a poem a day X

Kwart voor zes

en nog steeds geen honger.

Dat dankt je de koekoek,

nog zopas gegeten

in Mechelen onder de watertoren

waarin de zooi hoog ligt gestapeld,

zo hoog dat je erin omkomt van dorst.

A quarter to six

and still not hungry

thanks to the cuckoo,

eaten not long ago

in Mechelen* under the water tower

where in a heap of zooi** so high,

so tall that one will starve from thirst.

*Belgian town

** un-translatable, a Belgian watery dish

a poem a day IX

‘Welke haas heb jij gevangen?’

vroeg mij de koe vroeg in de morgen

en ik wist het antwoord niet.

De ogen nog dronken van slaap

vergleed geboe in geloei, onbegrijpelijk bot

zoals ik mij aanstelde, bedelde om koffie

en haar molk.

Mijn vingers die haar tepels vingen

en zij mij kneep.

‘What hare did you catch?’

asked the cow early in the morning

and I didn’t know the answer.

The eyes still filled with sleep

glided buh to moaw, un-understandable rude

like I showed-off, begging for coffee

and milked her.

My fingers caught her nipples

while she squeezed me.

“Venus of Milo” should be restricted

The rules of picture streamer FLICKR

This is their quote: “A good rule of thumb is, bare breasts and bottoms are "moderate." Full frontal nudity is "restricted."”

After I uploaded some of my digital art I found a letter in my mailbox this morning, letting me know that my photo-stream was moderated. Why? They got a complaint: some bare breasts or bottoms were found; Body parts which should be covered, even in art. According to their rules the Venus of Milo and other classic art-works should be restricted. It is nudity in its most subversive way. How dare I using other naked parts then an allowed head or hand, foot maybe, however I’m not sure. It could trigger the foot-fetishists, no?

What is wrong with the human body, a work of art we all carry as long as we live? Born naked but covered as soon as we cry ourselves into this world. If it was only to keep us warm…, but no: once covered don’t show it anymore, and certainly not in public! Imagine that someone sees it who doesn’t even dare to look in the mirror when undressed…

It shows us humans as hypocrites: what we need the most to survive we cannot show in its original form. It is sex-related according to the puritans, and sex is dirty because it is where we all come from and that shouldn’t be known at all. The secret of life must be really kept a secret.

Besides this it is another violation against the open forum the Internet once was. Companies rule, and the bigger they are the more unwanted and never meant we have to swallow. In my opinion companies with restrictions should stay away from the Internet and that almost means today that the Internet should stay away at all. Because that is where it is all about: the Net turned into a money-machine and the ones who earn this way are afraid to loose customers, like politicians are afraid to loose votes. It is not about an opinion or meaning but about numbers, and not even the mass, because the mass doesn’t think that “Venus” has to be covered. It is about dictators’ ruling as this is what a small group can if you call a society democracy. Not what the majority allows or wants, because they don’t care. These are the rules of a minority with a strong opinion and the possibilities to ventilate them and pressure others to live by their norms. That is what we call democracy: the rules of a few who dare to shout!

one of the "moderated" works of art

a poem a day VIII

‘Zwaai de plak, onnozelaar!’;

brieste de slager,

gaf een schijf worst aan zijn vrouw

waar ze naar keek

of hij zijn lul in reepjes had gesneden.

‘Swing the paste, sucker!’;

roared the butcher,

gave a sausage disk to his wife

where she looked at

as if he had cut his dick into strips.

the Amsterdam IJ-border project

A B O U T

In 1989 I was asked, as an artist, to install an exhibition about the Amsterdam IJ-borders. It meant to be a historic overview and I only had eight weeks to realize it. An impossible job if it wasn’t that I had studied archeology for a while and therefore knew how to do historic research. Still it wasn’t an easy nut to crack in that time period.

I wasn’t the only one who was aware of this. Some amateur historians, who were involved in the project, called it nonsense to invite an artist to clear the job, and they were quit surprised when the end-result was much more then they expected.

At the beginning it was just an extra and paid order for me. I only lived three years in Amsterdam, and didn’t know much more about the city – and especially the IJ – than someone else who lived there for such a short period, but I knew my way in historical archives, managed to dig up what I needed and to illustrate the exhibition. Especially the historians were surprised, and admitted this. I was asked to stay with the project which wasn’t just a one time historical illustration of Amsterdam’s important sea-gate.

The IJ divides the city in two: the old part with the town center and 19^th century quarters on the south side and the former agricultural and industrial quarters in the North. This was the capitals stepchild, however close to the center but divided by the IJ it wasn’t easy to approach. A couple of –free- ferries made it possible to cross but the border alongside was mainly a composition of the old and long gone shipyard activity and some pre-fabricated housing facilities. It had to be modernized to cope with the south border and to become really a part of the Amsterdam agglomeration. A group of people saw this and formed the Noordzij (North side) association to work at the realization of re-structuring the northern border. The exhibition, in which I was involved, was just part of a festival to launch the idea among a broader audience.

