– an inventory I entered 2021 with a bit more thrill than expected. My partner traveled across the border for work for the first time in months. Since procedures changed and a lockdown was imposed, even more strict than the one we had in March in the Netherlands, he [...more]
Day 1 Michel Foucault was born on October 15th, 1926 in Poitiers, France. On the same day, in 2020, the internet was celebrating his legacy by transforming him for the umpteenth time into a meme and dispersing bite-sized nuggets of his knowledge across the digital realm. [...more]
<span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span> “‘Cause everybody hates a tourist.” Pulp, Common People, 1995, Album: Different Class / Deluxe Edition Sidenote: This piece was written as a direct address to an article authored by Teresa Machan in The Guardian´s travel section. [...more]
I call this a performative intervention, but you can be free to disagree. We can just then together call it an attempt to remember. Or an intimate piece. A way to deal with the mental and bodily exhaustion of working as an artist within a capitalist economic system. Or [...more]
Trauma is defined as “a deeply distressing or disturbing experience”. There is acute trauma – caused by a single incident. On May 14th, in Hoorn, potato grower Astrid Francis pulled her truck next to the parking lot of supermarket [...more]
The next few text and sound pieces posted on TAAK´s website, of which this is one, will be subsidised by Netherlands based taxpayer money. Full disclaimer: as an artist I am also a taxpayer. Though the routes that money [...more]
Part Two Fitness Man worries that his favorite log of wood for doing exercises will end up on a barbecue. * Zebra crossing These are the clearest stripes by far. * [...more]
I spent the whole day yesterday crying this deep cry that I’ve been holding inside of me for the past two months. I felt like an enormous child. I couldn’t help myself. This sort of bodily cleansing and mental stop felt like: equal parts sadness, equal parts lack [...more]
Paulien Oltheten Paulien Oltheten is a visual artist who works with photos, performances, and videos to explore human behavior in public spaces. She studied at AKV|St.Joost and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and was a resident artist at ISCP, New York in 2013. In 2017 she worked at Cité des [...more]
TAAK is inviting artists to respond to a changing society during the COVID-19 pandemic. We share their reflections on our website as part of the programme In Quarantine. In 2020, our perspectives on the public domain have suddenly shifted. A pandemic spreads widely from person to person, [...more]
the office of alina lupu · Our New Normal Day 44 [...more]
Part One Neighbors A charming balcony scene of two neighbors who first meet because of the lockdown. * Baptist on Dam Square A clever way of handing out flyers while keeping a 1.5 meters distance. * Regulars Regulars staying loyal to their favorite pub in times of [...more]
Reference communist joke for laughs: “There´s a long line. One guy approaches the first person in line, an elderly lady, and asks: – Excuse me, what is being sold today? – I have no clue. I started feeling sick half an hour ago and leaned onto a wall. [...more]
I go out for a walk in the neighborhood, navigate the pavement next to polite strangers, lay down in a swing in an empty playground, take out my phone and film my feet reaching for the sky. I post the clip online and get an immediate reaction: [...more]
It´s 2:00PM and I’ve been awake since 8:00AM. I am caught up in an avalanche of page refreshes – mostly on news outlets, coronavirus map counters and Netflix´s main page, hoping yet another variation on a popular TV show is getting a chance to live out a short life [...more]
Alina Lupu Alina Lupu is a Romanian born and bred, Dutch-based artist and writer. She has a background in psychology, photography and an incomplete education in fine arts. In 2019 she released a publication entitled “This is a Work of Fiction”. The novella goes through real and imagined situations touching [...more]