Wintercafé 2: Hold on! Oulipo.

If you play the game, you make the rules. With Saskia de Coster, Karin Amatmoekrim, Anton Valens and Joke van Leeuwen. In Dutch

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Information

Date and time Saturday 16 January 2010 21:05 tot 22:00 uur
Location Filmhuis - zaal 7

Hold on! Oulipo and the literary restriction: If you play the game, you make the rules. The French OuLiPo company (Ouvroir Littéraire Potentielle, founded in 1960) thought that with self-imposed literary restrictions one could write potentially interesting texts. In which only the e as a vowel would occur, or a poem in which all the letters of the alphabet would recur.This programme, a co-production of Wintertuin (Nijmegen) and festival Winternachten (The Hague) is a tribute to the writers, mathematicians and philosophers of OuLiPo. Four writers, Saskia de Coster, Karin Amamoetkrin, Anton Valens and Joke van Leeuwen were given a restriction by writer/mathematician Hugo Brandt Corstius in Nijmegen. Now the four writers and their ‘patron’ get together in The Hague to read the results. Meanwhile, all the texts will have been published in a handy-sized booklet – available at Winternachten in a limited edition!
At the end of this hour there is a performance by saxophonist and composer Maarten Ornstein and Joshua Samson (percussion). Ornstein composed music to poems of the South African poet Ronelda Kamfer. In Dutch.

Line-up

Sanna Andréa-Dia

(The Hague, 1979) is a theatre maker, dancer, singer and cellist. She is doing an international musical training in London and trained at the drama school in Utrecht. Andréa-Dia has a Dutch mother and a Lebanese father, which explains her interest in intercultural connections. She teaches drama at the Geert Groote College in Amsterdam and is cellist in the women's quintet Joya.
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Hugo Brandt Corstius

(Eindhoven, 1935) is one of the most productive and controversial writers in the Netherlands. In all he published more than forty books since 1966. He gained national fame as a columnist and literary critic. Brandt Corstius wrote his often cutting pieces using more than fifty pen-names. According to himself every one of them is part of his persona. His columns as Piet Grijs for VN and Stoker for the Volkskrant regularly led to controversy. In 1985 the Dutch Cabinet refused to give him the P.C.-Hooft Prize because according to the responsible minister for culture he used offence as his sole instrument: In a column Brandt Corstius had resembled the minister of finance to Adolf Eichmann. Eventually he received the prize in 1987, but owing to the riot, it had been degraded from state prize to ‘ordinary’ prijs. Brandt Corstius studied mathematics in Amsterdam and is a specialist in computer linguistics.
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Saskia De Coster

(Belgium, 1976) in the blurb of her novel Wij en ik (We and I, 2013) Tom Lanoye called her ‘for years the most stubborn, most capricious and most attractive pen in Belgium. In this penetrating family novel she chastises modern European man and describes how strong family ties are. ‘The Great Flemish novel isn't dead. It has just been written by Saskia De Coster’, Herman Koch wrote. Multitalented De Coster made her debut in 2000 with the story Onder elkaar (Among Each Other). She writes with gusto and soaks her stories - often populated by unwordly characters  - in a firm dash of humor. She writes columns too, is a visual and video artist and she writes for the theatre - and lyrics. Saskia De Coster is very active on international literary stages. De Costers latest novel was published in 2015 and received (just like 'Wij en ik' did) the 'Cutting Edge Award'.
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Joke van Leeuwen

(The Hague, NL 1952) is a jack-of-all-trades. Apart from writing prose and poetry for children and adults, she illustrates and performs. In 2008 and 2009 she was city poet of Antwerp, Belgium. Her illustrated novel Alles Nieuw (Everything New) made it to the shortlist of the 2009 Ako Literature Prize. Van Leeuwen's children's books have been awarded many times with the Zilveren Griffel (Silver Pencil), Gouden Uil (Golden Owl) and the Woutertje Pieterse Prize. Especially her children's book Deesje was translated in many languages and awarded abroad. The power in her work is that she enriches her texts with beautiful illustrations. Van Leeuwen's main characters often walk through life with a gaze of wonderment while at the same time they seem locked by everyday routine. Van Leeuwen’s career began in 1978 when she won the Camaretten (cabaret) festival and published her first children's book. Since then she hes been performing in smaller and bigger productions, combining cabaret, literature and image.
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Anton Valens

