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VISUAL
Everything in museums, galleries, on roundabouts and village squares, and hanging over sofas. And Marina Abramovic
Digging in the earth stays on the surface in Gardens Speak #HF16
There I am. Next to Holland Festival director Ruth Mackenzie, on a grave, as part of the installation Gardens Speak on the stage of the main hall of Theatre Bellevue in Amsterdam. There is nothing to see, little to hear. Tone lights suggest a rising sun after a few minutes. I get up together with the ten other visitors. Quite a shame, because I was actually quite comfortable lying there.
The programme booklet sounded promising:
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We are the forest. Christiane Jatahy achieves maximum impact at #HF16
There are countries in the world, where the boundaries between art disciplines are not as sharply drawn as they are here. The Holland Festival, under the new leadership of Ruth MacKenzie, is catching us up. She is bringing events here where the boundaries between visual art, performance, video, film and performing arts can no longer be drawn. Events that generate meaning in ways that are quite new to us, such as The Encounter, last week, and Gardens Speak, later this week.
Thoughts as fuel for space travel
No actor to be seen in the auditorium of Theatre de Veste in Delft. Just a house with walls and roof of transparent cloth. It holds thirty people. On the walls of the hall around it, projected images pass by at whirling speed. This is fascinating: usually, when you are in a house, the walls close you off from the surroundings, but this time they actually give a view of a world as big and beautiful as you never experience in ordinary life.
Vik Muniz 'faked' Mona Lisa's buttocks
Once, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen had the Mauritshuis built with money earned in Brazil, including in the slave trade. Now a Brazilian is exhibiting in that same Mauritshuis with perfect 3D replicas of the backs of famous paintings. He made five new ones especially for this exhibition. Four well-known masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, but also a painting relating to the Brazilian adventures of the time.
Emscher art: substance enough for discussion on public participation in artworks
On the same day that in Arnhem our king opened Sonsbeek 16, there was also a party around the Phoenixsee in Dortmund. Namely, Emscherkunst 2016 opened there, and for those who have never heard of it: it is the continuation of previous art events in the Ruhr region, the former industrial heart of Europe. I went there once myself, six years ago, and had mixed feelings: is investing in art really an appropriate method to save an area abandoned by the economy?
We all live in Constant's New Babylon
Two major exhibitions honour the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag shows his architectural utopia New Babylon, the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen outlines Constant's development from Cobra to this. We tour the Hague exhibition and explore the legacy of Constant's legendary project. Including some 3d photos.
Brazil expo in The Hague barely bothered by turbulence in Brasilia
Impeachment proceedings, social unrest, corruption: recent reports on Brazil paint a not very optimistic picture. Yet this very country is at the centre of the major annual major sculpture exhibition in The Hague. The reason: the Olympic Games, later this year in Rio. But does the suspension of President Roussef make Brazil a risky cooperation partner for an exhibition?
Festival Spring opens with disappointing play by Nicole Beutler
The honour of opening Utrecht's dance and performance festival SPRING fell this year to choreographer Nicole Beutler[hints]Nicole Beutler (Munich, 1969) is a choreographer and theatre maker. After studying Fine Arts at the Art Academy (Münster and Munich), she came to Amsterdam for the AHK's School for New Dance Development, where she graduated in 1997. Her work is at the interface of visual art, theatre and dance(Source)[/hints]. The performance 6: The Square exhibits an inimitable fascination with dancing and thinking in squares. Squaredance, a very old folk dance tradition in couples, especially popular in America, and the futuristic functionality of Bauhaus are linked in this choreography to thoughts about creating order and pigeonholing. How exactly
Culture Council fill-in exercise offers hardly any surprises
Champagne at BAK in Utrecht, deep disappointment at The New Institute in Rotterdam: the Council for Culture has spoken. Today, Thursday 19 May 2016, the first advice after the draconian art cuts by the first Rutte cabinet came out, and heads are rolling. Amsterdam loses prestigious presentation institution De Appel, in The Hague fellow institution Stroom has to redo its homework. The Orkest van het Oosten and the Gelders Orkest have to come up with merger plans within two years. In Utrecht, the city company Theater Utrecht will no longer receive funding despite artistic appreciation. Het Zuidelijk Toneel in Eindhoven Tilburg must make new plans and Opera Zuid must quickly raise its artistic quality. These are the main conclusions of the Culture Council's opinion.
As dramatic as some of this may sound, the advice is actually not, when you look over the whole battlefield. Thanks in part to
Audio, the new video (II): Syrian dead speak at Gardens Speak (HF16)
'This regime also rules over you after you die. The regime steals your story. They use you to tell their own story. Relatives are forced to sign statements that the dead were killed by the opposition. The regime uses the dead to oppress the living.' Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury made a statement: Gardens Speak (Gardens Speak). An installation, an immersive[hints]definition: immersive, making you forget the real world around you[/hints] performance, in which the spectators themselves are actors. A performance that consists of a mountain of earth from which soft voices sound from beneath tombstones. That performance comes in June to Amsterdam, as one of the examples of the new Holland Festival programming by festival director Ruth MacKenzie.
The pile of earth in and on which the installation takes place represents the many thousands of anonymous backyard graves in Syria. At the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the struggle was still mainly between opponents of President Assad's dictatorship and his (secret) police. The first victims were often still just students taking part in peaceful demonstrations, handing out pamphlets, or attending the funeral of a friend. After all: bombing funerals was and is a proven method of murderous regimes and crime syndicates to eliminate insurgent networks.