After my successful introduction I was asked to stay and guide the cultural events the association had planned for the future. I became the official exhibition coordinator, and later the vice-president of the club which wanted to work to an end-conclusion in order to bring attention to the re-structuring of the northern border towards the city and council of Amsterdam.

E V E N T S

Noordzij festival

The first festival was strictly cultural, just to bring attention to the subject. The exhibition I was responsible for, and another, done by a different artist which showed artistic views around the IJ-border. Besides the two exhibitions, which were the center of the festival, a lot of street acts were performed, photographed and documented by Kors van Bennekom.

Meetings

The goal was to organize meetings in order to grab as much as possible ideas and to create an as broad as possible basis in the area. People have to know and to understand why changes have to evolve if you want them to support. The association brought those meetings as close to the audience as possible, organizing in cultural centrums and hotels nearby. Participation was as broad as one could expect: people who lived in the neighborhood, entrepreneurs and local politicians. New ideas were brought in and the discussion around re-structuring came to surface. Based on these meetings an end-conclusion would finally be formulated and brought to attention of the responsible governmental services.

Exhibition in the ferry office

The organization started in one of the cultural centers which was only a temporary location, but moved to the former ferry-office. A headquarters was formed with a small permanent staff and I was asked to celebrate the new location with an exhibition which showed the results so far.

Tolhuis exhibition

Every initiative located on the border of the IJ was used to give more attention to the project. When Tolhuis, a restaurant and former toll-office, was renovated, the inauguration was a perfect reason to put the Noordzij association in the spotlights again. A meeting was organized framed by an exhibition around the plans and realizations by the organization as was achieved. It was a first preparation for the community to make them aware of the possible results as would be formulated in the end-conclusion.

Springtij festival

Like a pyramid all the effort came together in a one time and extremely large festival to celebrate the results of, in total, four years of hard work. In the summer of 1993 the Springtij (spring-tide) festival was organized with exhibitions on both sides of the IJ, discussion meetings in boats on the IJ itself, enlightened with all kinds of street manifestations and performances. Architectural plans for both the borders were shown. The end-conclusion was a fact, however not printed yet, but the recommendations were already addressed to the proper institutions. The festival was a gigantic success with a lot of media attention and visitors. It underlined everything the association stood and had worked for.

End conclusion

The end-conclusion was presented in a booklet of over a hundred pages text and photos. I was asked to do the layout to make it as attractive as possible. It was something to be proud of, and a lot of the ideas formulated came actually to plans and are realized in the mean time. If you compare the northern border today by almost 20 years ago you see the differences and the huge change the formally industrial Amsterdam IJ-borders went through.

the IJ-border project link

a poem a day VII

Eindelijk bereikt het konijn de jager

en schiet hem aan flarden.

Brüderlieb, Liebesschmerz, geeft niet hartje,

kauw je reebout terwijl ik je dijbeen streel.

Finally the rabbit reaches the hunter

and shoots him to patches.

Brotherly love, heartache, no offence love,

chew your haunch while I caress your thy.

a poem a day VI

Westerwald en Wanderbach,

Wonderwelt en Schmerz,

veel bereikt in weinig woorden

met een Hottentottententententoonstelling.

Of weet jij er meer van

Eisenbahnknotenpunkthinundherschieber?

Westerwald and Wanderbach,

Wonderwelt and Schmerz,

much achieved in just a few words

during a Hottentottstentsexhibition.

Or do you know more

Eisenbahnknotenpunkthinundherschieber?*

*German for pointsman

a poem a day V

Brave borst, en zij heeft er twee

zolang ze beklijven

en niet weggekaapt worden

of zakken van ouderdom.

Brave breast, and she has two

as long as they endure

and not be privateer

or sink of old age

a poem a day IV

Butsenbrokken in het park

toen het treintje de verkeerde afslag nam.

Eenden overreden en konijnen plat,

de schildpad trok zijn kop in

en dacht: ‘Gelukkig!’

Maar het laatste wiel was te veel.

En de ruiten op het pantser

verbrokkelden tot scherven,

terwijl hij huilde om de pauw

die fladderrennend het terras opzocht.

Dents and lumps in the park

when little train took the wrong turn

ducks crashed and rabbits flat,

the turtle drew his head back

and thought: ‘Lucky me!’

but the last wheel was too much

for the diamonds on his armor

kibbled to shards

while he cried for the peacock

who flutter-ran attended the terrace 

a poem a day III

Bijzonder genoeg

werkte hij zich dood

en verging met man en muis,

verzoop in de tuinvijver,

braakte vissenlatijn

tegen guppen en waterjuffers

die hem niet verstonden

omdat ze van elders kwamen.

