Schaduwbal in The Unsafe House: a missed chance

ENGLISH BELOW

Vrijdag 13 maart, 2026, vond het Schaduwbal plaats, een avond over boeken als alternatief voor het officiële boekenbal zoals dat al jaren door de literaire cultuurindustrie georganiseerd wordt. 

Dit Schaduwbal wilde meer zijn dan louter een verkooppraatje voor de laatste literaire hype, zo is mij verzekerd door de organisatoren van The Unsafe House. Het is overigens een van de laatste events in hun onderkomen aan de Wenckebachweg in Amsterdam.

Het schaduwbal toonde op het eerste gezicht een keur aan gasten die aan de rand van het officiële literaire circuit rondhobbelen, een Arthur van Amerongen, illustrator en performer Gabriel Kousbroek, Rob Muntz, Adriaan Kuyper, Tunc Topcuoglu, Tijs van Bragt, Sina Khani zélf, natuurlijk, en anderen, omlijst door een muzikaal programma met dit keer o.a. Motortoaster, DJ Vic van de Reijt en een performance van de nu al beruchte Kittens.

Verwacht hoogtepunt was de presentatie van het eerste nummer van The Unsafe Journal, een dik, Engelstalig, magazine, met veel bijdragen van schrijvers, dichters en essayisten, waaronder een open brief van Radio Neverno´s Hans Kuiper aan Ronaldo....Alleen lag dit dikke, nieuwe blad ergens in een hoek van de ruimte, terwijl een belangrijk deel van de literaire avond uit handen was gegeven aan de uitgeverij Ezo Wolf die vervolgens een onverstaanbaar aantal interviews met hún schrijvers ten beste gaven.

Ons inziens een gemiste kans voor Sina Khani en The Unsafe House om daadwerkelijk een inhoudelijk alternatief te geven, terwijl in het eigen netwerk zeer veel literair en anderszins getalenteerde mensen rondlopen. Er was zelfs geen officieel presentatiemoment voor het eigen Unsafe Journal weggelegd!

De hele avond was bij voorbaat al uitverkocht, begreep ik, maar als je lid wordt van de club dan kon je alsnog naar binnen, als je maar betaalde. Overal moest voor betaald worden, naast de obligate biertjes ook een bezoek aan de Kittens, die voor 10 euro een bizar tafereel opvoerden van een dame met een kunstmatige zeer grote vulva voorgebonden, waarschijnlijk van papier maché en beschilderd. Je kon vervolgens een gedicht kiezen dat de dame uit haar nieuwe edele deel trok. Ze had er drie gedichten in tamponvorm in gepropt en koos vervolgens er één, in dit geval bleek het een "racistische mop":

De tekst luidde als volgt:

"Racistische mop

What does a pig sound like?

Oink Oink

What does a French pig sound like? 

Oinque, Oinque

What does a Japanese pig sound like?

Oink-huh! Oink-huh!

What does an American American (twee keer, ja) pig sound like?

Stop resisting!"

Een verwijzing naar de handelswijze vermoedelijk van de politie in menig VS-staat, voordat ze hun wapenmagazijn op je leegschieten. Een kritiek op de VS zowaar terwijl even later een, wederom, onverstaanbaar LIVE STREAM interview met de nu al onvermijdbare Curtis Yarvin viel waar te nemen.

Waar de goede man het over had was werkelijk niet te volgen, mede door te veel keuvelend volk in de garage, die regelmatig tot de orde geroepen moesten worden door de ceremoniemeester Tarik Sadouma: "Quiet!"

De focus lag o.i. iets te veel op partying waardoor de inhoudelijke kant ondergesneeuwd raakte. Alleen Sina Khani, die een enorme prestatie leverde door samen met Hichem Touati zijn Unsafe Journal in korte tijd samen te stellen, vorm te geven en te laten drukken op een appetijtelijke wijze, wél even de aandacht wist te vangen van de drankzuchtige- en socialising menigte, door met snerpende stem een statement voor te dragen over zijn ándere publicatie Fart School dat hij jaren geleden al schreef met Tunc Topcuoglu. Hij claimt ál gecancelled te zijn in 2007 met dit magazine door docenten en anderen van de Gerrit Rietveld Academie waar hij en Topcuoglu studeerden: "Cancellation is of all times!!"

