my mate ewoudt has taken the following seat in the amsterdam adblog interview series
me news
perspective is relative to viewpoint, discuss…
the establishment is slowly begining to manifest itself in reaction to the barbaric fashion in which the new (and apparently popular) right-wing government in holland is tackling budget cuts in the arts, the protest even seems to be coming from outside the netherlands, shown above is an infographic made by mediamatic (themselves now also under threat) which aims to give some idea of the relativity of the financial footprint of the arts compared to say, state spending, defense, jet fighters or even the national food and drink consumption…
meanwhile an international group of concerned professionals in the arts field have prepared this response to the governments provocatively titled ‘more than quality’ memorandum, read and weep…
…to be clear: Dutch professionals in the field of art and culture are aware of the fact that some cuts in funding are necessary given today’s economic situation and that a recalibration of support may be called for. Furthermore the cuts in arts funding might seem of lesser importance in light of what is happening, with the same brutality, in the fields of healthcare, social reform, education, the media and scientific research, among others. However it is in solidarity with all these realms that we raise our voices in disagreement about the sweeping, overreaching, and devastating broad cuts proposed…
tape art
i attended the premiere of the dutch national ballet holland festival program on friday, and even though i am not a big ballet fan i would really recommend it to anyone, especially if you are also not really familiar with (or a fan of) ballet
amongst the ingredients which made it such a special event for me, are the presence of electronic music by scanner, beautiful costume designs by the wonderful yumiko and some pretty awseome set designs for both the ‘cherkaoui’ production and ‘dawson’ who worked together with young german set designer ‘eno henze’ on a kind of large ‘stage-sized ipad projection’ with real time recording and timelapse photography…
the biggest surprise for me however was the fact the poster we made, shown above (which was created and devised months ago) was such a perfect fit with the look and feel of the actual show, in this case there was very little actual information available at the time (the productions were still being made) so the colour scheme and especially the creative choice of using ribbons as an image was a to some degree a complete (and happy) coincidence…
legible objects
a candid, short dutch interview with ‘irma boom’ (english subtitles) about her work, philosophy and opinions on design in general and books in particular (tip via fontanel)
blah blah blah
i was recently interviewed (on the subject of posters) by the man with the most complete collection of current posters in amsterdam: mister jarr geerligs
a slightly different version of the interview was also posted up on the amsterdam adblog later this afternoon, a transcript of the original text can also be read here in me stuff