The Creeps From the Middle East revisited

These Creeps from the Middle East keep on haunting our mind, here at Radio Neverno. All the other editors have left the building, can´t stand it anymore. 

Das Blut der Anderen, the latest episode now online, is not entertaining everywhere though, The Creeps team still seems to be looking for the right balance between fast and slow paced scenes. The slow scenes with the father, still too slow and slightly boring again though, combined with the tenderness and estrangement at the same time, contrasting with the scenes at the end of this episode, at The Unsafe House, made me think again. 

These scenes at the end of this episode, starring Tarik Sadouma, Sina Khani and some pole dancers and running around nuts, where Sadouma exclaims his analysis of the current world, are so out-of-this-world and that all in black and white, with the shouting crazies at the end of the scene, anticlimaxing in a pole scene of mr. Sina Khani himself are maybe the best scenes I have seen till now in this ongoing sequence, and I have seen all of them.

 

The absolutely best scenes of Das Blut der Anderen are at the end, with an amazing Tarik Sadouma.

 I know The Creeps from the Middle East demands a strong ass, I mean, you have to keep on sitting the whole episode to finally arrive at the climactic scenes in The Unsafe House. As we wrote in a former blog post, The Creeps should work more with actor Tarik Sadouma and they finally seem to have seen the light. He is the strong character needed at the side of Sina Khani, finally we have a duo, nicely to watch.

Sadouma in The Creeps is the uncle you don´t want to have, because he ends up reciting poetry while lurking at the water pipe and nervously touching his nose all the time, a bit like that wannabe philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and ending laughing like a crazy. Sadouma looks like the neighbour while you work on that car in your garage and you hear those strange sounds, cries, shouts and people with extreme laughs ending up in a smoker´s cough and you doubt whether you will pass by but are afraid it might end up badly, for you.

The camera (by Steven Bos), is handheld zooming in and out, while the lighting shimmers all around, black and white is back again in the HD era, Sadouma runs around like a combination of the Siberian Snowman and a preacher in  a souk somewhere in the dark alleys of Cairo, young women, some beautiful, some weird looking like stepping out of a horror movie, these last scenes of The Creeps harbour so much richness, in sound and image, you have to see it, time after time, again and again. 

This week I was thinking on hilariousness, I even know an artist with the first name Hilarius, protesting each Saturday in the center of Amsterdam against the continuous bombing of Gaza, hilariousness is what this scene is breathing and it saves another slow Creeps from The Middle East at the end, again.

The choice of music during the scene strengthens the visual parts in a way I seldom see anymore, me, as a musician, I am very sensitive to this. There are so many movies where they don´t understand, profoundly, the relation between sound and image, to my opinion, and this scene of The Creeps is an exception to the never ending slur of the bad usage of music in film.

For the first time I am looking forward to the next episode of the Creeps from The Middle East. I hope Sina Khani and his team are working partners again and don´t go to court. This episode convinced me, a bit, of the enormous potential lying beneath the surface of this creepy world, not always pleasing. The slow and fast scenes need some more finetuning though, but I have the feeling The Creeps might end up with a working combination. 

The Creeps are dead?

(Photo:) On Instagram, Sina Khani claims to have been beaten up by his...new girlfriend.

You always have to take care if you are the carrier of bad news, people may be seduced to haunt you. But, in this case I have an urgent need to ask the question in public: Are the Creeps, the notorious series starring Sina Khani,  dead?

I know it has been asked many times before to boost careers that were already on their way downwards, but The Creeps didn´t even seem to have reached their summum.

What happened? Main character Sina Khani, also one of the founders and directors of the project posted last week on a frequented social medium his apologies to not have posted a new episode yet...since a year.

Now, insiders whisper the Creeps team broke up! Khani got into a serious fight with his fellow Creeps creators and, so he told "they broke up". Why? It´s still unknown to outsiders - insiders know better.

I know Khani a little bit longer. You never know whether it´s a new ´episode´ in his theatrical way of being or not, but he looked rather serious, when I asked it him face to face. "It´s not going to be mended", were the last words he uttered on it. The Creeps are dead?

