Metaphors that Move the Body
01/02/08 Jan Verwoert
According to some, dance is the space in which social possiblities are tried out. Based on the art of Katarzyna Kobro, Paulina Olowska, Silke Otto-Knapp and others, Jan Verwoert demonstrates how this social choreography should not be taken too literally.
Waiting for a Shadow
The City as Tableau Vivant
01/02/08 Nele Wynants
If theatre-makers Lotte van den Berg and Benjamin Verdonck and visual artist Pauline Oltheten have something in common, it is their partiality to street choreography. In the spirit of the Situationists, they discover the poetry of everyday life, which they record and circumspectly imitate or incorporate in a direction of their own. Unlike that of their famous predecessors, this work does not seem inclined to social criticism. Their interest is more general in nature, a call to attention.
01/12/07 Nancy Adajania
Unlike the unassuming elder generations, many young Indian artists simply claim their place on the international art front, whether the West is ready for them or not. Their art is ‘transnational’ and ‘multimedial’ and is a welcome contribution to the many new practices being developed between established cultures and disciplines throughout the world.
01/08/07 Lotte Haagsma
There is nothing new about art going into the neighbourhood. In the 1990s, especially, it was common for artists to seek contact with the residents of the neighbourhoods in which they lived, in an effort to make a form of art that had direct sociocultural implications. This tendency seemed to be somewhat on the decline, but is now undergoing a striking revival in response to political influences.
30/07/07 Ilse van Rijn
A series of workshops at the periphery of the art world: the Dutch Art Institute graduate school in Enschede is nothing if not ambitious. Together with local art institutes and universities in other countries, students are investigating the possibilities of cultural exchange with six blank spots in the art world atlas.
Crypto Logo Jihad
Black Metal and the Aesthetics of Evil
01/07/07 Daniël van der Velden
Death metal shrouds itself in the darkest of blacks. Deeply unintelligible guttural sounds, illegible logos – it is as though the bands are doing everything they can not to be understood. Yet death metal’s flirtation with absolute darkness in no way hampers its increasing acceptance in the realm of visibility, the visual arts. At this rate, the head bangers can look forward to a perfectly legible future in spotless white cubes.
Passionate Crises
Documenta 12 Manual
01/07/07 Domeniek Ruyters
Ai Wei Wei is bringing 1001 Chinese to Kassel, Artur Zmijewski is asking a deaf couple to sing Bach, the Brazilian Ricardo Basbaum has sent a serving tray around the world, and the molecular cook Ferran Adrià will be treating the public to space age delicacies. More than that, artistic director Roger M. Buergel and curator Ruth Noack will not reveal about the participants in the forthcoming Documenta. To their eyes the exhibition is no mere list of hits, but a medium for ideas.
Lonely at the Top
New Plans for the Stedelijk Museum
20/02/07 Jorinde Seijdel
A museum potentially has the possibility and the means to be a place of critical comparison and discourse, but apparently not in the Netherlands, where museums are in the thrall of an all-consuming market mentality. Take the recent policy statement of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. Instead of stepping back from gratuitous conformity to market forces, the museum is following with narry a whisper, with the top of the international museum hierarchy as their ultimate objective. Fundamental changes in society are meanwhile ignored.
The shining moon, the dead oak tree,
nights like this appeal to me.
21/12/06 Ben Schot
The comeback is characterized by a temporary disappearance, after which the return can be celebrated with all due. It is a variation on the resurrection, on rising from the dead, which has a long history and has been translated into countless myths, fairy tales, rituals and artefacts. From Lazarus to Iggy Pop, from Elvis to Martina Hingis, many are acquainted with it. There really is life after death, certainly in art.
Exposed and Worse
22/10/06 Domeniek Ruyters
What is ‘bare life’ and why is it such a popular subject in art? A meander along some examples produces a broad range of meanings, from a quest to find the essence of existence and social criticism, to a socio-psychological picture of fear.