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For the most convenient overview of our art, visit Schiedam

I see a lot, but an exhibition that gives access to that contemporary art for outsiders is rarely among them. You have the Rijksmuseum with a nice overview of culture through the ages, but from 1900 onwards, the space for it becomes very small. So you don't know what's going on now. For that, you can go to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which shows the world's best. However, if you want a handy overview of what Dutch artists have created, it's best to go to Schiedam.

'Content creators' will unite globally

A lot of money is made on the internet from the distribution of text and music, news, photos and films. That money comes in to internet providers, services like Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Spotify, and to the big record companies and film producers, who are almost always also shareholders in the aforementioned organisations. Virtually none of that money reaches the people who make all those films, compositions and books or articles.

Biodesign

Happy jerk or depressed bacteria? Biodesign is the future, according to William Myers

What idiot could come up with that, one of the attendees wondered: that you can make electrical circuits by combining the DNA of an algae with that of a hamster? Just a question that comes to mind when walking around the exhibition Biodesign, on show in Rotterdam from 27 September to 5 January (2014). And then there's... 

Les Nabis from Hermitage Petersburg on display in full glory on the Amstel

In the main hall of the Hermitage Amsterdam, the music room of businessman and art collector Ivan Morozov has been recreated. The hall, where normally the top pieces of the exhibitions hang on the Amstel, now shows what the music room of Morozov's Moscow city palace looked like. With grand piano and all. But above all: with wall decorations by Maurice Denis, who was specially commissioned for this purpose. For once, these paintings have left the Hermitage so that St Petersburg can also work on a similar reconstruction. There is little chance of them leaving St Petersburg after that. 

Daan Roosegaarde for president? Alderman? Councillor?

Jet Bussemaker believes in Daan Roosegaarde. She confessed this on Sunday 1 September during the traditional Paradiso debate. She admired his courage to imagine the unthinkable and his drive to come up not with opinions but with proposals. Her message to the arts sector, again almost fully present in Paradiso, was clear: stop complaining, start doing something.

I Like To Watch Too is a must for keeping the performing arts in the Netherlands young and fresh

A man and a woman dance passionately in the hall of Paradiso. Such an experimental dance performance is unusual for the Amsterdam pop palace. Yet the festival I Like To Watch Too right here. Many people feel a barrier towards this kind of performance, but here there is just the right 'in and out' atmosphere to make avant-garde art something you can just look at and that always triggers something in you.

'This was the site of the Cold War' Dennis Meyer on Festival The Base

"I am very curious about the audience's reactions. People always have an image at a festival. They come, expecting to experience all sorts of things. What you get here is the terrain, an exploration and a story that emerges as a result. The main energy that exists on and around this terrain is, "I get to go on it, and what's there? On that energy, I want to build on."

Marie on a string: Anja Röttgerkamp stars as an unknown soldier in Gisèle Vienne's The Pyre @HollandFestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

'The Pyre', the latest show from internationally rising star Gisèle Vienne, initially seems less disturbing than her previous work. Pieces like 'Jerk' (2008), based on the true story of a young serial killer, and 'This is how you will disappear' (2010), starring a dark forest, were only seen in a few places in the Netherlands. Hopefully, this performance at the Holland Festival will change that. Gisèle Vienne once studied harp, then philosophy and eventually trained as a puppeteer. But Vienne sees herself primarily as a visual artist working with time, on a stage, where different rhythms, motifs and figures come together.

Fiction in dance films, (how) does it work? Good question at festival Cinedans

Fransien van der Putt, together with choreographer and dance film-maker Angelika Oei, saw five new Dutch dance films during Cinedans. Some of the results were promising. The films all transcended the level of visual gimmick. In its place is a struggle with fiction and physical credibility.

'A lot of art is too much about pleasing'

It started with an email out of the blue. Artist Joncquil had Googled my website and was struck by the name. I myself had almost forgotten how I had ever come up with the name, Joy of Irony: a song by the legendary, highly underrated English noise/metal band Fudge Tunnel. Joncquil came to my site because of his expo at the time, Himmel und Joy. He had read some of my pieces and introduced himself. Maybe one day we could have coffee to talk a bit about art.

Thus it happened.

Disbanded Tilburg dance innovators go into fitness for parkinson's patients

Sat another note in the post. One of many, these weeks. About a club that had only just been set up by the government. With the accompanying millions, which because of the PVV's vindictiveness have now been dumped in the local ditch. Its creators have already found a new purpose for themselves a few months ago: to improve the well-being of Parkinson's patients. But Dance House Station South is now thus a thing of the past. We quote:

If you don't have Twitter in Egypt. Community Arts 'Mahatat' works from the bottom up. #vvu

The government has made little effort in recent decades to create a cultural scene  getting off the ground. There are no workspaces. No galleries. Only a very large library and a "cultural palace". Both of which opened only five years ago. There are also a few small independent initiatives. In public spaces.

Netherlands closes a special embassy

This week, the curtain officially fell on the Theatre Emabassy, a club of inspired people who had Dutch artists collaborate with artists in developing countries such as Honduras, Bhutan and Congo. The resulting performances were only sporadically seen in the Netherlands, but every now and then a project made a broad impression here too, such as a 'On Hope of Blessing', played by real fishermen, but from Mali.

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