mind
essay
Take what you’re owed // Fugitive Dreams
Imagine falling asleep whenever and wherever – this is love, I think, this is freedom.
essay
Productively Unproductive
Arne Willée rescues idleness from its morally dubious past and presents it as a needed, critical resource.
column
The Guest at Work
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.
essay
Cyberpunk Diaspora
Reconciling with Hong Kong in Kongkee’s “Dragon’s Delusion”
essay
Traces of past lives: an attempt at capturing balloons
“Can I write about the balloon without attaching too much weight to it? Or is a balloon just a balloon; enough said?”
essay
When fear rules — a conversation about silence in the Dutch art world
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.
fiction
Ötza and the Open-Ended Becoming of the World
Confessions of a Cryodesiccated Fanfiction Entrepreneur From the Neolithic.
essay
Where the Magic Happens
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.
essay
A neon palindrome, lessons from the crouching man
“In the name of contemporary art, Spain has finally embraced the whitewash technique of the iconoclasts.“
essay
Ghosthood and the Uncomfortable Familiarity of Haunting
now you tell me I remind you of a friend, but one that you can't seem to name
interview
Gaydreaming
Welcome to the Gaydreaming henny.
column
and then we danced, on hosting ghosts and ghosting
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.
essay
How the hero became my problem
Deconstructing traditional notions of masculinity and conflict, exploring a fluidity in defence.
feature
Rethinking Conquest: An Anti-Amazon Conversation
I am the city, I am a daughter of the city.
Not the rain, neither the forest.
Further from being the rainforest’s daughter.
essay
Sisyphus in the Era of Simulation
Reflections on The Sims game and its entanglement in the mystification of an oppressive and recursive power system.
essay
Babe… It’s Time to Get a Haircut
In what way is fading a means of internally & externally bending “dreams” beyond the black barbershop?
essay
singing about bananas
A banana bread without Chiquita bananas and without a guilty conscience would taste even better.
essay
What did you dream about last night?
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?
essay
Dasha’s Kitchen: My magical grilled cheese sandwich recipe
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.
essay
The Image of an Image is a Memory: Clash of the Imperial Gaze
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?
feature
Under the Spell of the Sensuous: What David Abram’s Environmental Philosophy Can Teach Us
“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.“
fiction
I Become You
“I love your face. I guess if I had to look at it every day, it wouldn’t be the worst.”
interview
Farzané & Arash: Artificial Acoustemology
"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."
fiction
The New Build: A Companion Haunting
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.
essay
Thinking through the supermarket
Ilaria Obata takes a fresh look at the vast environment of the supermarket chain in this analytical essay.
fiction
Full Nine Seconds
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.
essay
A devilish grin, a suburban carpark
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
letter
A letter from my couch
2023 in review, and a few hints on what’s in store for The Couch in 2024.
poetry
The horizon shifts as I do
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.
fiction
Camp Connection: An Intimacy Ritual Horror Story
“Maye couldn’t take her eyes off Kevin Commitment. He was just so tight and shiny.”
essay
In The Door Opening of The Bedroom
'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.'
fiction
Lungs
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…
fiction
The Glass Age
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.
interview
'When you mourn, everything is included'
Asa Horvitz unearths the many layers of GHOST: his poignant performance project on death and its presence among the living.
essay
Talent Programmes: Entry Points and Ecosystems
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.
essay
The Moment You Discover Eyelashes
“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.”
essay
Are TikTok Healers Contemporary Quacks or Re-risen Witches*?
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?
mind
Check-in with... Stéphanie Janaina
Berber Meindertsma speaks with dancer and choreographer Stéphanie Janaina, almost four years after she performed ¡miércoles! at Het HEM.
mind
Check-in with… HMTP talents and coaches
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.
fiction
The Hotel Corpus: A (data) body horror story
“How much data about herself would she have to provide before the stupid machines could understand who she truly was, what she truly wanted?”
profile
Against the Logic of Efficiency
BUTT Magazine editor Andrew Pasquier explores how Horst Arts and Music Festival has challenged traditional festival organisation by prioritising innovation and creativity.
interview
Atelier Brenda: Thinking Beyond The Format
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.
interview
The Alchemical World of Dooha Ritus
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.
interview
Check-in with... Wil Spier
“If people are interested, they understand everything in the world. The problem is getting them interested.”
column
Noa’s Advice: How To Stand Out
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?
interview
Terrestrial Technologies: An Interview with Patricia Domínguez
"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."
interview
Check-in with... Sara Koops
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.
column
You Gotta Serve Somebody
“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.
poetry
Between the columns we reckon with it all
All metal and grass, golden hour reeds upon the canals North Sea winds making small gods of us all
fiction
Cup Run Over
smiling my best smile I asked him what sort of work he was in, my eyes moving down to the cup in his hand.
mind
Check-in with... Maarten Spruyt
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."
poetry
Remember me, remember you
"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."
essay
Mystics of the Chthulucene
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.
essay
Two Nights of Noise at Tivoli
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.
column
You Wanna Know How We Got These Scars?
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.
column
Noa’s Advice
There’s no such thing as a stupid [art] question - Noa knows it all.
fiction
The Boys Next To Her House
"I thought about a cold beer and cigarettes in the garage. I’d kill for that."
fiction
Mademoiselle de Sade
"She cleaned him, made him pray; she ate him violently like a fat pig enjoying its last meal."
essay
POV:
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.
essay
Hospitality on demand
Can the concept of hospitality provide us with a critical lens to explore what kind of relationships socially engaged art institutions can build online ?
interview
Check-in with... Bert Spaan
Who or what is the contemporary cartographer? Bert Spaan (Shock Forest Group) reflects on his residency in 2019.
letter
An Introduction to The Couch
"Meanwhile, the idea that we had – that the digital is a free space where anything is possible – has shattered into little pieces."
interview
Re:Sounding
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."