Now, surprisingly, yesterday he posted a new ´episode´, episode 5, Das Blut der Anderen, of  The Creeps from the Middle East, which is not new at all, for insiders, but looks exactly like the one they showed months ago in The Unsafe House in Amsterdam. Maybe there is some more post-production work attached to it, but that seems to be marginal. The story that Khani has found his ´real dad´, played by Philip van den Hurk, seems exactly the same. Is it a cover-up for potential new fans, that suggests there is still life in the Creeps project?

To dig a little deeper: The last year Khani seemed to be submerged in the Unsafe House project, initiated by Tarik Sadouma, he even lives in their dwellings and seems to have left Berlin. Did he leave The Creeps behind?

Sadouma, also a character in episode 5, intends himself to boost his ´career´ in several ways. This seems necessary because, as he claims himself, he has been cancelled by Dutch and other culture czars. To achieve this aim Sadouma claims to be running for the USA Venice Biennial pavillion, via his shady contacts with self-proclaimed tech guru Curtis Yarvin, who now even convinces Sadouma, he makes a serious chance to be the USA candidate for the Biennale di Venezia. 

Now Sadouma is a great A.I. trailer producer - "I like this satirical way of using it", a friend of mine said. Sadouma is even a reasonable painter, but for the Biennale you need to produce something bigger. Trailers are not enough, and I didn´t see Sadouma produce any big installation yet, or it must be his ´relational artwork´, The Unsafe House itself. Maybe build it in the pavillion in Venice in 2026? Sadouma works like hell on a proposal that has to be brought by Yarvin to a secretary of culture in the ...Trump government. Bypass the liberal wokies of the art domain!

In this context, Sina Khani seems to have left his Creeps project behind , got into the Unsafe House cult, where he probably believes to boost his career in a better way. So, he seems to have hitchhiked into the Unsafe House, where Sadouma even confesses himself that ´he is burning money´, which means they don´t make a dime, except by selling their real estate to some big investment company - a classical capitalist story. Even Art Space 411, the only art venue to show their work in Berlin and currently in Haarlem (NL), has a hard time selling their work, where Sadouma thinks he can multiply his prices now ´Venice´ seems to be that close.

Scratches on the cheek - his girlfriend must be a cat...

But let´s stick to the main character of this post, mr. Sina Khani himself. Last week I was in the neighbourhood to talk to him face to face - yes, in the Unsafe House - but he was not to be seen anywhere around. Even the Unsafe House crew didn´t know where he hung out, I got the excuse: "He is an artist, they sometimes disappear for a few days, you know how it is".

Ok, maybe I was one of the lucky few who saw the PREVIEW of Episode 5, but that was almost a year ago. To present Episode 5 now as a completely new episode is a farce, but what do you expect of mr. Khani?

Steven Bos and Susan Lanting, the co-directors of the ´permanent series of Sina Khani, till he dies´,  have totally disappeared from the scene, and story goes they have been in a fight with Khani on legal issues considering who owns the rights of the Creeps from the Middle East.

I hope these are not the first steps into the abyss of mr. Sina Khani, who seemed to be so promising one day...

POST SCRIPT

One of the directors reacted immediately and wrote: " Look from minute 43.00!" to convince us of a coming NEW episode, suggesting The Creeps are not dead at all. We only see a short (new) scene of a squirrel dying, symbolic for the Creeps project and a coming s. attempt of one of the characters? WE are NOT convinced the story above ain´t right!

To be continued...

Neoschlager · I am gonna need a Detective Show

Unsafe interview with musical genius Mohsen Namjoo

Photo: Sina Khani & Mohsen Namjoo (Photo: Steven Bos)

We are very happy to be able to present the recording of the interview of Sina Khani (Creeps from the Middle East), Tarik Sadouma (The Rise of the Unsafe House), and Ruth Spetter (idem) conducted with Mohsen Namjoo after his concert in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Mohsen Namjoo is an Iranian musician and poet currently living in New York. In 2025 he is touring the world with his Minooor Show, a multimedia solo show, singing, reciting, playing the setar, and showing images. Minooor refers to the minor scale, according to some the only allowed musical scale in current Iran.

