Culture

Trailing Michel Houellebecq From the Bedroom to the Courtroom

Published

1 year ago

June 1, 2023

Trailing Michel Houellebecq From the Bedroom to the Courtroom

On Saturday night, an eclectic art crowd was gathering outside an industrial garage in Amsterdam East, where Michel Houellebecq, the celebrated French author, was set to speak.

Houellebecq had on May 24 released “A Few Months of My Life,” a new book describing a tumultuous period from October 2022 to March 2023 when he collaborated with a Dutch art collective called KIRAC. Together, they worked on a film, shooting scenes that show the married 67-year-old author making out with young women.

Although Houellebecq had consented to making the film, he later changed his mind and tried to back out. Beginning in February, he brought court cases in France and the Netherlands to stop the movie from being shown. Last month, an Amsterdam judge upheld Houellebecq’s complaint and granted him the right to see a final cut of any re-edited film four weeks before release, giving him a chance to file another action if he doesn’t like what he sees.

In “A Few Months of My Life,” a 94-page autobiographical work, Houellebecq digs deep into his hatred for KIRAC. He names the group’s leader, Stefan Ruitenbeek, only once, describing him as a “pseudo-artist” and “a cockroach with a human face.” Female KIRAC members are referred to as “the sow” and “the turkey.”

According to the organizer of Saturday’s event, Tarik Sadouma, Houellebecq had not come to Amsterdam to promote his new book, but to talk about his work generally. As a condition of his participation, Houellebecq asked Sadouma to bar Ruitenbeek and his cohorts from the event.

Yet just as the audience took its seats inside, Ruitenbeek burst through the door, dressed as a giant brown cockroach, with bobbing antennae and a furry cape. He was trailed by KIRAC members, one wearing a false pig snout, another filming the whole thing.

“I’m here!” cried Ruitenbeek, taking the stage, to a mixture of jeering and cheers. “I’m the cockroach!”

A woman taking tickets tried to wrangle the camera from the cameraman and Sadouma shouted for the intruders to leave. Eventually, Ruitenbeek — pleading, “No violence!” — left with his entourage.

This was the latest episode in an ongoing, surrealistic conflict between KIRAC, a fringe art group that posts its films on YouTube, and Houellebecq, one of the world’s most famous authors.

Was it a performance? A marketing stunt? Or part of a genuine cultural feud? Who could really tell?

KIRAC, an acronym for Keeping It Real Art Critics, is often described as an art collective, but its creative center is Ruitenbeek and Kate Sinha, a writer who is also Ruitenbeek’s life partner. They make films that at first appear to be documentaries, or possibly mockumentaries, typically set in the art world. In them, the boundaries between reality and fiction are often blurred, narratives sometimes conflict and onscreen characters can appear to be playing a game with the truth.

It is also often difficult to discern KIRAC’s political views. In one of its films, the Dutch architect and curator Rem Koolhaas is criticized as “macho” and “patriarchal.” In another, KIRAC seems to decry diversity efforts, arguing that the artist Zanele Muholi was given a retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, “only because she is from South Africa, Black and lesbian.” (Muholi now uses they/them pronouns and identifies as nonbinary.)

Seen as provocateurs or pranksters, and sometimes art world trolls, KIRAC’s members often deliver critical monologues directly to the camera, usually in the form of articulate academic analysis from Sinha, or mocking insults from Ruitenbeek.

“In the broadest sense, we’re just trying to make great films, intellectual entertainment,” Sinha said. “I think we are primarily artists, interested in the object we make, which is always the film.”

In a joint interview, Ruitenbeek and Sinha said they developed the concept for the Houellebecq film with the author and shot 600 hours of footage of him, with his contractual consent. Houellebecq only objected when they put together a two-minute trailer for the work in progress, according to Ruitenbeek and Sinha.

In that clip, Ruitenbeek explains that a “honey trip,” or sex holiday, that Houellebecq had planned in Morocco had been canceled because the author feared being kidnapped by Muslim extremists. (Houellebecq has a long history of making critical statements about Islam, and some readers have found Islamophobic sentiments in his books.)

“His wife had spent an entire month arranging prostitutes from Paris, and now everything was falling apart,” Ruitenbeek says in the trailer, in voice-over. He then suggests that there are plenty of young Dutch women in Amsterdam who would have “sex with a famous writer out of curiosity,” and invites the author to visit.

