"Topsy Turvy": The End of Carnival in the Netherlands

Ugo Rondinone, If There Were Anything But Desert. Sunday, 2000, fibreglass sculpture, 2,20m x1m. Photograph: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk. Courtesy the artist and Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels

Op de website Afterall.org publiceerde Nick Aikens een kritiek over 'Topsy Turvy', de openingstentoonstelling van De Appel arts centre. Het artikel is tevens een overzicht van de huidige bezuinigingen op de kunsten in Nederland. Aikens stelt dat de culturele voorhoede de hand in eigen boezem moet steken: 'For over a decade the leftist art world was allowed, even encouraged, to stand at a safe distance, firing critical blanks at the system that funded them. Now, the weakest parts of their defence (-) simply re-articulates the ‘us versus them’ rhetoric deployed by populists'. De Appel tentoonstelling vindt hij in dit opzicht een gemiste kans, maar in de begeleidende uitgave Shadowfiles krijgt, volgens Aikens, de combinatie van kunst, carnaval en politieke actie wel degelijk vorm.

Door: Nick Aikens

The Dutch cultural landscape – its new funding structures, public perception and own vision of its future – looks precarious. The cuts to the arts in the Netherlands have been discussed at length in the Lowlands and elsewhere, but it is worth briefly sketching the scene: In May the Council for Culture announced their recommendations to the government for the next four years of funding, following last year’s decision to cut state support for the arts by 25% after a decade of healthy – some would say bloated – public funding. The outcome is now clear: a spate of arts organisations will close (SKOR, Netherlands Media Art Institute and SMART Project Space being the most high profile examples in the field of visual art) whereas others will see drastic decreases in funding (BAK in Utrecht, for example, has been re-categorised as a ‘small’ organisation and will receive 60% less funding). The future of the postgraduate art schools Rijksakademie and Ateliers remains uncertain; their survival depending on them coming together under a vastly different guise.

Lees verder op http://afterall.org/online/a-note-from-the-nether-nds-topsy-turvy-at-the-new-buidling-of-de-appel-arts-centre