The setting for the New World Summit in Berlin’s Sophiensaele. The flags are all of organizations on the ‘designated terrorist lists’. Showing one of them might be a crime, but as a whole they qualify as an artwork. All photos courtesy of Jonas Staal and his team
I chaired a summit and helped curate a project designed by the Dutch artist Jonas Staal in Berlin on 4 and 5 May, as part of the Berlin Biennial. Continue reading
The National Museum of Riyadh is a very interesting museum designed by the Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama (figs 1 & 2). It was inaugurated in 1999. It is located on the grounds of the Murabba Palace that was built by King Abdul Aziz in 1936/37 north of what was then Riyadh, a small and congested walled city. Many of the buildings of this palatial complex that fell into disuse in the early 1950s have been beautifully restored, and together with the gardens that surround them they form one of the only large public spaces in Riyadh (figs 3 & 4). Many people come here to stroll, picnic and watch other passers-by. Continue reading
This is part of a catalogue I wrote to accompany the new solo show by Ayman Yossri Daydban at Athr Gallery. The book was launched yesterday. Continue reading
This unfinished building overlooking the US Embassy compound was probably used by the Taliban in the current attack.
In 2009, while visiting Kabul, I was astonished by the fortifications that had arisen around a large swathe of land comprising the US Embassy, NATO headquarters, the Presidential Palace, key ministries and other embassies. Given the hilly topography and urban layout of Kabul, this cordoning off of a large chunk of the centre caused considerable traffic and access problems for ordinary Kabulis. Continue reading
Why the art sector cannot justify its continued existence
The idea that societies could be reformed (modernized) through general access to culture, also high culture, was part of the modernist project for Western societies. These ideals were stated most forcefully in the 1920s and 30s by the avant-garde. They became mainstream in the post-war era, when the leaders of the Western world were looking for social-political models that could prevent the recurrence of the devastating world wars while avoiding a communist insurrection of the masses. Continue reading
Installation View of the New Middle East
The wave of popular uprisings throughout the Arab world have revealed a new Middle East – young, dynamic, secular, pragmatic and creative – which few people in the West knew about. It did not however come out of nowhere: as this exhibition shows, contemporary Middle Eastern culture has been developing very quickly over these last few years. Continue reading
The Tropenmuseum was looking for a contemporary art curator, and I applied. They asked me what I would do were I to get my job. As with the vacancy of director for De Balie (see below, in Dutch) I got through to the last round but ultimately didn’t land the job (the main reason being that they thought I didn’t have a sufficiently solid theoretical basis in art history). However since I enjoyed writing these plans, and thinking about how a ‘stuffy’ old ethnographic museum that wants to renew its appeal could go about doing it, I’m sharing them with you here: Continue reading
Ik ben tot de laatste ronde gekomen in de sollicitatieprocedure voor de functie van Directeur van De Balie. Jammer dat ik het niet geworden ben, want dit was ik van plan: Continue reading
The prospect of having performance artists dressed up like Disney’s Snow White parading with toy guns in the city hall caused quite a stir in The Hague over the last weeks. It is not that the Dutch are easily scandalized – they are rather hardened in matters of artistic provocation – but the consistency in the branding of a city such as the The Hague is becoming a more important principle than artistic freedom. The Hague likes to present itself as the international capital of peace and justice, and to start with, the officials in charge of city marketing didn’t like the theme chosen by Todaysart festival 2009, “The Hague City of Conflict”. Continue reading