'During performances or book signings, people often come up to me and tell me: "I wasn't a reader, but your book made me experience the pleasure of reading and now I really enjoy reading." I don't say that because I think my books are now so good, but because it shows that once someone experiences...
Learning is less about what you learn than from whom you learn it. Not that what you learn doesn't matter, but you simply learn more from an inspired person than from a teacher running down his list. Fortunately, I have had many good teachers. Some of them are now demented or dead, with almost all of them...
Iemand die bij een uitgeverij werkt, genereert daarmee voor zichzelf een inkomen van 42.379,79 euro. Dat is iets meer dan het gemiddelde inkomen van mensen in de boekhandel, die het slechts met een gemiddelde van 31.000 euro per persoon moeten stellen. Dit inkomen wordt grotendeels gegenereerd door auteurs en vertalers. Die verdienen – gemiddeld – 1540,55 euro. Per persoon. Per…
It remains miraculous how much emotion intelligent animation can generate. In Another day of life (in cinemas from 14 March), the Angolan coverage by legendary Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński is captured in grandly drawn images. Combined with live footage and well-chosen archival material, it delivers an 85-minute hellscape that can be appreciated on several levels. Kapuściński...
Her debut novel became an instant bestseller in Spain. The Last Gift of Paulina Hoffmann by Carmen Romero Dorr is a novel based partly on her own family history about Paulina, who emigrates from Germany to Spain as a young girl because of World War II. 'About her past, her experiences during the war, my grandmother never wanted to talk.' A beautiful family epic, that is The Last...
‘Als scholen willen bijdragen aan een samenleving waarin inclusiever gedacht wordt, zouden zij literaire teksten van vrouwelijke en niet-westerse auteurs systematischer onder de aandacht moeten brengen.’ Deze aanbeveling komt nu eens niet uit de hoek van wat op de minder welriekende kanalen van Reddit SJW’s worden genoemd, maar van onderzoekers van de Stichting Lezen. Zij presenteerden eerder deze week een…
![M carbunaru [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons](https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Vasile_Craciun_-_competitie_internationala.jpg)
How nice it would be if Zutphen were to be Cultural Capital of the Netherlands next year, proudly representing itself and thanks to a strong impulse from its surrounding area: the province of Gelderland. They could immediately tackle the hopeless situation of the local theatre, the kids from the suburbs could also go to hip-hop in a real hall and everyone in the Netherlands would know...
How did the Hague prostitute Blonde Dolly make her millions? And why was her killer never caught, when it was abundantly clear who must have strangled her? That smells like a conspiracy, and conspiracies are like grist to writer Tomas Ross' mill. In Blonde Dolly, he tackles one of the oldest and most mysterious cold cases in the Netherlands. Until it...
The 2014 first season of True Detective was a huge success. A Southern murder mystery with an occult twist. Besides the 'who did it' storyline, the season was mostly about the complicated characters of Martin Hart and Rust Cole (played convincingly by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey). There was a raw and palpable chemistry between the two. The...
‘Hoeveel werkelijkheden kunnen we aan? Voor mij is dat het thema van 2018. Die dames van Noord Korea die aan ’t juichen waren, bijvoorbeeld. Maar het zat ook in Halbe Zijlstra die had gelogen over de datsja van Poetin.’ Greg Nottrot, theatermaker uit Utrecht, had zich voor dit jaar voorgenomen een eindejaarsvoorstelling te maken die de tijdgeest goed zou vatten.…
A good selling book earns an author an average of 10 to 15 per cent of the selling price. Bestsellers go towards 20 per cent. But how much does it really yield? KVB Boekwerk, the research arm of the Royal Booksellers' Association wanted to find out. Jurriaan Rammeloo presented the first preliminary results of his research on 27 November. Not something to be very happy...
