Author Archives: cultureweeklyradboud

Action Figurines and Grocery Lists: Creating a Transmedia Archive from the 1970s

By Eva Schellingerhout, student in Arts and Culture Studies

I got introduced to the cut-throat world of copyright and intellectual property at the tender age of eleven, watching a mini-documentary series with my father, called The Toys That Made Us. The series, in its attempt to follow the genealogy of famous childhood toys, exposed the bureaucratic slap-fight that occurred in the 70s and 80s over the merchandising rights to the latest Star Wars or He-Man. Corporate espionage, stolen trademarks, leaked product designs — it was a wild, dangerous world that endlessly intrigued me. This interest resurfaced when I was tasked with making my own transmedia story — I was going to create my own slap-fight, a company that would have competed with the likes of Kenner and Mattel at the heights of this ‘Toy War’. In the end, it became less a company, and more of a living, breathing person: David Kerr, a fictional toy product developer in the 70s, is contracted by a franchise to create a toy line, to accompany their upcoming film and collects his mementos of the work project in an archive box, where they sit, forgotten, for decades. The objects in the box are myriad: through advertisement blurbs, communication between the product designer and the client company, editor notes and sketches, the failings of a bled-dry franchise can be pieced together, alongside details about David’s personal life.

The archive brings two different branches of intermedial storytelling together: the ‘classical’ model of intermediality, Jenkin’s spatial transmedia “commercial franchise” and David Kerr’s personal life, which interacts with thing theory, archives and personal memory (Ryan 4).

Following Heersmink’s model, my archive functions as an ‘autopography’, a “network of evocative objects” which “provides stability and continuity for … autobiographical memory and narrative self” and through interacting with these objects “we construct … our personal identity” or the “narrative self” (1846; 1830). I.e. by interacting with the evocative objects in the storage box, we construct a narrative for the product developer. During the process, the viewer endows objects with autobiographical meaning, imagining the relation between human actor and object. To promote this ‘endowing’ I aged the objects, scrunched up and tore the complaint letter and left out specific information. On a larger scale, how the ‘viewer’ chooses to construct the narratives they find in the box, whether this is the first or second branch or a combination of both, can be seen as cryptographic narratives being at play. The cryptographic narrative was conceptualised for video games that obscure a secondary, parallel story in their text not necessary for game completion, which can only be accessed through dedicated effort (Paklons and Tratseart 168). Because my project is also interactive and deals with constructing narratives out of “disparate plot points”, in a co-creation process between author and viewer, but also never confirms whether the constructed narrative is ‘correct’, the cryptographic narrative is a useful framework (Paklons and Tratseart 170).

Superficially, the storage box forms two branches of theory, or rather, invites two different modes of interaction, as I suggested earlier: the viewer can either connect with the commercial franchise, in the form of adverts and film posters, or with David Kerr, via grocery lists and sticky notes. In practice, this is a crude simplification of the inner workings of the box. Naturally, I cannot dictate which ‘story’ the viewer will find interesting. In essence, all objects can become a part of an infinite number of theoretical cryptographic narratives, at the whims of the viewer, since there exists no hierarchy, or even true division, between plot elements. The theory, therefore, that I outlined above, can be applied to all objects: the two branches exist simultaneously, it all depends on how the viewer interacts with the objects. Does the viewer acknowledge the constructed nature of the archive box and therefore treat the ‘personal memories’ of the product developer as clues instead of real memories, taking a cryptographic approach? Does the viewer see the representations of the commercial franchise as an extension of the narrative self of the product designer? And so on and so forth.

For the actual contents of the box, I compared archival documents, like old Star Wars, Transformers, Marvel, He-Man and Mattel adverts, and how they constructed their brand identity across multiple media (see the first image below this paragraph). For the poster, I drew from 80s fantasy films, like The Dark Crystal, The Labyrinth and The NeverEnding Story (see images 2 and 3). Once I started researching 70s and 80s idiosyncrasies, it became near compulsory to check each detail. It began with googling 1980s travel brochures — at this point my itinerary was much more ambitious — and ended with frantically searching for the computer standard typeface for word processors in the 1970s. It’s Helvetica, for those curious (image 4). All of this was endlessly fascinating to me, but I’ll stop myself, before I start waxing poetry about film poster composition, gauche colouring and standard 70s printing practices. Essentially, the viewer should be able to deduce a vague time estimate based on typography, colour, texture, ‘style’, and composition (image 5).

The biggest problem was verisimilitude — breaking the contract, stepping past David Kerr and inserting emphasis where none would have existed, proclaiming “Yes! This is what you should be looking at!”. An over-reliance on the cryptographic elements would train the viewer to only engage with the objects as potential clues, which would limit their engagement to a very narrow range of emotional investment (images below this paragraph).

The toys, especially, formed a roadblock. I was not just trying to create appealing designs — they would have to fit 70s sensibilities, while also reflecting the restraints David Kerr would have battled with, like time, budget and investor desires (images below this paragraph). When I went back to theory, I was able to put my worries to rest. Wolf writes, “Adaptation into a physical playset [or toy] … involves not so much the adaptation of a narrative, but rather the settings, objects, vehicles, and characters from which a narrative can be interactively recreated by the user” (169). Flattening these characters was integral to making a toy, I realized, which is a great narrative tool for my project at large.

Then, it was just a matter of shackling myself to my desk until my eyes went red and David Kerr had substantially come to life.

There is so much more I could mention about this project. How I arranged the objects in the box, how I re-folded and un-folded paper, the intricacies of all the scrapped product designs and rejected archive objects, how the Namdor logo is made from five typefaces and took an entire day (see image) — but alas.

The Namdor Archive box now rests behind my curtain, buried by a few sunhats, pillows and a children’s microscope. It has ironically, become a truer archive than it had ever previously been — the papers have bent beneath their own weight and some knickknacks from 2024 have found their final resting place inside. The box has already begun to fade from memory. I wait for someone to rediscover Me and David Kerr inside.

Works Cited

Heersmink, Richard. “The Narrative Self, Distributed Memory, and Evocative Objects.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 175, no. 8, 2018, pp. 1829–49. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/45094122.

Hescox, Richard. “The Dark Crystal.” N.d., Pinterest, pin.it/5AYWXOEcU.

Paklons, Ana and An-Sofie Tratsaert. “The Cryptographic Narrative in Video Games: The Player as Detective.” Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre, edited by Anneleen Masschelein et al., UCL Press, 2021, pp. 168–84. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nnwhjt.14.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Transmedia Storytelling: Industry Buzzword or New Narrative Experience?” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, doi.org/10.5250/storyworlds.7.2.0001.

Star Warsaction figurine comic book advertisement. 1977-1978?, Star Wars, www.starwars.com/empire-40th.

Wolf, Mark J. P. “Adapting the Death Star into LEGO: The Case of LEGO Set #10188.” Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, Amsterdam UP, 2018, pp. 169–86. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt207g5dd.16.

Summer Recommendations from the ACW Team

With summer vacation having started for many and drawing closer for others, we thought it would be a good time to ask our staff in Arts and Culture Studies about the cultural things they’ll be enjoying this vacation. If you’re on the lookout for a book, a podcast, an album or an activity to spend your summertime on, look no further, because ACW has some suggestions for you!

Podcast: People I (Mostly) Admire by Steven D. Levitt Episode: Maya Shankar Is Changing People’s Behavior — and Her Own
I love listening to behavioral scientists and how their tiniest intervention can make a change in social systems. This episode talks about different ways in which behavioral economics was applied to increase voter’s turnout (among other fascinating examples) and how as people, embracing change can be daunting but is quite necessary. The entire podcast has a stellar guestlist, and its my cooking companion!
Apoorva Nanjangud, Postdoctoral researcher, MTC

Graphic Novel: My Favorite Thing is Monsters – Emil Ferris
This two-volume graphic novel is a mind-blowing read about a monster-like girl growing up in the vibrant and violent city life of Chicago in the 1960s. The book is one of those rare cases where excellent script writing and intricate graphic storytelling come together. It is also the debut of a 50+ American writer who has spent over two decades working on it.
Maarten de Pourcq

Novel: Julia – Sandra Newman
It takes great courage to re-write a classic novel like Orwell’s 1984, and Newman pulls it off. This retelling of the story from the perspective of Julia is fantastic, especially where dialogues from the original have been copied literally and still manage to twist the original plot.
Edwin van Meerkerk

Poems: Doe het toch maar – Babs Gons, and a novel: Jaguarman – Raoul de Jong
Bookworms who have turned their hobby into their job have a problem: as children, they tried to make each book last as long as possible, but now that reading is their work, the tower of texts that must be read seems to rise in direct proportion to their falling quality, which makes speedy reading both necessary and desired. Not with these two books. Their optimistic realism and real mystique made me want to stay with them.
Anna Geurts, teacher in cultural studies and historian of Dutch and Surinamese travel.

