BeNeLux (this is not a vacuum cleaner)
In the last few months, I have been meeting with the extraordinarily talented and lovely Dutch theater artist Ragna Aurich for a proposed project in Brussels later in the year. We have been discussing issues around the tension between border regulations and the way that people naturally and chaotically move, migrate, and wander. Having recently experienced a real tension of this kind firsthand, after leaving peaceful and easily pacified Holland, I am convinced more than ever that I live in a rather special place at the moment, an area where rules are a bit less black and white, and borders are either well-hidden or more simply just non-existent.
This area is called BeNeLux, by marketing executives, and is the collection of the three tiny countries Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Here, mime schools exist aplenty, far-reaching and heated national debates are held about how to make second phase performing arts schools even more progressive, keeping things low-key and non-threatening (in design, social interaction, or advertising) is a major cultural issue, negotiation is always the preferred form of settlement, it's commonly acknowledged that most men are *at least* bisexual, and things like flowers, chocolate, or digital audio software are rather big exports.
"Kunst kunst kunst, it's like turning on a faucet, and you just can't turn it off again. I want to live in the United States where people make art about science and technology, where there's not all this culture business everywhere," says Ragna, complaining about the ubiquity of the cultural arts in Holland. She has a point, it is a bit overwhelming really, and the endless applications for funding, for joining this steady stream, nay, river, of art is a tiring and laborious process, and one which my brain doesn't deal with very well anyway. In the US, you make some sort of pact with the devil, some sort of life commitment about being an artist, and when you do it, you know it means working at a shit job during the day and getting your culture kicks at night. But here, many artists seem comfortable, well-paid, and dare I say, happy? What a strange situation.
I honestly think the art suffers because of it, a lot of people seem really apathetic about what they make. But then again, the art is everywhere, all the time, so maybe it's ok, because there's always a second chance to get it right. I don't think that this is a culture that could produce a Merzbow or a Ryoji Ikeda, making serious life-or-death music. But it will happily hand out the big money to those people when they're on tour, which seems to be a pretty good situation as well.