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Indien je een mens bent, laat dit veld leeg:.

philosophy

Philosopher Henk van der Waal: 'The mystical experience is empty.' (podcast)

by Monique Huijdink
20 April 201730 May 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, LITERARY, PODCAST

Henk van der Waal is a philosopher and poet. His collections have been awarded several prizes and nominated for several awards. In 2012, his philosophical essay Denken op de plaats rust. Design of a philosophical attitude to life, and now the philosophical dialogue Mysticism for the Wicked has been published. [bol_product__links block_id="bol_58f89055ec618_selected-products" products="9200000060486849,9200000075985970″ name="vanderwaal" sub_id="huydinck" link_color="003399″ subtitle_color="000000″ pri... You can log in now to continue reading!...

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Art is not an exam you can fail. Art is a way of seeing

by Jaïr Tchong
26 February 201728 February 2017
7 min read
VISUAL

Op Art (optical art) is less well known than Pop Art. Until you see the works in question. There may be no Op Art stars of Andy Warhol status, but their creations directly resonate with images you know from art history. On Saturday 25 February, a major exhibition[hints]In collaboration with the Louisiana Museum in Denmark[/hints] opened at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam about these...

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Geert Viaene: 'Poetry is like a drug, I can't live without it'

by A Quattro Mani
22 February 20172 August 2020
10 min read
LITERARY, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

He was belatedly gripped by poetry, but how: for Flemish poet and street musician Geert Viaene (1963), poetry has now become a condition of life. 'A chord has been struck that still can't stop vibrating.' From this late bloomer, who published on digital forum Het Gezeefde Gedicht (The Sifted Poem), the debut collection Eistijden was recently published. Viaene understands the art of being outspoken in...

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Diversity, schmiversity (my reservations about the CCD Award)

by Jaïr Tchong
16 February 201730 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Brief summary. On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the presentation of the important award (actually two: audience award and jury award) called Code Cultural Diversity Award. I did not see a single fellow journalist(s). What I did see were lots of professional advocates speaking on behalf of people who were barely present themselves in the Galaxy. NB: the author is of Aruban-Chinese-Dutch descent and in no way wants to undermine the urgency of the issue of diversity...

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All about Nothing. Danish premiere of youth opera Intet by David Bruce

by Inger Stokkink
7 February 201730 March 2022
8 min read
Aarhus 2017, For members only, LITERARY, OPERA, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS

From a country where a giraffe is dissected for children as a holiday attraction, you don't have to expect a sugary pink Disney opera. And so Intet (= Nothing) is not. Think Lord of the Flies, place of action: a peaceful Danish village. Also think Søren Kierkegaard - because philosophy. Also by no means a buffoon. The story Intet is based on the eponymous...

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Master class Sergei Loznitsa makes one long for even more knowledge about how film works

by Leo Bankersen
19 November 201630 March 2022
4 min read
For members only, FILM

With Austerlitz, Sergei Loznitsa made a documentary about tourists in former concnetration camps that was as rigorous as it was unsettling. This year, he is guest of honour at IDFA and gave a master class there.

This is the most ordinary day of Toon Tellegen's life

by A Quattro Mani
18 November 20162 August 2020
8 min read
LITERARY, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

'I have a hundred wishes, and if I think carefully maybe a thousand,' writes Toon Tellegen in Het grote taartenboek, published to mark his seventy-fifth birthday today. 'But one wish is my dearest wish, and that is to sit among the animals on the riverbank one afternoon in early summer....

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Back, to The Cherry Garden 2 - ©Willem Popelier

Nottrot's Cherry Garden: fascinating evening of philosophy on Greek cottage

by Wijbrand Schaap
20 August 201630 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, PODIUM ART, THEATER

What is a memory worth? A first kiss, for example: how much poorer are you if it is forgotten? In hard euros. Such questions Greg Nottrot likes to ask his audience, and we, his grateful listeners, gladly join in his money thought experiments. The man who, with Oscar Kocken, came up with the revolutionary concept of the live talk show Order of the Day, now makes,...