Novel: The Swan Book – Alexis Wright
I would like to recommend this energetic as well as poetic novel from 2013 by the Nobel Prize-worthy Indigenous Australian author Alexis Wright. It has just been translated to Dutch as Het boek van de zwaan, presumably because of its highly topical theme. It’s a sci-fi story about climate change and the injustices inflicted upon Aboriginal people (and how the two are related). I will be reading Praiseworthy, Wright’s latest novel, this summer myself. Or I will try, as it’s 800 pages long! The Swan Book is easier to read on the train to the beach or in your tent in the woods. I wouldn’t exactly call it light reading, but it’s a great reminder of the power of literature and that’s always welcome – in any location.
Dennis Kersten, Lecturer Arts and Culture Studies/ Algemene Cultuurwetenschappen

The Emerald Podcast
For the past few years, I’ve been diving deep into ancient myths, and last year I stumbled upon a podcast that has completely captivated me since. The Emerald podcast is a mesmerising blend of myth, story, music, and imagination, creating an immersive experience (best described as a “sonic journey”) that hooked me from the first episode. This podcast reminds us of the importance of reviving the imaginative and poetic essence of human experience, celebrated by cultures for thousands of years, to address today’s unprecedented challenges.
Britt Broekhaus, project coordinator

Film: Petite Maman, a 2021 French fantasy drama, written and directed by Céline Sciamma
Why I would recommend it: always wished you could have met your parents when they were much younger – or even the same age as you? The film follows a young girl who experiences just that. She copes with the death of her maternal grandmother by bonding with her mother – who she meets in the woods, and who is eight years old, just like she is. It does not take long before she quietly realizes that this stranger is actually her mother in a much younger version. The film is beautifully shot, lovely to look at, thought-provoking, psychologically well constructed and (somehow) strangely credible. It stayed with me for weeks after I saw it. Petite Maman is available on Pathé Thuis.
Helleke van den Braber

Novel: The Book of Love – Kelly Link
I recommend The Book of Love because it is captivatingly strange. I spent the first half of the book having my expectations defied and wondering where on earth the plot was going, and the second half deeply impressed with the way all these widely diverging threads of plot were woven into a coherent whole. This is a book for people who enjoy magical realism, interpersonal drama, and carefully wrought prose.
Julia Neugarten, PhD candidate

Album: ‘The Shape of Fluidity’ – DOOL
This album was put into the world in April 2024 and since then I have been loving it, as it touched something in me. As the artists themselves say: “The theme of the album pitches the concept of identity against the backdrop of a world in constant flux, and deals with change. […] We have to be as fluid as water to navigate ourselves through this ocean of possibilities and uncertainties – and make peace with chaos and impermanence.”
Demi Storm, PhD candidate

TV Program: Rutger en de Nationalisten (2023)
In case your summer is too relaxing, and you are afraid of getting too optimistic about the future, I’d recommend the NPO series Rutger en de Nationalisten (2023). In this series, Rutger Castricum (PowNed) follows a number of nationalists of different flavours in their daily lives and work – from anti-vaxx conspiracist, farmer, politician, or local neighbourhood watch to student association and Friesian car mechanic. The series gives a good and disconcerting insight into a world that might seem far away, but that surrounds us every day. Happy watching!
Anonymous Contributor

Novella: Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson
Both intimate and brutal, Open Water is a beautifully written novella that has made a great impact on me despite its short length. At first glance, it is mostly a love story between a photographer and dancer in London, but unfolds into careful examinations of Black artistry, racial injustice, police brutality and mental health. I love the lyrical prose and musical influence, and have re-read many passages since my first read; it’s the perfect slow read for summer!
Joy Koopman, PhD candidate

TV Program: B&B Vol Liefde
Ja kijk, ik kan nu heel cultureel verantwoord gaan doen, maar we willen deze zomer gewoon allemaal B&B Vol Liefde kijken toch? De afgelopen 3 zomers was dit dé zomerbesteding. Ik was oprecht verdrietig op vakantie omdat ik toen 10 dagen moest missen. Het is super wholesome hoe al die mensen met elkaar omgaan, er zijn vaak mooie natuurbeelden, er komen iconische memes uit en de afleveringen zijn ook lekker lang (ongeveer een uur en dat dan 5x per week) dus dat is perfect. Lekker met je hoofd voor de ventilator als het snikheet is, wijntje erbij.
Maaike van Leendert, lecturer

Exhibition: Spot On – Hairytales in museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
This exhibition is just a small room in a large museum, but it showcases a particularly interesting subject. The way that hair is styled tells us something about social status and belonging to societal groups. Cuts and hairdos expose notions of gender and body image of their time. They reflect norms and are an expression of political protest and resistance. “Hairytales” opens up perspectives on this intimate, symbolic material.
Jeanine Belger, Teacher in Residence

Novel: Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo
At the moment I am (re)reading this classic and I’m just smiling and crying and applauding all the time. Originally published in Italy in 1923 (as La coscienza di Zeno), this novel hasn’t lost anything of its power and ingenuity. Memorable protagonist, a continuous embarassing self-analysis. Every sentence is to be savoured.
Natascha Veldhorst

Concert on September 26/27: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds “The Wild God Tour” in Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome.
The 26th is already sold out but there are still tickets available for the 27th. Cave’s approach to culture and literature has been an inspiration to me as a student and later as a teacher. Rarely do I come across a band or a song where music and lyrics so powerfully transform one another, yielding layers of meaning that are as much scary as they are uplifting, often bordering on the sublime. I always enjoy coming back to his art, which is why recommend this upcoming concert.
Laszlo Muntean, assistant professor of visual culture and some other stuff

Novel: The Wall (Die Wand) – Marlen Haushofer (1963)
My recommendation is one of my favorite novels of all time: The Wall by Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer. This is an ecofeminist novel about a woman who wakes up in a cabin in the woods to realize she is separated from the rest of the world by a transparent wall. The forest and a few animals are her only companions, creating difficult conditions for survival, but also stimulating her to document her daily activities and thoughts about being the only human among nonhumans. The world the book creates is, despite its dystopian elements, a wonderful place to immerse oneself in during a summer break. After reading, you can also enjoy the film adaption (Pösler, 2012), but I would recommend you to first imagine the world this moving book creates by yourself.
Rianne Riemens, PhD candidate

The header image for this blogpost was created by Courtney McGough and shared on Flickr under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

A Nooge’s Notes to Self: Amy Winehouse In Her Own Words

Dennis Kersten

According to her parents, Amy Winehouse was quite a private person before she became famous as the voice of her generation. As a young girl she’d spend ages in her bedroom writing and drawing stuff she’d typically keep to herself. Even as an artist she would never play her family a new song before it was absolutely perfect. You’d think, then, that Winehouse would have dreaded the prospect of the publication of her juvenilia after her death. Little did anyone know that it would come so soon, after a short but commercially as well as critically successful career, which spawned two studio albums, a number of hit singles and many iconic live performances. As last year’s publication of Amy Winehouse In Her Words suggests, there was little difference between public and private Amy. It shows how her early writing actually prepared for the daring candor and self-deprecating humour of her songs.

The book’s arrival was perhaps inevitable as well: posthumous releases of musicians’ private papers have become something of a staple of pop life writing. The last couple of decades have seen the publication of Kurt Cobain’s Journals (2002), The John Lennon Letters (2012), Jimi Hendrix’ Starting at Zero: His Own Story (2013), Ian Curtis’ So This Is Permanence (2014) and Prince’s The Beautiful Ones (2019). Some of these piece together a more or less complete autobiographical narrative by carefully sequencing extant journal fragments, quotes from interviews and song lyrics (Hendrix), while others bring together facsimile of letters, notebooks and other memorabilia without too much interference from curators or editors (Curtis). Amy Winehouse’s book falls in between these categories and most resembles Prince’s memoir, which supplements His Purpleness’ own writing with editorial commentary and pre-fame photographs from family albums.  

In Her Words was compiled by Winehouse’s parents and is divided into several sections, from “Early Years” and “School Days” to “Fame” and “Legacy”. All of these are prefaced by short biographical chapters by Janis Winehouse-Collins and Mitch Winehouse, who also provide commentary to the visual material. The latter confirms that Winehouse was an “obsessive documenter” (16) of her own life from an early age onwards. She loved making lists: of words to describe herself (“loud, bright, bold, DRAMATIC, MELODRAMATIC”), but also of her “trademarks” as an artist (“walking bass, sweet jazz chords, hip hop beats”). Some of her notes can be read as memos to herself (“New rule: always track m8’s/ layer harmonies over em”). We learn that Winehouse was given the nickname of “Nooge” by her mother, “a Yiddish word that means she was always pushing the boundaries” (37). Even funnier is the letter in which the gobby young Amy tells the story of how she is nicknamed “Main Mouth” by a boy she meets on holiday, who subsequently christens her two best friends “Mouth 2” and “Mouth 3” (93).

The closer Winehouse gets to adulthood, the longer and more seriously self-reflective her writing becomes. Some reviewers have called In Her Words a “sanitised” portrait, a criticism Janis and Mitch anticipate by writing that “Despite what many people presume or have written about Amy’s life in the past, we’re hard-pressed to find much torment or misery in any of her writings” (15). There are definitely stories missing and Janis and Mitch sometimes seem at a loss as to how to read the prose poems and diary-like pages from their daughter’s (late-)adolescence. They comment less frequently on texts from this period, which does leave room for readers to interpret these more emotional texts independently. On the whole, the book is a treat for fans, who are having a field day anyway, with the recent release of Sam Taylor-Wood’s biopic Back to Black, starring Marisa Abela.

A Losing Game

Naturally, any book about a tempestuous life like Amy Winehouse’s – or, indeed, any human life – will have to make compromises as to what to include and what not, even if its title or its whole paratextual presentation may imply that readers will get the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In the end, even life writing texts that “simply” let their auto/biographical subjects speak through the private papers they left behind only offer interpretations of those people’s life stories – or especially such texts, as the material they share with the world is necessarily curated and, thus, an inevitable framing of fact. It’s the eternal dilemma facing all auto/biographers: it’s impossible to represent “the whole truth” without form, but form has the nasty habit of shaping meaning.

So if, as Winehouse sang, love is a losing game, then life writing is at least… complicated. Perhaps the more so in biographies, texts that write the lives of others, even if the biographical and autobiographical are never easily separated (hence, the use of the slash in “auto/biography” by life writing scholars). Indeed, as Joanna Biggs writes in her LRB review of Catherine Lacey’s novel Biography of X (2023), “The problem with biography is that it’s impossible.” Of course, all depends on what you expect life narratives to do, but the representation of actual people in writing is never as perfectly factual, objective and disinterested as some auto/biographies want us to believe.