‘Ja. Ik heb onze reis anders voorgespiegeld. We zouden op zoek gaan naar kleine mensen en grote ratten, dwergolifanten en reuzenooievaars, naar wat normaal gevonden wordt en wat niet.’ Wanneer Frank Westerman (1964) in het onderzoek voor zijn boek Wij, de mens eindelijk het Indonesische eiland Flores bezoekt in gezelschap van zijn dochter, komen ze terecht bij de massagraven waarin de…
DocLab 2018 is no longer about the latest technology, but about the human experience. What menu can artists serve us with digital media and artificial intelligence. Examination of reality, playful installations, the Humanoid Cookbook and collaboration with MIT
Searching for what I stand for and which way to go, time and again I come across facts that confuse and amaze me. I live in a country where only a single woman is in De Volkskrant top ten most influential people - in tenth place, that is. Only three out of 100 young Dutch millionaires...
The female composer, she continues to stir minds. My article following Mathilde Wantenaar's world premiere of Damocles unleashed a fierce discussion on Facebook. 'Why should women be given preferential treatment?" an angry man asked. 'All that matters to me is quality, not whether a piece of music was written by a man or a woman.' He got icky about the m/f discussion, which...
The Netherlands suffers from a problematisation problem. In case you find that a problematic term, that is part of the problem. Indeed: we make something into a complicated problem and explain it complicated because there is actually no reason to make it a problem. Venue: our national assembly. Reason: not everyone benefits equally from...
One of the sources of inspiration for director Ingrid Kuijpers was a film about a certain kind of flatworm. It has also found a place in her performance WO-MAN. Flatworms are hermaphroditic animals. Mating amounts to a fight over which of the two gets fertilised. Kuijpers: ,,The one that manages to get the other pregnant has won. If you get pregnant...
"Don't let Netflix tell you what to think". The Netflix documentary Making a Murderer caused a huge stir in the United States and the rest of the world in 2016. Society was divided into two camps: those who believed Steven Avery was guilty and those who believed he was once again innocent in jail....
The chances of being helped in a museum by someone standing there unpaid, purely for her fun, have increased considerably in recent years. This is especially true for museum shops, museum cafés and cloakrooms - in short, anything related to commercial activities and operations. This is evident from a closer examination of the rather jubilant figures for 2017, which the Museum Association...
Three black men wash up on a small island. This threatens to throw a spanner in the works of the residents and their economic plans. So everyone prefers to pretend that nothing has happened. Archipelago of the Dog, Philippe Claudel's new novel, is a haunting book with lightness peeking through at times. The French bestselling author worries: 'Once, nuclear weapons constituted...
Het ministerie van OCW beschikt over uitstekende zwarte viltstiften. Op geen enkele manier is het me daarom gelukt te achterhalen welke krant in Amsterdam het WOB-verzoek heeft gedaan waarop minister van Engelshoven nu reageert. De lengte van het zwarte balkje kan alles zijn (behalve Coöperatief Cultureel Persbureau UA). Maar goed: iemand doet onderzoek naar de gang van zaken rond de…
On 3 October, the opera Harriet by Hilda Paredes will premiere, dedicated to legendary African-American freedom fighter Harriet Tubman (c. 1822-1913). In the mid-19th century, she escaped from a slave existence, after which she risked her life to free many peers via the so-called Underground Railroad. After years of wrangling, the US Department of the Treasury decided in September 2018 to take Tubman's effigy and...
Speaking of bubbles. In the middle of Den Bosch, on the parade square, there are three mega-play blocks you can enter. They are mini theatres, brainchildren of designer Theun Mosk. In one of them, you come across a very large plastic bubble in which young, mostly naked, people move. The audience stands on either side of the bubble feeling uncomfortable. Partly because the naked young people...
Afgelopen dinsdag, 24 juli, in een week waarin heel Nederland vrijwillig voor pampus of elk willekeurig ander eiland ligt, kwam de Cultuurindex met een belangrijk stuk. In ‘Vijf vragen over vrijwilligerswerk beantwoord’ beantwoordt de Cultuurindex inderdaad vijf vragen. De vraag is echter hoe relevant deze vragen zijn voor de staat van de professionele cultuur in Nederland. En, nog belangrijker: speelt…
In 2016, I was unexpectedly struck by a Beatles classic. So what are the ingredients of perfect pop music? It is August 2016. I am standing with my friend at a ticket office in Liverpool, the British port city that is just as much an open-air museum. It is rather rubbed in on us that this city gave birth to The Beatles. In the harbour, tourists spend the night in a yellow submarine, equally...
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