(Paterswolde, 1964) got critical acclaim and various literary awards for his debut Meester in de Hygiëne (Master in Hygiene, 2004). In this strongly autobiographical collection of short stories Valens writes about his experiences in home care. Just like Valens, the main character Bonne is a visual artist with ties with Groningen. His second book Dweiloorlog (Mop War, 2008) is a sequel to his debut, with more stories about Bonne's experiences. In 2009 he published the novella Vis (Fish). Again the main character is a visual artist who this time sails on a fishing boat, and so gets to know the rough life of a fisherman. In between he wrote a travelogue on China, Ik wilde naar de rand van Beijing (Journey to the Outskirts of Beijing, 2008). In 2012 he published Het boek Ont (The book Ont) and in 2016 Het compostcirculatieplan (The compost circulation plan), the novel for which he has been awarded with the F. Bordewijk Prize. The jury states: "Gardening is garden warfare in this wonderful novel about friendship and mourning. In superb style Valens shows the effort with which we, season after season, try to get to grips with life - with our feet in the mud, in which we finally all will have to disappear."
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Karin Amatmoekrim

(Suriname, 1976) debuted with Knipperleven (2004), followed by Wanneer wij samen zijn (When We Are Together, 2006), based on the history of her Javanese-Surinamese family. Her novel Het gym (The Gymnasium, 2011) describes Sandra, a Surinamese outsider, holding her own among preppy white girls. De man van veel (The Man of Much, 2013) is based on the life of the Surinamese national hero and writer Anton de Kom, and was followed by her memoir Tenzij de vader (Unless the Father, 2016), a painfully honest report of getting to know her father at age 22. Her PhD thesis on the late author Anil Ramdas (University of Utrecht) was published as the biography In welk land leef ik eigenlijk? (What Kind of Country Do I Actually Live in?, 2023). She regularly publishes stories, columns and opinion pieces.
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Maarten Ornstein

(Amstelveen, 1967) is a saxophonist, composer and musical jack-of-all-trades who is involved in a great number of projects. In 2004 he founded the group DASH! to combine all the projects he was working on, from theatre productions and concerts with classical musicians to performances with work of his own. In 1989 Ornstein won the soloists' prize at the North Sea Jazz festival. Some years later he was involved in the foundation of the big band New Cool Collective, as a composer and an arranger. Also, Ornstein composed for, among others, the Metropole Orchestra, Ties Mellema, Calefax Rietkwintet, Koor Nieuwe Muziek en North Sea Jazz Festival.
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Joshua Samson

(1967) is a much sought-after percussionist who played with Anouk, Lois Lane and Hans and Candy Dulfer, among others. Meanwhile there are no less than thirty CDs and DVDs on which Samson can be heard. He did the percussion course at the conservatory in The Hague and a post-doctoral in New York. His style is characterised by a combination of various ethnic influences to which he adds his own professional background. In addition to the usual instruments he likes to play unique percussion instruments such as the recently developed Hang, which consists of two Tibetan scales placed on each other. Right now he tours the country with a children's show Kikker heeft de Blues (Kikker's got the blues) and plays the drums with DASH! and Last Tango in Paris. Together with college friend Tony Overwater he forms the duo the Sleutelbewaarders. Once a month they do a concert at a unique spot in the Netherlands with a special guest from varying musical disciplines.
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Ronelda S. Kamfer

(South Africa, 1981) is one of today's most important South African authors. She writes in Cape-Afrikaans, a spoken language containing English words and slang. Her work has been translated into Dutch, French, Greek, Italian and English. Her first poetry collection Noudat Slapende Honde (Now Then Sleeping Dogs, 2008) paints a sharp picture of poverty. Santekraam (2012) contains stories in verse about a fishing village that must make way for a military site. Mammie (2017) is a loving as well as raw ode to her mother. Chinatown (2021) is typically hard-hitting. Kamfer's poems, as controlled as they are intimate and darkly humourous, tackle violence, the position of women, love and parenthood. Her first novel, Kompoun, was published in 2021. She compiled Die maan is swart (The Moon is Black, 2022), a collection of poetry by Adam Small, and has translated two of Kirsty Applebaum's Princess Minna children's books into Afrikaans.
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