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ACTUAL

All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.

Bold p***o on the euro note?

There has been another interesting cultural twist to the 'Europe debate'. Someone has shouted that the watermark of the new series of euro notes will include a picture of 'the rape of Europe' by the Greek supreme god Zeus. The anti-Europe and anti-Greeks in the various timelines need no more to frame the conspiracy of the banking mafia against European citizens.

Enough of that. I was just wondering how it could suddenly be about the 'rape' of Europe,...

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Eric de Vroedt: 'Eventually reached Obama too'

Winning two awards in one weekend, that doesn't often happen to a person, not even in the award-winning art world. Eric de Vroedt is a theatre-maker and writer to whom it has thus happened. Entering his final season of 'MightySociety', he was awarded the Amsterdam Prize (35,000 euros) and the Prize of Criticism (a statuette), determined by a jury of newspaper critics.

In this skype interview, he talks about his motivations, and about how, with a performance that sometimes...

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The Promise main theme at 32nd Netherlands Film Festival - audience recruitment stepped up

Next year, the Netherlands Film Festival will have to face extensive budget cuts. So let's enjoy ourselves extra this year, was the recommendation with which festival director Willemien van Aalst closed the press conference presenting the programme of the 32nd Netherlands Film Festival this afternoon. Isabella Rossellini in Nono, the zigzag child Especially in these times of economic headwind, the... 

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Halbe Zijlstra: 'nothing to do with local arts policy'

Halbe Zijlstra is proud of his policy, and keen to come and tell it in front of the entire cultural sector. So on Sunday 26 August, he appeared on stage during the annual 'Paradiso Debate' to reiterate how well things had gone with the 200 million cut in the arts sector. He praised the resilience of the affected art world, and would be happy to do the same again.

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'Windfall cuts': bricks saved, people sacrificed

The major research and management consulting firm Berenschot has calculated that, on balance, the cuts to the arts turn out to be not too bad. Client of the study, De Volkskrant, then headlined that big. And indeed, it is kind of good news that the pile-up of cuts (the state 24% less, the provinces 20% less and the municipalities only 9 % less) is so low in net terms. We were surprised for a moment, but when we asked around, we found out

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Theatre on demand offers British quality

Lots of bobbing on boards. That's what drama on television is mostly. And actors with weird reverberations in intimate scenes. That too. It is easy to shoot at attempts to bring successful performances to the TV or cinema screen. They almost always make viewers feel that their medium is shooting back 80 years in development. This is also why every attempt by the Dutch Public Broadcasting Service to make our fairly highly regarded stage art attractive to a wider audience via TV fails....

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Cronyism at the Performing Arts Fund?

In the small Dutch art world, it is impossible to put together a committee of experts that is completely independent. Everyone with expertise also has knowledge of people, or has worked at an institution that is now to be judged. Or works there now. Reason enough, then, for speculation and conspiracy theories.

'Johnny Quid', incognito member of the culture bashing and anonymous commenter weblog Geenstijl.nl thought at least an Amsterdam, white conspiracy ...

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Culture Council hands out in second round

Yet money for the National Academy of Visual Arts, money for an orchestra merger in the south of the Netherlands and 4.7 million for a knowledge institute for amateur art. The clear-cutting of the Dutch cultural sector has become a little less extreme thanks to a second advice from the Council for Culture. Besides the aforementioned positive assessment, there is also money for a knowledge institute for the creative sector 

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Edelkoort signals development of animation art better than she thinks

On 12 August 2012, during the worst watched Summer guests-broadcast of all time (343,000 viewers) told trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort about The Johnny Cash Project. A great example of what crowdsourcing can do for creativity: in 2010, everyone was invited to add a drawing to an animated music video to Johnny Cash's latest song. We now know what and who is behind this:

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Maastricht on slippery European ice with arts subsidy

Maastricht is going to do things differently. Starting next year, the city council will determine what art is needed, and art institutions will be allowed to submit plans that fit within that framework. If their plans do not comply, they will not get any money. Sounds nice, but the capital of Limburg is treading on thin ice.

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Volkskrant fails: not 'region' but Randstad suffers

This one I'd like to share with you. Quote from this morning's Volkskrant, where editor Harmen Bockma makes a valiant attempt to list all the figures of the cultural carnage, but fails a bit. It also remains difficult to add up the dropout in basic infrastructure to the dropout in the fund, but it turns out to be even more difficult to distinguish exactly what are 'regions' and what are 'cities'. At least, I can't figure it out.

I quote:
"By emphasising topin...

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Baldwin Live

On Wednesday 1 August 2012, the Performing Arts Fund will announce the results of the lottery that granting arts subsidies has now become. Huge cuts are looming: companies and makers that by now seemed to be a permanent part of the Dutch arts landscape will disappear. So what exactly it will look like, we will officially only know from 12:00 on Wednesday 1 August. To leak things in advance makes no sense, things are too dramatic for that.
What we do want ...