Uit alle hoeken en gaten van Amsterdam wisten allerlei types deze event te vinden, mogelijk door de samenwerking met de uitgeverij Ezo Wolf die een aantal bekende Nederlanders uit de hoed toverde, naast Arthur van Amerongen, die keihard blijft publiceren, ondanks dat de zelfbenoemde culturele wannabe elite hem blijkbaar niet lust. Hij is nu columnist bij Geen Stijl en schrijft o.a. vaak een provocerend stuk voor HP De Tijd, als ik mij niet vergis en dat alles vanuit Olhao, een rustig dorp in de Algarve in Portugal. Hij kan blijkbaar het Nederlandse culturele klimaat niet al te lang meer verdragen, wat ik kan begrijpen overigens.

Naast van Amerongen liepen er nog wat andere originals rond en mogelijk zelfs goede schrijvers, maar zoals hierboven geschreven waren hun interviews moeilijk te volgen. Wie niet moeilijk te volgen was, was een Amsterdamse volkszanger die professioneel het toegesnelde publiek op haar wenken wist te bedienen. 

Sina Khani had echter méér aandacht voor zijn eigen Mag mogen opeisen, een tijdschrift dat naast door relatief onbekende schrijvers ook bevolkt wordt door opvallend bekende namen uit allerlei hoeken van de cultuur, ook al komen ze niet allemaal rechtstreeks uit de literatuur of uit het Nederlandstalige cultuurgebied. 

Zo levert Diana Burkot van Pussy Riot een bijdrage, net als Mohsen Namjoo, door velen beschouwd als de grootste muzikant van Iran, en de Europese dj sensatie Droeloe. Ook cultlegende Harry Merry duikt op met een voorproefje van zijn nieuwe lyrische anthem, naast Eduard Padberg, NRC Handelsblad correspondent in het Midden Oosten, kunstenaar Wayne Horse, die onlangs nog een schilderij voor tachtigduizend verkocht, en Tarik Sadouma en Ruth Spetter, de oprichters van The Unsafe House. Verder bevat het boek bijdragen van Gabriël Kousbroek, zoon van voormalig bekend essayist Rudy Kousbroek en schrijfster Ethel Portnoy, van Oliver Uschmann, een van de bekendste Duitse schrijvers van de afgelopen twee decennia, en van Sofie Kramer, een rijzende ster in de theaterwereld, en zo ontstaat een bont cultureel gezelschap dat reikt van muziek en beeldende kunst tot journalistiek en literatuur.

Ondertussen is The Unsafe House druk bezig te verhuizen naar Amsterdam-Noord, waar een nieuw pand is aangekocht door financier en initiator Tarik Sadouma. Ook hij kan wat meer zijn eigen werk promoten, daar liggen in het, naar verluidt, 400m2 nieuwe gebouw toch genoeg mogelijkheden. We gaan het zien.

Hans Kuiper voor Radio Neverno.

ENGLISH

On Friday, March 13, 2026, the Schaduwbal or the Literary Shadow Ball took place in Amsterdam, an evening about books as an alternative to the official book ball as it has been organized by the literary culture industry for years. 

This Shadow Ball wanted to be more than just a sales pitch for the latest literary hype, as I have been assured by the organizers of The Unsafe House. It is also one of the last events in their accommodation at Wenckebachweg in Amsterdam. 

The shadow ball showed a selection of guests hobbling around on the edge of the official literary circuit, an Arthur van Amerongen, illustrator and performer Gabriel Kousbroek, Rob Muntz, Adriaan Kuiper, Tunc Topcuoglu, Tijs van Bragt, Sina Khani, of course and others, framed by a musical program this time including Motortoaster, DJ Vic van de Reijt and a performance by the already infamous Kittens.

The expected highlight was the presentation of the first issue of The Unsafe Journal, a thick, English-language magazine, with many contributions from writers, poets and essayists, including an open letter from Radio Neverno's Hans Kuiper to Ronaldo.... Only this thick, new magazine was lying somewhere in a corner of the room, while an important part of the literary evening had been handed over to the publishing house Ezo Wolf, who then gave an unintelligible number of interviews with their writers. 

In our opinion, this is a missed opportunity for The Unsafe House to actually provide a substantive alternative, while there are many literary and otherwise talented people in its own network. There was not even an official presentation moment for their own Unsafe Journal!

The whole evening was sold out in advance, I understood, but if you become a member of the club you could still get in, as long as you paid. Everything had to be paid for, in addition to the obligatory beers also a visit to the Kittens, who for 10 euros performed a bizarre scene of a lady with an artificial very large vulva tied up, probably made of paper mache and stenciled. 

You could then choose a poem that pulled the lady out of her new private part. She had crammed in three poems in tampon form and chose one of them, in this case it turned out to be a self proclaimed racist poem: The text read as follows: 

"Racist joke.

What does a pig sound like? Oink Oink 

What does a French pig sound like? Oinque, Oinque 

What does a Japanese pig sound like? Oinh-huh! Oink-huh! 