Especially enough

he worked himself to dead

and perished with man and mouse

drowned in the garden pond

vomited fishermen Latin

against goldfish and dragonflies

which didn’t understand him

because they came from elsewhere

a poem a day II

Het gedicht: niet meer

dan de gedachte,

zo ondraaglijk licht

dat het ongezien voorbijsluipt.

A poem: notting more

then a thought,

unbearable light

it will sneak pass unseen

a poem a day

woordwoordjes ringelen

tot zinnen aaneen

zonder zin voor smeden

in gelid wachten op rijgen

volnestels tot alinea

wit vergrauwt tot pagina.

tiny word-words solid

to sentences

without any sense of forging

they rank to be thread

fully laced to paragraph

bleach and grey until they page.  

Because of the NUDE COLLECTION and other wix.com edited sites

from the series FANTASIES; no.32, digital art

Inspiration

The female body already inspired me when I was a kid, but the first nude who actually posed for me was a girlfriend. I was just a teenager, 15 years old when she stretched naked on my parents’ bed, of course during a time I was alone at home. A couple of clumsy drawings, but we thought they looked quit well. As a student there were the models at the academy, and during my whole life I asked women to pose, whether or not I was in a relationship with her. When I lived in Amsterdam we had a small class together with colleague artists, from who most were females. Every Friday we had a model, often the same girl, but not always. We paid her a small amount, for us to study and sketch.

from the series FANTASIES; no. 1, digital art

The early works

Apart from the sketches and drawings I made from girlfriends or my wife, it took till the eighties until I made the female nude to one of my favorite subjects in my art expressions. Maybe I thought that it was a subject which belonged to the pass. It was the time of environmental art and political statements. But what comes first has to go first, and following on my “Indian” period the nude more or less slipped into my art, as by accident. Still looking for the right expression and searching for ways to paint and draw the beautiful curves. This matured during my time in Amsterdam and even more in Antwerp, living with my girlfriend. Still working with models; women I knew, young as well as older as age doesn’t matter in painting.

from the series FANTASIES; no. 3, digital art

Digitals

After I moved to Spain digital expression became more important; not only because of the evolving possibilities and techniques, but also because I made the digital way to my profession. More and more I earned my living as an Internet and multimedia specialist and of course this affected my art. The digitals I create are not only about the nude female body, but it is still one of my favorite subjects. In the beginning I used analogue created paintings and drawings I made earlier and which I re-worked to digital creations. The more I discovered the graphical tools, the more I could rely on them to create a digital image from scratch. Of course I sometimes still use existing images or photos to re-work, but mostly also this basis is from my hand.

from the series FANTASIES; no. 12, digital art

About me

In 1980 I had my first solo-exhibition, why I schedule that year as my start as an independent and self-employed visual artist. Before I worked mainly as an illustrator, which I still did after 1980 to make a living. Especially in the beginning art was a side-income, which became more and more important during the years building contacts. A lot of my work is in private collections but also in museums and companies.

I created a lot, thousands of works, from very small to extremely large, and I never bothered about materials but used what I thought I needed for the specific work or series I was creating. That is why a lot of my art is mixed media.

Not only in my visuals the female body is important, also in my writings, as most of my stories are about the intercourse and relation between men and women. That untouchable subject without we would not exist as human beings. 

from the series FANTASIES; no. 21, digital art

Background

I’m from an artistic family. A grandfather was into pottery, and another wrote (historical) stories and books. My mother liked to draw but never matured in the matter as women had to be there for their siblings in those days. I draw and write since I remember, but was quite late taking classes because of several reasons. What formed me mainly was my stay of almost three years in the US where I followed art-courses at the Palomar College in San Diego where I had my first experience with computer-art, as the digital revolution was still called in the beginning. Afterwards I studied at several art-schools, as well in the Netherlands as abroad. The classical way which I followed in the beginning, looking for my own way later, but still; classical themes are never far away, even in the digitals I create today.

from the series FANTASIES; no. 33, digital  art

Digital art

As mentioned above Palomar was my first experience with computers and therefore digital art. Experimental and still in slow motion compared by today, the possibilities to create were mainly in ASCII and copying machines: re-creating what already existed the digital way.

After I returned to Europe I had the luck that Rank Xerox Benelux invited me to work in their showroom, thanks to my experience in the US. I had the chance to use their prototypes for over a year and the company did more. They made it possible to show the work I created worldwide; from the US till as far as Japan.