Tania El Khoury heard of the Syrian alternative in 2013: the private burial in one's own backyard, or failing that, in an anonymous city park, with no headstone or memorial. Such an action is both an expression of fear and an act of resistance: these are deaths that the government can no longer abuse. 'The play was not originally intended for European audiences either. It was made in Lebanon and the text was also in Arabic. The last thing I thought about was the European audience. The idea was
Voices Outside The Echo Chamber: we need exhibitions like this
An exhibition that puts our view of migration and migrants at the centre, critical of our migration policy but does not fall into easy pamphleteering, that is "Voices outside the echo chamber". On Friday 29 April, the exhibition "Voices outside the echo chamber"-an exhibition by Framer Framed, the Amsterdam-based organisation that has been questioning and commenting on the visual language in our arts for years-opened at the Tolhuistuin. After all,...
Jiří Kylián: 'The silence of a photograph, I love that'
With Free Fall, Jiří Kylián shows his photographic works for the first time. He talks enthusiastically about his discoveries, his inspiration, and Sabine. The house in The Hague where Jiří Kylián has lived for more than 30 years radiates joy of life. Warm colour tones, fragrant flowers, classicist furnishings yet cosy. Unmistakably the 'touch of a woman.' That woman is Sabine Kupferberg, the life partner and...
Modern panoramas at Mesdag do not dwarf the old
Although Panorama Mesdag always focuses on one painting, it is not a static museum. Changing exhibitions sometimes highlight Mesdag and his time, sometimes more modern artistic expressions. This time, the museum has approached artists to develop new visions on the concept of the panorama. A laudable decision. Whether the new panoramas are all equally convincing is a second. The main work in the exhibition is...
In memoriam exhibitions Martyn Last
Last Saturday, 2 April, I attended the opening of four exhibitions in Amsterdam featuring work by Martyn Last, who died suddenly in September 2015. He was only 54 years old. The curators Jeroen Werner and Henk Wijnen (i.c.w. the galleries) created an impressive tribute to their late friend and art brother. It is an experience to see so much of Last's work at...
NRC in error: Daan Roosegaarde is not a thief because Ger van Elk is not unique
This Daan Roosegaarde is said to have made a huge fool of himself again. In any case, NRC Handelsblad reported that the man, who is under fire for not naming sources, has again committed plagiarism. For his contribution to the DWDD pop-up museum, a wildly successful thing by the world's fastest culture programme, he hung a whole row of seascapes in a room,...
Magical girls by Klimt and Schiele
There are outside opportunities to be taken advantage of. Egon Schiele's Portrait of Edith by his wife Edith will be joined by Gustav Klimt's Judith I from Vienna for a one-off at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Two fascinating works, both very rarely on loan. And although the artists knew and appreciated each other, there is almost no greater difference imaginable than...
Toorop and Berlage: good marriage at Gemeentemuseum
The Jugendstil curls of the famous 'salad oil poster' adorn the logo of the major Toorop exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. And while this choice is recognisable and appealing, there is something to be said against it. After all, the museum is so keen to show other sides of Toorop. And there are surprisingly many of them. The Gemeentemuseum has a history with...
Bep Rietveld could do at least 1 thing better than her father
The great thing about visiting openings is that sometimes you get to experience something that no one expected. Like at the mini-exhibition 'Bep Rietveld, daughter of...' at Kunstruimte Kuub in Utrecht. It features 72 paintings by the daughter of Gerrit Rietveld, the man who gave De Stijl its furniture and houses. This Bep, not without merit with the paintbrush, created a...
Hacking Habitat: battle for total digital power impressively depicted
In the corridor leading to the airspace, a shabby man stands leaning against the wall. Exhausted, cold, untouchable. It is a young Adolf Hitler, portrayed by Roy Villevoye as the homeless, failed artist he once was. Now he is at Hacking Habitat and full of potential, according to the caption. The art manifestation that has taken possession under that title in...
Self-employed: you don't have to be able to do everything on your own, seek career guidance!
Following the exploration of the labour market in the cultural sector made by the Social and Economic Council (SER) and the Council for Culture last month, there was a lot of attention on the low earning self-employed in the cultural sector. Promising headlines such as "Everyone gets paid except the artist" (NRC) and "It's a matter of waiting every month to see if I earn enough" (Volkskrant) could account for recognition...
'Frankenstein' Hlobo wants to cure South Africa
Scattered through the main hall of museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague are enormous works, mostly consisting of ribbon and used car inner tubes. There are also canvases hanging on the wall, again full of colourful ribbon embroidery. These canvases are more sculpture than painting. They are the work of South African Nicholas Hlobo. Images by the Sea, under the title Imilonji Yembali (Melodies...
It's time for a 'slave-free art' seal of approval #tegendebakker
Making art is too much fun and too unnecessary. People really like making art, and really want to show it off. So much so, that they are the only ones doing their contribution to an art event for free. While all other contributors are simply paid. Thus, the art world, including the subsidised one, is one of the places in the Netherlands where slavery is still common. It...
Mauritshuis reveals secrets of the depot
A mythical aura often surrounds a museum's depot. How many works of unparalleled value does a top collection like the Mauritshuis let gather dust on its shelves? And more importantly, why? And as a museum, wouldn't it be better to sell them? In the exhibition Highlights from the Depot, the Mauritshuis answers such questions. At the same time, new questions arise,...
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