What does an American American (twice, yes) pig sound like? Stop resisting!"

A reference to the actions presumably of the police in many US states, before they empty their gun magazine on you. A criticism of the US even while a little later a, again, unintelligible LIVE STREAM interview with the already inevitable Curtis Yarvin could be observed. <

What the good man was talking about was really impossible to follow, partly due to too many chatting people in the garage, who regularly had to be called to order by the master of ceremonies, Tarik Sadouma himself :"Quiet!"

In our opinion, the focus was a bit too much on partying, which meant that the substantive side was undercut. Only Sina Khani, who made an enormous achievement by compiling, shaping and printing his Unsafe Journal with Hichem Touati in such a short time, managed to catch the attention of the alcoholic and socialising crowd, by reciting a statement in a shrill voice about his other publication Fart School that he wrote years ago with Tunc Topcuoglu. He claims to have been cancelled in 2007 with this magazine by teachers and others from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Art in Amsterdam, where he and Topcuoglu studied. "Cancellation is of all times!!"

All kinds of people from all corners of Amsterdam found their way to this event, possibly due to the collaboration with the publishing house Ezo Wolf who conjured up a number of "famous Dutch people", in addition to Arthur van Amerongen, who continues to publish with great vigour, despite the fact that the self-proclaimed cultural wannabe elite apparently does not like him. He is now a columnist for Geen Stijl and writes, among other things, provocative pieces for the opinion weekly HP De Tijd, if I'm not mistaken, and all from Olhão, a quiet village in the Algarve in Portugal. Apparently he can't tolerate the Dutch cultural climate for too long, which I can understand, by the way.

In addition to van Amerongen, there were some other originals walking around and possibly even good writers, but as written above, their interviews were difficult to follow. Who was not difficult to follow was an Amsterdam folk singer who professionally knew how to serve the crowd at her beck and call.

Sina Khani's The Unsafe Journal is populated not only by obscure literary hopefuls but also by strikingly well known figures from across the international cultural world, many of whom come from outside literature, although not always known to a Dutch public. 

Among the contributors are Diana Burkot of Pussy Riot, Mohsen Namjoo, widely considered Iran’s greatest musician, and the European DJ sensation Droeloe. Cult legend Harry Merry also appears with a preview of his upcoming lyrical anthem, alongside Eduard Padberg, NRC Handelsblad’s correspondent in the Middle East, the artist Wayne Horse, who recently sold a painting for eighty thousand, and Tarik Sadouma and Ruth Spetter, the founders of The Unsafe House. The book also features Gabriel Kousbroek, son of the essayist Rudy Kousbroek, Oliver Uschmann, one of Germany’s most prominent writers of the past two decades, and Sofie Kramer, a rising star in the theater world, creating a colorful assembly that stretches from music and visual art to journalism and literature.

In the meantime, The Unsafe House is moving to Amsterdam-Noord, where a new building has been purchased by financier and initiator Tarik Sadouma. He can also promote his own work a bit more, there are plenty of opportunities in the, allegedly, 400m2 new building. We'll see.

Hans Kuiper for Radio Neverno

Will The Unsafe House take over the Venice Biennial 2026?

It is always difficult to assess a chance of something happening if you have only access to limited direct information or people stay quiet on the real issues involved.

In a former post we talked about the apparent demise of The Creeps from the Middle East in which we shortly mentioned the new biotope of Sina Khani, the main character of The Creeps:

"The last year Khani seems 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, is boosting his art career in several ways. This seems necessary, as he claims to  have been cancelled, recently  by cultural institutions such as De Balie in Amsterdam and the Art Academy of Leipzig (HGB). To achieve this aim Sadouma is running for the USA Venice Biennial pavilion, in collaboration with his friend philosopher, monarchist and "lord of darkness" Curtis Yarvin, who is convinced that Sadouma makes a serious chance to be the USA candidate for the Biennale di Venezia. This topic has also been discussed in The Unsafe House podcast, hosted by Sadouma’s partners in crime, Ruth Spetter and Sina Khani. People interested should watch the podcast.

Sadouma has emerged as a brilliant A.I.-powered trailer producer. ”I like his satirical way of using it," a friend of mine remarked recently. His creative flair even extends to painting, where, according to some,  his unique visual language and bold ideas stand out. Judge for yourself: Tarik Sadouma Paintings

Of course, the Venice Biennale demands something on a larger scale, and while trailers alone might not suffice, his concept The Unsafe House, a kind of relational artwork, could be just the thing. Why not build it in the pavilion in Venice in 2026? That would be my suggestion.