Mohsen Namjoo talks about his show, the use of sound and music, while in the background a selection of images are shown of the Green Movement, an oppositional political movement in Iran emerging in 2009.

This movement came to be after an apparently fraudulent presidential election in which the regime’s candidate, Ahmadinejad, became the winner, which was disputed by the opposition movement. The government arrested around 4,000 people and 72 people were killed during the protests.

Namjoo had already had a turbulent life and career, so it seems. After visiting the Tehran University of Art, he published his Toranj Album, which became a great success among the Iranian people but angered the government. In court he was sentenced to 5 years, in absentia, as he lived in Vienna at the time, for recording music that “dishonours passages from the Quran.”

The album featured nine traditional folk songs including poems of Rumi, Hafez, Baba Taher, and Attar, famous Persian poets of the past. It was mostly produced as underground music.

The story is, Namjoo was sentenced because of making animal sounds while singing the 91st Sura of the Quran. Because of this sentence, Namjoo will not return to his native country until the Islamist regime is sacked.

The Unsafe Election Night

WHERE: The Rise of the Unsafe House: The American Election WATCH PARTY, Amsterdam (NL)

DATE: 5 & 6 November, 2024.

LOVE: YES

The Unsafe Election Night

OMG, I think I was at the coolest place in Amsterdam, even if just for a few intense hours!

To be honest, I haven’t had this feeling in a long time.

Tuesday Night – Wednesday Morning, November 5th & 6th: Somewhere in a shady neighborhood near the famous Bajes—formerly an Amsterdam prison, where I gave a concert when I was 18, with the now-infamous Harm on piano.

Ok, forget the prison and harm—they’re history. The prison closed years ago, Harm moved to the countryside, and the place is now a kind of concentration camp for the underperforming creative class of Amsterdam, as I mentioned before.

But the Wenckebachweg? Sorry, I have to drop a hint for the culture police dogs, so they can catch a whiff of where this real creative scent is coming from. The Wenckebachlaan was the place to be that night. It’s a long street, though, and you’d need a strong nose to pick up the “art drops” sprinkled in the fresh autumn air of Amsterdam.

Enough rambling! I wanted to go incognito. I had a bit of an eye ache, so I wore these nighttime sunglasses to protect me from the ultra-bright film studio lights. But I took them off again because Mr. Sina Khani, the “Main Creep from the Middle East,” walked up and offered me a beer.

There was a strange mix of people in this “Unsafe House.” Mr. Khani seemed to be part of the place’s interior design—he could easily have posed for one of the creepy paintings by Mr. Tarik Sadouma himself, because we were in the domain of the informal “Night Mayor” (or should I say Nightmare) of Amsterdam.

The cast was impressive. As I’m always on the lookout for talent, I was thrilled by this concentration of inventiveness.

Steven Bos, also part of “The Creeps,” was hosting the event, sitting in a comfortable armchair from 1880, next to the couch where Mr. Sadouma reigned as the current “King of Art” in Amsterdam (sorry, Papa Adama, times are changing).

Steven Bos also invited Edo Blaauw to join on the couch, and, man, he became my favorite comedian of the night—even when he was rooting for Kamala Harris as his favorite presidential candidate.

That’s why we were there, in the end—the American Election Night had come to Amsterdam, to the Unsafe House. Edo Blaauw tried to poll the room to see how many were pro-Kamala, but not many wanted to back her, even before her defeat—maybe a sign of things to come.

Earlier today, I watched a very funny AI video of a cursing Kamala and Trump putting everyone down even ruder than he does in reality. Will future presidential candidates be as crudely Bronx-slanged as I saw on that Twitch channel? I missed the “real” election night in the USA because what was happening on the couch was far more exciting. Honestly, I forgot about Trump and Kamala right away.

Sina Khani opened, after a few jokes—though he still claims not to be funny and just a “Sina Songwriter”—with “Let’s Not Hate the Americans” on guitar. The song was almost forgotten by Khani himself, but it’s still a famous underground anthem. I even wrote another song inspired by it during those surreal COVID months in 2020.

