From colorful toys to a philosophical walk. Tidgeest’s editors provide tips for the weekend and next week.
SEE
Escape to the legendary world of designer Floris Hover
If you want to escape to a clear, colorful world in these gloomy and confusing times, you can visit the Amstelveense Museum Jan (until the former Museum Jan van der Togt). There is a charming exhibition with work by designer Floris Hovers. He calls his studio a ‘playground’, and his design truly exudes a childlike enthusiasm.
Hovers (1976) is known for its colorful vehicles, greatly simplified until there is only one recognizable basic shape left: fire truck, tractor, truck. He calls them Archetoys; archetypal toys.
These vehicles are part of a complete world: colorful cities built from all kinds of waste materials. Table legs, stoppers, thumbs, plastic bottles and metal profiles are changed in the hands of Hovers for apartments, church towers, cranes and transmission towers.
ingenious world
In Museum Jan you can get lost in a huge model set up on the floor. But there are also smaller ‘cities’ hanging on the wall, which makes them look like abstract sculptures. It’s not necessarily a romantic world that Hovers creates. But one that has a reassuring effect due to the cheerful colors and the clear layout.
Hovers also designs furniture where the same simplified shapes play a major role. Like a chair that has been ingeniously put together by connecting all the parts with a rope that is then pulled tight. Or a simple wooden box that on closer inspection turns out to be completely made of tin. The designer was inspired by historical tin toys – of course.
The exhibition The art of playing can be seen in Museum Jan in Amstelveen until 26 June. Info: museumjan.nl
Scapino Ballet: The Square 2
The Square is the stage for young choreography talents, conceived by artistic director Ed Wubbe. To the sounds of dance and ambient, a young international company dances various choreographies, gathered for an evening performance. Dutch musician and producer Richard van Kruysdijk plays live and drives them on their ‘journey’ from loneliness to meeting, renewed inner strength and insight.
More via scapinoballet.nl, or listen in advance podcast series about the backgrounds via the website or via Spotify. Tour April 7 to June 10
Calder Now boarding tour
During National Museum Week (April 4-10), guides from Urban Guides will take you along with the American sculptor Alexander Calders (1898-1976) innovative mobiles and large public sculptures. In addition to his work, you will come across installations, performances and sculptures by ten international, contemporary artists who are inspired by Calder. With a ticket from Kunsthallen, the tours are free. Sign up at checkout, full is full.
Calder Now can be seen in Kunsthal Rotterdam on 6-9. April at 13.30 and 14.30. For more information, visit kunsthal.nl.
FOLLOW
Dance to the tunes of a sponge
What does a cocoa bean sound like? And can you dance to the rhythm of a pineapple? Musician Tarun Nayar (@modernbiology) shows on TikTok that there is music in pretty much everything that lives. He regularly dives into the Canadian forests and connects his synthesizer to all kinds of plants that he encounters, and then makes music with them.
However, a small side note. The plants do not really make the music themselves. Educated as a biologist, Nayar uses the bioelectricity that flows through the leaves or stems. He picks up his synthesizer as a rhythm. Then he turns some buttons and suddenly it sounds like music.
And from time to time there are some pretty danceable songs. For example, using mushrooms, he produces eighty-like sounds that would not look out of place in the series Stranger Things, sounds some lovely whistle-like tones from an apple tree, and he manages to extract a modern-sounding dance number from an arum. In fact, Nayar has already released an album full of plant music and plans to make a lot more music.
Understandable when one sees that his videos have sometimes been viewed tens of thousands of times. His mushroom music is especially popular, he said recently The edge† “If I only made music with mushrooms, a great musician like Tyler, the Creator, would call me again for a collaboration.”
The rapper Snoop Dogg also has experience with plant music, in 2019 he was involved in the song Sticky situationmade using a cannabis plant.
If you want, you can also get started with plants yourself. For example, you have devices with sounding names like Plantwave or Plantchoir, with which you can make your own plant music from your living room. It’s just not a cheap hobby, you can easily spend around 200 euros on it. (Gabriella Codonesu)
TO DO
Walk through Limburg Mergelland
Wavy hills with flowering fruit trees: Limburg Mergelland is now at its best. This brisk walk (4 to 5 hours) takes you along wooded hills, sunken roads and rolling fields. Along the way you will pass a few castles, Geul, a limestone wall and a former hermitage.
The route can be found here. Is 15 kilometers too much? There are also shorter routes!
Go through the philosophical landscape
In Philosophy Month, there are philosophical walks: Move with your feet and mind. The practical philosopher Leo Hollander explains what nature does to your brain and comes up with surprising questions. Walk through a forest and discover the wonder, open the senses. In a philosophical conversation, for example, it is about the question of how to look at dead trees. Is there beauty in death, or must all that is dead go away? After the five kilometers, your head is empty.
Philosophical hike is possible on April 2 in Mastbos, Breda and April 30 in Katendrecht, Rotterdam. Read more here.
READ
This cheerful and original counting book will create cheerfulness even among third graders
In ordinary counting books, toddlers learn to count to ten, but this picture book is about counting to one. And definitely no longer than one! It’s fun, especially for kids who are already very good at it.
But the book contains clever instincts, because after a drawing of an apple and an elephant – easy! – follows a plate of two huge whales. While your brain is already saying ‘two!’ starts screaming until you read the question: ‘How many sausages do you see?’ And yes, a little sausage is dancing on the fountain of one of the whales.
The tone and humor are reminiscent The book without drawings by BJ Novak. Like the wonderfully funny book, this original, cheerfully illustrated counting book will create cheerfulness even among third graders.
Caspar Salmon, Number One Counting Book. Gottmer. 26 pages € 13.99. From 4 years.
Do not forget Spotify when you read this book by Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton has never made it a secret that she is commercial. So her first book is accompanied by a CD of the same name. The superstar co-wrote the book with best-selling author James Patterson (with hundreds of titles and more than 400 million copies sold). But Ren, Rose, Ren has mainly become Dolly Parton’s book. In the two main characters, the reader will easily recognize a young Dolly working her way out of poverty, and the older, successful Dolly.
When young homeless AnnieLee Keyes happens to be in a bar in Nashville begging to perform, she does not know that this is where superstar Ruthannah Rider started. AnnieLee is exceptionally talented and Ruthanna takes her under her wings.
Gripping hands
Parton mainly uses the book to pick a bone with the music industry. Vilein tells her character Ruthannah what she encountered on the way to the top. Radio stations that would never broadcast a woman’s song twice in a row. How women were mainly seen as adornment for male musicians. That it took a very long time before it was understood that female musicians could also score a coutry hit. And then, of course, there were the producers’ gripping hands.
AnnieLee is of a later date and is not very happy. She writes her own songs at a high tempo. (Parton would be her hits Jolene and I will always love you also wrote a day). But AnnieLee also has a secret past. She gets chased and to the confusion of her benefactors, just when everything seems to be going well, she flees.
Co-author James Patterson, famous for his intriguing novels, has held back. It takes a long time to get some excitement in the story. In between the intricacies and all the romance, the greats of country music are eagerly referred to, and it’s nice to grab Spotify while reading. All in all, this makes for an entertaining but also Dolly-sweet book.
Dolly Parton and James Patterson: Pure, Rose, Pure (original title Run, Rose, Run). New Amsterdam; 368 pages € 22.99