As KUNST*KOLONIE*VEENHUIZEN (KKV) we met a few years ago some Hamburgian artists on the art-market of Leer (in Groningen across the border). We exchanged adhoc some conceptual arts in an attempt to put the muzak of the shoppingstreet out of tune with our art brut. The Hamburgians invited us after that to support their Transindustrial Manifestation in Verona (Italy) with a Dutch translation of their manifest. And we invited them for the presentation of the manifest during a symposium in Noordenveld concerning Provincial and Local Artpolicy in Drenthe. Veenhuizen is part of the commune Noordenveld in North-Drenthe. We presented the manifest with 9 artists in a gibberish of 9 languages behind a press-conference-table in an art-bureaucratic installation made out of our A4-art. And in a booklet. TV-Drenthe broadcasted some images. After that the Hamburgians invited us for a TI-congress in Hamburg. 19 artists from Hamburg, Verona, Drenthe and Finland were participating. A fantastic exchange. An essay of handicraftian conceptual installations and musicpieces. With just enough stipends of a suburb of Hamburg to publish a book of reference for all the participants. Some artists from the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam were so impressed that they organized a Fourth TI-manifestation from 22 – 28 May 2000 in ZAAL 100 and FILMHUIS CAVIA. Less introvert and congresslike. More provocative as a public action. With the title FRESH SNOW.  

I joined the happening as KAKAVÉ the Neanderthaler of Drenthe (NL). Because I'm involved already for years with prehistoric rock-engravings and paintings and their meetings with the postmodern media. Modern rock-engravings on erratic boulders from Drenthe couldn't be realized because fundamentalistic Drenthian amateur-archeologists declared the boulders to be authentic Neanderthaler sculptures and they prohibited all postmodern carving in them. As a compromise I made a series of 15 woodcuts in which 15 boulders expressed 15 highlights out of my earlier life as KAKAVÉ the Neanderthaler of Drenthe (130.000 – 30.000 years ago). With my 15 prints on panels on poles I left to Amsterdam. Number 10 out of the series, the Neanderthaler as a Nomad, enjoyed the privilege to joint the different highlights of the manifestation alive. 

The 25 participants, visual artists, poets and musicians from Hamburg, Verona, Finland, Drenthe and Staatsliedenbuurt, acquainted on the oldfashioned touristboat “The Waterlily” of Rob Fransen. Later he burned a sound-sculpture on a CD with help of the motor-sounds of his boat. Our first aim was the open-air-studio of the monumental boat-scrap-sculptor Herbert Nouwens who unfortunately just was away to bring his kid to the school. The boat-trip continued to the floating polyester-islands of Robert Jasper Grootveld. His workers just had a free day but we could look around everywhere – as long as we didn't disturb the breeding goose on one of the islands. 