In a French court, Houellebecq argued that the trailer violated his privacy and damaged his image. He asked the court to make KIRAC pull the trailer from all online platforms, remove any mention of his wife arranging prostitutes and pay her damages. The court rejected Houellebecq’s case.

Later, in the Dutch court, Houellebecq argued that KIRAC had violated contract law, and misled him so that he ended up “in a different film than the one originally intended,” according to his Dutch lawyer, Jacqueline Schaap. An appeal judge in that case found for Houellebecq.

The film is still unfinished and continues to evolve, Ruitenbeek said. After Houellebecq left the project, KIRAC filmed in and around the court proceedings, as well as shooting other moments, such as Saturday night’s cockroach show.

Ruitenbeek said he was now rethinking the material, and a final cut may not come for months.

“We started off this project in an open-minded attitude toward each other; we took each other as artists,” Sinha said of the collaboration with Houellebecq. “It feels like he backpedaled and put on a different coat.”

Houellebecq last week agreed to an interview for this article, but pulled out after learning that he would not be shown his quotes before publication. (At the event in Amsterdam, he again declined to comment, claiming that he did not speak English, although he speaks it in the KIRAC film.)

Ruitenbeek’s over-the-top voice-overs and willingness to play a goofball suggest that KIRAC is going for humor. But, often, the subjects of its films don’t find them funny.

“They point fingers at others, but carve out a safe space for themselves’,” said the artist Renzo Martens, who was the focus of an unflattering movie. “From this safe space they are brave enough to cut into other people’s flesh.”

Three Dutch institutions that KIRAC has lambasted — the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Abbe Museum and the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague — declined to comment for this article.

Thijs Lijster, a senior lecturer on the philosophy of art and culture at the University of Groningen, said that there is “something threatening in their ways of going about their work. They have a style of filming, and approaching and talking to people, which is, in a way, rather hostile.”

It is not just KIRAC’s targeting of artists and institutions that has been controversial. Over time, its films have evolved to enter the realm of social commentary, drawing ire from across the political spectrum.

Some viewers saw the group’s 19-minute film “Who’s Afraid of Harvey Weinstein?,” in which Sinha speaks about sexual power dynamics between the American film producer and his rape victims, as dismissive of the #MeToo movement.

A leading art school in Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, canceled a KIRAC screening after dozens of complaints from students, former students and teachers about statements in the group’s films that they found sexist and racist. The Weinstein movie was championed on a right-wing populist Dutch blog, Geen Stijl. Suddenly, KIRAC became a magnet for conservative followers.

Although Ruitenbeek and Sinha said their personal politics are progressive, KIRAC didn’t disavow the attention, and instead produced a film called “Honeypot.” For that, the group convinced a conservative Dutch philosopher and activist, Sid Lukkassen, to have sex on camera with a left-wing student. The idea was to see if the intimate act would somehow bridge a political gap.

More backlash ensued. When an Amsterdam arts center called De Balie screened “Honeypot,” a feminist collective submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures that called the film “a glorification of sexual violence.” The petition’s signers also included the right-wing Dutch politician Paul Cliteur and some of his followers.

“It was interesting that these two sides teamed up against the film for opposite reasons,” said Yoeri Albrecht, De Balie’s director, who did not cancel the event. “I’ve never seen that happen in the more than a decade that I’ve been organizing events here.”

The ambiguity around the group’s motivations only feeds the interest in KIRAC’s work. Many who have been following the Houellebecq affair are unsure whether it’s real or a postmodern KIRAC fiction.

“Everyone is wondering, are they playing a game together?” said Simon Delobel, a curator who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Ghent, Belgium, where he was introduced to the group’s work by his students. KIRAC and Houellebecq were surely “well aware that it can be interpreted as a stunt,” he added.

Yet Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with the author was no stunt. They don’t want to be in court with Houellebecq, whom they both described as “a genius.” They just want to be in conversation with him, Sinha said.

Ruitenbeek added that when he showed up at Houellebecq’s talk on Saturday, he thought there was a small chance that everyone would laugh and give each other hugs. He was “very happy the day he went to get the cockroach suit,” Sinha said. “After all these intimidating court cases,” she added, “we were back on our own territory again: making art.”

Léontine Gallois contributed reporting from Paris.

Culture

James Earl Jones’ voice marked the time, in baseball and beyond

Published

3 hours ago

September 10, 2024

Press Room

James Earl Jones’ voice marked the time, in baseball and beyond

James Earl Jones, who was 93 when he died Monday, will be remembered by baseball purists for the stirring, soul-reaching words he delivered in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.”

