Imagine falling asleep whenever and wherever – this is love, I think, this is freedom.

Arne Willée rescues idleness from its morally dubious past and presents it as a needed, critical resource.

Twice a day you walk up a mountain to connect to the internet, check your matches on Hinge, and text the girl you like from your language class back in the country you live. 

Reconciling with Hong Kong in Kongkee’s “Dragon’s Delusion”

“Can I write about the balloon without attaching too much weight to it? Or is a balloon just a balloon; enough said?”

A conversation with Mirjam Westen, Tina Farifteh and Maurits de Bruijn on the current possibilities of talking to each other as a society – through visual arts – about the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Confessions of a Cryodesiccated Fanfiction Entrepreneur From the Neolithic.

I find a room in the basement and a room in the attic and while sifting through these rooms, I realise that the room of my dreams has always been a room to work in.

“In the name of contemporary art, Spain has finally embraced the whitewash technique of the iconoclasts.“

now you tell me I remind you of a friend, but one that you can't seem to name

Welcome to the Gaydreaming henny.

In my dance, I host ghosts, their multi-headed presence, their sounding breath coming out of their numerous mouths. I befriend the strange, and the otherness becomes my condition.

In what way is fading a means of internally & externally bending “dreams” beyond the black barbershop?

A banana bread without Chiquita bananas and without a guilty conscience would taste even better.

When we dream and interpret the dream, is it really a dream that predicts the future, or is our subconscious making us believe that the dream predicted the future? 

Deconstructing traditional notions of masculinity and conflict, exploring a fluidity in defence.

I am the city, I am a daughter of the city.
Not the rain, neither the forest.
Further from being the rainforest’s daughter.

Reflections on The Sims game and its entanglement in the mystification of an oppressive and recursive power system.

Dasha Ilina tricks the search algorithms that might read her essay about algorithmic surveillance into thinking it’s just a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich.

Today, a walk in the museum is a walk with a camera. Is the hegemonic narrative of the exhibition questioned by the camera? Or does the camera become an accomplice to the museum?

“We can navigate the intricate workings of the planet without the need for absolute mastery, embracing uncertainty and opening ourselves to unexpected insights and interlocutors, be they human or more-than.“

“I love your face. I guess if I had to look at it every day, it wouldn’t be the worst.”

"The question that piques my curiosity is not whether machines can exhibit human creativity, but rather to explore how human-machine interactions can lead to the development of aesthetics or epistemologies that are based on the combined agency of both entities."

That was the top-rated post on Raising, the occult AI forum where Nessa had found the instructions to build Robin 3. Raising was an “occult” group as in secret and illegal uses of language models, not as in black magic, Nessa was pretty sure.

Ilaria Obata takes a fresh look at the vast environment of the supermarket chain in this analytical essay. 

Bug wondered if any part of him, any itty-bitty projection of his future self, had objected to the goings-on during the fall and wished to rewind in midair.

Essayist and poet Charlie Jermyn makes a do-it-yourself pilgrimage through museum, muck, rain, wind and pub to visit Jan Steen’s old haunts

2023 in review, and a few hints on what’s in store for The Couch in 2024.

Did you know that sequoia trees can grow taller than data centres can?
In the outskirts of Amsterdam, there are many of the latter, corrupting the horizon.

“Maye couldn’t take her eyes off Kevin Commitment. He was just so tight and shiny.”

'The bedroom is the locus of a becoming, spread out across multiple dimensions. Every night, as I close my bedroom door behind me, this process is set in motion, and every morning, just as it is about to become actualised, it disappears.'

Cassidy works at Jazzy's Afterlife Relations, a theater where customers can talk to deceased loved ones. However, when dismembered body parts begin appearing on stage, Cassidy is tasked with cleaning up the mess…

Suddenly, a muffled bang pierced the room. It travelled over the aisles in a shock wave, coating the walls in a shallow echo. A thick silence followed, cut only by the hiss of the refrigerators.

Asa Horvitz unearths the many layers of GHOST: his poignant performance project on death and its presence among the living.

Music journalist Hannah Pezzack dives into the nuances of building a career within the cultural sector, investigating mentorship offered by European festivals, platforms, and institutions, including Het HEM.

“This is what I want to remember: ‘Repetition is a form of change’. But I’m not sure whether I think this is lame or actually holds a profound truth.”