Tuesday the visual artists started to arrange ZAAL 100 and FILMHUIS CAVIA. The existing visual pollution was more or less cleaned away and locations for own installations were occupied in an anarchistic way. Jan van Wissen occupied a wall in the restaurant with his “Library of Unwritten Works”, 9 panels with promising computer-printed covers-without-books. Barbara Pier occupied another wall with “Don't Touch Me, I'm Thinking”, a reaction on the TI-congress of Hamburg where the opposition against feministic FEELING and transindustrial THINKING was escalated. Erik Fens placed two of his 432 collections in position along the balcony-frieze, one about “The Thinker of Rodin” (17 A4-pages) and one about “ART” in headlines of the last 30 years (28 A4-pages). Aja Waalwijk, from the hippie-village Ruigoord, now lived above ZAAL 100 and was always everywhere present, with his maquette “Kurort Grünewald” and his collage “Buchenwald” and his “SOS-machine”, a dating bachelor-machine. On the balcony Marleen van Engelen installed her “Lonely Queen of the Chess-play”, with 64 computer-prints and 7 bear's breech music instruments and a lady's portrait out of the middle-ages. And Ronald van Kuyk with gouaches of car-accidents. In the bar and the corridor the art could go high. Peter Kastner and Paolo Moretto, the authors of the TI-manifest, made a parody of the CP-party-secretary of Verona with installations of “No Copyright”; “Armata Rossa Virus”; “One Dog Family” and “Help Two Poor Artists Without Family (thank you!)”. Out of a recorder sounded old Italian communist battle-songs. Ine Ophof glued 200 postcards of a Volendammer Opera Choir against the wall around her opened mouth with a conserved pirhana. Frank Starik hanged an enormous frame with French grave-portraits (“Frei / wohin man schaut”) out of his Factory of Small Works. Saku Levonperä different strip-stories. Kristian Kanstadt a visual version of his poem “Wij Treinen”. His “Targetdisplay of a Warplane” on the roof of the abattoir unfortunately didn't come from the ground. Van Wissen, Ophof, Breedveld, Wäspi and Waalwijk nomadised two TI-ant-tracks through the room ending in the trash-can of the CP-SECRETARIA under the title “Mier Hier”. Kastner and Moretto adhoc made two big TI-collages with ants and other symbols. And KAKAVÉ found two locations for his tribe of 15 Neanderthalers: one on Drenthe Dailies above the entrance of the music-hall; and one on panels and poles in the little green garden of Diana Ozon (“It's easier to find a hash-seed in Amsterdam than a cup of earth to grow it up”). Further in the courtyard a “Pendulum of Foucault” by Waalwijk and Kuyk and a “Mirror-box” of Waalwijk and VdLinden and a “Pavilion of Energy” of Guillaume Knies. In FILMHUIS CAVIA comparable installations were presented by Levonperä, Ophof, Fens, Van Wissen, Waalwijk and KAKAVÉ. The day ended with a freejazz “TImprovisatie” by Felicity Provan, Wilbert de Joode, Steve Heather, Jodi Gilbert and Richard Barrett. 

Wednesday and Tuesday KAKAVÉ went out in full dress to encounter Amsterdam. With 15 panels on the carrier-tricycle of ZAAL 100. Wednesday there was a confrontation with the Monument of Domela Nieuwenhuis who claimed “Right for All” at the end of last century also for the poor peat-workers of Drenthe. The monument only could be placed in 193l in the Staatsliedenbuurt under the condition that in 1934 their could be placed a monument of the Atjeh-slaughter Van Heutsz in a more rich part of Amsterdam. In the Sixties we called this “repressive tolerance” but in these days of the Dutch Polder Model we prefer to speak about “consensus” and “elegant negotiation”. Thursday there was a confrontation with the office-workers of the Dutch BBK (Professional Artists' Union). They hardly were recovered of the cuts in the social support for professional artists - and now they had to face new cuts in the financial support for the professional artists' organizations. Cuts of the structural social support for the old artists' organizations so called to support ad hoc commercial experiments with quality and renovation. The artist as entrepreneur. The Neanderthaler of Drenthe looking for a whole in the market in Amsterdam. Haha! As if not every artist is an entrepreneur in sentimental goods by definition. And as if not all art fulfil a need because it's made by someone who dares to feel himself an artist in a muzak-society. The editor of the BBK-krant promised KAKAVÉ a picture of his office-visit on the front-page of the special edition on “The Artist as Entrepreneur”. With the underline written by KAKAVÉ himself. 

Wednesday Harry out of his Museum of Collections above a second-hand-shop in an empty factory-hall. Beginning of July the opening of the enormous room will taken place, carefully prepared up to the last centimeter. Thursday the TI-manifestation was opened officially with a confrontation between the SOS-MACHINE of Waalwijk and the TI-PERFORMANCE of Kastner and Moretto in the middle of the Staatsliedenbuurt before the pub Tramway Desire. Thanks the technics of ZAAL 100 the performance sounded very professional. Old Hippies Currantbread. Old Provo Happening. 

In ZAAL 100 the kitchen-crew (Frits van der Heijden) had organized an unmitigated meal-installation. A confrontation between the vegetarians and the transindustrialists. The vegetarian snacks only could be ordered in the kitchen by passing an intercom-shutter under a cruel abattoir-video. Specially Erik Fens was hurt by the bluntness of the presentation and wrote a pastoral letter to the TI-brothers and –sisters not to accept the video outside the exhibition-times. The play of the art leaded to real emotions. The kitchen-crew was satisfied with the reactions. And most TI-participants ate the TI-snacks with their back to the video, without cleaning their mouth with the special TI-napkins. 

