Artist Tarik Sadouma Visits the Debate Centre De Balie on 15 June 2022
PRESS RELEASE
There is no second institution like De Balie anywhere in the Netherlands: a place that openly displays its ambition to give public debate, in all its diversity of participants and ideas, as much room as possible, thereby serving as a free space for students of democracy, visionary creatives, unyielding academics and impetuous revolutionaries. Director Yoeri Albrecht safeguards the continued existence of the delicate cultural activities within his institution’s walls by convincingly navigating the snake pit of national and local politics and media; De Balie’s success depends on Yoeri’s gift for this balancing act. The higher he dares to raise the tension of cultural experimentation within his institution, the more the audience’s cheeks glow and the tickets sell. But if he flaunts his cultural chutzpah too ostentatiously, a jealous civil servant crosses out the annual subsidy and he still has to close the doors.
It would hardly be surprising if, after all these years of graceful manoeuvres, passionate stratagems and the occasional stab in the back, Yoeri were beginning to feel weariness in his joints and no longer knew how to balance the status quo and experimentation. A certain stagnant dullness cannot be held against a debate centre, since debate, especially in the Netherlands, inevitably brings in the boiled-cabbage smell of the native consensus culture. But when this can no longer be dispelled by rare eruptions of cultural genius, we can speak of a toxic vapour threatening to spread throughout the city through the institution’s cracks and crevices.
The cultural genius Tarik Sadouma became entangled in these struggles. During a public debate he fell victim to Yoeri’s sophisticated balancing act and indignantly walked out. After nine months, he has decided to revisit the scene of this confusing incident.
On 15 June, Yoeri will host an evening about the role of performance art in society, of which De Balie’s website says: “During this evening we will speak about what theatre and performing arts should aim to do, what art is, social engagement in art and how social engagement and beauty function in relation to each other.”
The artist Tarik Sadouma has bought tickets and will make his ambiguous statement in this context. He says: “The intention is not to disrupt the existing programme or behave childishly. I have no desire to take anyone else’s place away from them, the guests and so on. In the restaurant and at the bar around the event, there may be room for interesting conversations and declarations.”
Are there any other thoughts you would like to share beforehand?
There are moments when I myself forget what I am going to do on 15 June, and why. It concerns the role of the ad hominem in artistic discussions. Do we want only systemic criticism, or do we also want to discuss the people operating within that system? Can you make a personal portrait that simultaneously reveals a larger, abstract dynamic? Can you personify abstraction and systemic criticism in an artwork? That is an artistic question for me. What happens if I turn Yoeri into a life-size, formidable representative of an ideological complex against which I can go into battle, without it really being personal?
Why are these important artistic questions?
If people cannot be subjects, what should—or, rather, may—I aim my arrows at? Usually it is a matter of authority. If it is a respected outfit like Charlie Hebdo, then we “know perfectly well” that a drawing is not intended as an antisemitic or anti-Arab racist cartoon. The Muslim who reacts to it does not belong to free culture. But if the sender is a marginal figure, their actions are dismissed as improper. I made peace with my marginal position long ago; growing up as a foreign child, I suffered because of it, and as a cancelled artist I know its value. Marginality is an inevitable component of the avant-garde insofar as experimentation is perceived as threatening and dangerous, and therefore outside society, and can consequently be practised only outside society.
In my artistic practice and studio, The Unsafe House, society comes to me, because there is an attraction to a place where society’s restrictions barely apply, if at all. Young, passionate people want to go there so that perhaps they too can make or do something new and brilliant. In a world that labels every divergent morality dangerous, The Unsafe House is an enlightened gypsy camp or pirate ship celebrating the possibilities of marginality. In this way, nightlife and young people’s desire for escape are connected to the experimental nature of an artist’s existence.
But because, with my Unsafe House, I am a conspicuous marginal figure rather than a legitimate institution like De Balie, Yoeri personally pins a fight late in the evening after the premiere of KIRAC 23 on me—a fight that could just as easily have happened in a nightclub or pub. During the discussion before the presentation of KIRAC 23 at De Balie, he cites the testimony of someone claiming that I was personally involved in the incident. Yoeri could at least have questioned the reliability of these claims, but the whole story was just vague and hysterical enough to leave its truth undecided and then disqualify me as a person on the basis of the “atmosphere of violence surrounding The Unsafe House”. In doing so, the name Unsafe House was publicly stripped of its artistic, figurative meaning, finally bringing the ugly, flat truth to light: you see, they are not artists or avant-gardists at all, just semi-criminals and drug addicts, and they admit it themselves. In effect, I am accused of being marginal and having the insolent nerve to play with that position. I expect little from people; I live my life, but I am not going to sit waiting to be driven from my own den. I therefore hereby accept Yoeri Albrecht’s accusation as an artistic challenge.
As a culture, we have spent years cultivating a free space for art, a space that emerged in Western society and forms part of the democratic balance. Not a mass medium or entertainment, but a reflective space in which dangerous, simmering, pathological and all kinds of other ideas and visions could exist. Now that this space has been abolished in recent years—you can no longer take it for granted—the artist and his ideas find themselves in a no-man’s-land in the middle of the real world. Figuratively placed outside the city gates, yet still in the middle of the city. In these circumstances, an artist can and must practise his art everywhere, without regard for the restrictions and hygiene that making art within such a free artistic space also entailed: within the channelling walls of institutions, galleries, museums, debate centres and so on. For that space is no longer relevant to the artist, no longer his responsibility, and is even hostile insofar as it denies the artist admission while simultaneously denying the artist’s existence outside its own space.
History often shows a cycle of this kind: a space permitting the most extreme forms of experimentation can be guarded only by people animated by its conquest, still possessed by the ideals and insights that underpinned it. When this task passes to the next generation, or the one after that, such a space inevitably becomes a way of containing art and everything dangerous about it, and the artist breathes freely again only when he becomes an outlaw. But that also means he has to fight for his own position and existence.
This entire action is also driven by curiosity about Yoeri, because we do not know how he will respond. Perhaps he will open a bottle of champagne and turn out to be a convivial man with a sense of humour who can acknowledge his mistakes. Everyone occasionally does something ridiculous; it is not the end of the world. It arouses curiosity: a director like that on a stage, proclaiming all kinds of things and seeming terribly indignant about them. That is very exciting to pinch. It is erotic. It has a sexual dimension. It is tactile. He is no longer merely the director of De Balie, but also the sweaty little man on that stage having all kinds of anxious fantasies about violence. This is about his body, which is also why we are going there. Up close, it might inspire another painting or sculpture. You want to smell Yoeri. Sniff him out. His wife is quite attractive.
END OF PRESS RELEASE — 9 June 2022, Amsterdam
For more information, call the contact person: 06 55 41 53 52.
For tickets: https://debalie.nl/programma/on-stage-yoel-gamzou-en-milo-rau-15-06-2022/
Journalists can contact De Balie for admission.