Then, things moved quickly. Sadouma leapt off the couch as new guests took his place. Salima El Muslima, whom I’d seen before, brought an award sculpture and began “canceling” a Dutch artist she accused of mistreating her. I had heard his name before, Himmelbach, but apparently, he hadn’t left much of an impression on me. Salima accused Himmelbach of threatening her Ukrainian friend Jelena, who suffers from psychosis, and of manipulating her into stealing the award sculpture he made, only to pressure her to give it back under threat of calling the police. Jelena almost relapsed into psychosis, triggering her trauma. “These fake artists,” Salima said, “offering a woke award only to demand it back, are all about subsidy money. That’s what art is about these days: money!”

Another woman, Sharkurtala,  took a seat on the couch (this is starting to sound very Freudian) and launched into a tirade against Steven Ruitenbeek (from KIRAC), “who nominated a racist for the award.” The atmosphere in the Unsafe “Garage” turned decidedly feminist. Himmelbach and Ruitenbeek “blocked her,” and she responded, “You can talk to my lawyer later!” (The crowd cheered.)

Younes Bouadi showed up, a former campaigner in the US and now a consultant in the Netherlands. He started his career in 2004, working for a voting activation program to increase voter turnout. “You can only do this by pretending to care and be interested,” he said. Edo Blaauw jumped in: “Do you really care?”

The discussion took a more serious turn until Sina Khani asked the audience, “Who wants to see my penis?” Steven Bos ordered him and Blaauw off the stage. Blaauw refused to surrender the mic, but Bos finally succeeded, and he invited Salima El Musalima, Amsterdam’s first female imam!

During the break, Sina Khani came up to me while I was streaming the entire event on the Radio Neverno Instagram and apologized LIVE to the audience for making “racist remarks—it’s a comedy show!”

I got a strong Moscow Mule (vodka, ginger beer, lemon, gin) and got tipsy. After the break, they asked me to join them on the couch myself, but that’s another story…

Creeps in the Unsafe House

It took me almost a week to process the latest episode of *Creeps from the Middle East*. In the dark cellars of *The Unsafe House*, a few yards away from the former largest prison in Amsterdam, the ´Bajes´, now turned into a ´creative breeding place´ (a Dutch euphemism for a heavily subsidized work camp for underperforming wannabe artists), it´s not a particularly inviting setting to witness the next farce in the *Creeps from the Middle East* saga.

Photo: The Unsafe House with Tarik Sadouma in front of the film screen

For our readers not familiar with the Creeps, its main character is the former, failed painter, Mr. Sina Karim Khani (although he wisely deleted the "Karim" part for unknown reasons), who is also one of the three directors of the "live long project". Khani intends to make episodes until his physical death. Having seen the previous episodes, I would almost consider sending a hit squad to end this tragedy for the man, who apparently sees this as his last chance to have something like a creative career. However, I prefer to see him and his team continue struggling to create something that ressembles an interesting narrative approaching the concept of a film.

Photo: Sina Khani with Tunc Topcuoglu, Sohrab Bayat and some unidentifiable characters

Of all places, the Creeps end up, in this far-out shack, called *The Unsafe House*, run by former Kirac member Tarik Sadouma. As a kind of "high priest" he welcoms visitors into his kingdom for the preview of *Creeps*, episode 4, and his own film, surrounded by a selection of stand-ups including Edo Blaauw and Salima El Musalima (who both starred, by the way).

As soon as you enter the garage (it´s nothing more than a garage, stuffed with old couches, shimmering lamps, a bar with a tattooed girl working hard, and a lot of paintings) you become aware of some imminent danger. You don´t know what to expect, but it doesn´t seem to be good.

Photo: Sina Khani with Kirac actress Jini Jane

I went completely incognito, my credentials were not even checked. I saw one of the founders of Radio Neverno walking around in a ridiculously wannabe business suit with a light green tie, pretending not to know me and shooing me away as he continuously chatted with the Creeps in-crowd that he seemed to know, for whatever reason.