Cast as a fictitious writer named Terence Mann, Jones is nominally speaking to Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella. But what he’s really doing is speaking to anyone in the audience who has long wondered whatever became of the baseball cards they collected growing up. He’s speaking to anyone who ponders what Babe Ruth would hit today, or what Shohei Ohtani would have hit yesterday. He’s speaking to anyone who’s ever held a baseball glove up to their nose just to smell the leather.

We know this to be true partly because of the staging. Mann is facing the camera while standing on the edge of a baseball field that’s been carved out of an Iowa cornfield. But the real magic comes from Jones, who uses his rich baritone voice in such a way that we want to go outside and build a ball field:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

These words have become a baseball anthem without music, in much the same way Jones, accompanied by the Morgan State University choir, recited “The Star Spangled Banner” before the start of the 1993 All-Star Game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

And yet Jones was not a baseball fan growing up. And he did not fall hopelessly in love with the game as a result of appearing in such baseball-themed movies as “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings” (1976) and “The Sandlot”(1993), as well as the Phil Alden Robinson-directed “Field of Dreams.”

But neither was Marlon Brando a mafia boss before “The Godfather,” or Margaret Hamilton a witch, wicked or otherwise, before “The Wizard of Oz.” What we see from Jones in “Field of Dreams” is an actor who pulled all the necessary dramatic levers and pulleys inside him to become a baseball fan, or, in my case, the kind of baseball fan I remember as a kid growing up just two miles from Fenway Park.

In the scene in which Kinsella has somehow convinced Mann to attend a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway, we see Jones watching the action in a manner that jumped out at me when I first watched “Field of Dreams.” While Costner’s Kinsella is busily jotting down the name “Moonlight Graham” on his scorecard, Jones’ Terence Mann shows us a look of earnestness mixed with a dash of serenity as he watches the game action. In an era before mobile phones, before the wave, before beer decks, before walk-up music, that’s how people watched baseball. It’s such a small thing, but Jones figured it out.

Yes, it’s the “people will come” exhortation on the ballfield in Dyersville, Iowa, that transformed Jones into a baseball icon. But it’s what happens just before the speech that had me wanting to stand up and applaud when I first watched “Field of Dreams.” As Kinsella’s brother-in-law (played by Timothy Busfield, who happens to be a for-real baseball fan) charges into the scene to announce that Ray is bankrupt and must sell the farm, we see Mann with a copy of “The Baseball Encyclopedia.” In the pre-internet days, it was the baseball bible. And Mann treats it as one. It’s on his lap, open, perhaps to the page revealing the lifetime stats of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver or any one of those baseball-playing ghosts on the field.

That struck a note with Larry Cancro, a senior vice president with the Red Sox who has worked on the marketing side of things for nearly four decades. He told of a time when he was around 10 years old and his family was visiting relatives in Melrose, Mass. “I was sitting there with my three sisters,” he said, “and my father’s cousin had a copy of ‘The Baseball Encyclopedia.’ It was the first time I’d ever seen one. And I started poring through it. In the years to come, I ended up getting several copies. When you see that scene in ‘Field of Dreams,’ there’s James Earl Jones, proudly holding a copy. Only a real baseball fan sits there looking through ‘The Baseball Encyclopedia.’”

Cancro helped facilitate the Fenway Park scene in “Field of Dreams,” shot while the Red Sox were on the road. Costner and Jones are seated in Loge Box 157, Row PP, Seats 1 and 2.

Cancro is happy to report that the two actors were “gracious and friendly” to all Red Sox employees who were involved in the shoot. Even better, Cancro remembers the bond that formed between Jones and the late Joe Mooney, the longtime Fenway Park groundskeeper who was one of those old-timey curmudgeons with a way of being standoffish to strangers. He could also display exaggerated disinterest when dealing with celebrities whom he perceived as not being real fans, or not knowing the history of Fenway Park, or both.

“The way Joe operated, if you were there to show off or trying to be a big deal, he wanted nothing to do with you,” Cancro said. “Joe was a sweet guy, of course, if he knew you. But he and James Earl Jones really hit it off. Kevin Costner, too. But the thing with James Earl Jones, they were laughing and having a good time. Joe liked him, which is really all you need to know about James Earl Jones being at Fenway Park.”

