Look what the Staedtlers made me do!

Usually, I will not use this blog to bragg about any of the stuff that I did solo. But I wanted to share these drawings with you, cause it took me and my staedtlers forever to make them! They have been on exhibition in Amsterdam for a couple of weeks but are home now.. So this is me NOT showing off.


If you want to hear about the deeper meaning of poledancers and wolves... ask me!

Last Minute Christmas Shopping

After the huge success of last year... More Last Minute Christmas Shopping At the SingerSweatShop in Rotterdam this weekend!

Just for one weekend, the main area of the squat/gallery/house will be transformed into a nice and cosy place to hang out and find gifts for your loved ones. Saskia Haex (B.I.C.) and Diane Versteeg have made a wonderful selection for you, including shirts, books, bags, pluchies, screenprints and much more. Biefstuk will provide the necessary cookies, soup and cake.

So get some cash at the koopgoot and come spend it, you know you want to!

MAYHEM tonight!

O yeah, Dutch Dolls will make their DJ debut in Cardiff tonight at Mother Mae I, an electro night of mayhem at the Cardiff Arts Institute!! They tell us to expect "everything from electro-pop to dirty beats via all manner of friendly filth with an electric undercurrent". Plus lollipops, limbo bears, riot showgrrrls and FREE PINK FIZZ.....

We're on from 11.00 till 12.00, HALLELUJAH!!!

Cardiff Arts Institute, 29 Park Place, Cardiff.
Check out the Facebook event here.

A crafty Christmas

A "guerilla Christmas store" is opening up tomorrow at gallery BLAAK10 in Rotterdam. Students and alumni of the Willem de Kooning Academy will sell their designs. Prints, books, t-shirts, jewelry, bags, ceramics, cushions, the inevitable designer toys and Dutch Dolls items, it'll all be there! Should Santa Clause let you down, you could always go there after Christmas to spoil yourself, the guerilla store is open till January 3rd!

Academiegalerie BLAAK10, Witte de Withstraat 7a, Rotterdam.
Open Tuesday - Sunday 11.00 - 18.00. Late night shopping on Friday December 11th 18.00 - 21.00.

Slightly Surreal

What to do on a (rainy) Sunday after one of the best nights out you ever experienced in your life?? That was exactly my question the day after the Warehouse Project in Manchester...

Well, after a sturdy breakfast of scrambled eggs, coffee and freshly squeezed OJ my boyfriend and I decided to drag ourselves to the Manchester Art Gallery for the exhibition Angels of Anarchy - Women Artists and Surrealism. They had great works on display by a.o. Francesca Woodman, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim. But my heart truly skipped a beat when I saw some collaborative pieces. They were made along the same principle as our drawings for the Freikörperkult t-shirts! I had never seen these before.

Y. Tanguy, Joan Miro, Max Morix and Man Ray (1927).

Andre Breton, Jacqueline Lamba and Yves Tanguy (1938).

Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Nusch Eluard and Valentine Hugo (ca. 1930).

Andre Breton, Valentine Hugo, Greta Knutson and Tristan Tzara (ca. 1933).

I didn't know this 'game' had a name. It's called EXQUISITE CORPSE. The Surrealists used to play it with words as well, and exquisite corpse is taken from the first sentence that was produced this way: "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.", which translates to "The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine."

The title of our t-shirts was sort of randomly picked after one of our favourite German words: Freikörperkultur, roughly translated as Free Body Movement, which advocates a naturistic/nudist way of life. We encountered the Freikörperkultur up close and personal at the swimming pool in Berlin this summer. The word suited our drawings perfectly, especially when we shortened it to -kult.

Anyways, I just thought it was so cool to see these drawings that I wanted to share them with you. I now know our drawings aren't just weird, no, they are Surreal!

Kuduro Riddims

Woohoooo, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Manchester for what might well be THE best party of the year. Annie Mac invited the creme de la creme of DJs and artists around to play at the Warehouse project, a temporary club under Piccadilly Station. It's going to be an exhausting night with live performances by Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema, and Toddla T, Fakeblood, Skream, Boy 8-Bit and DJ Zinc behind the decks!!!!! More exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!!

I think this is a very exciting time for dance music, with rhythms and musical elements from all over the world seeping into mainstream club music, entering the dance floor and making us shake our booties. Take tomorrow's artists for example. Diplo, the guy who played an important role in bringing baile funk out of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, has now turned to dancehall with his latest project Major Lazer, in collaboration with Switch. With great success. Also Toddla T has a taste for Jamaican riddims (as well as for club house and garage). Buraka Som Sistema brings us kuduro, a genre which originated in Angola and was later transported to Portugal (its colonizer). And apparently kuduro is now huge in France, thanks to the substantial Cape Verde community. I stumbled on a selection of some excellent kuduro tracks at the Masala blog (a great blog BTW, even though I can only read half of it - they're from Montreal, so most is written in French). I pass two of those tracks on over here, both by Angolian artists. It's raw. Very raw. But that's how I like it!

Dog Murras - Midexa. Get it here (YSI).

Noite E Dia - Tiramakossa. Get it here (YSI).

Taken off the compilation Akwaaba Sem Transporte.

R'n'Balkan

I still have to thank my friend Peter *. Thank him for introducing me to Miss Platnum!

Miss Platnum was born in Romania, but moved with her parents to Berlin when she was a kid. She used to work as a background singer until she started working on her own music for her debut album Chefa. I think her style is truly unique: Balkan-flavoured R'n'B. So lots of brass, rolling R's and songs about food and Mercedes Benz. She takes the piss out of the (Western) ideal beauty and the stereotypes of Eastern Europeans in a very funny and clever way. To be honest the R'n'B songs are a bit too mushy for my taste, but I absolutely LOVE her uptempo work.

For some strange reason I just assumed that for her latest album she had tipped over to the R'n'B side, maybe because a sophomore album is usually more 'mature'. So even though The Sweetest Hangover had been released in September I didn't give it a listen until yesterday. Silly me! The songs might not be as catchy as some of her older ones, but it is a great record with plenty of uptempo songs and still heavily Balkan influenced. Have a listen to Come Marry Me, a duet with German hip hop superstar Peter Fox, from her first album and She Moved in!, taken off her latest release.

Miss Platnum - Come Marry Me (feat. Peter Fox). Get it here.

Miss Platnum - She Moved In! Get it here.

* If you can read Dutch, do check out Peter 'Teps' de Koning's blog!! He wittily writes about all sorts of interesting stuff, like music from around the globe, politics, soccer and personal memories. I think he is one of the best storytellers in the Lowlands!