Almost Human

Walking through Amsterdam gives one time to chew on thoughts and experiences. Wednesday evening I was walking back home from the De Balie, a centre for culture and politics, located at Leidseplein. I had attended the presentation of the book The Engineerable News (Het Maakbare Nieuws)’. The anthology comprises twelve essays written by twelve Dutch correspondents in response to the controversial book Almost Human (Het zijn net mensen) by Joris Luyendijk.

Arabic spring

The presentation of ‘Dromen van een Arabische lente’ van Petra Stienen was almost finished. I arrived too late and only could enjoy the applause. Luckily the publisher is rather forward looking. An interviewer and cameraman have registered quite a lot; they kept on interviewing and filming the guests until the end of the party. You can watch the video (4 min 40), published on the site of her publisher Nieuw Amsterdam.

Petra Stienen studied Arabic and worked in the Arabic world for more then ten years. Now she works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. The launch of Stienen’s book attracted quite some supporters, friends and family in art gallery Gemak.

Some crowd surfing resulted in the following short encounters:

- a man was in the midst of organizing an Arabic Filmfestival

- people planning a holiday to Lattikia, a coastplace in the north of Syria, the end (or the beginning) of the Mediterranean sea

- somebody was working on an encyclopedia in Arabic

- another was studying Arabic in Leiden

- a guy proudly showing his new I-Touch and considering the production of an Arabic version

- also somebody was working on a review of the book

It was a interesting and vivid group, gathered at this presentation. I expect to meet the same kind of people while reading Petra’s book.

‘I love to miss Istanbul’

As the Dutch essayist Bas Heijne noticed the Turkish writer Elif Shafak is not interested in boundaries. She detests to be pinned down, Heijne writes in the introduction to the Winternachten Lecture 2008 `The writer as a commuter’. Shafak regards Istanbul as her home base, but cherishes it most when she is not there.

Shafak shared many interesting thoughts with her audience, for instance the nomad versus the migrant and their different relationship with the objects around them. It was a dazzling mix of everything, a real eclectic torrent of styles, ideas and sources which flooded into the New Church in The Hague (Thursday evening, the 17^th of January).

Lost in between

Today I was at the viewing of ‘Liefde bestaat’, a documentary of Farshad Aria about seven artists who made a memorial for asylum-seekers who passed away in an asylum centre in Holland. All seven are buried at a cemetery in the remotely located Sint Annaparochie (Friesland) because this is the cheapest place to bury somebody. Aria follows the artists in the process of making their objects. Meanwhile they elaborate about their motivation to create something for an unknown asylum seeker. Mostly it’s a combination of love, anger and shame.

To compensate for the bad quality of the picture above, here is the url to the movie Aria recently made in 48 hours: Lost in between (6 min. 41)

Dick Scherpenzeelprijs

Again a talking head on a big screen. One of the award winners of the Dick Scherpenzeelprijs 2006, was not in Holland. Joris Luyendijk said thank you for the prize via camera from his location in Suriname. In between he joked a lot with Stephen Sanders, the host of the afternoon. Sanders is a real ‘digibeet’ and was truly amazed of the possibilities of interviewing via Skype. ‘This is great. In future we do not have to invite the award winners to come and collect their prize. Let’s just talk with them by internet.’