The Unsafe House is currently pouring energy into a bold proposal, set to be delivered by Curtis Yarvin to a cultural envoy in the Trump administration.  A strategic move to bypass the usual tastemakers of the art world in the USA. It’s an audacious approach, but then again, that’s very much Sadouma’s style. To quote the Vanity Fair about their shenanigans: The Barbarians Are at the Gates. 

In the meantime Sadouma, the initiator of The Unsafe House, went on with his project to really achieve a participation in the Venice Biennial. He and some of his partners visited the USA a couple of times, had a meeting with Curtis Yarvin, the big ‘project accelerator’, in Paris, and assured me in personal talks the chance of really getting the USA Pavilion commission was 70%!

As a former professional researcher of opinions, consumers and markets,  you have several options to estimate certain developments by, for example, desk research, combined with qualitative interview techniques, using projective techniques, and  others and you can make people talk on subjects they prefer to stay silent on. This  might deliver relevant data, like a recent publication in The Washington Post and others on latest developments and  relevant candidates for the Venice Biennial 2026.

After visiting The Unsafe House a few times, inviting them to exhibitions with Art Space 411, contributing performances and jingles, and being the main musician on Sina Khani’s No Gaza No Cry, recorded in the Unsafe studios, I found myself caught in a strange dual role. On one hand, I try to stay objective and reliable, maintain a professional face, maybe even live a normal life. On the other hand, there’s the pull of my own projects, artistic and journalistic, increasingly entangled with radical gestures and controversial figures. Collaborating with someone like Sina Khani feels urgent and necessary, but how far can you go before the risk outweighs the impact? And how do you navigate all this without losing your footing or getting cancelled?

Let’s go back to the main topic: will The Unsafe House actually be selected to represent the USA at the Venice Biennial of 2026?

Sadouma and his partners have been quite secretive to me about their proposal, but in The Washington Post though, much is revealed: The proposal would present artists who "have been previously excluded or underrepresented by the hegemonic and ideological art world," artists "who challenge progressive orthodoxies" with a vision of patriotism and traditional values according to their application. Their proposal also includes a workshop for "public figures aligned with conservative or MAGA-related values," like movie stars, to co-create artworks in collaboration with traditional American craftspeople."

The Washington Post reports: “Their vision calls for the U.S. pavilion to be rebaptized as the Salon des Déplorables, a reference to the Salon des Refusés, the 19th-century Parisian exhibition of rejected avant-garde works. A Museum of Dark Enlightenment will showcase artwork of creation and destruction that will declare the 'old' art world to be dead. A series of Hollywood-style sets will offer a provocative mimicry of pop art, without its often disdainful view of American identity.”

It is a clever strategy. By positioning themselves as the alternative, once excluded art community, they directly challenge the art establishment that has long controlled the selection of U.S. representatives at the Biennale. In this shifting cultural landscape, marked by a reorientation of leadership within American institutions, there is a real opportunity. As the Trump administration reshapes the ideological direction of cultural policy, figures like Curtis Yarvin and Tarik Sadouma are not just provocateurs. They are emerging as serious contenders with a cohesive and radical vision. If this momentum continues, it is entirely possible that Sadouma and his collaborators could represent the United States in Venice in 2026.

One very important note on the main competing artist with an "overtly Trumpian, Maga" proposal: Andres Serrano. Notoriously bombarded to fame in the late 80’s with his Piss Christ work (officially called 'Immersion (Piss Christ)),' which also could be the hindrance to his selection by the way, considering the very conservative and explicitly pro-Christian roots of the Maga movement now trying to control and redesign the USA.

Again The Washington Post: Serrano "now thinks he has a perfect fit for a MAGA-ified Biennale. ‘The Game: All Things Trump’ is Serrano’s exhibition of Trump ephemera from his casinos, product lines and television work over the years."

Considering the narcissistic personality of the current president this proposal might even have a bigger chance of being selected, presupposing that the Piss Christ is successfully concealed by the Serrano team.

Things are shifting. The old cultural hierarchies are cracking, and in that space, people like Curtis Yarvin and especially Tarik Sadouma are starting to move in ways that seemed unthinkable a few years ago. In my opinion, Sadouma isn’t just reacting to the moment. He is actually shaping it, with a mix of strategical thinking and sharp media instincts, dark humor, and a kind of unapologetic aesthetic strategy. If the current momentum holds, I genuinely think it is not far fetched to imagine him taking over the U.S. pavilion in Venice in 2026. And honestly, it would make sense in the current cultural and political climate in the USA. His work speaks directly to this weird and unstable time, not just in opposition to the established art world but as something that could replace it.

The decision on who will be the selected artist will fall this month, September-October  2025.

Hans Kuiper

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 

Hans Kuiper