Two films were shown. First *The Creeps*, in which Sadouma now appears as a contributing actor and even member of the creative team. I have to say, Sadouma has the qualities to "contra star" against the rather bleak acting performances of Sina Khani. Suddenly, *The Creeps* seems to become a real movie sequence adhering to film theory, which posits that you need a main character and a opposite one, at least in so-called ´narrative film´. This opposite character needs to be as strong as the main character to create a challenging dialogue, in images or narrative or both, to keep the viewer engaged in an unfolding story.

Photo: Still of a scene with mr Sina Khani in a train discussing life and latest breaking news

Bless mr. Sadouma, he saved *The Creeps*, from ´utter boredom´, as written in a former review here.

For a video impression, check *Art Tours Amsterdam* on Instagram, to understand what we are talking about. Check it out (link below)!

The whole night featured a stand-up program with Edo Blaauw, Salima El-Musalima, John Pelech, John Kefentse, Joel, and "comedian" Sina Khani himself opening, despite claiming "not to be funny". Next to a huge Sadouma created painting of Michel Houellebecq, Khani fulminated for 15 minutes on his latest frustrations, often interrupted by Sadouma himself sitting on a couch in the limelight. "I heard of a dangerous place, a whorehouse, full of pimps and criminals, a crack house, illegal immigrants, innocent people getting beaten up in the backroom, rapists on horse and Thierry Baudet", Khani ranted about The Unsafe House.

"Tarik, you are a beautiful person, but people ask me, what do you see in Tarik? His work ethic, his generosity, he helps you solve problems, he creates" Khani continues as the crowd cheered. "Like Khadaffi", Sadouma added into his microphone, "Tarik is so patient, whenever I have a problem, he lends me an open ear, he even lends me his paintings, Tarik is paranoid, but in a good way!"

After this, the latest episode of *The Creeps from The middle East* which was shown for a selection of "invitees" and some incognitos, I have to conclude, that it was by far the best one even if I might be fired by the Radio Neverno Team now.

Photo: The surroundings of the Unsafe House

The second movie, was a creation of *The Unsafe House* team itself, apparently by director mr. Sadouma himself. As I am a critic of the Dutch politicized "Culture Industry", that claims to be permanently fit for subsidization by nepotistic culture czars, distributing tax payers money to their "artists" or better "friends" by shady committees, *The Unsafe House* seems to be an exception to the rule, I hope.

Before stating more about the second movie of the night, which I really liked, maybe because of Sina Khani NOT being in it: please never enter the subsidy abyss awaiting you by the so called "generous culture politicians". Otherwise one day you will be blamed to have collaborated with the current ultra right ´PVV´ government (on which Sadouma fulminates at the end of the night in a passionate speech) that aims to centralize all culture to create its own image and annihilating everything oppositional by first luring artists in the ´subsidy abyss´ before killing them off.

Maybe Sadouma is clever enough to arrange private investors, like Philip van den Hurk is to the Kirac Team. But: don´t make this kind of van den Hurk person to a character in your own movie, it will kill the spirit, I have seen the current Kirac Team struggling with this man in their latest episodes. Khani mentioned van den Hurk´s description of his Creeps, "Creeps of the Middle Class", which says enough.

The second movie by and in the Unsafe House, had depth, showing Sadouma working as a painter commenting  on Picasso and others and sampling parts of critics like "Paul-talk", a wannabe youtuber art specialist commenting on art, mainly painting, but even commenting *The Creeps* in one of his episodes. Next to the strong story line, we could see , for me the first time, a very appealing AI generated, animation, a celebration of his love for his lady. This movie was a good example for the Creeps team to improve the level of its episodes even more. They should keep on working with mr. Tarik Sadouma.

Photo: The dark night falling on Khani and his companions

Go and witness some secret recordings of the night at instagram.com/art_tours_Amsterdam 

Inspector Casino

The 7 most ridiculous things about KIRAC 28 by Sina Khani

Dear readers, yesterday was the premiere of the highly anticipated new Kirac film. If you missed it, here is a brief summary and an explanation of why it is the worst, dumbest, and most random film I have ever seen.

