De zomerwandeling, deel 1.

De zomerwandeling, de eerste aflevering van een twee- of meerluik over het schrijven van een boek, het vinden van een  openingszin en overwegingen over de stand der zaken in Nederland, tijdens de (corona-) zomer van 2020.

Opname en moderatie: Hans Kuiper.

Radio Neverno · De zomerwandeling -deel 1

Radio Neverno ART PODCASTS

Radio Neverno is an art podcast station. At this blog you can listen to podcasts produced since 2015. Most shows were recorded live at art events.

We started at the exhibition 'Tomorrow never knows' on invitation of Arti et Amicitiae, the art association in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We, that is Moritz Ebinger and me, Hans Kuiper. We both were already experienced independent radio initiators, Moritz with Radio Rood and me with several projects in the art domain in The Netherlands and Germany (Radio Rietveld, my own Radio 3x3, Herbstradio, Piradio Berlin, 2005-2015).

Roam around this blog full of podcasts and you will find little treasures of independent radio!

For info or feedback, please send a message to radioneverno@gmail.com

By Hans Kuiper

Installed in the atelier of artist Bernd Trasberger in Berlin, where I can stay a couple of days, today it's the day of the Berlin Biennale opening. For June, it's quite warm, around 30 degrees Celsius, but I am lucky to be able to take the bike to visit all the Biennale venues.

Radio 3x3 (KIK residence, NL)

Installation in the KW Sousterrain


First, the official preview for the press and other invited guests of this event that will last for 3 months. After a word of welcome by the organisation the curatorial staff explains the approach of this years show with the theme 'We don't need another hero', a title taken by the Tina Turner song of the 80's. Main curator is Gabi Ngcobo, a South African curator, her cv you can find here.
She formed a curatorial team existing of Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, Seruberi Moses, Thiago de Paula Souza and Yvette Mutumba.

Curatorial Statement

'We don't need another hero' has been chosen as a title for what the curators consider a strategy to deal with the 'actually spread condition of a collective psychosis', referring to probably international racial and immigrational fixations in current politics and media (this is not so clearly mentioned in the curatorial statement). "The participants face the current ongoing fears and worries in our time - fears that are multiplied by the neglect of complicated subjectivities". To deal with inner conflicts and accepting them as enduring entities is one of the themes of the Biennale of 2018. The "School of Anxiety" is one of the curatorial projects by Serubiri Moses, next to 'Strange Attractors' by Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, an "exercise in uncertainty". How to deal with these fears and anxieties? The longing to solve it by clinging to an international heroic figure is rejected, instead of that wish, the curators state 'the political potential of strategies of self preservation'. "Strict knowledge systems and standardised historical narratives" though are rejected not to be the solution also. "Alternative configurations of knowledge and power, that accept contradictions and complications" are preferred.

Installation of Sinethemba Twalo and Jabu Arnell in the KW top floor

I know more or less what is meant and there will be a whole body of thought and theory behind it (unfortunately I didn't see a  literature overview), maybe rooted in experience that will be practically unknown to me, as a 'white' European male, university schooled, with a degree from a prestiguous art academy in Europe, who was able to travel and develop a vision on contemporary art and democratic politics, from a Western perspective, and always having lived in a reasonable affluent society, with many opportunities to be grabbed for a middle class kid at 18.

But why do I get a feeling at the presentation that the curatorial narrative of the current Biennale is rather aggressively blaming the exclusive mindsets of a Western professional artistic class that I do understand but of which, even as an artist, am not really a part of? Ngcobo is even using the phrase "We are in war", seemingly meaning a war of narratives battling for dominance in the professional, institutional art context and thereout, a battle between a postcolonial, African or Euro-post-African (art) elite, trying to conquer the art discours and fighting a class of Western curators that might have had a one eyed view on art slightly too long, being embedded too much in the dominant worldview on accumulation and exploitation on a world scale (as in a famous book of sociologist Samir Amin) and its concomitant symbolic systems, in jargon: 'narratives'?


