Alive and Kickin’

In Holland we protested by ‘yelling’ against the cuts on funding for art and culture. Our ‘yell’ at the City Theatre might not have been a work of art, but it sure was culture! Perhaps a better idea would have been for all of us to go on strike, close our doors for at least a month! However, if we’d do that, our arts and cultural institutions would go bankrupt instantly. The Municipal Councillor asked for guts in the choices to make, but whose guts was she talking about? To suit the action to the word is a whole different ball game...

In the meantime on the other side of the water, beneath us, a part of the world is on fire, there is anger and chaos. People are tired of living in poverty, high unemployment rates, the lack of democracy and freedom of speech. The denial of basic rights, women’s rights, human rights, right! We call it the Arab revolution, or the Jasmine revolution but funny enough it started and is still going on in Northern Africa!

Across our other waters, on our right side in the western world, the streets are on fire, people are outraged and we don’t exactly know why. Are they against the system? Against consumer society? There is anger, there is chaos and plundering for no real ideals, so we believe.

British historian, David Starky named the phenomenon on national TV, ‘Whites become Blacks’ as unchangeable Good becomes Bad. Huh?!? So when our Ivory tower explodes in our face we still won’t face the facts but again, with a subtlety totally out of place, we blame the Blacks as we blamed the Muslims before and the Jews before them, and the Catholics before them, and whoever-you-want-before-whoever it was, just to avoid looking at ourselves for a CHANGE.

Interesting fact is that the revolution in Northern Africa grew so massively, without any organisation behind it, thanks to social networks, our digital world, and our mobile phones. The response from the Northern African governments was to shut down the Internet. And in the West we were enraged for it was denying people’s rights, their freedom of speech, it invoked censorship, and empowered the dictatorships, etc.

But when in our Western world we discover that the rage becomes unstoppable because people can mobilise just as fast, thanks to the same digital world, twitter and business phone Black Berry, with its free and oops untraceable PING!, we forget our moral standards and want to close down that same Internet!

Over the centuries there were many revolutions, for the good and maybe for the bad: The French revolution, Slave resistance, Industrial revolution, the Prague Spring, the Velvet Revolution, Carnation Revolution, Flower Power, Sexual revolution… Maybe now is the perfect time for a Cultural Revolution! No bullets from right to left but a bombardment of performing art, visual art, paintings, street art graffiti, music, food-art and the art of having fun together.

We combined all these arts in our festival for preserving art and culture ALIVE & KICKIN’, for we believe art and culture are the glue of every society, for every generation to come. For it touches us, in places we didn’t even know existed or perhaps we’ve simply forgot we are living. Art makes us aware and opens up the other half of our mind... In which we might find creative solutions, which money alone is not able to fulfil. So show us the money... no, better GRANT us the money and we will show you a beautiful world!

ALIVE & KICKIN’, with a Northern African revolution - from the battle for Algerian independence in Rashid Bouchareb’s film Hors La Loi to the call for democracy through social media with the video-installation by Abdelatif Benfaidoul. From Central Africa to Amsterdam with the documentary Jazz Mama of Petna and Cherie Ndaliko Kantondolo, where the women of the Congo are fed up for been seen only as victims without any ideas, calling up the men into dialogue. Male spoken word performers answer their call in Amsterdam. To Southern Africa where the artists in Dylan Valley’s documentary Afrikaaps jiggle with Dutch language and Afrikaans, with a jam session with the artists at AITP! In our Round-About-Africa short programs a whole variety of new kids on the block from Africa and its diasporas will show you their view on the continent. With the panorama section you will experience the ZEN in film almost meditative through beauty. To wake you up with horror, and I mean real HORROR films!

ALIVE & KICKIN’, Africa in the Picture 2011!

Heidi Lobato,
AITP Director