The “problem” of biography may actually explain many readers’ fascination for “real life” stories, but perhaps also why biofiction – the merging of fact and fiction in, for example, novels about historical individuals – remains one of life writing’s most popular sub-genres. Fiction is form shaping meaning without fixing it. Or, to borrow from Michel Foucault, fiction is form shaping a proliferation of meaning. Biofiction, especially when it writes the lives of artists, also offers the opportunity to refer to the work of its subjects without suggesting one-to-one correspondences between life and art. In fictionalised life narratives about authors, you can let their own fiction speak again (and for itself), raising fundamental questions about the relation between life and art as well as the very process of life writing itself. The strongest scenes in Taylor-Wood’s Back to Black may be those in which Amy/ Marisa Abela is seen in action as a singer and performer. Winehouse’s songs and how they are delivered say it all, really. The more so since the film – perhaps deliberately, then – spends more time on Amy’s life beyond the studio and the stage.

Playing with Chronology

As a life writing text, In Her Words has an intriguing and meaningful shape as well. The order in which the story is told contributes to the image it construes of, as it says on the back cover, a “girl who became a legend”. It tries to create a more or less coherent and auto/biographically fairly conventional narrative with, among other things, chronologically organised chapters on childhood, school, professional life etc. The book emphasises certain topics while skipping others and there is an interesting dynamic at work in the interaction between the visual material and the accompanying commentary – especially when some writings and/ or photographs are explained and others aren’t.

The book spends quite some time on Winehouse’s childhood and adolescence, while the “Fame” section only starts on p. 230 (of 288) and contains more photographs than personal notes; a result, her parents write, of her touring schedule, a lack of privacy and the impact of her addictions. A striking absence is Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse’s former husband. When reading In Her Words – Winehouse’s notes as well as her parents’ commentary – you’d think he never even crossed paths with his wife, while Taylor-Wood’s film turns their love affair into one of its focal points. In their foreword, her parents do once mention the “ill-fated relationship” documented by the Back to Black album (26), but they refrain from naming Fielder-Civil.

In Her Words may be structured rather traditionally chapter-wise, it does play with chronology in a number of significant ways. The highlighted quotes from Winehouse’s writings on spreads of pages not only function to link and comment on parts of her life story, they also generate emotional responses when their dramatic irony is recognised. For example, the final quote of the book reads: “I’ve got all this time to make that happen… I’ve got years to do music”, sentences that acquire the weight of “famous last words” as a consequence of their appearance as some sort of book conclusion. Sometimes, a phrase from a letter or a note is anachronistically superimposed on a photograph from another, often earlier source. One instance is the handwritten Michael Jackson reference “You know Im bad Im bad Im bad” projected onto a picture of a moody young Amy (67), which creates a humorous effect by appealing to readers’ knowledge of Winehouse’s later life.

Apart from these ironic anachronisms, there are also quotes that acquire a specific meaning when taken out of context. In “Early Years”, amid memorabilia of her childhood, Winehouse comments: “Seeing as I was very young, I don’t remember much. But I do remember being an angel” (74). As becomes clear one section later, this apparent retrospective reflection on her younger self is actually lifted from a primary school scrapbook chronicling her appearance in a nativity play as, well, angel (87).

The Genuine Article

Without explaining anything away, In Her Words makes you want to revisit her two studio albums, Frank and Back to Black, as well as wonder about the connections between Winehouse’s private writing and her songs. As said, the book adds to the suggestion that her song lyrics organically developed from the autobiographical dimension of her private writing, but it does so while raising the question if Winehouse’s songs should also be listened to as further exploring that writing’s note-to-self aspect. Which is not to say that she’s wasn’t interested in communicating with an audience, or that it’s difficult to identify with the very personal emotions she processed through songs like “What Is It About Men” and “You Know I’m No Good”. She was never so pretentious as to present her own experiences as symbolising the “human condition” – to put it MELODRAMATICALLY. But even without intentionally universalising personal pain, Winehouse clearly struck a chord with fans who love her music not only because they recognise themselves in her stories, but also because she told these with such brutal honesty.

She certainly wasn’t some kind of ten-a-penny, sweet-talking singer-songwriter; “Main Mouth” could be tough as well – both on others and herself. In fact, most music fans’ first introduction to Amy Winehouse will have been her debut single and Frank opening track “Stronger Than Me”, in which she effectively disses a “weak” boyfriend by, among other things, asking him if he is gay. (Fittingly, in Taylor-Wood’s film, Winehouse’s harder side is first revealed via the scene in which she dumps said boyfriend.) Equally vulnerable and defiant, she was real: in an industry in which authenticity is so often just another performance, Amy Winehouse stood out as the genuine article. To her parents’ credit, In Her Words doesn’t hammer home the message. But then again, there’s no need with the kind of material it so beautifully presents.

The Hidden Curriculum

By Edwin van Meerkerk

For the past year and a half I have had a series of intensive talks with lecturers and students all over campus. This is part of an educational innovation project on sustainability in education. Since I am specialized in – and fascinated by – teaching and learning, this project is also a way to dive more deeply into the question what we are talking about when we’re talking about education – or rather: what are we doing when we’re ‘doing education’? For this project, we visited every nook and cranny of our campus and met with staff and students from 38 bachelor’s programmes. And while our ‘sample’ of lecturers and students is not statistically representative, some patterns are starting to emerge that go beyond the specific group of people we talked to.

We started our first interview by asking students and lecturers to describe their programme in two or three sentences – as if they were at a family gathering and an aunt or uncle asks “what is it you’re studying again?” All save one of our 76 interviewees answered by describing the content of the curriculum: “my study is about …” That may seem logical, but it is highly problematic, given that in the subsequent interviews and workshops we organized, we found a consistent pattern of focus on the content (also referred to as “the basis” or “the core”) and a disturbing silence when it came to identifying what students are able to do with that content. Both lecturers and students found it very hard to tell which skills, attitudes, or competencies students learn. Digging deeper into this matter, we found that (luckily) students actually do learn important skills, but that in many cases these skills were not assessed or given feedback on. We call this the hidden curriculum.

This hidden curriculum at universities is a curriculum that, in the words of one of the participant lecturers, was “who we really are”. Students across disciplines affirmed that they could recognise fellow students by these skills and attitudes as different from students in other disciplines. But how do students acquire these skills? As one lecturer put it, between classes “magic happens”, without the lecturers explicitly guiding or steering students in this learning process. We then tried to make this explicit by asking lecturers and students to make a storyboard of the learning process, visualising student activity during a course. This proved to be a difficult, but often revealing exercise. Reflecting on one’s learning process, developing critical thinking skills, learning to work in teams are key objectives, yet they very likely happen outside our lecture halls.

It is time that we recognise that the most important aspect of our discipline is not what it is about, but what we want our students to be able to do with the content we are treating in class. Only then can we answer why it is important for cultural students to be able to analyse films, songs, visual art, theatre, and poetry; why it is extremely relevant for students (and for society) that people are trained to critically analyse cultural practices and policy. Because we are just as relevant as any other discipline, from Economy to Physics, from Computing Science to Psychology. The world needs public servants, journalists, educators, and other professionals who are able to critically reflect on the cultural aspect of the global crises we are in the middle of: climate, migration, housing, social safety, discrimination, and war. And we do teach them that – we just don’t always know how.

Do you want to think with us in opening up our hidden curriculum? Send me a message at edwin.vanmeerkerk@ru.nl.

Ficcability: Television, Fanfiction and Feelings

By Julia Neugarten

When I am feeling down, I watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, an early-2000’s dramedy about a mother, her teenage daughter, and their romantic entanglements in the idyllic town of Stars Hollow. Now, before you point out all the ways that Gilmore Girls has aged poorly – and yes, it has classist and fatphobic undertones and the way it portrays Korean Americans leaves much to be desired – I want to note that the show is also optimistic, kind-hearted, clever, funny, and female-centric. In short, Gilmore Girls is (almost) everything I look for in a feel-good show.

Here’s something else I tend to do when I’m feeling low: I read fanfiction – or fic – on Archive of Our Own, one of the largest English-language fanfiction websites. Because of the way the archive is structured, I can look for stories that either allow me to wallow in my self-pity (which we call angst in fanfiction-jargon) or stories that pick me up and fill me with warm fuzzy feelings (which we call fluff). Natalia Samutina described fanfiction as “emotional landscapes of reading,” because it lets readers curate their emotional trajectory this way.1 My own recent research also shows that some responses to fanfiction praise stories for their capacity to bring about specific emotions, especially comfort.

I am satisfied with my coping strategies. I’m sure everyone feels sad from time to time, but a Gilmore Girls + fanfic double whammy never fails to cheer me up, which is why I find it strange that very little fanfiction has been written about Gilmore Girls. And since I am a data-driven scholar of fanfiction, I decided to quantify this matter: which TV shows generate a lot of fanfiction? Which generate almost none? What could explain the difference in fanfiction production between these shows?

Here are some TV shows I randomly hand-picked, visualized with the number of fanfics written about them on Archive of Our Own as counted at the start of 2024.2

How many stories?

Works of fanfiction per TV fandom

If you’re familiar with TV fandom, the numbers I found probably don’t surprise you. After all, some of these shows have had much more time to accrue a committed fanbase than others, and some also have many more episodes. So, let’s divide the number of stories written about each show by the number of years that have passed since it first aired; that’s the amount of time they’ve had to accrue fanfiction.

Fanfiction Production Over Time, Seasons, and Episodes

Works of fanfiction per year

Our Flag Means Death comes out as the clear winner here. Since its inception in 2022, this show has had a very active and vocal fanbase. But Our Flag Means. Death has only had two seasons; what is the effect of that?

Works of fanfiction per show’s seasons

In this comparison, the clear winner is Sherlock, which has a meager four seasons. Sherlock generated an impressive 29.000 works of fanfiction per season, almost 30% more than the runner up, Teen Wolf, which averages a little more than 20.000 stories per season over six seasons.3 When looking at the average number of stories produced per episode, Sherlock also comes out as the clear winner with more than 9.000. Runner-up Stranger Things has a little over 2.000. This could be due to Sherlock’s unusual format, which consisted of very few episodes per season, all of which were movie-length.

