Do it. Make it. Don't care about others. Don't think about the consequences. Then sit on the blisters for a while, they will heal again. Starving for a while for art is not bad either. So choose your own path and enjoy every step. Above all: live in the here and now, all the time. History becomes...
Machiel Bosman is a historian and writes history disguised as literature. His book Elisabeth de Flines was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize and the Libris History Prize in 2008. This book De Roofkoning, prins Willem III en de invasie van Engeland was also nominated for the Libris History Prize. In this podcast, a conversation with the author who gave us...
Babylon Yasmina Reza With her novel Babylon, Yasmina Reza won the prix Renaudot, France's most important literary prize after the prix Goncourt. The main character is 62-year-old Elisabeth Jauze. Elisabeth is a patent examiner at the Institute Pasteur and leads a sedate life with her husband Pierre. In contrast to her sister Jeanne, who has been caught up in sexual adventures since separation that...
A submitted message puts your organisation in direct contact with all Culture Press readers[ref]Status April 2017: 5900 on facebook, 16,130 on twitter, 2000 in the mail, 26,000/month on the website[/ref]. Just like a regular message, your message comes along in the news stream, and newsletters. It is also shared on facebook and we connect you there with every...
Joop van Caldenborgh, founder of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, has commissioned a classical museum that builds on existing conventions about presenting art. The art should be central and the building does not matter, so to speak. Yet the design plays an important role. Architecture critic Tim de Boer dives deeper into the thoughts behind the building,...
Already during her studies, Loes Visser (1959) formed the Alpha Chamber Orchestra. In 1990, she initiated the Adamello Ensemble and, seventeen years later, she founded the Britten Youth String Orchestra, with which she is now celebrating its second anniversary. What drives her and what are her best experiences? Chamber orchestra "I founded the Alpha Chamber Orchestra because there was a need",...
Leisure is the mother of philosophy. -motto of British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, seen in Klokgebouw during STRP17 An app called "Die with me" that, as soon as your smartphone is at five per cent remaining power, automatically connects with other Die with me users. An app game called "Airb'n'bhost", where you have to choose who offers the airb'n'b interior from three portrait photos each time. The most fun:...
It is not easy to visit an opera presented as a stunning piece of contemporary social criticism without fear. Especially when it evokes such totally different reactions. Some call The New Prince 'an opera on the vein of our own time' (Mischa Spel, NRC), while others give it 'a fat fail' (Erik Voermans, Het Parool). Another needs more...
Interview with Martijn Maria Smits about his new film Waldstille, which he shot in his native village in Brabant. A drama full of subcutaneous menace from a Dutch filmmaker with a signature of his own.
Adultery, lustful sex and desperately dating forty-somethings - these are the spicy ingredients of caSINO, Frieda Mulisch's debut novel. On their quest for true love, her protagonists Polly and Sam scour dating app caSINO, a kind of Tinder. We talk to her about her book, literary aspirations and, of course, her father Harry Mulisch. 'If Tinder had been around fifty years ago,...
Initiated by Pierre Audi in 2016, the Opera Forward Festival questions the future of musical theatre. The 13-day festival offers (young) creators and singers a chance to explore new avenues. For the second edition, Audi himself directed And You Must Suffer, a music-theatrical version of Bach's St John Passion. This production by Muziektheater Transparant and the early music ensemble B'Roque experienced its Tuesday 28 March...
Boring, all those films, commercials and youtube videos that always use the same (background) music. In a hushed scene or pathetic documentary, the viewer is served Pärt. Exciting sounds like this, and when disaster strikes you hear this. Ordinary people Ah, even film-docu-& TV-makers are like ordinary people and like to reach for the same thing. Dommage! Because there is so much more...
Annelies Verbeke broke through in literature in 2003 with her debut novel Slaap! She writes plays, scenarios, short story collections, novels and novellas. Her novel Dertig dagen (Thirty Days) won Verbeke the F. Bordewijk Prize, the NRC Book Award and the Opzij Literature Prize. And now there is a new collection of 15 stories entitled Halleluja. In these stories, the characters discover that each...
Rewire is once again just around the corner. From 31 March to 2 April, the festival takes place in the city centre of The Hague. The young festival does so with a choice of colours and flavours, (just) outside the mainstream. So: where adventure and the great unknown are actually perks - diametrically opposed to Guus Meeuwis on the main stage....
Some doubt whether virtual reality is a suitable medium for feature film. The Dutch makers of Ashes to Ashes, The Night Watch and High Five show that it can be done.
We have to perform, from an early age. If you don't go along with that, you will be left out. It is the thrust of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, now to be seen at De Nationale Opera directed by Krzystof Warlikowski. The Polish theatre innovator has turned one of the most dramatic operas in music history into a fascinating musical...
'Many opera productions still assume a nineteenth-century vision of the world,' says German composer Moritz Eggert (1965) in the podcast below. 'But art must be relevant to our own times; the answers of then are not the answers of now. Our current problems are largely rooted in our colonial past, in our exploitation of other countries ...
Bruce Nauman is considered one of the most influential artists of the moment. He creates work that crosses genre boundaries - as well as breaking down with them - in an exploration of body, language and performance that has now spanned 50 years. Nauman expresses his often provocative and invariably innovative ideas in a multitude of media and materials. As a result, his work is...
In the documentary Life. Animated, Roger Ross Williams tells the equally amazing and infectious story of how Disney films were the key to the world for autistic Owen. "It's about the power of stories," he says.
In a discussion (on facebook, where else) about NRC Handelsblad's departure from Blendle, an editor of that newspaper made very disparaging remarks about a reader who had paid 30 cents for one of his articles. In a recent article on Frankwatching, an expert concluded that investigative journalism could only survive if we started subsidising newspapers....
'Thanks to a radio presenter, my grandfather found an entrance to classical music. With my new piece, I, in turn, am paving a path to him.' On Thursday 30 March, Elements by Brechtje (1993) will have its world premiere in the fifth episode of An Evening of Today at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. In this series by the Nieuw Ensemble, conservatory students are given ample opportunity....
Joop Oonk (27) creates dance performances with the Misiconi Dance Company, but not of a standard kind. She also calls it inclusion dance. Dancing with wheelchairs, for example, and then doing it in public spaces. Time for a chat with this extraordinary choreographer. Fortunately, you don't have to be an art barbarian not to know the word inclusion dance. Joop Oonk choreographer, artistic director...
'The smaller the community the narrower the mind,' says Krzysztof Warlikowski. The Polish director makes his debut at De Nationale Opera this month with Alban Berg's Wozzeck. It is the second time he has taken on this iconic work of the 20th century. To this end, he draws on his own experiences during his childhood in Stettin. It is exceptionally...
A dance performance for youth (6+) recently caused a stir. Pupils from groups 5 to 8 of the Islamic Aboe Daoedschool in Utrecht visited IJspaleis (6+) by dance theatre group plan d-. At a dance of two penguins in love, one of the teachers requested that the performance be stopped. This scene was not considered suitable for the pupils, the explanation said. It...
We know him from such wonderful novels as To the Other Side of the Night and The Last Escape, but Jan van Mersbergen has more to his credit. He recently surprised us with The Rider, written from the perspective of an old horse, and now there is Diary from the River. Not a novel, but his first thriller, published under the pseudonym Frederik Baas....
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