Also during my time in Amsterdam I had several possibilities to experiment digitally, but the real turn came after a six month course Internet Developer Expert in Antwerp. That is where I could work with, back then, still very expensive tools from for example Adobe and Macromedia. The possibilities grew and therefore my way to express and experiment.

links

all-about-art

the-indian-project

hunebedden

copierart

the-nude-collection
mail-art

dark canvas, digital 2012

The opening event of the "ero-portraits" gallery in VirtualGallery.com: 

https://www.virtualgallery.com/joachim_artist_a843163/ero_portraits_s8061. 

will take place TODAY the 10 of April, 2012 from 16:00 to 18:00 GMT. 

fierce girl, digital 2012

All 14 works in the gallery are for sale, signed and printed in limited edition

The incompetent development for using the Internet, especially on governmental servers

old man ruled out by buildings surrounded, digital 2011

Another experience forced me to write this blog, but it is not a stand-alone. The more Internet is integrated into society, the more fools are developing it seems.

A hash statement indeed, but this is what I experience, certainly this last year, and I can imagine why hackers unite to bombard companies and institutions. The ignorance at the servers-side is enormous. Not only is it a hassle, even for more experienced users, to find your way through websites and applications, but it is also a fact that complete communities are banned from logging in of what they need. To explain this I will show an illustration.

Yesterday I needed to log on to the server of the city of Maastricht (Netherlands), but whatever button I pushed, I constantly was directed back to the original page, so I asked for an explanation by email. The response was a couple of links and the remark that the application was best shown in Internet Explorer. This sounded suspicious. Yesterday I tried to log-in from a Linux environment using Firefox, so I started to test, and guess what…

Not only is it impossible to access the application with browsers like Chrome, Safari or Opera, they simply do not allow Apple or Linux users. They ban complete communities by writing an application just for Windows XP or higher, and even under this Operating System you are just allowed to access by using IE7, Firefox5, or higher. If this is not discrimination…, or is the majority of servers sponsored by Microsoft to save their own skin? This idea comes to mind more often lately. The success of Macintosh and the growth of the Linux community since Ubuntu has to be countered one way or the other.

This story is even getting worse…

Thanks to the links and by using WinXP with the Firefox browser I was able to see the buttons, however clicking them I was asked for my DigID (Digital ID). The next screen told me that my password was incorrect. Pardon? I used it – on a different server – just a couple of weeks ago, and everything went fine, so I tried again. The same result came up. I became more and more angry on the bloody system, but that didn’t help. I could only do two things: hack the damn thing or renew my password. Since the second possibility seemed less time consuming I went for it, gave in my username and password to reset it, and… it came back unaccepted. Suddenly I understood why.

A couple of months ago the DigID servers were hacked and a lot of information could be out in the open. A scandal which came as far as a Dutch parliament discussion, and the company responsible was fired, went even busted, I believe. However; the old system had failed and the new responsible company changed it of course. Nothing against it: safety first. But to wipe out the used certificates – mine was 16bits, if someone wants to crack that, go ahead for the poor info I leave behind – brings a lot of people into trouble. During my last session a couple of weeks ago, months after the hacking took place, it was already clear that my information was untouched: so why delete it with all the trouble of renewing and waiting for five days on an activation code. Afterwards maybe hacking was less time consuming, though.

But enough about me; imagine our whole elderly generation which doesn’t have a clue how a computer or Internet works. The last couple of years they are forced to buy a pc and get a connection to the Net, because otherwise it is hardly too impossible to apply for their pension, taxes, or whatever one has to do to satisfy the government. All those people who have trouble to cope with the future will have the same experience as I, without any warning. Their passwords, carefully written down in an old notebook, won’t work anymore, without even a simple email to explain. Imagine the panic if suddenly something doesn’t work that always did and what you don’t understand anyhow. No access to what so ever, and what happened with the name of the cousin you always used and always worked fine?

On the one hand today’s governments want to let us believe that digitalization of society is a blessing: everything will work smoother, easier and faster. It is like the banks in the past; convincing people to give their money to them, and look what happened recently… It is the same with governments: if they really understand were society is heading to – that the future is on the Net, indeed! – Then they in the first place have to make sure that no one is ruled out. Not someone from over 70, and not anyone who is using something else than a poor operating system Windows still is. Highly commercialized, for certain, but as weak as Moses’ basket…

Invitation to Joachims Virtual Exhibition

I N V I T A T I O N Joachim Artist requests the pleasure of your presence at the opening event of the "ero-portraits" gallery in VirtualGallery.com: https://www.virtualgallery.com/joachim_artist_a843163/ero_portraits_s8061. The opening event will take place on the 10 of April, 2012 from 18:00 to 20:00. The exhibitor will be available and connected to communicate with registered users through the gallery's chat.

www.virtualgallery.com Contact Us