May 21, 2010

Favela chic and colourful in Brazil

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am
welcome

On 29 March 2010 we finished work on the latest favela painting and our first part of ‘O Morro’: Praça Cantão. It is central square at the foot of the community of Santa Marta, a favela in the heart of Rio de Janeiro.

Livening up slums in Brazil is a project by Haas & Hahn – Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. They once filmed a documentary on hip hop in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo for MTV, after which they decided to bring funky works of art to unexpected places, starting with painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil together with the local youth.

The goal is to have the ‘O Morro’ project sponsored by a community of supporters who will finance the infrastructure, materials and people needed to complete the work. You can donate through their site in a number of ways, including one text message every month for just 3 euro a pop.

Find out more about this project on Facebook and Twitter.

(Link: trendbeheer.com, Photo; favelapainting)

Tags: ,

May 20, 2010

Bookies rate Dutch Eurovision entry as ‘hopeless’

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 8:56 am

I already called the Dutch Eurovision entry for 2010 cultural suicide, but as the big day approaches, the plot thickens. There’s been some accusations of plagiarism against song writer Pierre Kartner and Sieneke has had some voice problems. Luckily, she’s OK. However, Sieneke is currently ranked 36 out of 39 with ‘zéro points’ (pronounced in French, eh).

The big favourite this year is Lena from Germany with a dance number featuring some really lame lyrics I couldn’t get through (I heard the word ‘underwear’). Her voice has a quality resembling Iceland’s Björk, which probably helps and yes, she’s pretty. Georgia is a close second with Sofia Nizharadze and some love ballad with the name ‘Shine’ (ironically the name of the Dutch entry in 2009) that I didn’t get through, also with a very pretty woman. In third place, Sweden with a pretty blonde named Anna Begendahl accompanying herself on the guitar and some serious tremelo in her voice that’s not my thing.

But back to Sieneke: she’s friendly and warm on stage by Dutch standards, but she’s just not pretty. And it does matter. Dutch celebrity gossip show (RTL Boulevard) went around Oslo about two weeks ago, showed people a video of Sieneke and asked people to guess how old she was. I heard 32 and ‘not bad for 36’. Sieneke just turned 18. Ouch. The gay side-kick of the show politely said, “I think she needs a stylist”. Sieneke is the younger version of famous Dutch star Marianne Weber whose Wikipedia page isn’t even in English, the point being that outside of the Dutch speaking world, no one has a clue who she is.

Watching this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will be like watching a slow train wreck and I can’t wait, sorry Sieneke.

Let’s go back to the Dutch winner of 1957, the lovely Corry Brokken with ‘Net als toen’ ‘(Just like then’).

(Link gelderlander.nl)

Tags:

May 19, 2010

Pop-up street furniture in Utrecht

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 9:22 pm
1274078561pop_up_beweging_web

Some street-wise, pop-up furniture designed by Carmela Bogman and Rogier Martens was installed in Utrecht on 17 May 2010. The residents can pump up the furniture themselves (se pic) and when then are finished using it, it lowers itself down again.

It looks nice, I want to try it too, but I have to admit, the comments I read on the French site I got this news from needs to be addressed. Yes, it screams unhygienic. I mean, people walk on this furniture with dog pooh and who knows what under their shoes and then the idea would be to sit down and, what, have a sandwich on the table surface? Ick.

I can’t really get an idea of how fast the furniture goes back down and I can imagine not wanting to get my foot stuck, never mind a small child getting any of their limbs stuck under it.

As my Dutch friends say, the idea is nice, but the execution, well, kinda sucks.

(Link fubiz.net, Photo Carmela Bogman, thanks Laurent!)

Tags: ,

May 18, 2010

Spotify music service now in the Netherlands

Filed under: Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 2:18 pm
dutch_flag.jpg

Online music service Spotify is now available as of today in the Netherlands. Instead of continuously having to go to YouTube and weed through bad mobile phone recordings of your favourites artists or be subjected to everything that sounds like the band you like but never the actual band from Last.fm, it could be time to try Spotify.

“With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.” Even Blip.fm, and Zonga get their songs from YouTube, while Spotify is what everyone wanted and nobody was getting: that one song you needed, right away.

They claim to have eight million songs, including a specially recorded track by duo Guus Meeuwis and Marco Borsato, teaming up for a song called ‘Schouder aan Schouder’ (‘Shoulder to shoulder’) available exclusively on Spotify.