1 KATE SINHA

The film opens with a male voiceover informing us that there are no subtitles. Then, his girlfriend Kate Sinha patronizes him, telling him that his voiceover (for a different, undisclosed film, presumably) is terrible. So mean. When the voiceover actor asks her why it is terrible, she interrupts him with random gossip fresh off her phone: Sandra (who?) is bored with her life in Canada. It’s too cold there, and her husband is a jerk. “So she is coming to Amsterdam to live with your editor Bram.”

That is literally all we get to see of our once deep, profound, and almost believably intellectual Kate Sinha. What happened to her? Is she okay?

2 SANDRA WHO? 

Wow. A new character in the Kirac family saga is being introduced. Yaaay. Sandra Soliman. Middle Eastern hottie. Great. But is there anything about Sandra that makes her interesting? Let’s find out if this one came with a brain. Let’s check her IQ.

Sandra is single. Sandra is broke. Sandra starts an OnlyFans channel and makes 40 Euros. IQ test failed.

That’s all of Sandra. And we are 10 minutes into the film.

But wait. We know a similar story—the story of Jini van Rooijen aka Jini Jane. Why are they telling it again? What makes Sandra more interesting than Jini? Nothing. Jini at least wasn‘t just a pretty face. She also once put a radish into her asshole, then pulled it out and ate it. Jini had talent. And I miss that. Not even a nipple with this Sandra girl. Not even a bloody goddamn nipple. Nothing. 

3 INTERRUPTIONS

After the voiceover critique, Sandra’s story is abruptly interrupted by a third completely random storyline. We see a seemingly talentless, spoiled Dutch brat begging a reluctant rich man for 50 Euros to make a drawing or direct a theater play, or something like that. It's very unclear, but then again, also very unimportant.

4 THE BRAT

The brat is named Melchior Koch. He is a young, ambitious, self-proclaimed artist, though no one has ever seen any art from him other than some videos about himself and his friends and some drawings of, yes, himself and his friends. And an interview with his friend Michiel Lieuwma that is torturous to watch or even listen to. 

There is no hard proof of his talent, yet somehow, famous art collector and multi-millionaire Philip van den Hurk is interested in him.

I know for a fact that Philip is a cool guy because I have worked with him. He plays my father in the upcoming episode of Creeps From The Middle East. Coming soon...

So, anyways, van den Hurk pays a visit to Melchior Koch’s atelier to find out if he is worth investing in.

Unfortunately for Koch, he does not leave a good impression. He performs a one-man show on his little Ikea carpet and makes a complete fool of himself. And that, my dear reader, is not only deeply, deeply pathetic but also the worst act I have ever witnessed in my life. And I have seen a lot of bad ones. 

At this moment I realised that Melchior Koch had just killed narcissism for me. 

5 THE PLAYWRIGHT

I am not joking; this is how Melchior Koch tries to convince the potential investor. He claims his show is inspired by “Puccini’s opera,” followed by “Da Vinci’s Homo Universalis,” who is then “trapped in a cage as Che Guevara awaiting his death penalty.” But the death penalty is not what we typically think of. No, the death penalty is being fucked in the ass by a volunteer from the audience. What?! What is happening?

No one is going to give you money for this, boy. This operation does not look like it’s built to succeed, and subsequently, it doesn’t. No one likes this show. It’s a shit show, literally and figuratively. There was almost no way to see this coming, except maybe by thinking about it. 

But I guess this counts as a film scene. Why not? 

Kirac has changed. Especially now. Without Tarik Sadouma as main protagonist the fire has gone out.  Sadouma made Kirac controversial. Radical. Almost paradoxical. But necessary. 

He made Philip van den Hurk have to fight to buy his paintings. Philip had to travel to Cairo, Egypt only to see Sadouma’s work and even pay entrance to be allowed in his studio. He had to take a beating in Greece and go through numerous ordeals to get what he wants. In Kirac 28 he is portrayed by the director as just a rich man without personality or mystique. It’s a shame that he has to deal with beggars. 

Here is my prophecy: Kirac 27 will be the death of Kirac. You can quote me on that. 

