Martin de Haan
Opening exhibition and book release Ramkoers
The official presentation by publisher Peter Nijssen is on Friday 4 June,
Martin de Haan will read from his own work on Saturday 5 June.
Friday June 4 16:00 - 20:00 / Saturday June 5 12:00 - 18:00
Register your time slot via www.kochxbos.com
After June 5, the exhibition can be visited until Saturday June 19 at regular opening hours, without registration, our door is open again.
The Corona year of 2020 marked a turning point for literary translator and essayist Martin de Haan. Cornered by the unusual circumstances, he suddenly found himself busy with a major writing project, the novel Ramkoers, and used the daily hour of outside freedom given to him by the first French lockdown to make a series of photographs around the theme of ‘confinement’.
Two further series followed later in the same year, the novel was finished by the end of October, and suddenly a new creative double life had opened up. The fruit of that strange year is being shown here for the first time in its mutual context, with the book presentation of Ramkoers and an exhibition of the three series of photographs.
As an extra, there’s a photographic glimpse into the life of the writer whose nearly complete works De Haan has translated into Dutch: Michel Houellebecq.
RAMKOERS
‘What’s your book about?’ Jasper asked out of politeness. The man’s face darkened. ‘Good novels aren’t about anything, they just are, and they take the reader along for a while on the wings of their music. Is a symphony about anything, are your photographs about anything?’
The 37-year-old photographer Jasper van den Berg is in the bath when the news comes over the radio: a big space rock is said to be hurtling towards the earth, chances of impact as yet unknown. What’s to be done? First to get to work, because the annual Poodle calendar has to be made. Then, after some hesitation, a phone call to Northern Spain, where his girlfriend Hannah lives. It’s the start of a screamingly tragic chronicle in which we follow Jasper from day to day on his way through what is possibly the end time, and then again possibly not. All seen through the eyes of a mysterious narrator.
PHOTOGRAPHS
The three exhibited series not only come from the same period as Ramkoers, but each is linked to the novel in its own way.
The main character sees the first series, ‘Covid-1_’, hanging in some sadly closed gallery: ‘The photographer had changed the green of the vegetation to red (or was it infrared film?), and also straightened all the horizontal and vertical lines of the apartment blocks in the pictures. The whole thing made a post-apocalyptic impression – not least because not a soul could be seen, human nor avian.’
The second series, ‘Autan’, is named after a southern French wind that plays an important part towards the end of the novel, and which reputedly drives people mad: ‘Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne me rendra fou’, as Georges Brassens sang. The series of photographs in question, made during a photographic retreat with Richard Dumas in Cosprons, revolves around the theme of time and transience: long exposure times, blurred movement, photography as ‘writing with light’.
The third series, ‘Autun – un fil infrarouge’, continues this theme in its own way, but with infrared photography (which also grabs the main character of Ramkoers at one moment). The pictures show De Haan’s place of residence, Autun (which also appears in the novel), in a mysterious new light.
The Houellebecq pictures date from 2019 and previously appeared as a report in Volkskrant Magazine.