Wander is the new Artist-in Residence organisation in The Hague. December last year they collaborated with the Alternative Art Guide and hosted a pilot program with three artists: Anica Vucetic from Serbia, Kriss Salmanis from Latvia and Janek Simon from Poland. Each artist was given the opportunity to host an event for an evening. Kriss hosted an evening about ‘the book you shouldn’t read’.
Kriss is a Latvian artist who’s interested in investigating how artists in The Netherlands go about in making a living. He has worked in the advertising world for a long time and called his art practice a hobby. This provocation worked for a while, although he now considers himself an artist with side jobs.
For his evening -which was held quite appropriately in cafe De Bieb (cafe The Library), and attracted twenty some visitors- the visitors were invited to bring along a book and warn the others to not read this book. I wrote down all the titles and arguments against the proposed books.
‘Losing the head of Philip K. Dick’, by David Dufty because: when you have read the text on the cover, you read the book.
All books by Herman Koch because: He wants to show the dark side of human beings, come up with something new man!
Johan Gustavsson doesn’t advice his own book with drawings. He thinks the book is badly printed.
‘Blind Willow, sleeping woman’ by Haruki Murakami because the writer is to sure about what he writes. The reader cannot have a mind of their own.
‘Suezkade’ by Jan Siebelink because of his utterly snobbish way of writing.
‘The fashion of architecture’ by Bradley Quinn. Th.e author only compares between architecture and fashion. He doesn’t produce new information, nor does he state his own opinion.
‘The Magic mountain’ by Thomas Mann, very hard to get through. It collapses under trivia.
’7 Types of Ambiguity’ by William Epson. He is not sure about the seven types, so don’t read it, but do put it on your bookshelf.
All travelguides. Because we need to tell each other where we should go and not spend awfull lots of money on these books.
‘Conceptual art for dummies’. Because, ha ha how funny. Alle the pages are empty.
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