In the dark Middle Ages, an artist was still sometimes quartered for being out of line. In the 19th century, those lines were no longer important. In the early 20th century, artists started deciding for themselves where the lines were and punished those who did not stick to them. It was the time of artists' manifestos. Cate Blanchett, the...
'Everyone has an Apple. Everyone has a Corneille. Nobody has a Van Merwijk. So the question is whether Van Merwijk is any good. Nobody knows that. Then the challenge is for a few great people to buy a Van Merwijk. After that, everyone wants to have a Van Merwijk. When that happens, I'll go back to making other work, because I want...
You have punk. You have performance art. Best Gaap, because often little remains of that ferocious wildness that dominated the European scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Marina Abramovic we now see mainly as that silent lady on that chair opposite her long-lost lover. We have forgotten that she once offered her audience razors to cut her...
Last year, a minor riot erupted when the Holland Festival announced it was mounting a large-scale project in 2019 around Karlheinz Stockhausen's opera Light. Modern-music haters screamed blue murder, because who is waiting for the German wordsmith's nasty squeak? Yet a run on the charts immediately ensued. Even after his death...
Since 2012, Yoram Ish-Hurwitz has organised the Oranjewoud Festival in Friesland every summer. In doing so, the equally enterprising and adventurous pianist makes nature an inseparable part of the musical experience. From Wednesday 1 to Monday 5 June, he once again surprises his audience with concerts at special locations. Spread across the area, over 120 top Dutch and international musicians will play the most beautiful...
The wind blows harder there than elsewhere. The light is greyer there than further afield. London's south bank, for years 'the other side' of the English capital's posh city centre, has been the subject of several waves of renewal in the last century. It began in 1951 with the construction of concert hall 'Southbank Centre', followed in 1976, after years of wrangling, by the building in the same...
Each month, in the (Un)heard series, I present extraordinary sounds that do not go unnoticed and unsung. In this episode: Plan Kruutntoone, Horse Lords, Luc Ferrari, Anemone Tube, Jaap Vink and Kraftwerk in 3D. Plan Kruutntoone - What Do the Hands (LP on esc.rec.) "woke up again. xenakis is nothing like it. shoving myself and stuff in search of safety. how...
We are real Holland Festival specialists by now. We go and see performances beforehand, interview makers, actors and walk around the halls, in the foyers, just about every day. We hear a lot, we see a lot and we share it here. Cultural journalism as it should be, in short. Cultural journalism that should also be there. And it totally succeeds if you take out a subscription. Then you get...
What does it mean for a dancer with an intense career when she decides to choreograph as well? In March, Battle Abbey premiered, Heather Ware's first full-length choreography in collaboration with Swedish cellist Jakob Korányi. Heather Ware, a dancer with LeineRoebana since 2003, embarked on the path to creating her own choreography without a plan....
Using a television interview as a libretto for an opera? Quirky composer Huba de Graaff does not shy away from it. On 22 June, her opera The Naked Shit Songs will have its world premiere. It is based on a 1996 conversation by Theo van Gogh with British artist duo Gilbert & George. Due to lack of interest, De Graaff wanted her opera with a...
What do you get when you combine shadow play, Weimar cinema, gamelan and Javanese myths? A mix that demands a lot from the audience, but is a delight if you are willing to surrender to it. Indonesian director Garin Nugroho does not make easy films. Often they are visually stunning, like Opera Jawa, but the plot gets in the way a bit...
Writer and television presenter Arjen Lubach has been a fan of Norwegian writer Johan Harstad for years, whose mega-thick Max, Micha & the Tet Offensive has just been published in Dutch. He even visited him in Norway. Lubach: 'I was afraid we were so much alike that we had nothing to say to each other.' That turned out to be giant. Logical, then, that he...
And then there turns out to be a festival theme after all. Comes all by itself. Perhaps not thought of beforehand by the management of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU), but after three days of immersion crystal clear. Writing is about that about which we do not speak. During the last festival night, Saturday 13 May, I immersed myself for the occasion in a section that allows 'Utrecht' to...
Good timing by the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU) to put China at the centre of this year's edition. Just in time before the Chinese have connected the Betuwelijn to their own railway network on their own initiative, with their well-known decisiveness. High time to get to know the Chinese soul, it seems to me, and that does not succeed immediately....
Dutch, ladies and gentlemen, is just about the most difficult language in the world, and any committee that wants to improve it only makes it worse. As a professional language user, I have thought so for years, and it has now been happily confirmed by people who really know about it: translators. The first day of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU)...
Netflix and HBO are now purveyors of our conversations with friends, family and colleagues. The ultimate icebreaker at a party with strangers is talking about series, about beloved characters. Is Jon Snow still alive? Where is Barb? Having seen the first two working performances of 'The Nation', I have a strong impression that in Eric de Vroedt I have a fellow lover...
Friday 12 May kicks off the twelfth edition of Operadagen Rotterdam. Titled Lost & Found, the ten-day festival is dedicated to current refugee issues. I selected three operas by Calliope Tsoupaki, Annelies van Parys and Claron McFadden, strong women whose work deserves to be heard (and seen). The fear of the unknown is as old as the...
See, the Belgians do that well. When a new literary festival comes along, it immediately lasts more than a whole week instead of two days. Today marks the start of the first edition of the International Literature Festival BRU-TAAL. Five reasons to travel to 'the Venice of the North' in the coming days: Bruges. 9 days, 2 weekends, almost 59 writers,...
The play La Democrazia in America (to be seen at the Holland Festival on 4, 5 and 6 June) is of course about democracy in America, but actually more about The Democracy in America. And the two should not be confused. For The Democracy in America is a 1,200-page book by French jurist De Tocqueville. This...
Vincent Macaigne is uncomfortable. He looks around nervously every time the waitresses run past with trays full of clinking glasses and slam the doors. He has barely slept, and the previous evening he had walloped the audience of the Swiss Theatre Vidy with his brutal, inimitable performance En Manque. Braced, he sat down for the interview. "Sorry, I...
For new music, the primal performance is often also immediately the last time a piece is played. The scores await the archive or dusty drawer; recordings are nowhere to be found. David Dramm searches for these gems of stilted notes. He presents them at the Holland Festival Orphanage: three evenings of forgotten compositions from the rich...
Arjan Peters talks 12 May 19.30 during ILFU in Utrecht with Paulien Cornelisse, author of the office novel De verwarde guia, and Gerd Busse, who translated Voskuil's ultimate office novel Het Bureau into German. There, office workers are usually not portrayed too positively. High time to change that. Office worker and writer Suzanne Brink takes...
Having already won several awards for his short work, Daan Bakker now presents his wonderfully original first feature-length film Quality Time.
Earlier this year, Mircea Cărtărescu, Romania's greatest writer, was a guest at the Winternachten festival. Writer Mira Feticu, who was born and grew up in Romania and even received lectures from Cărtărescu as a student, interviewed her former compatriot and professor for A Quattro Mani. A beautiful conversation about their homeland, truth, literature and poetry. 'My books are...
Displaced paintings by Armando. Artists fleeing the city. A tinpot that brought financial disaster and summer festivals that attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. And you thought Amersfoort was boring? A footnote along the A1 motorway? Forget it. Let me tell you about this city struggling with its cultural identity. A story in eighteen impressions. Guilty landscape In his youth...
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