Our intended prime minister wants to abolish almost all cultural subsidies. Only art that can be properly understood by 'real Dutch people' still deserves financial support. Wilders targets cultural subsidies from an ideological background. Anyone visiting the exhibition 'Art in the Third Reich - Temptation and Distraction' at Museum Arnhem cannot escape seeing disturbing comparisons. Wilders sees art as a...
1. During 9/11, I was in Salamanca with two friends. The day Geert Wilders managed to amass 37 seats (thank you VVD and normalising media), I was in Rabat, attending the Visa for Music music conference, with which the European Jazz Network (one of the best-functioning networks within European cultural funding, I say as a new kid...
The hybrid German-English model combines the best of three worlds. But it also involves major changes. Artists will no longer all live in Amsterdam, but in one of eight or 10 urban cultural regions.
I went to Amsterdam to face my social anxieties on the once infamous Mercatorplein. I saw a sunny square with a trendy bar and bakfiets mothers around a play fountain for white children (brrrr! gentrification), old veiled and un veiled women chatting on a bench (help! multiculture) and a performance in a converted bumper car tent (Waaaah! Holland Festival). What I didn't...
The SER report published on Friday 21 April rubs it in nicely: the cultural sector is on the verge of collapse. It is even worse than a year ago. This shows that the patience of a PvdA culture minister over the past four years has not helped. Indeed: Halbe Zijlstra's multiplier of misery is doing its job entirely as expected....
'In schools, you have to feed children literature like they feed geese in France.' With his witty remarks, Tommy Wieringa got the laughs as he lay on the sofa as the personification of the Netherlands with psychiatry professor Damiaan Denys. 'The Netherlands on the sofa' was one of the first programmes of the Saturday evening literary festival Winternachten in...
Geert Wilders was quick off the mark, after the attack in Berlin, posting a photoshopped picture of Angela Merkel with blood on her hands. The message was all too clear. Even more opportunistic and shocking was the list posted half a day later by Martin Bosma, media and culture spokesman. Bosma's tweet included a list of names. Caption "These...
If the shock of 9-11 in 2016 highlighted anything, it was the yawning gap between the higher and lower educated in our neoliberal society. White, less-educated and angry male America elected a racist and war hitter as president. We cannot help but conclude that democratic, liberal, highly educated and majority-educated America refused to see the blow coming. In the spring ...
This play is going to cost me a lot of friends, but it needs to get out. After all, the theatre industry is doing badly. And I can see more and more clearly where that is due to. And for once it's not Halbe Zijlstra. Or the VVD, or the population, or the Netherlands in general, or the zeitgeist. And it's not because of Netflix either...
Finally, it was not quite literal, but he was clearly referring to it: Richard III. Geert Wilders, himself not too culturally savvy, quotes Shakespeare in his umpteenth plea to get the Netherlands out of the EU with pot-covered borders. In the second chamber. I saw it on Nieuwsuur, and you can watch it back. At 39′:49″ minutes into the broadcast he is in debate with his great friend, the VVD's Halbe Zijlstra.
But then. A day before Christmas, the prime minister experiences a sleepless night. He has no appetite for the Glühwein provided by the housekeeping service. The Christmas pastry, delivered by a friendly VVD baker, remains untouched. The security guards see their object sitting upright in his bed... Read and shudder That summer evening, Michelle de Kat sits smugly in a corner of the blood-hot studio
I published two articles in NRC Handelsblad last year. The first (6 July 2013) was critical of government policy. There was little reaction to this. The second article (7 December 2013) was critical of the arts sector: it needs to make its own sharp choices. That did cause a stir, although I am convinced that many colleagues largely agree with the content...
Win tickets for The NEWS at Paradiso
Big new, small news. News is everywhere, there is no escape. On the street, in one's own living room. What starts at the breakfast table can become world news. So: what is your news today? Let us know, share this page and take a picture, post it on facebook and twitter. Add #thenewsnl and win two tickets to the reality opera that will permanently change your view of the news.
Jubilant reviews. With the 'reality opera' The News, the Nederlandse Reisopera has a hit on its hands. However, the familiar theatre setting is being abandoned for pop temple Paradiso. Whether you like opera or not: five reasons to go.
We are quite happy with the Netherlands, if only because of the language. After all, we can write in Dutch here, and then there are quite a few people who can read us, and understand us when we speak. In Thailand
At the request of Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, Parool and Groene Amsterdammer columnist Theodor Holman wrote a play about a conversation between Anders Breivik and Geert Wilders. In an interview with Joost Niemöller of the opinion blog 'De Dagelijkse Standaard', the presenter and writer explained that he admires Breivik's analysis of the situation in Europe, which he also believes...
It happens regularly that you see or hear something, in the tram, on the train, on the road, on holiday. But also on the street, in your own home. And that you think: what is that? Chances are you are dealing with 'Art'. And that can have all kinds of side effects: pleasure, chills, confusion, sadness, or even indifference, and depression. Art can,...
We are not big on copying press releases directly, but this one accidentally slipped in. For those who didn't know it yet, but tout art is going loopy on Sunday and Monday for the preservation of sanity in the Netherlands. Although that will have no effect on the architect of the cut, PVV member Martin Bosma. Even the cultural sector in Limburg (Geert...
State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra does not like whining. Don't come to him with email bombardments, Twitter campaigns, angry letters and abusive language. He is not only insensitive to it, it even backfires on him. At least that is what he told
Of course we are being horribly abused. By the coughing chain-smoker with his trench coat in that Hague car park. Is there a bigger plan behind it. Which again we know nothing about, but which will become clear on 23 May. So be it. Until then, we can do nothing but slavishly write down what the coughing oracle coughs at us. Well: We already knew that...
'The drawing is literally and figuratively striking, painfully comic and wry: it brings tears and laughter at the same time. The combination of the boy's peaceful pose with the cruel assault on his body lingers in your mind. The print needs no text; it could appear in any European, even global newspaper, so powerful and universal is it
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