The interviews were conducted for the documentary Wolf is the name (and for sidewalk friends Hannibal) by Buddy Hermans and Jan de Ruiter.
The documentary portrays artist Henri Wolf and shines a light on the artistic and cultural climate in the city of Groningen in the 1960s to the 1980s. The interviews were conducted with acquaintances of Henri Wolf and are partly about his Indian background.
Time, place and themes: The interviews deal with events and experiences in the 1960s – 1986.
They are mainly about the Netherlands. Themes include influence of Indian descent, private life, art, working through.

On Curaçao, Paul Brenneker and Elis Juliana collected a large amount of oral data beginning in 1958.

Their oldest informant was born about 1853, ten years before the abolition of slavery.

Most of the information collected by Juliana and Brenneker is stored in the Zikinzá Collection, a database consisting of 1,400 songs, stories, and life histories. Anecdotes, childhood memories, rituals and folk songs were taped from 267 informants.

Content-wise, Brenneker and Juliana were concerned with capturing the knowledge and wisdom of the older, rural population, who still lived isolated from the city and encroaching modernization on Banda’bou or Band’riba.

www.elisjuliana.org

Rose Mary Allen used the Zikinzá collection for her dissertation, “Di ki manera,” on the Afro-Curaçaoan population in the period after the abolition of slavery.

Rose Mary Allen:

In this study I will present the key factors determining the social and cultural life of Afro-Curaçaoans during the first fifty years after the abolition of slavery in 1863. I will do so through a socio-cultural analysis of the social system of which they formed part. Their position within slave society will be the starting point, followed by an evaluation of the two principle elements of social control after emancipation: the State and the Roman Catholic Church. Rather than viewing Afro-Curaçaoans as mere objects to be acted upon, in this analysis I cite them as resilient agents, rising to – and often resisting in a variety of ways – the challenges and restrictions they faced in a free society. Their resilience and resistance are best demonstrated through the factors from which they drew their sustenance; these being mainly their social networks – such as families, peer groups, co-workers, local communities – and their culture, brought to the fore, for example, in their songs, stories and rituals. 

Rene Vicente Rosalia (b. 1948) received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam on the legal and ecclesiastical repression of tambu, the multifarious and rich Afro-Antillean cultural expression that recalls the slave past. In addition to being the word for felling drum, tambu is also a collective term for polyrhythmic music, played in twelve-eighths time, dance, symbolism, sacred and everyday rituals, entertainment, community building, conflict resolution, information provision, social protest and courting.

He used the Zikinzá collection in addition to his own interviews.

See: Article Bernadette de Wit in the Groene Amsterdammer: https://www.groene.nl/artikel/duivelsdans

On the occasion of the Stynen 2018 project, the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) conducted five interviews with family members, colleagues and clients of Léon Stynen that give us a unique insight into the architect’s life and work.

You will find a brief summary of each interview below. If you would like to access the full interview, please complete the request form.

• Herman Van der Wee
• Anne Stynen
• Lucien Jacques Baucher
• Paul Meekels
• Constantin Brodzki

The cultural heritage of design consists not only of sketches, models, photographs or correspondence of designers. With design, there is also a strong interplay between explicit knowledge and unconscious knowledge, knowledge that may be passed on but which usually does not receive written expression. That is why the Flemish Architecture Institute conducted interviews with designers, policy-makers and craftspeople.

For each of the seven interviews, you will find a short summary and brief biographical information of the interviewee on the website. If you would like to consult the full interview, please fill in the request form.

• Leonce Dekeijse
• José Vanderlinden
• Luc en Katrien Mestdagh
• Achiel Pauwels
• Moniek Bucquoye
• Lieven Daenens
• Johan Valcke

The centenary (2013) of the Feestlokaal Vooruit and the thirtieth anniversary of the Arts Centre that is housed there will be an opportunity to make the rich material and immaterial heritage of the building, the socialist cooperative Vooruit and its cultural activities and the Arts Centre accessible to a broad public.

The promoters and external partners want to develop a rich ‘content’ by tracing, valorising and presenting tangible and intangible heritage in an accessible way. To this end, the documentary heritage preserved by AMSAB Institute of Social History and the Arts Centre is being explored. In addition, three oral history projects will be carried out on the history of the last half century of Vooruit.

They will be made available in the form of a website, mobile ICT applications in the Feestlokaal Vooruit, an exhibition in the STAM and a public book. The experience and know-how of external partners will be used for this.
The 100th/30th anniversary of Vooruit will undoubtedly appeal to a broad public and will also receive a lot of media attention. This project wants to anticipate this with a high-quality heritage project in which UGent historians, art historians, architects and multimedia engineers will contribute. It fits in the good neighbourhood in which Vooruit and UGent live ‘back to back’ and it will contribute to the image of UGent.

Behind the iconic façade of De Vooruit lies a rich history. A story of 100 years of trial and error.

de vooruit/geschiedenis

Werking van de coöperatie Vooruit from Geertjan Tillmans on Vimeo.

