“Art is the lie that reveals reality.” Jeroen Brouwers - “Culture, considered as a process, means acquiring a vast deal of useless knowledge, and then forgetting it.” Albert Jay Nock - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Douglas Huebler - “In life and in art one has to begin each day anew.” Louis Couperus



Title: Het nieuws van 8 september 1997
(The news, September the 8th, 1997)



photos by: Cary Markerink

 Project executed at the invitation of Prix de Rome Art and Public Space /Rijksacademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.





AMSTERDAM - People are becoming immune to the disturbing images they see on the news. In an attempt to diminish the distance between the newsreader and the people watching the news, and to put world news back on a human scale, Sjaak Langenberg invited Dutch news anchorman Philip Freriks to read the news off-camera at the home of a Dutch family in the Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam. Philip Freriks, who read the eight o’clock news on Dutch national television between 1996 and 2009, was persuaded to discuss the news with his special audience afterwards. He also declared that he was more nervous about reading the news in a private home than in front of a camera with an audience of a million people. ‘The news of the 9th of September 1997’ was the project Langenberg did for the Prix de Rome, Art and Public Space. He won the Basic Prize with the project.

© Sjaak Langenberg