Works of fanfiction per episode

We can conclude that Sherlock fandom has been unusually industrious. But Sherlock isn’t the reason I decided to run these numbers; Gilmore Girls is. In all these comparisons, Parenthood, Desperate Housewives, This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy and Gilmore Girls are consistently the lowest scorers. These shows have inspired fewest fics overall, fewest works per episode, per season, and per year. Why? What do these shows have in common?

Introducing Ficcability

To explain this phenomenon, I propose the concept of ficcability: the extent to which a particular tv show or other narrative invites, inspires, and encourages the production of fanfiction. This concept builds on Henry Jenkins’ idea of drillability.4

“the ability for a person to explore, in-depth, a deep well of narrative extensions when they stumble upon a fiction that truly captures their attention.”

Jenkins’ notion of drillability calls attention to the fact that not all stories are equally open to interventions and extensions from the audience, and that formal features of the story, such as the perceived depth and extensibility of the narrative, can either invite or discourage rewriting and transformation.

The Unficcable: Emotions-Only Shows

So, what makes a story ficcable? In her 2008 analysis of fan discourse around the TV show Roswell, Louisa Ellen Stein found that fans distinguished between two types of shows, which they called Emotions-Only and Special People-shows.5 As explained by a fan:

“Special People programs focus on talented individuals who face conflict from without, whereas Emotions-Only programs feature ‘normal’ characters whose conflicts come from within themselves and from their relationships with each other.”  

And what do all shows that inspired relatively little fanfiction – Parenthood, Desperate Housewives, This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy and Gilmore Girls –  have in common? That’s right; they are Emotions-Only shows. These shows are about families, colleagues, neighbors, and lovers, about the (mis)communications that structure our social world, our desire to be recognized and understood, to share, to connect, to belong. They are comfort shows, in the sense that their emphasis on emotional trajectories can be comforting to watch. These shows help us navigate our feelings and desires by showing us characters who struggle to negotiate social situations we may recognize from our own lives. Additionally, these shows tend to emphasize emotional fulfillment and happy endings for their characters, essentially closing off the narrative. This focus makes narratives such as Gilmore Girls emotionally satisfying. I hypothesize that this makes fanfiction less necessary to give audiences the emotional and narrative closure they seek.

The Ficcable: Special People Shows

By contrast, shows that inspire a lot of fanfiction – Supernatural, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, and Stranger Things – are Special People programs. Their protagonists are monster hunters, genius detectives, werewolves or members of a select group who have access to another world. These shows emphasize action over feeling, plot over person, exterior action over interior character development. These are shows where the narrative tension and structure comes from dramatic encounters with monsters, villains, and crimes, where personal and emotional responses to these dramas are sidelined to make room for action and excitement. Supernatural rarely lingers on the emotional strain of hunting monsters. Later seasons of Sherlock turned attention to the relationship between Sherlock and John, but complicated murder mysteries always remained more central to the plot than feelings. Because of their emphasis on plot, these shows leave an emotional gap that fanfiction communities are then inspired to fill.

Storyworld: An Additional Aspect of Ficcability

Ficcability is also impacted by the construction of a storyworld. In shows structured around monsters and mysteries, the plot is endlessly extensible. In the world of a show like the X-Files or Supernatural, there is always a new monster to fight, a new mystery to solve. As a result, these storyworlds capture the imagination, inviting fanfiction communities to come up with their own fantastical creatures and improbable situations. These adventurous worlds might invite more fanfiction than the ostensibly realistic storyworld – small-town America – of a show like Gilmore Girls.

So ficcability is a property of a TV show that relates both to the imaginative potential of its storyworld and to the show’s position on an axis that goes from emotion-oriented to action-oriented.

Problematizing Ficcability

A closer look at Our Flag Means Death (OFMD), the clear winner in the Fics/Year-category, problematizes the concept of ficcability.  OFMD is a show about pirates. It’s heavy on the action and its storyworld is full of adventure. At the same time, interpersonal relationships are central to the show, and the comedy largely comes from the clash between adventure-oriented characters and storylines and the strain these fast-paced plots put on interpersonal relationships.

In one of the funniest moments of the show’s second season, a group of enemy pirates decides not to torture and kill the protagonists. Instead, the enemies mutiny, because they no longer feel that their captain is providing them with an emotionally nurturing work environment. That’s right. An emotionally nurturing work environment. On a pirate ship.

In this scene, OFMD explicitly stages the incompatibility of fictional characters’ emotional fulfillment and their adventurous lifestyles and storyworld. Perhaps it is the show’s acknowledgement of their characters’ emotional needs – in the face of their adrenaline-fueled adventures – that makes it so incredibly ficcable, and perhaps Our Flag Means Death is exploring possibilities for a different kind of TV show – and associated fandom – that combines the ficcable with the emotionally resonant.

This aligns with the observation, taken from Stein’s case study, that some fans praise TV shows’ ability to transcend strict genre categorizations. I hope to see many more transgeneric shows on TV in the future, because they seem eminently ficcable to me!

Many thanks to Fenna Geelhoed for giving feedback on an earlier draft of this blogpost.

Footnotes

  1. Samutina, Natalia. “Emotional Landscapes of Reading: Fan Fiction in the Context of Contemporary Reading Practices.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 20, no. 3, 2017, pp. 253–69, https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877916628238. ↩︎
  2. I am sure other fanfiction platforms, such as Fanfiction.net or Wattpad, have very different distributions over fandoms. ↩︎
  3. This comparison does not account for the fact that fanfiction production is unlikely to be stable over time. ↩︎
  4. Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia Education: The 7 Principles Revisited.” Pop Junctions, 21 June 2010, http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2010/06/transmedia_education_the_7_pri.html. ↩︎
  5. Stein, Louisa Ellen. “‘Emotions-Only’ versus ‘Special People’: Genre in Fan Discourse.” Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 1, Sept. 2008. URL: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.043. ↩︎

Tijdschrift LOVER: 50 jaar feminisme

Door Maaike van Leendert

Anno 2024 is informatie over feminisme overal te vinden, bijvoorbeeld op TikTok en Instagram of in mainstream tijdschriften als LINDA. Dat was in 1974, toen Tijdschrift LOVER werd opgericht, wel anders. Het tijdschrift viert dit jaar haar vijftigjarig jubileum. Tijd voor een korte geschiedenis.

Tijdschrift LOVER ontstond in 1974, in de hoogtijdagen van de tweede feministische golf. Waar de eerste golf zich eind negentiende en begin twintigste eeuw vooral richtte op scholing, arbeid en politieke rechten voor vrouwen, stonden in de tweede golf zaken als legale abortus, recht op kinderopvang en een afschaffing van de wettelijke discriminatie van vrouwen centraal. In Nederland waren er verschillende groepen die zich hard maakten voor deze zaken, zoals de actiegroep Dolle Mina. LOVER was verbonden aan een andere groep: de Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij. In 1974 werd LOVER voor het eerst uitgebracht, toen als bijlage van de MVM-nieuwsbrief. Er was in die tijd behoefte aan structuur in de grote hoeveelheid feministische geschriften die uitkwamen, dus kwam MVM met een LiteratuurOVERzicht: LOVER was geboren (en spreek je tot op de dag van vandaag dus uit als lóóver).

Binnen enkele maanden bleek LOVER zo populair te zijn dat het uitgroeide tot een volwaardig tijdschrift. In eerste instantie bestond het tijdschrift slechts uit twee rubrieken: ‘signalementen’ – tientallen pagina’s aan bronvermeldingen – en ‘teksten’ – recensies van een aantal van die publicaties. Na een paar jaar veranderde dit langzaam. In 1977 stelde prominente feministe Andreas Burnier dat het feminisme geen visie had, een one-issue-beweging werd en te veel in de schuldvraag bleef hangen. Hierover werd gediscussieerd in volgende LOVER-uitgaves, waardoor LOVER van literatuuroverzicht steeds meer in een discussieforum veranderde. Verschillende ‘grote namen’ binnen het Nederlandse feminisme, zoals Maaike Meijer, Anja Meulenbelt en Gloria Wekker, publiceerden in LOVER. Begin jaren tachtig had het tijdschrift zo’n 3000 abonnees en werd het daarnaast in zestig boekhandels door heel Nederland verkocht.

In de loop van de jaren tachtig ontstond er langzaam meer discussie en bewustzijn over de invloed van bijvoorbeeld racisme, en werd steeds duidelijker dat ‘vrouwen’ niet altijd over een kam geschoren konden worden. LOVER ging ook steeds verder naar buiten kijken. Zo werd in 1986 de rubriek ‘Feministische Tijdschriften Internationaal’ geïntroduceerd, waarin niet alleen de tijdschriften uit andere landen besproken werden, maar ook inzicht werd gegeven in de feministische bewegingen buiten Nederland en ook buiten het westen. Tegenwoordig richt LOVER zich op intersectioneel feminisme.

In 1981 vond LOVER een vast onderkomen aan de Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, waar ook het Informatie- en Documentatiecentrum voor de vrouwenbeweging, de Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst en de Van Leeuwenbibliotheek waren ondergebracht. Jarenlang vond het stabiliteit, met een vaste uitgever en abonnees, en redactievergaderingen die wekelijks een hele dag in beslag namen.

Dat is nu wel anders. In 2007 begon LOVER, meegaand met de tijd, ook online te publiceren, en door afnemende abonnee-aantallen besloot het tijdschrift in 2011 volledig te stoppen met de papieren uitgave. Het format veranderde daardoor drastisch: in plaats van vier keer per jaar een uitgave waarvoor betaald moest worden, werd er vanaf 2011 meerdere keren per week een gratis artikel gepubliceerd. Momenteel publiceert LOVER naast artikelen van haar eigen redactieleden ook stukken die tot stand zijn gekomen binnen samenwerkingen met het tijdschrift Raffia en de organisaties Samen naar de Kliniek en Stem Op Een Vrouw.

