All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
How can you write about a three-day conference, part of which took place behind closed doors, the closing night of which looks very neat on vimeo, but where the tension in the room was palpable? With a completely open mind and not much more background than an average newspaper reader, but with a firm belief in the power of the arts,...
The Movies that Matter film festival offers a programme of engaged and socially critical films not only in March. With Movies That Matter On Tour, special films are screened throughout the year throughout the Netherlands. In May, it is the Dutch documentary Burden of Peace. Burden of Peace tells the impressive story of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first woman to...
The power of data The arts sector in general is little 'tech savvy'. Sure, nobody can do without a website and a Twitter account will hardly be lacking anymore either. But there are few examples of groups, theatres or artists making the most of the power of digital. Setting up a good 'client relations management system' (crm) with profiles of all visitors or buyers, to keep those...
Jewish-Palestinian film duo Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti on their blistering drama Ajami
Wednesday was the opening night of the three-day conference What's Art Got To Do With It? on art, politics, and Israel/Palestine. How do you open a conference on a loaded topic that everyone, especially from the sidelines, has an opinion on? With music. Because how can you be against it? The evening began amiably with a short performance by the Amsterdam Andalusian...
1. Intimacy That the atmosphere in a packed hall becomes intimate enough for a girl in the audience to ask legendary American rapper-poet Black Ice the question: If poetry equals love, as he had just proclaimed, did it ever break your heart? Black Ice, the man who strings his associations together faster than Halbe Zijlstra strings his stupidities,...
The acute financial problems at HET Symfonieorkest prompted Jacques Monasch to put questions to minister Bussemaker. Yesterday came the answers Bussemaker. In summary: everything is not too bad. Only: the minister is giving the Chamber the wrong figures. The minister relies on figures from Culture in focus 2014 and reports "The percentage of own income of HET Symfonieorkest was...
Relief for Amersfoort's cultural organisations. In the proposal for the multi-annual budget 2015-2018 (presented last night by the college to the city council), they remain largely unaffected when it comes to cuts. Only theatres De Flint and De Lieve Vrouw have to make cuts. It is possible they will merge in 2017. Recently, there has been a lot of unrest in the cultural world. The...
Opinions on Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River vary widely.
Everything comes together in Enschede. Revenue models that appear to be based on air, but are defended to the hilt by administrators. Jubilant reports on rising museum visits, but smaller museums are going under. Aldermen acting out of cultural interests, but then playing residents against each other to make draconian decisions. All this to disguise the ruins of Rutte I. A quick recap:...
With its latest retrospective If We Ever Get To Heaven, EYE again convincingly and confidently presents itself as a museum that looks beyond film history. This was already evident in previous exhibitions such as Expanded Cinema, which showcased visual artists working at the intersection of film and art. Now William Kentridge has been given the honour of...
On Sunday afternoon 26 April, I was a member of the press jury at the final of the Prinses Christina Competition in Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. Definitely not a punishment, as all six finalists performed at top level, no matter how young and inexperienced they were. Time and again, the organisation proves that all the gloom about the future of classical music is nonsense: this year too, there were...
Hatred of dependents runs deep in the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. The political game the party plays nationally and locally cannot be explained otherwise. Amsterdam is now experiencing the latest example of how the party has launched its publicity attack on dependents: while the cut in cultural subsidies of four years ago...
In the end, homo calculus - and who isn't, a "calculating man" - turns out to be primarily concerned with the monetary value of art objects, and only then - sometimes a long time later - with their beauty, artistic value or rarity. Every episode of the television programme Between Art and Kitsch demonstrates this. It also applies...
Libraries are mostly negative in the news. Branches have to close, members walk away and there is an ongoing debate about their right to exist. But in Amersfoort, the library is on the rise. Over the past year, visitor numbers have risen sharply. An advance confession: I am a nostalgic library visitor. As a little boy, I used to borrow The Shipboys of Bontekoe, Eagle's Eye and...
Christian von Hornsleth is exhibiting in Amsterdam, and there was an immediate small riot. An organisation that raises money against trafficking in women no longer wanted to receive a contribution from the proceeds of his exhibition in Amsterdam, because the artist, whose conceptual work often features porn images, would actually be an advocate of prostitution. Something Hornsleth himself vehemently denies. The...
The 2014/2015 Film Yearbook pays attention to the rapprochement between cinema and television.
Museum Beelden aan Zee placed a concrete sculpture by 26-year-old artist Catinka Kersten on the patio at the end of March: 'And everyone held their breath during that fraction of centuries'. It consists of five concrete human figures stacked on top of each other, which appear to be made of fabric. Kersten completed her studies at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague in 2013 with a series of hunting animals in plaster and cotton. The museum, with associated scientific institute and plaster library, is considered one of the figureheads of sculpture in the Netherlands. How did this museum come to choose such a young artist and what does inclusion in its collection mean for her?
Festival Rumor 80, an irregular regular in Utrecht at three different locations each time, will show choreographer Marc Vanrunxt's new work Real, So Real this Friday at Theater Kikker. Starting point is Three Voices, a 1982 composition by Morton Feldman. A wonderful Flemish collaboration by Kunst/Werk and ChampdAction. Dancer Marie De Corte and singer Els Mondelaers shine in Real, So Real. The...
The opera Poland in Plan Zuid will premiere at the Liberal Jewish Community in Amsterdam on Sunday 19 April. Composer Caroline Ansink and librettist Olaf Mulder based their work on Daniël Vermeulen's (pseudonym) memories of going into hiding in Brabant and his subsequent reunion with his mother in Amsterdam in 1945. Three questions for Caroline Ansink. Why...
In protest against the screening ban on the Kurdish documentary Bakur, the Istanbul Film Festival has cancelled all competitions.
After the Turkish Culture Ministry prevented screening of the documentary Bakur at the Istanbul Film Festival, Turkish filmmakers have withdrawn their films in protest.
If Mama Ain't Happy, Nobody's Happy by Mea de Jong gets prize from the youth jury at the Go Short Festival.
How do you make theatre with someone who speaks a different language? The Volksoperahuis does. Hot Pepper is already the third performance Kees Scholten and Jef Hofmeister are making with artists from the former Dutch colonies. After Willemstad and Paramaribo, they now travelled to Yogyakarta. They came home with a hushed, elegantly designed narrative about the shared past...
Possible (cultural) cuts are causing unrest in Amersfoort. The population was allowed to express its opinion via a website. Cultural organisations received the most support. But what will happen with the results of the public consultation? Just a reminder: due to setbacks in the land exploitation, the municipality of Amersfoort has to cut nineteen million euros in the coming years. To this end, an overview of possible cutback proposals was made. The Arts and...
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