N° 1 2007
February/March
He Hit Me and It Felt like a Kiss
Kenneth Anger and Pop Music
20/02/07 Heinrich Deisl
For young video artists such as Doug Aitken, he can do no wrong. Kenneth Anger, American filmmaker, with Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren one of the three greats of American independent cinema, has been active for almost 60 years. He made films with leather queens before anyone knew what a leather queen was. Anger is considered the ultimate father of the video clip because he was the first to use pop music as a filmsoundtrack. Heinrich Deisl spoke with the 80-year-old filmdirector about his interest in music, the occult and contemporary political reality. A musical portrait on this great magician of light.
The traditional function of the book is disappearing. Now that many more books are being bought than are being read, it is time to recognize that there is more to books than the transfer of knowledge and insight. What then are the new meanings of books?
It's better to burn out than fade away. This adage of the bohemian artist has become the first commandment for freelancers everywhere in today's economy. Addicted to deadlines, with burnout lurking around the corner, people are working themselves to the bone. Jan Verwoert on the pleasures of exhaustion in the world of art.
The concept of the creative city, which has become something of a directive for ambitious city councils throughout the Netherlands, does not necessarily lead to a prosperous future for art and culture. The writers’ team, BAVO, describes the city politics of Rotterdam as a form of self-colonization being forced on all its inhabitants. They sketch an image of a city whose unstoppable creative appetite is alienating it from itself.
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.
Opening