Vanaf het begin heeft LOVER vooral op vrijwilligers gedraaid en ook anno 2024 werkt iedereen bij LOVER onbezoldigd. Dat brengt de nodige uitdagingen met zich mee: drukke agenda’s staan het tegenwoordig niet meer toe om hele maandagen te vergaderen en nu er ook geen abonnementsgeld meer binnenkomt, is het financieel soms krap. Daarom is LOVER ter ere van het vijftigjarig jubileum een crowdfunding gestart, met als doel nog één keer een fysieke uitgave uit te brengen. Daarin wordt het rijke verleden van het tijdschrift geëerd en is er tevens ruimte voor reflectie op het hedendaagse feministische landschap.

Zonder donaties kan de fysieke uitgave niet gerealiseerd worden. Help jij LOVER bij het behalen van haar doel? De link naar de crowdfunding – die nog tot 22 mei loopt – vind je hier. Neem ook zeker een kijkje bij de tegenprestaties die je voor je gift kunt terugkrijgen.

Behind its mask: postkoloniale mimicry in Radna Fabias’ gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning”

Rosalie Blom schreef dit artikel op basis van haar scriptie voor de bacheloropleiding Algemene Cultuurwetenschappen.

In hoeverre verschaft poëzie ons inzicht in de complexiteit van de wereld waarin we leven? “The writer has chosen to reveal the world,” zo stelt filosoof Jean-Paul Sartre over de intentie van de schrijver; “and particularly to reveal man to other men so that the latter may assume full responsibility before the subject which has been thus laid bare”. Wat hij daarmee zegt is: ongeacht of literatuur instemt met de heersende status quo; zij getuigt wel degelijk van haar aanwezigheid. En niet alleen dat: literatuur legt een bepaalde verantwoordelijkheid bij haar lezer. Wanneer poëzie bepaalde maatschappelijke vraagstukken blootlegt, in hoeverre vallen deze dan nog te negeren?

Het gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning,” afkomstig uit de bundel Habitus (2018) van Radna Fabias, is zo’n voorbeeld van een onvermijdelijk politiek werk: de titel van het gedicht refereert aan een formulier waarmee inburgeraars om ontheffing van het inburgeringsexamen kunnen vragen. Het inburgeringsexamen, de proeve die je moet afleggen om tot Nederland te worden toegelaten, is grofweg een door de Nederlandse overheid opgestelde, ‘scheve deal’: complete culturele loyaliteit in ruil voor burgerschap. De aanvraag “ontheffing wegens aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning” komt in beeld wanneer deze culturele loyaliteit niet duidelijk genoeg blijkt uit dit inburgeringsexamen. “U moet bewijzen dat u het wel hebt geprobeerd”, aldus het formulier (Minder of geen examens: Genoeg cursus en examens gedaan – DUO Inburgeren).

Koloniale patronen

De interactie tussen de immigrant en de Nederlandse overheid vertoont een complex spanningsveld: niet alleen wordt de immigrant geacht kennis te vergaren over de Nederlandse taal en samenleving, maar vooral ook wordt de overname van Nederlandse culturele waarden hier centraal gesteld. Deze beleidsbenadering vertoont parallellen met het koloniale verleden, waarbij de manier van oplegging van bepaalde westerse doctrines vergelijkbaar is met de methoden die kolonisatoren in dit tijdperk hanteerden. Welbeschouwd valt deze oplegging te herkennen als mimicry; een postkoloniaal concept ontwikkeld door literatuurwetenschapper Homi Bhabha. Mimicry is, kortweg, het onvolledig nabootsen van de kolonisator door het gekoloniseerde subject en fungeert binnen postkoloniale literatuur als middel tot verzet tegen de kolonisator wanneer deze imitatie een satirisch karakter heeft.

Vanuit dit kijkvenster kan Fabias’ gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning” gelezen worden als nabootsing van het daadwerkelijke formulier van “ontheffing wegens aantoonbaar geleverde inspanningen” – naast de titel, komt namelijk ook de inhoud van het gedicht overeen met de inhoud van het formulier.

Het Nederlandse culturele archief

De maatschappelijke context van Fabias’ gedicht is de Nederlandse samenleving; en dan specifiek de delen van de samenleving waarmee een inburgeraar in aanraking komt. In het boek Witte onschuld: paradoxen van kolonialisme en ras geeft antropoloog Gloria Wekker invulling aan het culturele archief van Nederland, een term eerder gedefinieerd door literatuurwetenschapper Edward Said om naam te geven aan de opslagplaats van normen en waarden die een bepaalde cultuur tekent.

Said stelde vast dat er in het West-Europese discours sprake is van een westerse Zelf en een oosterse Ander, waarbij het beeld van de Ander (‘de Oriënt’) een westerse constructie is die, in plaats van iets concreets over het oosten te zeggen, vooral iets zegt over westerse machtsuitoefening (Pattynama 158).1 Het westerse Zelf in Nederland is volgens Wekker getroebleerd: er is sprake van een centrale paradox. Nederlanders zien zichzelf als neutraal, tolerant en niet-racistisch, maar ondanks dit zelfbeeld is er in Nederland sprake van witte superioriteit (“white supremacy” (hooks 63)), met als gevolg dat mensen die afwijken van deze witte norm als anders (‘de Ander’) gezien worden.

Gekleurde mensen zullen altijd nog allochtonen blijven, de officiële en zogenaamd onschuldige term voor ‘degenen die van elders kwamen’, waardoor gekleurde mensen eindeloze generaties [lang] worden geracialiseerd en nooit tot het Nederlandse volk zullen gaan behoren. De tegenhanger van ‘allochtonen’ is autochtonen, ‘degenen die van hier zijn’, wat – zoals iedereen weet – slaat op witte mensen. (Wekker 28)

Het culturele archief – de binaire oppositie tussen, in Wekkers woorden, ‘degenen die van hier zijn’ en ‘degenen die van elders komen’ – sijpelt door in hedendaagse structuren, maar blijft verborgen onder het idee van tolerantie. De houding van ‘de westerse Zelf’, of dat nou systemen of individuen zijn, jegens de niet-westerse (lees: niet-witte) Ander, is dus vrij ambigu.

Een tegenstrijdig welkom

Deze ambiguïteit is in het gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning” haarfijn in beeld gebracht. Zo luidt de verteller, haar stem een imitatie van de stem van de Nederlandse beleidsvoerders: “we heten de ballotant welkom”; echter spreekt het voornaamste deel van het gedicht dit warme welkom tegen. Op opsommende wijze is er een lijst van alle sociaal-culturele Nederlandse normen, waarden en kenmerken opgesteld waarover een immigrant, hier een Zwarte vrouw uit Curaçao, zou moeten beschikken om tot de Nederlandse samenleving toegelaten te worden. Het gedicht is geformuleerd in de onvoltooid tegenwoordige tijd met de immigrant (“de ballotant”) als taalkundig onderwerp van de zinnen. Deze keuze transformeert de opeenvolging van beschrijvingen tot een richtlijn van een bevelende aard, maar dan gepresenteerd als een beschrijvende vertelling.

Om het gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning” vanuit een ‘mimicriaanse’ blik te lezen, is het essentieel dat mimicry in haar volledigheid begrepen wordt. Hoewel de term binnen de postkoloniale context gezien wordt als een strategie om koloniale machtsstructuren te ondermijnen, vindt mimicry haar oorsprong in de dynamiek van koloniale overheersing. Mimicry doelt op de wisselwerking tussen ‘de imitatie’ en ‘het origineel’: het draait om “een spanning tussen de hoogstaande idealen van de kolonisators om de gekoloniseerde gebieden ‘te verlichten’ en hun verlangen deze gebieden ‘dom’ en ‘onderworpen’ te houden” (Wurth en Rigney 386-387). Binnen dit koloniale discours is het doel dat het gekoloniseerde subject verlicht en ‘hetzelfde’ als de kolonisator wordt, zij het niet volledig; het streven blijft om het ondergeschikt te houden.

Het gedicht werpt licht op de manieren waarop deze vermeende ‘verlichting’ nog steeds een rol speelt in het hedendaagse immigratiebeleid. Zo wordt van de immigrant verwacht dat zij haar afrokapsel aanpast naar een “gepast kapsel” en dat zij haar moedertaal verruilt voor de “taal van de voormalig eigenaar”. Ze “gebruikt de heupen minder bij het dansen” en “beheerst de woede”, waarmee wordt verwezen naar westerse stereotypen over emotionaliteit en seksualiteit van Zwarte vrouwen (“Black, that is to say African Diasporic, women are generally seen as “too liberated,” with a rampant sexuality”, zo stelt Wekker in haar artikel “Diving into the Wreck: Exploring Intersections of Sexuality, ‘Race,’ Gender, and Class in the Dutch Cultural Archive” (161)).

Met zinsneden als “verbergt haar brandmerken” wordt niet alleen verwezen naar de periode van slavernij, maar ook naar de manier waarop dit verleden in de Nederlandse samenleving vaak verzwegen wordt, wat een van de vele praktijken is die herkenbaar is uit het culturele archief. Deze verwijzingen illustreren de voortdurende invloed van koloniale denkbeelden en praktijken op hedendaagse maatschappelijke structuren en attitudes, die de assimilatie van de immigrant nog steeds bepalen en haar dwingen om haar eigen identiteit en geschiedenis te verloochenen.

De imitatie van de immigrant blijkt op beperkte wijze mogelijk, aangezien veel natuurlijke kenmerken zoals haar en huidskleur niet zomaar kunnen worden veranderd – de immigrant blijft, in de woorden van Bhabha, “almost the same, but not white” (89). De mimicry, zoals deze hier op klassieke koloniale wijze voordoet, toont dat de Nederlandse overheid streeft naar het behoud van volledige controle en macht. De immigrant moet aan de Nederlandse witte normen voldoen, waarvan de onmogelijkheid van die eis resulteert in een hiërarchie op basis van (ras en) kleur.

