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]
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 [...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]
“‘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]
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]
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]
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]
the office of alina lupu · Our New Normal Day 44 [...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]
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. [...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. [...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]