This site became big thanks to Twitter and Facebook. We were also created at roughly the same time. In 2009, Twitter was just getting off the ground, and the Netherlands still thought Hyves was going to be the be-all and end-all, while Belgium was already on Facebook. Anyway, tl;dr: social media was still fun. Only in the years that followed did...
It is a great thing that there are comedians who keep a finger on the pulse of society. Hans Teeuwen, for instance, has once again made himself angry. He has joined the small chorus of (mostly) men who see the end of the world coming because of a rebuttal. That is the rebuttal that now comes via social media
In 2014, The Cutter published a review of De Wereld Draait Door. What not many people will know is that prior to that moment, there was a weeks-long battle behind the scenes over this publication. De Wereld Draait Door tried with all its might to stop the episode by not giving permission to quote the footage. Initially,...
England is closed. The culture minister happily reports that artists can tour Europe again, as long as they do not go outside Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. We've always taken an ambitious approach in negotiations on touring artists, including in my meeting with @AbidRaja last month. Delighted that our new trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein will allow musicians, performers...
Rather unexpectedly, it was announced this week that cultural and entertainment venues will be test sites for reopening society next month. It came rather out of the blue, as everyone was still working on petitions and other pleas to reopen cultural buildings. After all, they have their corona protocols in place there better than the Albert Heijn on my corner....
Stage poetry is usually held in lower esteem than written poetry. While stage poets can touch so powerfully. Only during the Night of Poetry, every year in Utrecht, do we honour the performers among the poets. Then it's back to the 'jokers' who can rhyme, as was recently written about Ingmar Heytze in a podcast announcement. Spoken Word, the...
A good friend calls me, sounding like he wants to share and check something important. He was talking to his sister this week about the Nieuwsuur headline: Black Lives Matter: Was it a turning point or a hype? His sister stumbles over the title and notices that important parties are left out of this item and that stings. On the...
That Shakespeare is still relevant after four centuries doesn't even require putting him in modern clothes, but of course it helps. The worldwide success of Ivo van Hove and his 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam' is therefore partly due to his Shakespeare adaptations 'Kings of War' and 'Roman Tragedies'. Marathons, hours of theatre with food in between. Valentine's Day 2021...
Four years ago at the Winternachten Festival in The Hague, we spoke about it with Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswani, who was disarmingly upbeat despite the fact that he can barely publish in his own country. On lack of freedom of expression and fiction in times of fake, this year's theme, Al Aswani could have a word. 'Freedom of expression is even worse now than under dictator Mubarak.'
Things can change. In 1979, Iran changed from a Western-oriented secular state to a spiritual dictatorship, where Islamic leaders call the shots. Women must henceforth go through life veiled and music is banned as extremely sinful. Four decades later, three women founded the Iranian Female Composers Association. In America, though. 'Music is like a drug, those who feel...
I have long put myself on the 'listen first, talk later' mode when it came to how we all deal with the festering sore of racism in the Netherlands. There's so much we don't know about each other, and there's especially so much I can't know about my fellow Black people, because for a long time I felt too little...
'Yes, of course it was something we already saw coming in every way. That made me mentally prepared. But then when you actually hear it... It's just SO sour. It's every time - I don't blame anyone, to be clear - but every time you get bad news, you try...
I had the chance to attend the 500th anniversary - it took place at the beautiful Teatro La Fenice - of the first Jewish ghetto during my visit to Venice in 2016. One of the speakers was historian Simon Schama. During his lecture, I was given a brief history of Jewish suffering in Italy. According to...
Last December, we had no internet and no TV/netflix for a week. The Customer Disconnection Department of KPN, formerly XS4All, had not understood that a broken cable in our neighbourhood could have had anything to do with it. One of the funny effects of these fibre-less days was that I finished reading four books. Something I normally do only on...
The culture sector will have to be patient for a while yet. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven had no intention of changing any of her policies on Monday 18 November, during the discussion of the culture budget in the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Culture. Despite a fairly widely supported desire, especially from the opposition, to do something about the 8.6 million cut in the...
This weekend, there was some fuss on Twitter. Something about a Nazi comparison that didn't quite work out. Now there is quite often a fuss on Twitter because of a Nazi comparison that doesn't quite work out, but this time it concerned one of our cultural figureheads. Kees Vlaardingerbroek, artistic director of the NTR Saturday matinee and former head of programming at the Rotterdam...
Police sirens sound less frequently in Groningen than in a city like Amsterdam. When they sounded last Wednesday night, it was because residents of the premises behind the local art academy, Minerva, raised the alarm. Standing on the roof was not an owl, but an almost naked man shouting that he was going to rob the Coop. Mads Wittermans, the actor in question, had forgotten the...
There I stood. Next to THE RED LOPER. In THE PRESS box. Everything you must have done once in your life and this was MY MOMENT. THE BOOKBALL at THE CITY BURY which was renamed ITA because of the boss' career. To my left TEAM VOLKSKRANT, to my right a cute KRULLENBOL from the LINDA and in between them a journalist....
'Please stop the show!", shouted an 83-year-old former reviewer from the back row. Theatre Frascati fell silent for a moment. There had never really been such an interruption at the Holland Festival's traditionally festive press conference. And that while Faustin Linyekula had just got into his stride, telling about the projects he is carrying out with his Studio Kanako in Kisangani. They provided...
It all started with a tweet. Leoni Jansen, singer, got into her car after a performance in Winsum, and looked around for a moment. She saw that the starry sky, far from the big lights in the Randstad, was beautiful. 'Just started the journey back from Winsum, fog low to the ground, clear sky. On the right, I think Castor and...
'When I look in the auditorium at a classical concert now, I do think: it's full now, but in 20 years eighty per cent will be dead. So the bottom has to be fed, and TivoliVredenburg does that well. They do it, for example, with Out of the Blue, which is a programme where you get great food and by a special host
Peter Vossen says he experiences live concerts on average twice a week. Not just in TivoliVredenburg, although he visited there almost 40 times last year. 'I also see a lot of free concerts on the streets and in cafés, of course.' Jazz is his great love, but he also attends soul, funk, Latin or pop concerts. Regularly, he can be found
It took about a day for the PVV Enschede branch to discover the message. Quite fast for a club that is usually not very interested in art. Anyway, this one detail at the presentation of the regional culture index was of course grist to the mill of the far-right local party: Region Enschede has the biggest mismatch between amount of subsidy and...
A little pity was in order during the debate on the culture budget in the Lower House. Thierry Aartsen, the VVD's brand-new culture spokesperson, still hadn't done his homework and therefore got terrible on his mitre from fellow culture spokesmen in the Lower House. And then also from the minister. Was he allowed to speak around 11...
The province of Utrecht has launched the community platform 'Werkplaats Waterlinies'. This initiative of the Pact of Ruigenhoek is open to anyone working on the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, Stelling van Amsterdam and other waterlinies. It is a place where you can exchange inspiration, knowledge and ideas, as well as present projects, collaborate and experiment. In short, a place where new connections arise and collectively...
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