De kracht van mimicry

Wat is, naast deze verwijzingen, dan de concrete wijze waarop het gedicht een illustratie is van mimicry als verzetsmiddel? Mimicry maakt gebruik van de cultuur van de koloniserende partij als een lens waardoor naar de kolonisator wordt gekeken. De kern van dit postkoloniale gebruik van mimicry is dat het initiatief van de imitatie ligt bij de (voormalig) gekoloniseerde. In plaats van passief het proces van gedwongen ‘verlichting’ te ondergaan en daarbij inherent inferioriteit te ervaren, is de gekoloniseerde zich actief bewust van de noodzaak tot imitatie en gebruikt zij het verschil dat haar inferieur zou maken als een middel om macht te verwerven.

Om succesvol te zijn, dient mimicry constant haar uitschieter, “its slippage, its excess”, zoals Bhabha deze noemt (86), te produceren. Op die manier wordt namelijk duidelijk hoe de gekoloniseerde bewust de onvolledigheid van de imitatie nastreeft. Een voorbeeld hiervan in “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning” is de manier waarop het interieur van de woning van de immigrant beschreven is. Deze is aangepast op wat ogenschijnlijk gebruikelijk is in de Nederlandse samenleving – zo heeft de immigrant sierkussens en een schoorsteenmantel.

uit de eclectische doch coherente inrichting van het eigen huis spreekt beheersing wellicht zelfs synthese:
de tropische warmwatervissen hebben in zwart-witfoto’s een plek gevonden boven de schoorsteenmantel
de volgroeide, intelligent geplaatste cactus botst modieus met de caribisch blauwe accentmuur
de eerder bedwongen kleuren zijn nu accenten in de vorm van sierkussens, dekens en achteloos over meubelstukken gedrapeerde houten rozenkransen
[…]

belangrijke details: de bank is niet in plastic gewikkeld en de ballotant bezit opmerkelijk veel palmbomen

(Fabias 104)

Het interieur lijkt een poging te zijn van het aanpassen aan de Nederlandse samenleving, maar de eigen identiteit en het achtergelaten thuisland komen op vele manieren terug. Ook zijn er de zwart-wit foto’s van tropische vissen, evenals “de modieus geplaatste cactus” (104) en de Caribisch blauwe muur. De verloren zon keert terug in de kleur van onder andere de bank en een bloempot. De strofe “belangrijke details: de bank is niet in plastic gewikkeld en / de ballotant bezit opmerkelijk veel palmbomen” (104) symboliseert tegenstrijdigheid. De bank die niet langer in plastic is gewikkeld, schetst een beeld van permanentie en stabiliteit en suggereert dat de immigrant zich gevestigd voelt. De opmerkelijke hoeveelheid palmbomen suggereert daarentegen een verlangen naar het thuisland.

De klassieke mimicry is hier te herkennen in de wijze waarop het interieur verwesterd dient te worden en tegelijkertijd is deze passage een illustratie van het gedicht als mimicry in geheel. De uitschieter is hier helder aanwezig: de imitatie wijkt hier namelijk sterk af van hoe een daadwerkelijke lijst aan assimilatiecriteria eruit zou zien. De nadruk ligt op een tegenstrijdigheid en belicht hier in plaats van een extreme loyaliteit aan de Nederlandse cultuur (zoals bijvoorbeeld het “is bereid te leren fietsen met een paraplu in de hand” (105), later in het gedicht) ook een loyaliteit aan de eigen cultuur. Deze uitschieter is een bewust teken van verzet; wat laat zien hoe de immigrant dan wel het Nederlandse interieur kan imiteren, maar dat dit niet betekent dat ze binnen die imitatie geen ruimte heeft voor verzet.

Kortom

De essentie van mimicry ligt niet in louter het reproduceren van de dominante Nederlandse cultuur, maar veeleer in een complexe vorm van nabootsing waarbij de gekoloniseerde individuen aspecten van de overheersende cultuur overnemen, terwijl zij gelijktijdig een zekere mate van controle en aanpassing behouden. “Mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind its mask”, aldus Bhabha. “The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority” (88). In andere woorden: de kern van mimicry als postkoloniale tactiek is dat de immigrant, in plaats van passief, actief is in haar imiteren. Simpelweg met haar ‘ambivalente bestaan’ ontwricht zij de machtsstructuur.

Mimicry, dat traditioneel gebruikt wordt om te onderdrukken, wordt hier als methode toegeëigend: de onderdrukking wordt tegengegaan middels een satirische imitatie van die onderdrukking. Hierdoor wordt Nederland, het beleid maar ook de samenleving, geconfronteerd met de manier waarop zij macht uitoefenen; een manier die het zelfbeeld van gelijkheid en tolerantie tegenspreekt. Een grondige (maar zelfs al een basale) analyse brengt aan het licht wat de vertelinstantie beoogt te communiceren: de verwijzingen naar voortlevende koloniale hiërarchie, racisme, en zelfs seksisme zijn lastig te omzeilen. Zoals Wekker benadrukt: de Nederlandse samenleving is vaak geneigd tot stilzwijgen, met het koloniale tijdperk dat als verleden wordt beschouwd en witte Nederlanders die zichzelf als kleurenblind en tolerant beschouwen. In deze traditie zou het dan ook passend zijn om de bundel van Fabias in zijn geheel links te laten liggen. Als er geen erkenning is van koloniale verhoudingen, hoe kunnen deze dan effectief worden ondermijnd en uitgedaagd?

Fabias heeft, door te steunen op een officieel beleidsdocument, de mogelijkheid uitgesloten dat haar gedicht beschuldigd kan worden van aanspraak maken op iets fictiefs. De brede waardering van Habitus heeft ervoor gezorgd dat de faam van de bundel zich ver buiten de Nederlandse literaire kringen heeft verspreid. Door middel van een kritische blik op de ervaringen van immigranten in de Nederlandse samenleving voegt de bundel zich bij andere literaire werken en sociale commentaren die de complexiteit van immigratie, culturele assimilatie en de impact van overheidsbeleid belichten. Mogelijk draagt Habitus, en met name het gedicht “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning”, bij aan het grotere gesprek over integratie en koloniale machtsstructuren binnen de Nederlandse context.

De illustratie bovenaan dit artikel heet “opmerkelijk veel palmbomen” en is gemaakt door Rosalie Blom (2024).

Bibliografie

Bhabha, Homi Κ. “Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of postcolonial discourse”. The location of culture, 1994, ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA22500601.

Essed, Philomena. Alledaags racisme. Feministische uitgeverij Sara, 1984.
Fabias, Radna. “aantoonbaar geleverde inspanning”. Habitus, De Arbeiderspers, 2018.

hooks, bell. “Talking back: thinking feminist, thinking Black”. Feminist Review, nr. 33, januari 1989.

ILFU. “Radna Fabias – 1000 dichters – De Nacht van de poëzie on Tour – 26-09-2023”. YouTube, 26 september 2023, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okjoi61U7m0.

“Minder of geen examens: genoeg cursus en examens gedaan – DUO inburgeren”. inburgeren.nl, http://www.inburgeren.nl/minder-of-geen-examens/genoeg-uren-cursus-gedaan.jsp.

Ministerie van Algemene Zaken. “Immigratiebeleid Nederland”. Rijksoverheid.nl, 14 maart 2023, http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/immigratie-naar-nederland/immigratiebeleid-nederland.

Odijk, Janice. Natural Hair Bias Against Black Minorities: A Critical Investigation of Intersecting Identities. Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2020, Masterscriptie.

Pattynama, Pamela. “Het dubbele bewustzijn van de vreemdelinge.” Vrouwenstudies in de cultuurwetenschappen, edited by Rosemarie Buikema en Anneke Smelik. 1993, pp. 157-169.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “What Is Literature?” and Other Essays. Harvard University Press, 1988.

Swanborn, Peter. “Grote Poëzieprijs 2019 naar Radna Fabias, debutant ‘slaat brug tussen geest en het eenzame vleselijke lichaam’”. De Volkskrant, 16 juni 2019.

Wekker, Gloria. Witte onschuld: Paradoxen van kolonialisme en ras. Amsterdam UP, 2017.

Wekker, Gloria. “Diving into the Wreck: exploring intersections of sexuality, ‘Race,’ gender, and class in the Dutch Cultural Archive”. BRILL eBooks, 2014, pp. 157–78. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401210096_009.

Wurth, Kiene Brillenburg, en Ann Rigney. Het leven van teksten: een inleiding tot de literatuurwetenschap. Amsterdam UP, 2008.


  1. Het gebruik van hoofdletters voor ‘het Zelf’ en ‘de Ander’ dient als een keuze om de nadruk te leggen op de abstracte en conceptuele aard van deze begrippen, waardoor ze meer dan enkel individuele personen of groepen representeren ↩︎

Writing Questionnaire 2024

By Julia Neugarten

Writing is the bread and butter of the humanities scholar. It is our chisel and our marble, our raison d’être, and yet the bane of our existence. With the daunting task of writing a dissertation in the forefront of my mind, I was curious about my colleagues’ writing habits, and so I circulated a questionnaire among the employees of the department of Arts and Culture Studies at Radboud University. The response I got was inspiring and insightful, and whether you’re a student or a scholar, a poet or a playwright, some of it may be helpful to you as well.

How much do we write?

Twelve people responded to the survey. On average, they spend 226 minutes per week writing, or a little under four hours.1 The amount of weekly writing time per person varies by a lot, ranging from 60 to 750 minutes. Together, these 12 people spend 45 hours per week writing.

Some people measure writing in time and others measure it in output, so the questionnaire asked about both. Conventional wisdom holds that it is best to write every day,2 and about one-third of respondents do. Shout-out to the person who manages multiple writing sessions per day.

When comparing writing time to word production, interesting differences emerge. One respondent estimates that their writing sessions take longer than 2 hours and results in less than one paragraph of writing. Another estimates that they produce more than two pages in a session of under 30 minutes. Of course these questions do not account for the quality of the writing, or how much actually ends up getting published. This is purely about production.