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Nobody likes a critic

While YouTubesurfing, I stumbled upon these razor-sharp sketches by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Originating from the heyday of their brilliant programme A Bit Of Fry & Laurie. Watching this beautifully persiflated windbaggery, a nasty feeling came over me that damn little has changed in the mindset of art critics since this sketch was broadcast. Complacency is always lurking.

Critics are oddballs, including us at Culture...

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Paradiso full of dance energy at I Like To Watch Too

I Like To Watch Too: abundance of performances shows that dance and performance are powerfully connected to modern society. The dance steps rain down on you even before you have entered Paradiso. Tim Boerlijst tap-dances on the pavement. This infectious welcome immediately draws visitors into the atmosphere of 'I Like To Watch Too'. This festival showcases dance and performance from... 

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William Kentridge & the dress rehearsal for the Holocaust

With Black Box / Chambre Noire, the Jewish Historical Museum presents the first exhibition by South African artist William Kentridge in the Netherlands. A multimedia artwork about the first genocide of the 20th century. Now on show at the Jewish Historical Museum.

Armed with clubs, two dark shadowy figures beat each other's brains out. And then a third victim, kneeling and unarmed, who shatters into pieces after the blows. In the background is music

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Halbe Zijlstra should fund Culture Card after all.

It was the issue on which he lied the hardest, as we demonstrated a year ago, but the country's most hated secretary of state did not care. Despite its great success, the culture card for schoolchildren had to be killed off, and on spurious grounds. Now the card has been saved by the chamber. A majority voted in favour of a motion by CDA and PvdA,... 

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Tate London has 100,000 members. Fortunately not all of them are active

Martin Barden realises that an old model works, where everyone is always clamouring for new forms. As marketing boss of the Tate museums in London, he created a large network of friends. So that museum has more than 100,000 members. people who feel part of the club, and whom you need to pamper.

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Awards for experimental docu and absurdist fiction

EYE is pulling out all the stops. This year, the final exam papers of the students of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy will get an ideal presentation in the largest auditorium of this new film centre. What is also new is that yesterday, immediately following the screening for press and relations, awards were handed out for best commercial (The End, Soon), best documentary (A Twist in... 

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Nancy Wiltink: 'a good story has to smell like blood'

People asking for clarity often clamour for "names and (back) numbers", but in classical music, that fuss with names and numbers is precisely why nobody understands anything anymore. So, according to ex-marketer and now storyteller Nancy Wiltink, it's not just about your story, but also whether that story is applicable.

Together with internet and marketing agency wecross, we interviewed a number of hotshots about their stories at the Performing Arts Congress (late May 2012 in Rotterdam). And Nan...

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'FATFORM is fat enough for all free radicals'

Two years ago, a couple of artists from collective FUCK and production company Vinger.nl annexed the roof of Kraaiennest shopping centre in Amsterdam Southeast, and stomped FATFORM out of the ground. An elusive art project, rooftop party and free state. Now they have moved up a hundred metres.

Sandwiched between the drab, modernist Bijlmer flats, megalomaniac high-rise and new buildings, the Djame Masdjied Taibah mosque, vacant shopping malls and underground station Crow's Nest houses the new incarnation of...

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Theatre Museum collection to be lost for good

[July update: the 2nd chamber passed a motion instructing the cabinet to save the collection from destruction. Where this is to be paid for, however, is still unclear]

It is now becoming clear where the laissez faire-laissez mourir (let it be done, let it die)-policy of Halbe Zijlstra, Martin Bosma and Mark Rutte is going to lead. Of the dozens of institutions that will close, downsize or die in the coming months due to vacancy of quality presso...

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"Janine Dijkmeijer to National Ballet"

The message below has since been confirmed. But we like to cherish our firsts. Hence. Of course, the merger event in and around Amsterdam's Muziektheater, where ballet, opera and theatre will work in unison, also produced a game of musical chairs. Stijn Schoonderwoerd, for instance, announced a month or so ago that he was going to do something else, and so the Dutch National Ballet was looking... 

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'Publicity after the show is more important than before'

He is a professor of it, so if there is a problem in the economics of culture, Arjo Klamer knows about it. He says there has been growing resentment against subsidies for years. So the arts sector will have to get used to making a living in a different way from now on.

We now think too traditionally first about subsidy, the Rotterdam professor tells us in the interview we had with him during the Performing Arts Congress 2012, at the Rotterdam Doelen, late...

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Save a museum: make sure you make friends

There are funny answers in the way people sometimes try not to answer a question. As director of Museum Boerhaave, Dirk van Delft managed to rake in a sloppy €1 million from the market. This immediately made him the darling of Rutte's cabinet. After questioning him twice, it turns out that he actually thinks there are too many wild things happening in the performing arts, and that this could be the reason why they have been hit so hard. But we have da...

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