You and Arjon Dunnewind began developing this festival’s concept in 2022. Were there specific artists or works that inspired you in this process?

Conceiving and creating a festival/exhibition is something you do together with artists. A year ago, that process began with a conversation with Dries Verhoeven, who was developing his installation Everything Must Go. Everything Must Go is about shoplifting and is an implicit critique of capitalism but also of ethics as an image. A beautiful, penetrating work of art that we – Arjon Dunnewind and I, co-curators DEAL WITH IT – are very happy with. Together you test how you look at each other’s concepts, not only how Everything Must Go could fit into DEAL WITH IT, but also how the positions taken challenge or reinforce each other. Dries Verhoeven also wrote the Code Radicality, among other texts that were informative for DEAL WITH IT. Such conversations are very inspiring, for both parties.

Preparing with Afghan artist Kubra Khademi immediately took us to areas where being radical as an artist immediately has major consequences. It makes you realise how good we have it here, in a (still) democratic and open country. The performance Armor, in which Khademi – armed with a suit of armour that accentuated her breasts and buttocks ánd protected her from men’s transgressive behaviour – walked Kabul’s main street, had major consequences for her personal life. She had to flee her homeland.

Although at less immediate risk of imprisonment or worse, I was also deeply impressed by our studio visit to artist Roy Villevoye. With two life-size sculptures in the exhibition at IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture], his work contributes to the politically uncomfortable setting of The Cake is a Lie. Radicality is never the goal with Villevoye. His artistry stems from an unbridled curiosity about what motivates people. Within Western culture, but also far beyond. His motivation and commitment are so idiosyncratic that misunderstanding and interpretation stress often fall to him, resulting in several attempts to cancel his works. This happened with both sculptures displayed in the exhibition: Reset (Vienna 1909, 20-year-old Adolf Hitler is Homeless) and Amún Mbes Reenactment.

A familiar one for IMPAKT, but a new artist for me to be able to work with, is Israeli-born Roee Rosen. What guts he shows in the stories his films and drawings tell. Larding the always politically charged approach with the greatest power play of all time – sexual dependency relationships – humour, paradox and playfulness are never far away. It makes the most fierce denunciations palpable to the viewer. The film The Dust Channel, for instance, is a must-see. Rosen also created new work for the exhibition, The Gaza War Tattoos, in which he expresses his criticism of the Israeli government’s atrocious way of razing Palestine to the ground and guilty of large-scale genocide.

You have been active in the art world for more than 30 years. In that time, how have you seen societal attitudes towards art change?

I have always made exhibitions at the interface of art, society and technology. Even at the level where I found it logical to seek cooperation with parties outside the art world (Council for the Chronically Sick and Disabled, the World Wildlife Fund, the Ombudsman, Personal Data Authority). This always made me an outsider in the art world. Due to personal circumstances, inclusion and diversity were my driving forces long before it became bon ton. This started with Ik + de Ander (1994) and Niet Normaal (2009/2010.

Meanwhile, there has been a ‘reverse world’. Traditionally, artists and curators were the ones who came up with the themes – from climate change to colonisation – based on their engagement with the world around them; now they are imposed on us by government and subsidisers as subjects we have to relate to. See the Diversity & Inclusion Code, the Fair Practice Code and Governance Code for Culture. Artists and art institutions have to jump through more and more hoops. There is less room for involvement from their own sense of urgency. This is a pity because we are only getting lazy because of this kind of imposed morality from outside. As far as I am concerned, art is still the way to learn to look at the world differently. And because art does that on an experiential level, playfully but often also crosswise and layered, that experience can also stick. That makes art transformative.

Of course, as an audience, you have to be open to it. And now, in an era of increasing polarisation and identity politics, that is becoming increasingly difficult. Not only are ordinary citizens increasingly distanced from the arts, even in that small, protected art world we hardly have any interest in each other. Let alone listen to each other. Instead, we let ourselves be played apart by populist and neoliberal sentiments. Meanwhile, we hardly realise who is pulling the strings behind the scenes, getting away with the loot. To quote the late Mark Fisher: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism.” Turbo-capitalism by now, as social media and AI are happy to help. As far as I am concerned, there are still plenty of challenges for artists and institutions. Although it takes more and more guts. That’s what we went looking for with DEAL WITH IT.

I have always said that art is not autonomous. In other words, autonomy is not something you automatically receive on a note the moment you graduate from art school. It is something you have to fight for day in, day out. I think now we’ve reached a time where I don’t have to explain that anymore. We are so encapsulated in patriarchal and capitalist systems that true survivors can be counted on one hand. Possibly the reason why more and more biennials and the latest documenta are turning to artists previously known as ‘outsider artists’. Without romanticising these artists embraced as ‘insiders’, there may still be authenticity and commitment there that we have lost in the mainstream art world.

The festival exhibition The Cake is a Lie is on view at IMPAKT until 12 January 2025. The name refers to a meme that originated from the video game Portal. What is the significance of this meme for you, and how is it reflected in the exhibition?

I previously used the meme for a game we designed, titled Break The Wall. The idea was to give young gamers the opportunity to question the world around them instead of assuming it is just as it appears. Artworks were given the role of oracles in that game. By asking oracles questions and engaging with fellow visitors, it was possible to recognise the large systems laid over reality as human fabrications. Think idée fixes or constructs like economics, religion or even identity.