6 TUNA 

They all agree on one thing: performance is clearly not Melchior Koch's forte. So, to give the impression that they haven’t wasted the potential investor’s time, they try to find something useful for Koch. Here’s another completely random idea: Let him make the soundtrack for the previous film that we have never seen. Kirac 27. The Houellebecq one. Heck yeah. This kid can sing about being broke and having cans of tuna for lunch. So he’s the perfect man for the job.

Melchior Koch is happy with this new job opportunity and smiles like he means it. He takes out his guitar, and they all do a little sing-along and have a great fucking time. It’s cute. I needed this.

Now would be the perfect time for a fade out. But there is no fade out. There is another scene, and it is spectacular. Are you ready?

7 ANAL SEX

Remember the poor voiceover guy from the beginning of the film, whose wife was super mean to him? Well, his name is Stefan Ruitenbeek. And Stefan Ruitenbeek has had enough of that Melchior clown, with his ridiculous theater ideas and his silly performances. 

So he takes him to the park and fucks the shit out of him. 

No, I’m joking. That would actually be impressive. In reality, they only make out like cute little harmless teenagers, and that stands symbolically for this entire film: too safe, boring, insignificant, irrelevant, superficial, forgettable… You get the point. 

And this, dear reader, is the end of Kirac 28. Fade out. Finally. 

Sina Khani is a comedian, filmmaker and our newest guest columnist. Watch his web series ´Creeps from the Middle East HERE.

Kirac 28 : The dream of the young artist

I was invited to the preview of Kirac 28, the latest movie in a long series that started so promising with its critical approach of the established art world, like gallerists on an art fair (the daughter of Paul McCarthy as a manoeuvering galerist), the art collectors and their influence on collection forming of  subsidized musea and the like.

Kirac had a refreshing approach to a domain which knows almost its own rituals, trends, financial interests and nepotistic relation structures. Anybody working professionally in art knows that also there reputations of artists are established by certain gallerists and their sympathetic journalists, writing in world wide dispersed magazines, sometimes conversing in congress with art theorists combining professorships with publishing every now and then a contemplative meta theoretical book critical on latest trends in established art institutions.

Kirac was, at least to me, a refreshing approach to all those processes and people who live by art but are not artists themselves. The army of curators, art historians and the like with their own career interests is big nowadays and these careers tend to spread globally. A succesful curator can move from a small art institution to becoming a curator responsible for the artistic policy of an art fair, a Biennial and so on. These careers are following their own path and are often dependent on trends in public debates. Not art seems to be central, but definitions of curators, in which artists seem to be puppets in a discours battle. Currently, for example, it seems to be very en vogue to appoint non western artistic directors to art institutions in the ongoing wave of anti racism and post colonialism. These directors subsequently start to redefine the art discours in which the art shown becomes instrumentalised for politically correct positions according to the new vocabulary. I liked the focus of Kirac, coming out of a fusion of artists and an art historian, on these kind of processes, demasking agendas maybe not so discernable for the public that is not familiar with these power processes steering reputations and careers in art.

Kirac´s initial movies touched these subjects and made them, at least in the Netherlands, known in the public realm. It became international news when they got in a controversy with famous French writer Michel Houellebecq, who accused them in 2023 in a booklet of around 90 pages of "character assassination", "rape" and the like, while he was lured in playing a role in a erotic movie initiated by Kirac and with one of the actresses swarming around the Kirac team. The switch of institutional critique towards openly luring erotically naive, like Sid Lucassen, or even sophisticated, like Houellebecq, nerd like men, into a having sex with young women on camera was a path which could be described as critique on society and the way of establishing erotic relations in a time of Tinder like social media, if you wanted to give it a noble purpose, where artists try to get to grips with society in 21st century. 

Some would see, though, a switch of Kirac into vulgarity as it didn´t seem to have a deeper reflection on what they were trying to expose now, after their strong anti institutional crusade. Was Houellebecq symptomatic of the moral corruption of famous artists or of art in general, what was the link with the former film in which self proclaimed right wing philosopher Sid Lucassen was exposed to being an inexperienced, socially, rather dumb, man, who was lured into an erotic movie?

