All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
After the presentation of the Rotterdam and The Hague arts recommendations, and a few days to weeks before the harsh judgements of the Council for Culture, and a few months before the devastating reports of the Performing Arts Fund, it is starting to become clear how drastically the Dutch cultural sector is being hit
"We've been working on some songs and dances," says visual artist Martin Creed, assisted by his five-piece band and five ballet dancers. In his fragmentary performance, Creed explores the relationships between the five basic positions from classical ballet, the bouncy off-beat rhythms of his post-rock band, and Creed's own video art. This is his first choreography and it shows. "Works No....
Je hebt van die voorstellingen die je opmerkelijk eenvoudig en onnadrukkelijk een compleet eigen wereld binnenslepen. Voorstellingen waarin alles herkenbaar is. Woorden, beweging, decor. Alles even vertrouwd en huiselijk. Maar dan wordt er een tikje tegen gegeven. Patronen vervloeien. De taal staat op losse schroeven. Alles rammelt en raakt op drift. En toch klopt het. Voor je ogen en oren…
Wat is zwaartekracht? Wat is lucht? Wat is adem? In Untried Untested van choreograaf Kate McIntosh onderzoeken vier vrouwen met simpele middelen de magische werking van de natuur. Ze zijn gewapend met tientallen zwarte ballonnen, een kluwen scheepstouw, een handjevol veren, een paar zakken aardappels, windmachines en tl-lampen, een speelvloer van pakpapier. En hun eigen lichamen. Helaas blijft die verwondering…
Historical material, shall we call it. The letter from Halbe Zijlstra, outgoing State Secretary for Culture, and Uri Rosenthal, the equally outgoing Foreign Minister on the international cultural policy of populist Holland. As cold and matter-of-fact as the fallen Rutte government dealt with culture, so is the formulation of cultural policy in an international perspective, according to the...
Maniacally, she gallops across the stage, stomping like Michael Flatley on crack. Gravely thin and bare-chested, Marlene Monteiro Freitas tap-dances around. She squeezes her tits and pulls handfuls of (fake) hair from her scalp. "My name is Mimosa Ferrara," she panted menacingly, as her black leggings sag off her ass and linger just above the pubic area....
It may be a crisis and the cultural winds may also be blowing from the wrong right corner, but that doesn't stop The Dodo from flying. The festival day newspaper we launched two years ago as a new commercial product is ready for another 10 days of Springdance. We're going to review a lot of performances, and compare even more. And we're going to make a journal. It...
Ze heeft het druk gehad. Hoogzwanger werkte Yasmeen Godder (Jeruzalem, 1973) aan haar eerste choreografie voor Batsheva Dance Company. In een maand tijd stampte ze onder de vleugels van Batsheva haar nieuwe voorstelling The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act uit te grond, en beviel tussendoor van een gezonde dochter. Voor de derde keer presenteert de Israëlische choreografe Yasmeen Godder haar werk…
Tonight the queen may officially open the new home of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, last night director Sandra den Hamer did it herself in advance at an opening party for relations. In doing so, she spoke of a historic moment for film culture in the Netherlands. Seen from a distance, the building, conveniently referred to as "the new film museum", is most reminiscent of a...
Hein Janssen (Volkskrant) wrote a column in response to a couple of performances with BN stars in the subsidised circuit in which he argued that subsidy was not meant for that. The association for actors thought this was reason enough for a debate. We made a short film to go with it. We formatted it in storify, a feature that allows you to put tweets and other social media messages together and...
Art subsidies are better abolished if artists have to reach large audiences. Because then, after all, you distort the market. Logical. You could also decide to subsidise everyone. And that sounds stranger than
Brazil has 10% more every year for arts, sports and entertainment, plus an extra 600 million this year. If we in the Netherlands ever start growing the economy again, we can choose between the Chinese and Brazilian models. In China, growth goes mainly to puissant wealthy entrepreneurs, and wealthier citizens buy mass-produced luxury goods. For...
Eigenlijk zit je er na 1 keer klikken al helemaal in. Het nieuwste project van New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) uit Philadelphia (VS) neemt de internet-ervaring mee naar een nieuw level. De makers doen niet zomaar iets met een website, maar ze scheppen een virtueel bestaan, dat ze minstens een jaar volhouden. In hun laatste project Extremely Public Displays of Privacy…
The general public knows her as the rock-hard lawyer Claire from Gooise Vrouwen. Tone lovers have known her longer as that actress with the striking voice. A diplomat's daughter, born in Africa, later raised in Bussum. Tjitske Reidinga now dares to come forward:
"It is currently not possible to reliably predict the development of these characteristics of the cultural sector, let alone the impact of the cuts on them. Movements in the things mentioned in the question depend on many factors. First, there is no
Last night the awards for best short films were presented at festival Go Short in Nijmegen. Winner of the Dutch competition is Woensdagen by Aaron Rookus, a small feature film that approaches the heavily charged subject of sexual abuse in the most subtle way. What begins as an emotionally stunningly well-struck impression of eight-year-old Kris' weekly outing...
In the short Dutch film Ceci n'est pas un rêve, which premiered at the festival Go Short (Nijmegen, 14-18 March), the cityscape of Paris slowly transforms into a dreamscape. You could call it a surrealist documentary, in which filmmaker Amos Mulder has incorporated influences from early German film pioneer Walter Ruttmann as well as modern computer animation. With further...
At the request of Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, Parool and Groene Amsterdammer columnist Theodor Holman wrote a play about a conversation between Anders Breivik and Geert Wilders. In an interview with Joost Niemöller of the opinion blog 'De Dagelijkse Standaard', the presenter and writer explained that he admires Breivik's analysis of the situation in Europe, which he also believes...
Peter de Graef is not only a wonderful actor, he can also tell compelling stories. He also brings that talent with him as a writer. So in Boiling Frog, the show now on tour in the Netherlands, there are six Peter de Graefs on stage, and that is no punishment. Especially not because those six Peter de Graefs also...
For the unions, it is not all that bad: because of the mega-cuts to the arts, they have to 800 people laid off will be. That is almost nothing compared to, say, the bankrupt Nedcar, where redundancies at a single location may be double or more.
To bring in an extra five tonnes, the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and the Gelderland Orchestra are pulling together. And with success: the provincial governments of Overijssel and Gelderland are absorbing the state's subsidy cut. However, it now turns out that the plans used to rake in that bailout are dubious. Politicians have hardly looked into it. Questions about the business plan came mainly from the PVV in Overijssel, but in Gelderland that same party enthusiastically agreed to the injection of millions after a - remarkably damning - counter-expertise.
Nearly thirteen million The Gelderland Orchestra (HGO) asked for the province of Gelderland. It got three-and-a-half. Just enough to absorb the reduction in the state subsidy for the next two years and to work towards a new organisational structure and a new revenue model, as described in a very ambitious business plan, which...... wait a minute. We have already written about this, haven't we?
Apartheid activist Martin Bosma started talking about it during one of his many hilarious appearances in the second chamber, but, as is often the case, was wrong. He said art subsidies were an invention of the Nazis and therefore pernicious. We knew better, because researcher Benien van Berkel is thorough and deals with facts. From her doctoral research...
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