jeugdtheaterplatform Utrecht, Theaterplatform Utrecht, De Paardenkathedraal, De Nieuwe Paardenkathedraal, De Utrechtse Spelen. The ostentatious names for Utrecht theatre companies had run out of steam over the past 30 years. Not entirely unexpected, then, that the city theatre company of the Netherlands' fourth city opts for sobriety and clarity. Since Sunday 11 January, 5pm, De Utrechtse Spelen has been called...
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