Are the countless self-proclaimed ‘healers’ giving medical advice on TikTok quacks? Or are they a sign that witches* have reclaimed their space in the health field, reviving lost knowledge and offering the care that mainstream healthcare still fails to provide?

Berber Meindertsma speaks with dancer and choreographer Stéphanie Janaina, almost four years after she performed ¡miércoles! at Het HEM.

After the music video release Vamos by KG and Fabs, a track written during the Homebase Music Talent Programme (HMTP) Writer’s Camp, Berber Meindertsma speaks with them and two of the coaches of the camp.

“How much data about herself would she have to provide before the stupid machines could understand who she truly was, what she truly wanted?”

BUTT Magazine editor Andrew Pasquier explores how Horst Arts and Music Festival has challenged traditional festival organisation by prioritising innovation and creativity.

We explore the minds behind our identity for The Couch, which is made by Belgium-based design studio Atelier Brenda, run and founded by Sophie Keij and Nana Esi. With a growing portfolio and many experiences in the art and music world, they are ready to conquer the world.

In anticipation of New HHHorizons, Het HEM’s second collaboration with HORST, Agrî Ibrahim sits down with  Woody92, Armia Yousefi and Arad Inbar ahead of the first instalment of their ever-expanding performance, Dooha Ritus.

“If people are interested, they understand everything in the world. The problem is getting them interested.”

If artistic production (within the artworld) is tied to individual mystique and brilliance — then how the hell are we supposed to stand out if the Netherlands alone produces such a vulgarly deflating abundance of artists?

"If you look beyond their corporate functionality, these bodies are all going to the Earth to be repaired from damage by a system that never stops."

Ever wondered what boxing is all about, and what art might have to do with it? Sit back and enjoy this check-in with professional boxer Sara Koops, who participated in the Chapter 1NE Box clinic at Het HEM in 2019.

“Hello” I typed, and it felt like flinging sound into a cave, testing to see if someone was there in the dark, some being of an undetermined image. 

All metal and grass, golden hour reeds upon the canals North Sea winds making small gods of us all

smiling my best smile I asked him what sort of work he was in, my eyes moving down to the cup in his hand.

We sat down and looked back with Guest of Chapter 3HREE Maarten Spruyt, known for his work as a curator, art director and stylist, with an incredible knack for beauty and sensory perception. "I try to make exhibitions which make you look inwards, feel uncomfortable and sit with that for a moment."

"It’s strange not seeing each other for a while. I know there isn’t any other way, but it’s strange. I hope I’ll still recognise you, after the renovation."

Cthulhu – H.P. Lovecraft’s science fiction monster – lurks under the surface of the ocean as an elemental deity. We must wonder what lurks beneath the surface of the systems known as AI.

By recounting his experiences of two formative concerts at Tivoli, essayist and performer Charlie Jermyn provides a poetic account on the raw power of sound and the music of everyday life. He connects the origin of noise music to Italian Futurism, a movement fascinated with dynamism and constant innovation, and appreciates the ongoing vitality of aging cultural icons amidst the decay of our time.

Writer, cultural critic, and philosopher Ben Shai van der Wal calls upon us to embrace our trickster-friend. A short essay about how society’s need for healing and fixing stands in the way of it.

There’s no such thing as a stupid [art] question - Noa knows it all.

Can the concept of hospitality provide us with a critical lens to explore what kind of relationships socially engaged art institutions can build online ?

"I thought about a cold beer and cigarettes in the garage. I’d kill for that."

"She cleaned him, made him pray; she ate him violently like a fat pig enjoying its last meal."

Ginevra Petrozzi makes the case for a complicated relationship between ourselves and the artificial intelligence tools that guide us through our lives. The stories and myths we construct around the technologies we don’t understand can help us navigate the obscure and even violent power of artificial intelligence.

Who or what is the contemporary cartographer? Bert Spaan (Shock Forest Group) reflects on his residency in 2019.

"Meanwhile, the idea that we had – that the digital is a free space where anything is possible – has shattered into little pieces."

In 2022, researchers Pamela Jordan and Sergio González Cuervo brought their sonic archaeology project Re:Sounding to our site. "Het HEM presents potent questions, questions that wouldn't come up had we not been thinking about the space through sound, through our perception of it and the perception of the building’s original users."