The claim seems to be stretched to the whole Western , colonial, civilisation, in its past Eurocentric narratives (that need to be reappropriated) and the current post colonial "West", though. Or course I know, in economy and politics, there are still multinational companies, backed by their governments, intervening on a permanent big scale to grab natural resources and waging war when necessary and using cultural dominant narratives that deny the articulation of oppressed groups. Attacking these classes and mind sets would be a bit more specific of the curators although those narratives may be omnipresent in media, educational institutes and even contemporrary art. Now, even a struggling artist or curator who happens to be born in Europe or the Usa, might be part of 'that' mind set, so the not outspoken assertion suggests, as if no resurrections and oppositional movements ever took place in 'The West' and 'revolutionary' views and approaches in the artistic realms never were there. Or is the statement of curator Ngcobo in particular directed against neo colonial mind sets? I guess so, but how do I find out? Not in the curatorial statement which uses terms that are not specified too much.

Video installation in ZK/U

Luckily, when you roam through the exhibition spaces, the artists themselves seem to have focused on their work, not seeming too busy with the discours or narrative battle of Ngcobo's fight going on over their backs. Of course 'we', and I mean we, the artists, whether we are European or African rooted, or both, we, in the end have to make the works that fit our minds and, in the end, are more or less influenced by this 'war'... I think the curator's statement at the press and invited's preview was more of a provocative media statement and I am eager to find out more on the intellectual background of it.

ZK/U is a relatively recently subsidized art space in a former industrial area in the Moabit neighbourhood.




THe Berlin Biennale opens Friday June 8th in the night and runs till September 6th 2018. More information via the Berlin Biennale website.
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Radio Neverno PODCAST LIVE session 3 juli 2015

Hier kunt u de podcast van de Radio Neverno show van 3 juli 2015 in Arti et Amicitiae in AMSTERDAM beluisteren.

Met Elhabib Art, Studio Kinematix, Maarten Schmidt, Dirk van Lieshout, 't Gaepend Gat & Amber-Helena Reisig.

Performances en interviews.

Presentatie door Hans Kuiper en Moritz Ebinger.

De interviews zijn in het Nederlands. Alleen het interview met Studio Kinematix is in het Engels.
Live performances door Elhabib Art (El Andalous liederen en improvisaties), STudio Kinematix (sound performance) en Amber/Helena Reisig (gedichten).


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Here you can find the podcast of the July 3rd session of RADIO NEVERNO.

Guests are Elhabib Art, Studio Kinematix, Maarten Schmidt, Dirk van Lieshout, 't Gaepend Gat & Amber-Helena Reisig.

Live performances by Elhabib Art (El Andalous songs and improvisations) and Studio Kinematix (sound performance) .

All interviews in Dutch except with Studio Kinematix. After the performance the interview was conducted in English.

A.K. Bouwman, Amber-Helena Reisig en Moritz Ebinger

RADIO NEVERNO: podcast radio or streaming radio?

By Hans Kuiper


Moritz Ebinger and I had a discussion whether it would make still sense to stream radio with knowing almost for sure that there will not be a large audience at the actual moment of streaming.

Next to solving the technical problems facing streaming, which appear not to be that complex nowadays, although you have to be somewhat tech savvy, is it worth all the effort and costs?

The budget for the radio station (can we still use this name or should we use the words podcast station?) is so low that first we could not broadcast in a traditional way (yes we could have, but who will pay and how) and second we are only able to communicate the project mainly in social media.

Another solution is then to do the interviews, live, record them and put them online afterwards. Then you can communicate it as an archive of interviews with artists and performance registrations.

So, the focus becomes twofold: first the event as a performative event, in a hall with public and guests that do performances and second putting the podcasts online. The traditional 'radio concept' (so traditional ethereal broadcasting or even streaming online radio) is subverted, it also seems outdated more and more, as people don't tend to listen to programs that long anymore.

I did some resarch and interviews with how people use radio nowadays. In the Netherlands, most people only listen to radio in their car, while driving. Then they, next to listening to services like Spottify on their media player, also listen to a selection of stations, pre selections to be more specific. As a newcomer you don't seem to have much chance if you are not able to generate advertising or better communicative power to get your message accross that you are actually making radio on the spot.

Well, an illussion less? No, the project only transforms. First in our minds, second, during the actual project, that will take 4 weeks. Capitalism dictates the conditions of production also here? Or is that a rather simple way of blaming others in stead of taking your own responsibility and work a little harder? Online radio still faces challenges of really reaching a public, combined with making interesting content so they will come back.

We will have fun anyhow, but building a streamin or even ethereal art radio station that really attracts a steady public requires a huge amount of energy, people and...yes, money.

PS

Our podcast can be listned directly via our SOUNDCLOUD PAGE