Category: English
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The strategy of the dual perspective
Lecture at the opening of the exhibition Compromiso Político, at BAK, Utrecht, 10 February. I am honoured to speak at the opening of the exhibition Compromiso Político. Of interest perhaps, is that Matthijs de Bruijne served as paranymph at the defense of my PhD one month ago, sort of a…
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The sharpening of contradictions
Presentation at De Balie, Freedom of Speech and Islam, February 25 2015. (Photo: Assassination of Sadat by Islamic Jihad, 1981) If we look at the gruesome assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo primarily as an attack on freedom of speech, the natural response is an all-out defence of freedom…
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Why the EU is not a superstate
Introduction at Battle of Ideas, at De Buren, Brussels, 12 november 2014. Two important misconceptions plague the discussion on the European Union. The claim of its propononents that they are the party of cosmopolitanism and that their opponents are nationalists. And the claim of its critics that the EU is…
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Lost in Translation: On the Intelligibility of Art Discourse
Published on Open!, July 2014 Animosity and mutual miscomprehension have come to characterise the relationship between journalists and the modern art world in the Netherlands. At the core of this discord is a recurring discussion on the intelligibility of art discourse. The more recent point of departure was a much-maligned…
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From social engineering to spatial engineering
As must be clear to anyone crossing the IJ, if only with the gaze of the eye, the North of Amsterdam is an area undergoing rapid transformation. It was a longtime container of everything unwanted in Amsterdam, starting with the early gallows, to trailer camps, polluting industry and the surplus…
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Gentrification in Amsterdam
Here my response on questions from an Italian journalist on gentrification in Amsterdam. 1) Amsterdam is currently one of the capitals in Europe with the largest social housing stock. How is gentrification reshaping its human geography? Reducing the low-incomes in some areas, with the purpose of “opening ghettos” and increasing…
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The artist as a ‘baron in the trees’
Speech given at the opening of Casco, 1 May 2014. These last years, the cutbacks in the cultural sector have led to a reconsideration of the place of art in Dutch society. There are those who have advocated a return to art’s traditional bulwark: the classical notion of autonomy. The…
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Revisiting ‘Policing the Crisis’
On the 17th of August 1972, a British newspaper reported on a violent robbery as ‘a mugging gone wrong’. The article was accompanied by the following headline: ‘As crimes of violence escalate, a word common in the United States enters the British headlines: mugging. To our police, it’s a frightening…
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Political populism: speaking to the imagination
On August 28 2010, a startling spectacle took place in Washington, DC. The day is engrained in the collective memory of Americans as that of Martin Luther King. On 28 August 1963, he gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech here. The address, delivered on the steps of the…
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Open Source Urbanism
In recent years, creative city policy has increasingly come under attack. The field of creativity policy has brought into existence it’s own academic subdiscipline of creativity studies. At the same time, an entire substratum of creativity research seems to have emerged that is exclusively dedicated to critiquing creative industries. Creativity…
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