Arno van Roosmalen, director of Stroom Den Haag, this time you blurred it

The year started with big excitement: finally I got to rent a studio (one of the municipal studios that only members of Stroom can have) in the center of the city where I right away installed myself and set up my new working space. In February 2010, I received a letter from Stroom announcing me that they don’t recognise me as a professional artist anymore; note that I have been a member since 1997 with four years interruption because I lived then abroad. They judged my work activities of the last three years only. I became a mother three years ago so those have been the hardest years for keeping it up but I did continue, sometimes giving the focus on organising projects that involved many other artists (see at http://www.geborgenkamers.nl), sometimes by focusing on my own development. The fact is that starting off as an outsider, or more walking my own path, and being a foreigner in this country (not from the favoured countries nor from countries of conflict that are in fashion for these arrogant westerners over here), it was obvious year by year that this centre of arts did not want me in their feet; they just found the moment to expel me. I am sure that they have kicked out more people but noone talks. I do, and I continue to work on my own path. I still have the studio and I will report it as soon as something goes wrong with it.

In the meantime I am waiting for the apologies of Arno van Roosmalen and of Stroom.

If I am to die I might just as well have three legs, S.Kapnissi 2010

Stroom Den Haag is a discriminating organisation

The success factors for becoming (and staying) a member of Stroom: Dutch nationality, diploma from a Dutch art school preferably the KABK, knowing to sell yourself as an artist, being friend of the director or pretending to like what he considers art and be male or behave like a male.

Foreign artists, with studies, exhibitions and constant involvement with art, are treated as serfs who have to report to the master every 2-3 years about their activities and their incomes. This master though is financed by the state where these foreign artists also pay tax through their art organisations or individual movements or even through other incomes (day-time jobs, night-time jobs, private assets, etc.).

Arno van Roosmalen, director of Stroom, should apologize to the artists of The Hague and to the city itself for suffocating them in a mediocre provincialism (even for a state managed artworld as the case is in the Netherlands).

Self admiring neurotic corps (to be), S.Kapnissi 2010

against the stream (tegenstroom), the case of Stroom Den Haag and what the artists of this city have to face

Stroom Den Haag , the euphemism of center of visual arts and architecture,  treats the artists of The Hague as their employees and judges them every couple of years (not all of them and not all under same intervals) according to criteria that mainly have to do with earned incomes and commerciality of the work, but also skills (that one has for some years and then loses them), impact qualities (zeggingskracht) and proven achievements (by this, meaning mostly public assignments). Attached to the financial part is a more widespread issue of Holland where artists hang on subsidies in order to realize their ideas/projects and basically do not go ahead without a subsidy; try to belong to commercial clubs that ensures them a minimum of commercial activity (and also ping-pong bills and receipts back and forth between them to show incomes) and all that exactly to avoid being judged as non-artist (?), non-professional artist (?), an amateur (?). The question marks are addressed to Arno van Roosmalen, director of Stroom.

Stroom Den Haag misuses the authority that the city of The Hague has entrusted them. Arno van Roosmalen, director of Stroom since 2005, uses the money streaming in from the city of The Hague to build his own career as curator. Under pretext of “changing the way people sees art”, he imposes his view of art to the city’s artists instead of supporting theirs, including all those who go along and excluding those who have their own way of thinking.

Stroom Den Haag is an obstacle to the free work of the visual artists of The Hague; artists are requested to comply with the taste and the ideas of the director and his committees (consisted by “fellow” artists and a gallerist!). This is the present  “professionalism testing committee” (toetsingscommissie beroepsmatigheid): Simone van den Heuvel , Maurits van de Laar (the gallerist) , Maarten Schepers , Zagara and Marian Zult .

Stroom Den Haag is a discriminating organization. More on that issue will be written in the near future.

For the ones outside Holland: Stroom Den Haag is the organisation responsible for the visual arts and recently also the architectural matters of the city of The Hague. It is set up as a Stichting (foundation or association) with independent management, but which runs on money subsidized from The Hague. Its mission is to facilitate the work of the visual artists of The Hague by managing the municipal ateliers, the subsidies and the exhibition opportunities. In practice that means that a non-stroom artist can not request a municipal atelier which would be rent at a low price, cannot request a subsidy for his/hers activities and projects, cannot request contribution to exhibition expenses, cannot be listed in the national database for visual artists (http://www.kunstenaars.nu) and is not invited to participate in exhibitions because a group exhibition in order to be subsidized by Stroom must have 50% stroom-artists participation.