Rode cultuurbeleving in het feestlokaal van Vooruit tijdens het interbellum (1919
-1939) – Johannes Teerlinck

FOCUS OP DE PODIUMKUNSTEN

Rode cultuurbeleving in het feestlokaal van vooruit

Universiteit Gent, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Afdeling Geschiedenis (Nieuwste Geschiedenis), Academiejaar 2009

It examines whether there has been a development in film criticism during the period in question, from a discussion of the form of film-making to a criticism that discusses film on the basis of its content. The discussion includes the influence of the Dutch Film League, the relationship between film criticism and social developments and the Dutch film-critical response to German anti-Semitic films during the Second World War.

The interviews with Bertina, Bredschneyder, Van der Ham, Huijts, Kok, Koolhaas, Koster, Lichtveld and Scholte were conducted as part of Barten’s research into Dutch film criticism from 1923-45.
On this subject Barten wrote Schrijven voor de prullenmand? A history of Dutch film criticism (1923-1945), Amsterdam (doctoral dissertation Contemporary History, VU University), 1987

The interviewees are or have been all connected to the VARA current affairs programme ACHTER HET NIEUWS. The interviews were made as part of Prengers’ PhD research into the development of journalistic conventions within current affairs programmes on television in the 1960s, particularly VARA’s ACHTER HET NIEUWS and KRO’s BRANDPUNT.

On this theme she earlier wrote ‘Van familiemagazine naar actualiteitenrubriek. KRO’s BRANDPUNT in March 1963’, in: Jaarboek Mediageschiedenis 2, Amsterdam: Stichting Mediageschiedenis, 1990, p.157-186 and ‘Rode balletjes’ en cinéma vérité. De VARA, de PvdA en de nieuws- en actualiteitenprogramma’s in de jaren vijftig en 1960′, in: Henk Kleijer e.a. (ed.), Tekens en Teksten. Cultuur, communicatie en maatschappelijke veranderingen vanaf de late middeleeuwen’, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1992, p.158-173.

Most of the interviews were conducted by Hans Mulder (Theaterwetenschappen, Utrecht) for his dissertation on artists’ resistance during the Second World War: Kunst in crisis en bezetting. Een onderzoek naar de houding van Nederlandse kunstenaars in de periode 1930-1945 (Art in crisis and occupation. An investigation into the attitude of Dutch artists in the period 1930-1945 (with a preface by prof.dr. H.L.C. Jaffé), Utrecht/Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1978.

The author used the interview with Marten Toonder in his publication Een groote boot een plompe voet. The Netherlands and the Nazis in cartoon and caricature 1933-1945 (with a foreword by Marten Toonder), Amsterdam/Brussels: Thomas Rap, 1985.
The interviews discuss the social and political position of artists before the war, especially since 1933; the situation during the war, with an emphasis on the way the interviewees dealt with the resistance; the influence of the war and resistance experiences on their own thinking and professional practice and on art in general after 1945.

Several interviewees were involved in the preparations, which started during the war, for a new constellation in which the arts would have to function after the war, which resulted in the establishment of the Federation of Artists’ Associations and the Arts Council. Many were involved before the war in anti-fascist groups such as the Comité van Waakzaamheid and the Bond van Kunstenaars ter Defensie van de Kultuur (BKVK), which in 1936 organised the exhibition De Olympiade Onder Dictatuur (D.O.O.D.), among others.

In the interview with Bijmoer, the emphasis is less on the war period. Before the war, Bijmoer did guided tours in the Stedelijk Museum, and during the war he was a draughtsman and designer. Immediately after the war, he drew for the newspaper Het Parool and was a set and costume designer for many plays, revues and television series. The last ten years before his retirement, he did that exclusively for television (NOS).

Transcripts are present only of conversations that were held in 1973-74, namely those with Boers (1905-1978), painter; Braat (1908-1982), sculptor, poet and writer; Defresne-Ruys, wife of the actor Defresne (1893-1961), herself a bacteriologist; Groenier (1905-1977), actor and former director of the Arnhem School of Drama; De Leeuwe (1898-1982), actress; Romein-Verschoor (1895-1978), historian and writer; Poons (1896-1985), actor; Sandberg (1897-1984), former director of the Stedelijk Museum; 1st interview Sterneberg (1901-1987), actor; Tiemeijer (b. 1908), actor.

The interviewees (some of them in Jerusalem) are family members, former pupils, former students, colleagues and other relations of the historian and writer. They talk about his youth, background and family ties; his student days; teaching at the Vossius Gymnasium and the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam; his marriage to Dé Appel; the war years, including the suicide attempt in May 1940, Dé’s deportation and the period in hiding; his Jewish identity; his second marriage to Bep Hartog; his political views; the issue of his appointment as professor of Newest History at the University of Amsterdam Political Social Faculty at the University of Amsterdam; his publications, including his well-known two-volume Ondergang. The persecution and extermination of Dutch Jewry, 1940-1945, The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1965.

Interviews in Conservation Research is a growing collection of interviews for research and decision making on conservation, preservation and restoration, use and presentation of artworks and cultural heritage. It includes interviews with artists and artist assistants, as well as conservators and curators. The thematic collection is ongoing and part of the Interviews in Conservation Initiative. Additions are welcome so that a rich collection of unique source material is built up that allows for cross-referencing and gives a unique picture of life behind the scenes of artworks and cultural heritage in the Netherlands.