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Zvizdal - Chernobyl so far so close, by Berlin/The Zuidelijk Toneel

If you have nothing but love - Zvizdal is stunning highlight of Festival Boulevard #tfboulevard

by Wijbrand Schaap
6 August 20165 July 2023
8 min read
Boulevard, FILM, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

I experienced by far one of the most impressive theatre experiences of my life on Friday 5 August 2016. I was a guest at 'Zvizdal - Chernobyl so far, so close' by the Flemish company Berlin, in co-production with Het Zuidelijk Toneel. I saw this 'documentary installation' in an empty factory hall in Den Bosch, where the work is a beautiful resting point in...

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Wunderbaum sends you into the night with a smile #HF16

by Hannah Roelofs
23 June 201620 February 2017
3 min read
Holland Festival, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER

This year's Holland Festival spotlights Rotterdam-based theatre collective Wunderbaum with the revival of 'The Coming of Xia', premieres of 'Privacy' and 'The Future of Sex' and the film 'Stop acting now'. With this film, Wunderbaum concludes their four-year project 'The New Forest', a 'Platform for social change', according to Wunderbaum, "The New Forest depicts transition and casts a...

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Scenic shot from The Encounter by Complicity/Simon McBurney. Photo: Robbie Jack.

Audio is the new video (I): McBurney's theatrical podcast on #HF16

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 May 201614 May 2018
4 min read
ACTUAL, Holland Festival, PODCAST, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER

Simon McBurney is a real theatre nerd. Exceedingly interested in mathematics and physics, he enjoys nothing more in the theatre than building technical illusions. He is also an in-demand actor and director, who, when he has a performance at London's Barbican Centre, gets a visit from Kate Bush, who humbly comes to congratulate him on his work. This year, he is,...

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Stagehands, stay away from that theatre!

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 April 201630 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, THEATER

The longer I walk around in the theatre sector, the more I find out that this so-called crisis in the performing arts is not down to the people who make theatre, nor to the people who come to see it or not. Good will is omnipresent. The only real cause for a breach of trust between actors and audiences that I can point to is the nineteenth-century invention we call 'theatre'. Let me explain.

Theatres were rather intimate soci...

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Agile thinking, drawing philosophical comics and more

by Brechtje Roos
13 March 201614 March 2016
2 min read
ACTUAL

Hear about mensch and other animals. Doubt yourself silly and discover the benefits. Cross borders while putting your philosophy biases through the wringer for a while. Food for thought. To be picked up in The Hague. The eternal doubter will miss out on a discount after 16 March, by the way. In other words, on 14 April from 19h-23.30h, the Night of Philosophy for the...

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Art is not: 'If you're hungry, eat. Measurable result: toilet visit.'

by Brechtje Roos
9 March 201630 March 2022
5 min read
For members only, LITERARY, MUSIC

The stupidest question I come across all too often is THE question: what is the tangible result of your projects for audiences? Or more broadly drawn: what can art & culture measurably add to lives? Add that question together with the current clamour for 'utility in art' and I get accutely red pimples from these non-answerable questions. And I...

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Holland Festival 2016: urgent, challenging and inviting

by Maarten Baanders
10 February 201620 February 2017
8 min read
ACTUAL, DANS, FILM, Holland Festival, MUSIC, OPERA, SPECIALS, THEATER

Never before has the Holland Festival placed itself at the centre of society as it is today. The 2016 programme is steeped in the turbulent times in which we live. The Netherlands holds the presidency of the European Union this spring. Artistic director Ruth Mackenzie has taken this fact unflinchingly to give 'Europe' a wide place in the programming. In presenting...

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Wu Wei: 'Eastern and Western cultures can enrich each other.'

by Ewa Maria Wagner
3 February 201630 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, MUSIC

Chinese musician Wu Wei plays sheng. For him, the four-thousand-year-old instrument encompasses more than just music. 'Sheng means hope and hope is life,' he says during the dress rehearsal on the eve of the Saturday Matinee on 31 January where he performed with the RFO conducted by Edo de Waart. Confucius ' "A human being has two...