Now, there are baseball purists who have their issues with “Field of Dreams.” There’s the late Ray Liotta’s Shoeless Joe Jackson batting right-handed. (Shoeless Joe was a left-handed hitter.) There’s Kinsella navigating his Volkswagen bus the wrong way on Lansdowne Street behind Fenway Park. But there can be no denying what Jones brought to the production, from his spoken baseball anthem to his very believable portrayal of Terence Mann, who, we learn, grew up loving the game and dreaming of playing alongside Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field.

GO DEEPER

‘One constant through all the years’? The ‘Field of Dreams’ speech meets 2020

As Jones often said, he considered himself more of a stage actor than a film actor. He won three Tony Awards. Nor was “Field of Dreams” his most famous film role. Providing the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” films pretty much ends that discussion. In terms of honors, he earned an honorary Academy Award in 2011 and was nominated for best actor in “The Great White Hope” (1970).

He won Primetime Emmy Awards for “Heat Wave”(1990) and “Gabriel’s Fire” (1991), a Daytime Emmy for “Summer’s End” (2000) and a Grammy Award for “Best Spoken Word” in “Great American Documents” (2000). When joined with his three Tonys — “The Great White Hope” (1969), “Fences” (1987) and a Lifetime Achievement Award (2017) — and his honorary Oscar, he is in the rare company of actors who achieved EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) status. In “Fences,” he plays the role of Troy, a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues. Other notable film roles include “Coming to America” (1988), “Claudine” (1974), “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995) and the voice of Mufasa in “The Lion King” (1994).

And yet in an interview for “Field of Dreams at 25,” he called the film “one of the very few movies I’ve done that I really cherish.”

Looking back on the film, Jones said, “Magic can happen if you just let it happen and don’t force it. And that was (director) Phil Robinson’s choice with ‘Field of Dreams.’”

The same could be said of his portrayal of Terence Mann. He just let it happen. He didn’t force it. In doing so, his voice marks the time.

(Photo: Kevin Winter / Getty Images for the American Film Institute)

Culture

Carroll Dawson, legendary Rockets assistant coach and GM, dies at 86

Published

11 hours ago

September 10, 2024

Press Room

Carroll Dawson, legendary Rockets assistant coach and GM, dies at 86

Former Houston Rockets assistant coach and general manager Carroll Dawson has died at age 86, the team announced Monday.

The cause of his death was not disclosed.

Dawson, known as “CD,” spent nearly three decades with the Rockets from 1980 to 2007, starting as an assistant coach under Del Harris and working with Bill Fitch, Don Chaney and Rudy Tomjanovich before transitioning to the front office in 1996. He remains the lone figure in franchise history to have served as an assistant during each of their four NBA Finals runs, most notably during the back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995.

“While CD’s contributions to basketball were remarkable, it was his character that truly stood out,” the Rockets said in a statement. “We will deeply miss his uplifting spirit, infectious humor, and kind-hearted nature. We are proud that CD’s legacy will forever be honored with his banner hanging from the rafters of Toyota Center, alongside our other Rockets legends.”

The Rockets family mourns the loss of beloved former coach and general manager, Carroll Dawson, affectionately known as “CD.”
For nearly three decades, CD was a cornerstone of our organization, instrumental in shaping the careers of stars like Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.… pic.twitter.com/U0iE3EIET1
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— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) September 9, 2024

As an assistant, Dawson built a reputation around the league for developing big men, working closely with Hall of Famers like Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson and Moses Malone. His proficiency in player development carried over to his role as general manager, tasked with the day-to-day running of the Rockets’ scouting department.

Dawson constantly sought avenues to upgrade the roster, successfully pulling off trades for the likes of Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Cuttino Mobley and Tracy McGrady — along with drafting of Yao Ming in 2002. In 2007, Dawson hired Daryl Morey as his successor.

That year, the Rockets hung a banner with the initials “CD” from the rafters at Toyota Center to honor Dawson’s work with the franchise.

But Dawson’s impact wasn’t just limited to the NBA. He was also an instrumental figure in the construction of four-time WNBA Champion Houston Comets, which still stands as the most successful WNBA franchise of all time. As executive vice president of the organization, Dawson played a monumental role in signing WNBA legends Tina Thompson, Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes along with the hiring of coach Van Chancellor.

“I’m lucky to have the chance to get to know and work with (Dawson),” Rockets general manager Rafael Stone told The Athletic in a statement. “He’s a Houston Rockets legend and someone I learned a lot from, particularly his ability to use humor to make his point and connect with people. That’s a timeless quality that not many people possess and it was cool to get the chance to observe.”