I also asked: How many pages of academic text do you estimate you have written in the past year, assuming a page is around 250 words?3 Here’s the reported response in pages, with each bar representing one respondent.

Notably, the person who estimated their output at 1000 pages a year (actually, their response was ‘more than 1000 pages’) also reported that they were not happy (2 out of 5) with how much they wrote.

How do we feel about writing?

Fortunately, most respondents report that they enjoy writing.

Meanwhile, more than half also report that they dread writing. For example, the person who said they enjoy writing not at all identifies the following phases in their writing process:

pain. agony. suffering. killing. relief.

Interestingly, 4 respondents (1/3) dread and enjoy writing approximately in equal measure, reporting a score of 4 or 5 in response to both questions.

Around 3/4 of respondents are not very happy about how much they write, although most are at least moderately satisfied with how they write. The numbers on writer’s block are pretty spread out, although those who experience a lot of writer’s block also, unsurprisingly, report lots of dread around writing.

What are our writing techniques and processes?

I was curious about the strategies my colleagues used to get their writing done, and the steps they followed to structure the writing process. Many people mentioned that hot beverages, isolation and frequent exercise were key to getting them writing. The Pomodoro Method, where you alternate between 25-minute writing sprints and short breaks, was praised twice for boosting productivity.4

I was happy to see that I’m not the only one who feels like successful writing requires some kind of ritual to get you into the appropriate mindset. Someone reports that they need to:

block a whole day at a time (otherwise no way of getting into the ‘mood’)

Another respondent uses music to set the right atmosphere:

I have a playlist that is always the same so that I don’t REALLY hear it. I sometimes alternate music styles because the rhythm of the beat impacts the way that I think and write.

Many respondents say it can feel intimidating to start writing. For one writer, Word feels too ‘official’ and so writing on paper in the initial stages is a good way to lower the threshold. Interestingly, they also describe a Google Doc as less intimidating than a Word document.

Outlining is also mentioned as a good way to get rid of the empty page, and someone reports:

I tend to “trick” myself and write pieces in bits and bobs.

When it comes to the best order for writing and revising, responses are mixed. Some people write their texts from beginning to end, saying:

[I] can only move on to the next section of text if all earlier paragraphs are as complete and finished as I can make them.

Other people write the conclusion first, or write from beginning to end except for the introduction, which they save for last. Some people do not adhere to a linear order at all during writing. One piece of advice I particularly like is the idea to see the structuring of a text and its writing as carried out by two separate entities:

With pieces that I find really difficult to write I will write an outline where I briefly state which point I want to make in each paragraph so that I separate the role of opdrachtgever and uitvoerder of my own writing: I first write myself an outline, and then I pretend that I’m just the writer who was hired to execute it wether they agree or not.

This quote also touches on the next question I asked: Do you view writing and research as separate tasks? Most people answered yes to this question, although there were a couple of firm ‘no’s’ – like the person who says: “Writing is thinking. Writing is research” – and some people were unsure. Personally, I like this view:

Writing is about communicating results, not about creating results.

This separation lets us see the craft of writing as a separate academic skill, which I find valuable. Another respondent explains:

[Research and writing are] not neatly separated in time: once I start trying to write a final text I’ll discover along the way that I need research for specific steps in my thought process. So in practice they may seem to blend, but I regard them as separate sometimes very quickly alternating activities. Also: my experience is that writer block is what happens when you lose control over the difference between research, thinking and writing, and between writing and editing. It is, in my personal practice, important to be able to write horrible first drafts.

So the separation of writing and research seems productive to many. Nonetheless, I find it useful to think of writing as the material process through which scholarly research comes into being, especially in the humanities. That idea is described elegantly by one of the respondents who says no, writing and research are not separate:

my keyboard is my laboratory, this is where I atomise my data and pour them in textual flasks to see which ingredients react under which conditions.

Writing Advice: the Best and the Worst

Finally, I asked respondents about the best and worst writing advice they ever received. Most good advice mentioned the discipline to write every day, and a variety of methods for lowering the threshold on writing, so that writing every day became easier. Those tips included, for example: outlining first, lowering one’s own expectations about the quality and elegance of the first draft, starting to write at whatever point in the text is already clear to you. Similar advice is communicated in motto’s like “Done is better than perfect.” and “The best PhD is the Submitted PhD.” In other words: the perfect is the enemy of the good.

There’s one more piece of advice that I really like, and might write on a sticky note to keep by my desk:

Some of my most productive writing has been when I felt the joy of making discoveries and communicating my findings. Keep the joy!

Overall, what people mentioned as bad advice was often the inverse of what they considered good advice: perfectionism, especially. But some core values about the societal role of academic writing also came out in response to this question:

Writing styles are not neutral choices – they also communicate an intent and what I dare call a “vibe”. We are trying to communicate and collaborate – I’m not a fan of taking writers who’s style is hermetic or hostile towards more naïve readers as role models. Also, writing may seem like a solo activity, but I believe that at it’s core academic writing is a deeply social and collective activity: we write it down for others to take apart and re-use. (…) as academic writers we are pretty much valuable precisely to the extent that we make ourselves available to being cited and re-purposed for someone else’s research. So any advice that places to much emphasis on writing as the work of a Lone Genius Having Ideas does not make sense to me.

In a similar vein, someone observes:

Worst advice: writing is is method to order your own thoughts. It isn’t. It is a method to order the readers’ thoughts.

To conclude: in this piece, I’ve tried to order my own thoughts about the writing processes of my colleagues, and in the process I hope I have also helped you order yours. I’m going to experiment with writing academic texts in a different order, and I wish you all happy writing!

If you want to examine every response in detail, you can consult the full results of this year’s Arts and Culture Studies Writing Questionnaire here, with my added calculations in bold.

Footnotes

  1. Full disclosure: I myself am one of the 12 respondents. ↩︎
  2. Authors credited with this advice include Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Graham Greene and Eric Hayot, the author of The Elements of Academic Style whose insights on academic writing inspired me to
    create this survey. ↩︎
  3. I removed one respondent from the dataset here, who reported 12.500 pages. That must have been a typo, or maybe they meant words instead of pages. Otherwise it would be 3.125.000 words. For comparison, depending on the translation, War & Peace is between 560.000 and 587.000 words. I don’t think anyone is writing 5.5 copies of War and Peace per year, but if you’re the respondent and this is actually accurate, let me know. I’d love to interview you. ↩︎
  4. The Pomodoro Method was invented by Francesco Cirillo. ↩︎

‘Als Piet was blijven weigeren’. Over makers die elkaar vooruit helpen

Helleke van den Braber

‘Het valt mij op’, schreef een Volkskrantlezer afgelopen zaterdag (23 maart 2024) in een ingezonden brief aan de krant, dat ‘in artikelen over Piet Mondriaan nooit verteld wordt dat het mijn grootvader Lodewijk Schelfhout (1881-1943) was die na veel aandringen Mondriaan wist over te halen naar Parijs te komen’. Het was in Parijs dat de schilder kon uitgroeien tot de baanbrekende kunstenaar van wereldfaam die we nu kennen. Briefschrijver Andreas Schelfhout uit Dreumel weet het zeker: zónder die ervaring – en zonder de interventie van zijn grootvader – was Mondriaan altijd ‘een schilder van brave landschapjes’ gebleven. ‘Als Piet was blijven weigeren, was hij nooit een beroemde modernekunstschilder geworden’.

De brief roept tal van interessante vragen op. Wie was die Lodewijk Schelfhout, en wat was zijn relatie tot Piet Mondriaan? Mijn eerste gedachte was: Schelfhout moet vast een rijke pief zijn geweest, met geld teveel. In De Volkskrant beschrijft zijn kleinzoon immers hoe Schelfhout Mondriaans treinkaartje naar Parijs betaalde, een atelier regelde en voor woonruimte zorgde. Daarvoor is – zou je zeggen – een ruime beurs en een flink netwerk nodig. Maar waarom zou zo iemand zich op deze manier voor Mondriaan inzetten?

Het verhaal blijkt complex. Lodewijk Schelfhout was zelf ook schilder. Hij was Mondriaan in 1903 voorgegaan richting Parijs, en had zich daar gevestigd in een ateliercomplex aan 33 Avenue du Maine. Ook collega-schilder Conrad Kickert had daar een werkruimte. In 1912 voegde Mondriaan zich bij hen. Het pand aan Avenue du Maine was wat we tegenwoordig een ‘broedplaats’ zouden noemen: een plek waar makers samenkomen om te werken, uit te wisselen, elkaar te inspireren en – zoals hier het geval was – financieel te ondersteunen. Onderzoek wijst uit dat dit soort onderlinge samenwerking en uitwisseling makers ook vandaag de dag helpt om een brug te slaan tussen hun behoefte aan autonomie (in vrijheid maken wat zij vinden dat gemaakt moet worden) en commercie (de noodzaak een publiek te vinden voor hun werk). Hoe de verhouding autonomie-commercie er een eeuw geleden voor Piet Mondriaan uitzag is sinds kort na te gaan op het online platform The Mondrian Papers. Daarop zijn alle brieven en artikelen te lezen die de kunstenaar schreef.

De kunstenaars die samenkwamen in 33 Avenue du Maine konden terugvallen op elkaar. Met name Conrad Kickert was daar belangrijk in. Hoewel Lodewijk Schelfhout ook zelf niet onbemiddeld was, zat het echte geld én de echte ambitie om mede-kunstenaars vooruit te helpen bij Kickert. Hij wilde een weldoener zijn voor de makers om hem heen, en dan met name voor diegenen die hij zag als talentvol en vernieuwend. Hij kocht hun werken – om hen te helpen – voor een hogere prijs dan wat ze op dat moment waard waren, en nam de tijd om hen aan te moedigen. De (Franstalige) officiële Kickert-website besteedt aandacht aan de goede daden van ‘Conrad Kickert- Mécène’ en betoogt dat het geld dat hij aan zijn medemakers besteedde voor hem een investering was in de waardevolle en inspirerende uitwisseling die hij met hen had.

