Listening to the radio is not just about the music. JazzFM, SkyRadio, and many other radio stations broadcast randomly chosen selections from a selection of music. Perhaps the initial selection (of what should be in the database) was made by humans—or maybe they used an algorithm such as iTunes’ Genius. …With computerised radio stations the…

How does one photograph “what it means to be absent”? These pictures are meant to help mourn the recent past we just left behind. We recently moved from this place (Bestuursgebouw) to inner city Utrecht.

Banksy makes public art. (If you don’t know his works, please Google.) It is public; the works are out there, on the streets, for all to see. They are accessible to all, and make ample use of circumstances available on the streets (empty walls, holes, sidewalks). The pictures are always carefully, and beautifully rendered and…

One problem with the “roadside monuments” in Jonas Staal’s “Geert Wilders Werken” is that initially, i.e. when their effect was still of maximum height, they did not make themselves known as art. As a consequence, they did not induce the passers-by to take up an artistic attitude, but lured them into believing the “roadside monument”…

“Is dit Coetzee? Dat is een makkelijke. Hoe vinden we een auteur? Door naar Zuid-Afrika af te reizen? Dat denk ik niet. We vinden hem door die boeken op de juiste manier te lezen. Wat “juist” is? Daarover zal ik het hier hebben. Is “dispassionate” een goede term om zijn manier van schrijven te duiden?…

Wiener Aktionism, Biology and Ethics Biology prescribes that humans strive for survival. It simply makes no sense for a person sustaining a life of his own, to do things which will threaten that project—ultimately it is the support of all his other projects, and dying marks the end of all of them. Ethics presupposes biology,…

Thoughts I formulated about living in-between persons, put into a film. Very consistently. Clooney is great; one, also, gets the impression the film is about him. (IMDB)

A dear friend, an artist herself, made me realise that television is far more extreme than art is, with regard to crossing moral limitations. She pointed me to the case of Jade Goody who, terminally ill, sold her dying to network stations and journals, spending the money earned on her two surviving sons. I have…

Kristian von Hornsleth, Danish artist, devised The Hornsleth Village Project Uganda: “The Hornsleth Village Project Uganda saw every individual in a village change their name to Hornsleth, in a simple exchange for a pig or a goat, and outrage ensued.” …donating sheep to poor Africans on condition that they assume your name… I was told…

Researching for my paper on Immoral Art, I came across “works” from the Wiener Aktionists. On a site with truly horrible short films from the 1960s there is a film showing Otmar Bauer vomiting, eating his own vomit, and so on. Next, there are several films showing Otto Muehl in horrible, and dirty scenes; there…