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Stefan Hertmans: 'Poetry is my way of digesting the world'

by A Quattro Mani
23 December 20152 August 2020
11 min read
LITERARY, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

The Flemish author Stefan Hertmans (1951) is best known in the Netherlands as a novelist, especially since he won the AKO Literature Prize and the Gouden Boekenuil Publieksprijs with his beautiful autobiographical novel Oorlog en terpentijn (War and turpentine). But besides being a writer of novels, collections of short stories, essays and theatre texts, Hertmans is above all a poet. He wrote the Poetry Gift for the upcoming Poetry Week, which starts at the end of January....

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Firma Mes - BOT (photo by Joris Jan Bos)

BOT by Firma MES: delightful theatre for laughers and thinkers

by Frans van Hilten
14 December 201530 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, THEATER

'KUT TONEEL' has been spray-painted over BOT's poster. Another features penises and a clown's nose. Does Firma MES' new show arouse so much aggression? In any case, the young theatre company from The Hague promises us a play about "unkind people". But that doesn't quite pan out. On the flat floor of Theater aan...

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A tricky marriage between festival and philosophy

by Helen Westerik
18 June 201530 March 2022
3 min read
Holland Festival, SPECIALS

Typical of a not entirely satisfactory evening around Samuel Beckett and French philosophy is the way it was announced. The Holland festival called the evening Beckett and Philosophy: Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze. Organiser Felix and Sofie called it Beckett in the crosshairs of French Philosophy. I wonder how much dialogue between the festival...

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Keeping is no good, throwing away is wrong: comical lesson in self-reflection from Firma MES

by Frans van Hilten
7 November 201430 March 2022
4 min read
For members only, THEATER

Twenty-five per cent of people have a room they can no longer enter because it is too full of stuff. This is oppressive and it is no wonder that some resort to the other extreme: radical consumerism. In TROEP, theatre group Firma MES follows Barbara, a woman who wants to live with no more than eight objects. Just like Buddhist monks. This results in a delightful, witty play that is seriously thought-provoking and shows how renouncing is just as bekl...

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Sallie Harmsen and Joris Smit in Tasso (photo Kurt van der Elst)

Drama about art: to do or not to do? Ivo van Hove and Sallie Harmsen think so.

by Frans van Hilten
28 October 201429 March 2022
9 min read
For members only, THEATER

The National Theatre will premiere Blueprint for an Even Better Life on 8 November 2014, which addresses, among other things, the position of artists in society. A theme that also featured in their recent Tasso, and in Toneelgroep Amsterdam's successful The Fountainhead. Is the subject of art back on the theatre agenda due to the changed cultural politics of the past...

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Art training no return? It's just what your goal is.

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 June 201430 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

In school, we used to have a very good way to check the quality of wine: the yield. Wine with 14% alcohol was better than wine with 12% alcohol. After all, the goal was clear: to get drunk. Wine of 14% was more effective at that. So we preferred to drink wine with a yield of at least 14%.

The Court of Audit has now calculated the return on investment of all kinds of studies. What turns out? An economics degree gives a higher return than an art degree, or a philo...

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Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

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Legendary director Peter Brook (89): Theatre is the field given to me

by Wijbrand Schaap
13 May 20143 July 2022
15 min read
ACTUAL, Holland Festival, SPECIALS, THEATER

The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.

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Boukje Schweigman's wordless philosophy

by Maarten Baanders
5 November 201329 March 2022
7 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Even before she graduated from mime school, Boukje Schweigman swore off language. She worked out a wordless philosophy in her performances. She seeks the mystery of life. However vast and elusive her starting points may be, her performances give the audience the most direct, immediate, skin-tight sensation imaginable in a theatre.

From 12 November, Boukje Schweigman and her group Schweigman& will tour Dutch theatres with their own festival: H...

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Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

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

by Fransien van der Putt
14 June 201330 March 2022
6 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, DANS, Holland Festival, SPECIALS

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 '...

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Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

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