Terug naar de ingezonden brief. Heeft kleinzoon Andreas uit Dreumel gelijk als hij stelt dat het zijn grootvader was die dat treinkaartje betaalde? Was het inderdaad Schelfhout die ervoor zorgde dat Piet niet bleef weigeren, maar de grote stap durfde nemen – of was het toch Kickert die die sprong via zijn financiële en morele steun mogelijk maakte? Belangrijker dan het precieze antwoord op die vraag is het inzicht dat er kennelijk zoiets bestaat als ‘kunstenaarsmecenaat’. Er zijn vandaag de dag én historisch meer voorbeelden van groepen makers die elkaar bewust vooruit helpen, door wat ze hebben (geld, contacten, kennis) onderling te laten circuleren en ten goede te laten komen aan degenen die die steun het hardste nodig hebben. We weten nu – dankzij de briefschrijver – dat het in 1912 Piet Mondriaan was die daar de vruchten van plukte.

Foto genomen door Conrad Kickert in zijn atelier. We zien Schelfhout en Mondriaan (met hoed) naast een werk van Schelfhout staan.

Algorithmic Ecologies: Refik Anadol’s Living Paintings

By Adil Boughlala and Anouk Stevens

Wavelike patterns move gracefully across the screen as natural colours seamlessly ebb and flow, occasionally revealing snippets of images that resemble familiar landscapes of nature. Living Paintings: Nature at Kunsthal Rotterdam features Refik Anadol’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The abstract artworks by Anadol provide visitors with a visual spectacle that explores the meaning of being human in an increasingly digitised society.1 Through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Anadol creates AI Data paintings, or ‘living paintings’, that immerse the visitor in unthinkable yet recognisable landscapes. Whereas the introduction of new technologies seems to repeatedly highlight the divide between nature and culture – two strands that usually do not meet – the exhibition presents a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. It blurs the boundaries between the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, and thus challenges traditional notions of what is ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’.

The ‘living paintings’ we saw reminded us of ecologies: they pose an immersive and interconnected environment of complex actors that seem to be always moving, always evolving, always ‘becoming.’2 Understanding Anadol’s works as algorithmic ecologies implies that algorithms are not isolated entities but exist within a system where they interact with each other, with data inputs, and with the environment in which they operate. Algorithms are not static, they evolve and adapt based on various factors, creating a dynamic and interconnected system akin to the interactions within an ecological environment. This ecological thinking allows for reflection on environmental conditions, and more broadly the interconnectedness of the planet and its inhabitants. We revisit the Living Paintings: Nature exhibition through this lens of ecologies.

The artist: Refik Anadol

The globally renowned Turkish-American new media artist Refik Anadol is known for his data-driven artworks. He adopts machine learning algorithms to create abstract, constantly changing, dream-like digital realms that usually address humankind’s impact on or position in natural environments. The exhibition displays Anadol’s most significant nature-themed artworks as triptychs, literal windows into a digital realm. Each series is composed of a dataset and features its own unique transformation of data into the artworks presented, from wind prediction data to images of natural parks. According to Anadol, these datasets serve as collective memories, memories that belong to everyone and should not be confined to personal or private memories.3

Contrary to common belief, the process of creating these AI data paintings requires a combination of algorithmic processing and human handpicking. Anadol does this together with a team of data scientists, researchers and designers who, together, form Refik Anadol Studio. By use of algorithms, Anadol ponders the question of whether machines can actually dream, hallucinate, or process individual and collective memories, a recurring element in the entirety of his oeuvre.4 Anadol’s body of work has introduced a new aesthetic to the artworld that intersects art, technology, nature and the human, and is distinctly recognisable as his.

Winds of LA & Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean

Data allows us to anticipate natural phenomena. Should you wear a raincoat today? Are there potential risks and is it perhaps better to stay inside? The process of datafication allows us to gain knowledge on our natural environment yet it also abstracts our relationship to it by reducing nature into numerical data. The series “Winds of LA” and “Pacific Ocean” reverse this process and visualise data in a manner that becomes readable for non-experts. Both series integrate data collected from weather service companies: “Winds of LA” uses data collected from real-time API weather sensors placed around LA 5 and “Pacific Ocean” integrates publicly available datasets that are shared daily.6 Rather than rejecting the integration of data into our everyday lives, Anadol shows how, with the use of new technologies, artistic translations of data strengthen our understanding of and relationship to our environment. Although the datasets of these two works differ, both take as a point of departure the translation of data into poetic and fluid patterns. Whereas “Winds of LA” transforms data into blue and white squares that mimic the abrupt movements of the winds of LA, “Pacific Ocean” visualises data more smoothly, resulting in a fluid surface similar to the ocean. Instead of presenting data as tabular information, it is transformed into an affective and dynamic image. The natural flow of coloured data on-screen allows visitors to submerge themselves in the artworks and connect with the portrayed natural phenomena.

Winds of LA
Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean

California Landscapes: Generative Study & Artificial Realities

“California Landscapes: Generative Study” and “Artificial Realities: California Landscapes” are two series based on the same dataset of over 153 million images of California’s National Parks. Despite sharing the same dataset, the two series feature two different visual representations: “Generative Study” creates images that are recognisable and similar to the national parks. Yet, the images continuously shift into new forms, visualising natural elements including skies, mountains, trees, waterfalls and much more in fluid ways. While doing so, it projects interconnected lines on top of the images, underlining the algorithmic work at play beneath the screens’ interface. You can see the machine working. Contrarily, “Artificial Realities” proposes a more abstract view of California’s National Parks, similar to “Winds of LA” and “Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean”. The series draws on the natural pigments of nature, bringing together technology and nature visually, triggering a sense of belonging to the Earth.7 While ”Generative Study” presents more static and photorealistic images in which natural landscapes can be more easily recognised, ”Artificial Realities” offers a more fluid and immersive experience that explores the dynamic and ever-changing essence of nature. In other words, what distinguishes both series is the degree of abstraction utilised in their presentation. The juxtaposition of these approaches prompts reflection on the relationship between technology and nature; as nature is mediated through a flurry of computations, technology can provide us with different versions of how we can perceive nature.

California Landscapes: Generative Study

The contrast between both series is also a testament to the nature of human-machine collaboration: “With the same data, we [Refik Anadol Studio] can generate infinite versions of the same sculpture, but choosing this moment, and creating this moment in time and space, is the moment of creation”.8 This approach not only attests to the need of human intervention, but it also acknowledges the reciprocal agency of algorithms in the creative act. The human is decentred as the algorithm assumes a prominent position. While Anadol decides the perimeters, it is the algorithm that decides the final result. The audience is then invited to reflect on the potential role of machine learning within art, but also to what extent the machine is part of the creative process.9

Artificial Realities: California Landscapes

Living Painting: Immersive Room

Completely unique to this exhibition is Living Painting: Immersive Room. As you step inside this square-shaped box you are embraced by a three-dimensional, kinetic, multisensory space of spectacle that no image or video can do justice. The screens display the same patterns from Anadol’s AI data paintings while the mirrors, strategically placed on the floor and ceiling, create an infinite space in which your body becomes your only reference point. Within this space, you cease to be a mere observer; instead, you seamlessly integrate into the very fabric of Anadol’s artwork. You become an active participant in the algorithmic ecology, a living element within the computational tapestry. The boundaries between the observer and the observed dissolve, offering a rare opportunity to not just witness but also to embody the artist’s vision.

Being included in the algorithmic ecology extends beyond the conventional engagement of art. It also prompts reflection on environmental issues and an affective re-evaluation of our relationship with art, technology, nature, and the interconnectedness between them. Digital technologies are capable of evoking emotional resonance through storytelling; stories have the power to evoke empathy and affective connections with the natural world, which in turn can influence our attitudes and behaviours towards environmental conservation.10 Anadol’s works provide abstract narratives that resonate with us on an emotional and subconscious level, stirring deep-seated feelings of connection to the natural within.

Living Painting: Immersive Room

Concluding remarks

Anadol’s works not only showcase algorithmic ecologies that intersect the realms of art, technology, nature and the human, but they also lend themselves exceptionally well to a relaxed and enchanting experience at the museum. Each video, well over 16 minutes long and presented in a dimly lit room, invites visitors to linger and lose themselves in a mesmerising, digital world of tranquillity. As you ponder your own thoughts, you might occasionally recognise a mountain or a sunset, which brings you back to the world around you.

Living Paintings: Nature is on show at Kunsthal Rotterdam until 1 April. Still not convinced? The exhibition is enjoyable for all ages:

A group of elderly people enjoying “Winds of LA” during a guided tour

Footnotes

  1. https://www.kunsthal.nl/en/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/refik-anadol/ ↩︎
  2. Iris van der Tuin and Nanna Verhoeff, Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). ↩︎
  3. Alina Cohen, ‘Refik Anadol’s Mesmerizing Data Paintings Are Captivating Audiences Worldwide’, Artsy, 15 February 2023, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-refik-anadols-mesmerizing-data-paintings-captivating-audiences-worldwide. ↩︎
  4. Refik Anadol and Pelin Kivrak, ‘Machines That Dream: How AI-Human Collaborations in Art Deepen Audience Engagement’, Management and Business Review 3, no. 1 & 2 (2023): 101–7. ↩︎
  5. https://refikanadol.com/works/winds-of-la/ ↩︎
  6. https://refikanadol.com/works/artificial-realities-pacific-ocean/ ↩︎
  7. https://refikanadol.com/works/artificial-realities-california-landscapes/ ↩︎
  8. Refik Anadol et al., ‘Modern Dream: How Refik Anadol Is Using Machine Learning and NFTs to Interpret MoMA’s Collection’, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 15 November 2021, https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658. ↩︎
  9. Joanna Zylinska, ‘Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’, Science 381, no. 6654 (13 July 2023): 139–40, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh0575. ↩︎
  10. Alexa Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative, Cognitive Approaches to Culture (Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2017). ↩︎