Sir Paul McCartney was erg trots op het feit dat een liedje van de Beatles de ruimte in geseind wordt, een initiatief van NASA. Het gaat om “Across the Universe”, 40 jaar geleden uitgebracht, en NASA is vijfig vandaag, 4 februari. Het is natuurlijk ook gewoon zomaar een geintje van de techneuten, daar kun je…

I have been getting so many questions about things I have said inTrouw, that it seems appropriate to me to explain my point of view in my own words. For that I have to rely on what others have reported to me about the article in Trouw in which I have been quoted, because I…

A Kind of Depiction? Would one recognise exactly what is depicted by some piece of music? Try this experiment: Perform a piece of music notable for its pictorial nature, hand out a piece of paper to everyone in the audience, and have them sketch the scene depicted. A translation Perhaps it is a viable thought…

In “Jongleren met de werkelijkheid” stelt Hans den Hartog Jager een interessant fenomeen aan de orde. Hij noemt het een taboe, en misschien is het dat ook wel. Het gaat erom dat veel schilders naar foto’s werken, maar dat ze hun werken slechts zelden vergezellen van de foto’s waarnaar ze gemaakt zijn. Het doet mij…

In class, we discussed Gadamer’s view that a work of art is also symbolic: it is not finished until its meaning has come about. This meaning though, he argued, is in the work itself. It is also “once only”: it belongs to the one work one is confronted with. This also explains Gadamer’s view that…

Their Peculiar Contribution What if we’d introduce a distinction between the epistemology of the narrative and the sincerity of testimonials of experiential memories that anchor the narrative—liberating the moral witness from having to answer epistemological challenges. the truth of a witnesses testimony is allowed to be idiosyncratic, because what it arguably does is contribute an…

1. Indeed. He knows his musicians best, and has written his piece with their powers in mind. In this “proper” (not: original) performance he can “correct” the orchestra, and, perhaps apply newly acquired insights to his score. As long as such proper performance is a viable possibility the claim in the title is of aesthetic…

Van Luchino Visconti is bekend dat hij zijn acteurs in kostuums uit de tijd liet spelen en rondlopen om hun bewegingen authentiek te maken (men denke hierbij ook aan Walter Benjamins opvatting over hoe de camera doordringt in haar object). Men kan zich voorstellen dat de huidige pogingen om Ciné Città te behouden hun belang…

Computer games allow their audiences to interfere in the world that they “represent”. This is sometimes said to ask for a qualification of the account of art in terms of the artistic attitude that it, art, requires of its ever audience, which account is proffered by myself in different places. In my view, the artistic…

A natural sense of melancholia overcomes one easily when watching historical documentary footage. The people one watches are all but dead and gone. Their lives, however miserable or joyful, held some kind of inner coherence, much like one’s own live does—which too will become a thing of the past in the not so far future….