The festival exhibition The Cake is a Lie refers to the fact that the world is not, or need not be, as it is presented to us. It is important to look at our society from different perspectives and to keep talking to each other to find out why you interpret certain facts or truths differently from your neighbour. This is not to bring each other down – our fucked-up world is doomed anyway if we continue like this – but to come up with alternatives for new forms of worldbuilding. Before that happens, we have a lot to unravel. I think the exhibition shows that very well. In terms of style, it is a weird show: nothing is what it seems. From physical sculptures and textile works to videos and interactive portals that put you in touch with the plastics in our biosystem. The latter happens in Mary Maggic‘s Estrowold Now (Join the colonisation Today). The work seems an oddity, but to me it is a wondrous spider in the web where all the threads of The Cake is a Lie come together. Once again, we are the fish who have no idea what water we are swimming in. Or: what we are doing to ourselves and our planet.

Furthermore, uncensored political tattoos by Roee Rosen as a commentary on the brutal war in Gaza enter into a conversation with Yusef Boys by Susanne Khalil Yusef, who, as a Palestinian, shares her personal war experiences with us. The reclining head is an amalgamation of the faces of Palestinian boys who were – accidentally in the wrong place at the wrong time – shot by the Israeli army for no explainable reason. They are images that confuse or even shame us for various reasons. What are they doing here and how do they relate to, say, Joshua Citarella‘s e-ideologies flags?

A festival like DEAL WITH IT cannot do without also offering an uncompromising critique of patriarchy in its exhibition. This is done through the lenses of colonised and oppressed people: artists throwing their personal experiences into the fray. Marcos Kueh shows how the West turned a promiscuous fertility goddess from the Middle East into a Christian, virginal white and prudish Madonna, obliterating all references to her earthly origins. Kubra Khademi works with similar themes. Her drawings depict women als animals, monsters and warriors. This in opposition to the women-oppressive Muslim regime, where women cannot be a full part of society.

The exhibition’s introductory text speaks of a world on fire. How can radical art help put out this fire?

Radical means ‘to the roots’. We are talking about artists who care about the world they live in from a personal motivation, and do so with guts and on their own terms. Usually this means that they have invested considerably in research; often they are experts by experience although at the same time they know how to keep a sufficient distance from their subject. Sometimes they challenge sacred cows, or allow several opposing voices to speak. Then again, they are fascinated in an almost naive way by the paradoxical nature of a theme or event. It is these kinds of individual, uncensored voices that show us the complexity of the world. They show how our lives are involuntarily intertwined. In miniature and on a global level.

Of course, a world on fire cannot be put out instantaneously. What we do know is that we have to do it together, as human beings, and with consideration for our non-human fellow inhabitants. To take up that collective responsibility, we need to learn to put ourselves in each other’s shoes again. We must learn to have empathy for people who are far away from us, who are not in the same bubble. Being able to see each other across the differences. This is only possible by immersing ourselves in other, sometimes unheard perspectives. This is what radical art is capable of. Telling stories and opening our eyes to what we do not yet know. Because they are never unambiguous images, they put us as viewers to work. In this way, they manage to touch us deeply as visitors.

It is important to recognise that what is ‘radical’ for one person does not have to be so for another. For yet another, it is just not radical enough. That’s not a problem. Nor is it a problem if you don’t understand everything that is offered, or don’t find it relevant. Compare it to a candy store: there you choose what you feel like at that moment. Eating everything at once makes you sick. DEAL WITH IT offers something for everyone, and together it is a beautiful bouquet. A festival that constantly offers moments for discussion and conversation, to understand together where we have come from, where we are now and where we want to go.

You are the founder of Niet Normaal, whose name fits nicely with the festival’s theme. Where does the name Niet Normaal (Not Normal) come from?

The Niet Normaal Foundation is named after the 2010 Niet Normaal exhibition. The central question was ‘what is normal, and who decides?’ Many visitors thought they were going to see art by non-normal people. But the opposite was true. Once inside, you realised that you yourself were the one who did not, or not always, meet the norm. And that therein also lay a source of pleasure and freedom. And that only when we all ‘do politics’ – in Hannah Arend’s words, “putting ourselves in the venture of publicness” – can we ensure that the imposed bandwidth within which we function as human beings does not become too narrow. It was the time when Geert Wilders gained support, after Haider entered the Austrian government in 2000. In DEAL WITH IT, we show Christoph Schlingensief‘s documentary on TV show Ausländer raus in the film programme for a reason. The extreme right was then a reality.

‘Niet Normaal’ as a term is ambiguous and perhaps confusing. The Dutch use the term many times a day, to express a range of reactions: from rejecting something that deviates from the norm to exuberantly embracing something fantastic. These two extremes together made Niet Normaal a very suitable title and later a name for my foundation. You never know what theme or approach we’ll arrive with next time. There is something unpredictable in that name, and I think that belongs to me.

Under the umbrella of the Niet Normaal foundation, I have made about seven large-scale exhibitions over a period of 15 years, which were very diverse in terms of aesthetics and content. From questioning ‘normality’ to putting humans as dominant species into perspective in Yes Naturally (2013), interpreting violent systems in Hacking Habitat (2016), and Robot Love (2018) on how we need to redefine ourselves as humans in relation to AI and robotics. The common thread connecting the themes is ‘curiosity’. From a feminist perspective, they explore who we are as humans, what our (interdependent) relationship is to each other and to non-human actors.

Sometimes the exhibitions are activist and dystopian, at other times I seek a more affirmative approach. Often one exhibition is an answer to the previous one, but also raises new questions. I am happy to have had the opportunity to realise these projects freely and without too many conditions (and codes). The best compliment I received was that my exhibitions were ‘non-disciplinary’. That fits well with what I understand by Niet Normaal.

www.nietnormaal.nl
www.inegevers.net
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