When I was called by the main character of the latest film, no 28, Melchior Koch, I didn´t know what to expect, but curiosity drove me towards the theatre the movie was shown in. Koch was waiting outside and checked my credentials. A young handsome man, with a sensitive glance promises at least some youthful energy pouring again into a new episode of the Kirac team. Looking around I discerned some women that were "starring" in some of the former episodes in which, young female sexuality and male wannabe intellectuals collude in a estranging splash of domains, leaving mostly the men behind in utter despair. Sid Lucassen was a victim, and even famous writer Michel Houellebecq a next one.

What could we expect now? Melchior plays himself and tells Stefan Ruitenbeek and Philip van den Hurk, the other male protagonists also of this episode on his challenges as a young, starting and aspiring artist. In the beginning the talent of Melchior Koch is not that clear, is he a musician, an actor, what are his aspirations? Is he only looking for money and in this way tries to use the Kirac team to get to financier van den Hurk?

The plot is not that clear. Van den Hurk and Ruitenbeek might be interesting personalities with a certain sense of humour that try to play the tutor to Koch in the beginning but slowly start to unravel the young Melchior on his true motives, not stopping in softly insulting him and trying to make him feel his dependence.It is at least Koch who shows vulnerability in his insecurity and his lack of knowledge on how to build an artistic career. Well, the two older men might not be the right companions for furthering that career as they have their own agendas.

Melchior turns out to make drawings, after the movie, in which last scene there is a pseudo sexual assault of Ruitenbeek on Koch, a drawing is shown, after pulling up the projection screen. Koch seems to have chosen the wrong partners to enhance and boost his career. When I talk to him afterwards he says he likes drawing, "that is the thing I can do best". But why then play in a movie of the current Kirac team that has no ostensable interest in your drawings or in your endeavours as long as you play a role they can use to, eventually, shock and awe? The departure of former Kirac contributor Tarik Sadouma seems to be felt till today. The pepper content and his confrontational approach seems to be for a big part due to his contribution and now that he left the team, Kirac struggles to be able to keep its former supporters and attain its former level. 

Looking around I see a lot of wannabe sharp looking people, that apparently are still drawn to the Kirac project. Some of them even seem to expect an actor´s career growing out of this. I hope their expectations are not too high, because the Kirac project doesn´t seem to be focused on enhancing any careers except their own, for which we can not even blame them, as they seem to be, financially at least, dependent on the capital of business man van den Hurk, who, as a real potential Macchiavellist, seems to pull the financial strings, as long as the Kirac team delivers and don´t hurt his feelings or business interests. In former episodes, he repeatingly threatens to cut funds in front of the camera, when Ruitenbeek is about to reveal his business dealings.

I would never give a financier such a big acting role as the current Kirac team seems to offer him, Van den Hurk is now even "starring" as one of the main characters. His role in the film is not that exciting. He keeps his tightly self controlled persona up even as an actor and is seldomly really challenged in front of the camera. If Ruitenbeek has something to win, it is by not focusing too much on van den Hurk anymore, to begin with curtailing his now rather dominant role in the movie, how charming he might be as a person, as he seems to be blocking its narrative development. It can be interesting to show the relationship between director and financier in one film, but to repeatingly showing the tension between him and director Ruitenbeek is not adding much. But that might need courage and directly endanger the ongoing production of a, still, seemingly succesful, project. Public funds now also support Kirac. The whole Dutch cultural  establishment was eager to open its arms to a, finally, internationally, known project and even in the US, professional artists follow it, some even producing a sequence of video blogs on it. Not bad for a small Amsterdam based video company. As Dutch public funds eagerly stepped in as co sponsors of the project, even the financial dependence on Van den Hurk might be diminished.

The big waiting is still for the final cut of Kirac 27, the Houellebecq film, that is supposed to make them ´really big´ and probably more independent of van den Hurk. Kirac, dreaming of world fame, finally, on the back of the French writer Houellebecq, who made a fool of himself. Kirac wouldn´t care less. Van den Hurk, as a real business man, shall probably be very happy in having contributed to this success, if it happens, because the Kirac project already seems to have lost momentum...his revenues of the project are less clear, but at least he can say to himself that he contributed to an almost world wide famous video art project...

Hans Kuiper