Friday the TI-performance in CAVIA was opened with short films and performances. “Moving Matter” of Floris Paalman about human movements in the soviet-architecture of Jerevan in Georgia (or about the ways how Eastern European guides can be manipulated by Western European visitors?). Tingel-tangel Dances and Big Fishes of Frank Starik. Impressions of Hamburgian Harbours and Fashion of Gabriele Schwark. The “Hamburg Theory” of Paul Cohen. “Alien Exposure” of Barbara Gene, who desperately tried as an outer-earth being to make non-verbal and telepathic contact with the CAVIA-visitors but at last exhausted slided down the stairs as a dead body. As youngest TI-participant she made the most impression on me. More than “Camel Bullocks” of Duro Toomato and “Modern Times” of Charlie Chaplin together. 

The whole Saturday I was busy with the ordering of the title-list for the exhibition, and of a shortlist for the auction of Diana Ozon. The evening started with a common meal and a group-picture where the most Amsterdam participants were starring by absence. Where they more interested in their own TI-trips than in TI-meetings? (“I do my own thing”). After that the final happening in ZAAL 100 developed. The Swiss artist Alfred Wäspi presented his audio-performance “Requiem” based on 60 texts of the Danish author Peer Hultberg, simultaneous spoken by 60 different readers and their projected portraits. The electronic aquarium-piece “Imaginaria” of the Argentino Alberto Scunio sounded. Diana Ozon red her poetic experiences between internet and city-garden. Penschuck and Kastner brought their TI-performance with electronic voice-distortions and stamp-rhythms which were pressed down too early by Kanstadt and Moretto. Frank Starik read about the death of a friend. Aja Waalwijk about trans-sexuality. And Joke Kaviaar about the attainableness of the sun. 

The auction was pompous presented by Diana Ozon, complete with stock-jobbers, demonstrators and hammerings. The gimmicks of the kitchen-crew, Fens, Moretto, Kanstadt and Starik made the best prices in the ZAAL-100-incrowd-market of Amsterdam. The auction was controversial because the Hamburgians and their hosts (Ophof, Van Wissen) were against the auction of artworks and only wanted to bring TI-souvenirs in the auction. Whereas Starik and Waalwijk and Breedveld and Ozon wanted to make visible the bizarrerie and the corruption of price-making of artworks on the free market. How to sell a wall-painting of Kastner and Moretto? How a stamped napkin can be priced over 10 guilders? How a KAKAVÉ-image of Drenthe can be pushed into the subculture of the Staatsliedenbuurt? The evening was closed with an overtone-concert by the Mongols Altai Hangai (“Gone with the Wind”). By accident staying with Aja Waalwijk. And with a jazz-concert in black-light produced and photographed by Ine Ophof. A whirling of light-stripes and coloured spots reached the power of an aboriginal dreamsong, an alternative life in an own dream-world as an answer to the banal attention-industry of the ruling muzak. 

After this week of conceptual artists meetings I reread the story of Cornel Bierens in the Cultural Supplement of the Dutch Qualitypaper NRC (19 May 2000). He states that de postmodern conceptualists first have to go underground in the real life to learn a real job before they come back with some real artworks. And he provokes us to write an essay for the NRC about the disappearing of the visual arts. I don't understand what this critic is talking about. Does he have real experience with the real life of the 12.000 professional visual artists everywhere underground in provinces and towns in their Neanderthaler-reserves as real artists? Without social security. Hiding themselves against the market-phrases of the culture-burocrat Rick vd Ploeg. And against the suction of the attention-industry of advertisement-offices, architect-companies, clothing-brandnames, airports, commercial broadcasting companies, internet-companies, city-planning-offices, shopping-centres, entertainment-parcs, magazine-publishers, and so on. Or does he mean that the youngest generations of postmodern conceptual artists are not as experienced as the old TI-hippies of FRESH SNOW? So that they get in an incorrect way the stipends of the Dutch National Art Funds. To push them incorrectly as neo-DADA and neo-FLUXUS and neo-PROVO? Than the real problem is why these neo-arts are pushed at this moment by the neo-liberal state for the neo-elite, at the cost of the social security of the broad field of professional visual artists everywhere in the towns and the provinces of the Netherlands. 

KAKAVÉ, the Neanderthaler of Drenthe (NL), KUNST*KOLONIE*VEENHUIZEN, 31 MEI 2000