Spoken Beat Night
Spoken word artist Jeannine Valeriano and her team of (guest) musicians and drawing artists - together Spoken Beat Night - create cross-over concerts in which jazz, spoken word, world music, readings, live animation and funky beats merge. The two artists do live sketches, which are personal and imagistic interpretations of the text. Spoken Beat Night plays with language; the team, plus top musicians from the comopolitan world of improvised music, pull the writers' words into the world of sound. With Jeannine Valerio (vocals), Maarten Ornstein (bass clarinet, saxophone and electronics), guitarist Paul Pallesen, illustrator and animator Floor de Goede, drawing artist Hans van de Meulengraaf, cellist Jörg Brinkmann and – in Saturday Night Unlimited - as a guest Nizar Rohana on oud.
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Archive available for: Spoken Beat Night
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IS: The Counter-Narrative
The so-called Islamic State is more than a band of rebels or a terror network. Their campaign of terror in conquered villages and cities, their terrorist attacks in Europe, and their written and visual propaganda looks and sounds like a coherent horror story of "the enemy" as well as a recruitment campaign for potential international jihadists. IS publish a glossy magazine and put masses of energy into the recruitment of sympathizers among youth who are seeking identity and meaning in the virtual world. And they don't limit themselves to Muslim youth. In short, IS understands the power of the word and greatly emphasizes the imagination.
In IS: The Counter-Narrative, Hassnae Bouazza directs the conversation about how to counteract the horror campaign and propaganda machine. Dutch-Kurdish Beri Shalmashi offers up a video essay about similar groupings, visual representation and propaganda. Frank Westerman takes us into the past and shows how we in the Netherlands have reacted to extremist acts, and how we could now choose the right words and actions to win the battle of ideas. Arnon Grunberg gets under the skin of jihadists from the West, and wonders whether their existential motivation diverges fundamentally from that of an average Western military on a mission. Rodaan Al Galidi shows us the bigger picture of the relationship between Europe and the Middle East and presents his vision of how to understand IS as a symbol of today's transnational world. He also provides the night's finale in the form of a performed poem; the musical epilogue is by Jeanine Valeriano and her Spoken Beat Night.
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IS: The Horror Show
A late-night show about a daring subject: today's campaign of terror by the Islamic State within and outside the Arabic world. Iraqi-born writer Hassan Blasim - The Guardian called him "perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive" - reads from his short story collection The Corpse Exhibition (2014) in which he pictures daily life in contemporary Iraq not only by vivid, lurid and violent scenes but by showing the surreal, humoristic and enchanting sides of his characters. The collection is published in its Dutch language version titled Lijkententoonstelling during Winternachten Festival 2017.
Journalist Hassnae Bouazza discusses the subject with Hassan Blasim, with highly esteemed political essayist Ian Buruma and with Dutch top writer Arnon Grunberg.
How should one analyze staged and theatrically planned murderous acts? What is the relationship between IS's bombastic horror-pathos and the fascist European propaganda of the 1930s?
Spoken Beat Night accompanies Hassan Blasim during the reading from The Corpse Exhibition
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My Secret City
Can the secrets of a city — a collection of microcosms, a collection of past and layered histories — ever be completely and commonly uncovered? The festival asked seven authors to write about their own "secret" cities. Not the city that they see when they walk out the door and onto the street, but the city that they occasionally and unexpectedly come across. Participants read in their own language, with English and Dutch translations projected simultaneously.
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This Is Not America (Part 2)
The unexpected election of businessman Donald Trump as president of the United States will be signed and sealed in Washington this Friday, 20 January. The choice of Trump is seen primarily as a protest by citizens against the established political elite, and a sign of broad discontent among the American public. Is the USA our role model - will voters stand up against the political establishment here as well? In Europe in 2017, significant elections will take place in the Netherlands, France and Germany; the Dutch will be first to go to the ballot box on 15 March to elect their members of parliament. Should we expect a surprise?
In This is Not America, writers and journalists will compare the USA and the Netherlands under the knowledgeable direction of Stephan Sanders. Margriet Oostveen wrote a column for NRC Handelsblad from the US about daily life there; currently she does the same for the Volkskrant about the Dutch from the Netherlands. Bas Heijne offers a broader cultural context for the general discontent; Ian Buruma, a citizen of and expert on both countries, makes comparisons; and Arnon Grunberg reflects on what he hears and sees in the streets of New York and The Hague. Jeanine Valeriano and her Spoken Beat Night finish up the evening with a sparkling performance. -
This Is Not America (part 1)
A late-night show about the United States of America that touches on many issues, from the shrinking middle class to the differences between whites and blacks, from hopeful new immigrants to the embittered white underclass. The America of the supporters of Donald Trump. A discussion between bestselling US author Colson Whitehead, Bolivian author Rodrigo Hasbún, Dutch writer Christine Otten and Anglo-Dutch writer Ian Buruma about America in the era of president Trump. Stephan Sanders moderates the conversation and Spoken Beat Night adds a jazzy musical interpretation of the American story.
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In the Mirror of Refugees
The image that refugees have of Europe does not match the reality they experience upon arrival. Europe is a fiction. German-Azerbaijani writer Olga Grjasnowa wrote about the displaced in a globalized world; the Russian Michaïl Sjisjkin translated for asylumseekers in Vienna for years, which led to his novel Venus Hair; and novelist and filmmaker Hassan Blasim fled Irak and ended up turning his experiences into a book in Finland. Dutchman Tommy Wieringa delved into the motives of refugees for Dit zijn de namen (These Are the Names). What do they find in Europe? Moderator: Jeroen van Kan.
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Winternachten lecture: Fiction in Fake Times
What is real, what is fake? And yet it's the fabrications that can provide insight into the world in which we live. The Anglo-Dutch Michel Faber, who kicks off the evening with the Winternachten Lecture about reality and fantasy, creates a future world in his novels, just like Dutch writer Hanna Bervoets. Czech economist Tomáš Sedláček sees parallels between economics and old myths, and Mircea Cărtărescu, also a translator of Bob Dylan lyrics, filled his trilogy about Communist Romania with mythical escapes from reality. Moderator: Lex Bohlmeijer.