(Photo of Dawson at the 2006 NBA Draft Lottery: Jennifer Pottheiser / NBAE via Getty Images)

Culture

Taylor Fritz’s U.S. Open final offers hope for men’s tennis — and a reality check

Published

18 hours ago

September 9, 2024

Press Room

Taylor Fritz’s U.S. Open final offers hope for men’s tennis — and a reality check

NEW YORK — In the build-up to Wimbledon, Taylor Fritz said men’s tennis feels more open now, compared with the Big Three era.

“It took just one of them to be playing incredibly well,” he said of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

“We were younger and not as good as we are now. You were hoping that they’d have an off day and you’d have an on day,” Fritz said. “Nowadays, anyone in the top 15, it’s kind of whoever plays better.

“It’s exciting for all of us because we know that all it takes is two weeks or 10 days of playing really high-level tennis, and taking the opportunity as best as possible.”

This U.S. Open has proved Fritz right and wrong. Early exits for Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz offered hope to the chasing pack, but the tournament ended upholding the status quo, as world No. 1 Jannik Sinner won his second Grand Slam of the year by beating Fritz 6-3, 6-4, 7-5.

With the other two majors of 2024 going to Alcaraz, 21, he and Sinner, 23, have won five of the last six Slams. They are delivering at the sharp end of majors with Big Three-like efficiency, and they’re still quite young.

Their domination feels different to the rest of the locker room, though. After Frances Tiafoe was defeated by Fritz in Friday’s semifinal, he said this tournament had been “big” in showing the best of the rest that a Grand Slam win is within reach. “It shows that it’s definitely possible,” he said. “The game’s open. Even with Alcaraz and Sinner and these other guys, it’s not what it used to be.”

Alexander Zverev, ranked just ahead of Alcaraz at No. 2 but without the same major success, expressed similar sentiments ahead of Wimbledon.

Part of the sentiment comes from the fact that even if they’re winning the bulk of the slams, Sinner and Alcaraz are not yet at the point of being a shoo-in for the semis or finals of every big tournament. Alcaraz showed that with his second-round exit here. Djokovic is still wildly talented but has been more uneven, offering the field a glimmer of hope after his worst Grand Slam year since 2017 (and second worst since 2009).

Fritz said Sunday that what encourages him is that he reached the final without playing that well.

“I think it’s really positive for me because I don’t feel like at any specific point in these two weeks … I was playing, like, amazing tennis,” he said. “Maybe it is a bit more open. I don’t think you have to, I don’t know, play unbelievable to go deep in tournaments and contend.”

“When I play good tennis,” Taylor Fritz said, “I think that level is good enough to win.” (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

Players such as Fritz also haven’t built up the kind of scar tissue with Alcaraz and Sinner that they had with the Big Three. Even if they find themselves losing to them, at least they feel like they have a chance of winning.

With the Big Three, players such as Fritz largely went in with hope rather than expectations. By contrast, before facing Sinner, Fritz said: “I have a feeling I’m going to come out and play really well and win. When I play good tennis, I think that level is good enough to win.”

In the end, Sinner proved too strong. Fritz acknowledged afterward that: “I think that (now) you can find yourself a little deeper in the draws — quarterfinals and stuff — if you just play solid tennis. I still think to beat the top guys, you need to bring your best game.”

And that is the rub. For a player like Fritz to break through and win a slam, he more than likely still has to face Sinner, Alcaraz or Djokovic. And as much as this tournament showed there might be more chances for players outside the elite to reach the quarters, semis and finals, none of those players recorded a landmark win against one of the top three.

Djokovic’s conqueror, Alexei Popyrin, is a rung or two below the group of main challengers, and Botic van de Zandschulp, who defeated Alcaraz, isn’t likely to be at the sharp end of slams anytime soon.

Fritz, though, will come out of this tournament with his standing in the game slightly altered. He spoke after losing to Sinner about how you can only beat what’s in front of you, and the way he navigated the highly stressful and slightly strange semifinal against his good friend and compatriot Tiafoe on Friday seems to have boosted his confidence.

There had always been a competition between those two and the rest of the close group of American players about who would get to a Grand Slam final first. Fritz has done it and, in his mind, while not playing his best. That bodes well for him heading into the Australian Open in January.

But Sunday, Fritz was reminded he’s still a way off from taking that final step. He spoke about how his Plan B of grinding it out works against most players but not those at the very top. He knows he’ll need to add more to his game to take that next step.

Because while the paths to the semis and finals might be getting easier, as long as Alcaraz and Sinner are delivering, the chasing pack still has a way to go.

(Top photo: Kena Betancur / AFP)