(Link: Spotify, Photo by Quistnix, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0)

Tags:

May 17, 2010

Rocking chair meets cradle

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 1:14 am

The Rockid is a combination of a rocking chair and cradle by Ontwerpduo (‘design duo’). This isn’t apparently a new idea, as it is based on the so-called nanny rocker.

According to Bright, one of Ontwerpduo’s happiest customers is the duo’s daughter, Jasmijn. The Rockid can be had with a separate sideboard, for when the cradle is no longer needed, and can be had for 850 euro.

Tags: , , ,

May 15, 2010

Angry citizens remove ‘illegal’ dam

Filed under: Architecture,Nature by Branko Collin @ 2:01 pm

Last week inhabitants of the Horstermeer polder just south of Amsterdam removed a 10 ton weir placed there by the AGV water board (Amstel, Gooi and Vecht regions). They claim the dam creates a dangerous situation.

The water board wants to let nature run its course in a part of the polder by letting water levels rise, effectively turning part of the polder into marshland. The inhabitants fear that since their houses are typically located at the lowest point of the polder, the centre, these higher water levels will damage their properties.

According to the polder dwellers, the water board never filed official plans for their dam, so that the inhabitants could not legally protest its placement. The water board has reported the theft of a weir to the police.

Water boards are a parallel government in the Netherlands for the management of water.

Video: Republiek Horstermeerpolder.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

May 14, 2010

Florentijn Hofman’s huge cuddly toys

Filed under: Animals,Art by Branko Collin @ 11:59 am

Writes Hofman:

A solo show inspired by the toys and cuddly sculptures of children, where the change of scale completely changes their function and feeling.

Hofman also took his exhibition on the (rail)road, where it works better in my opinion. A gallery is a canvas, a neutral background in front of which anything automatically becomes art. The railway station of Delfzijl (Hofman’s former home town) doesn’t have that stigma, and his plush animals look as out of place there as he intended.

See also:

(Photos: Trendbeheer / Florentijn Hofman.)

Tags: , ,

May 13, 2010

Man mistakes urinal for sink

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:41 am

Bibi Telleman, reporter for 105 TV, was doing a behind the scenes bit about the cleanliness of the facilities at the Liberation Day festival in Haarlem last week, when a member of the North American intelligentsia decided it was time to teach the rest of the world a lesson about hygiene. (Either that, or he wanted to attention-whore.)

Orangemaster says to give a big shout out to all the poor drudges like her who have to DJ the Ascension festivals today. (“Shout-out?” She did not say “shout-out.” It was something not as 2003.)

To borrow words from Youtube: as seen on Boingboing and Milk and Cookies.

Tags: ,

May 12, 2010

Youth football club bans non-native children

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:21 am

Nijmegen youth football club Quick 1888 (in Dutch, under ‘Persbericht’) has adopted a discriminatory policy by “putting children of foreign descent who apply for membership on a waiting list, while accepting native Dutch youth members.” Apparently, parents of non-native children don’t help out with football, don’t have cars to drive the kids to games or have to work on Saturdays.

I played women’s football for a year in Rotterdam and I had no idea that I would spend so much time at the club outside of practices and games, so I do understand the problem. However, communicating to these parents what is needed is much better than telling them they are doing something wrong, expecting to help out of guilt and then turning around and banning their kids!

Not helping out is considered a sin at Dutch amateur football clubs. Currently, over 80 percent of Quick 1888’s juniors are of foreign descent, and it is suffering logistically as a result.”

Hmmm. I played against a Dutch club in Rotterdam that was entirely populated with girls whose parents obviously came from Surinam. Sure, we won 2-0, but it wasn’t easy and they had tons of people helping them out.

This discriminatory and dare I say racist blanket statement from the football club will not help the relations between the kids or the parents: it will shame the native Dutch, embarrass the non-natives who do help and if this article doesn’t help, show how intolerant some Dutch people have truly become.

(Link: rnw.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

May 11, 2010

Journalist wins lawsuit over freedom of information request costs

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:00 am

Municipalities are not allowed to charge for complying with freedom of information requests, a court in The Hague found according to Trouw.

Reporter Brenno de Winter sought a judge’s legally binding opinion after several municipalities conspired early last year to sabotage his freedom of information requests by making him pay for them. The court reasoned that since freedom of information requests are for the good of everyone instead of the good of an individual, asking money for complying with them is illegal. However, government organisations can still charge money for the cost of photocopies.

Last week, De Winter started a lawsuit against the Minister of Transport, Camiel Eurlings, for keeping documents secret that could help explain the relative failure of the public transport chip card (the Dutch “Oyster card”).

See also: Supply the poor government with some much needed transparency

Tags: , , , ,