On Saturday night, a multitude of art-lovers gathered outside an industrial garage in Amsterdam East for a lecture by renowned French author Michel Houellebecq.
On May 24, Mr. Houellebeck published a new book “A Few Months of My Life”, which depicts the turbulent period from October 2022 to March 2023 in collaboration with the Dutch art collective KIRAC. The two worked on the film together, shooting a scene where the married 67-year-old writer has sex with young women.
Houellebecq had agreed to make the film, but later changed his mind and tried to withdraw. Earlier in February, he filed lawsuits in France and the Netherlands to stop the film from showing. A judge in Amsterdam last month granted Mr. Houellebecq’s appeal, giving him the right to see the final cut of the re-edited film four weeks before its release and filing a separate lawsuit if he didn’t like what he saw. gave the opportunity.
In his 94-page autobiographical work, A Few Months of My Life, Houellebecq delves deeper into his hatred of KIRAC. He mentions the group’s leader, Stefan Ruitenbeek, by name only once, describing him as an “artist pseudonym” and a “cockroach with a human face.” Female members of KIRAC are called “swine” or “turkey”.
According to Tarik Saduma, organizer of Saturday’s event, Houellebecq came to Amsterdam not to promote his new book, but to talk about his work in general. As a condition of his participation, Houellebecq asked Saduma to ban Luitenbeek and his companions from participating in the event.
But just as the audience was seated indoors, Luitenbeek burst through the door, disguised as a giant brown cockroach with swinging antennae and a furry cloak. He was followed by members of KIRAC, one wearing a fake pig’s nose and another filming the whole story.
“I’m here!” shouted Luitenbeek as he stepped onto the stage, amid a mix of jeers and cheers. “I am a cockroach!”
Sadooma yelled at the intruders to leave as the woman who took the ticket tried to steal the camera from the photographer. Finally, Luitenbeek pleaded, “No violence!” — left with entourage.
This was the latest episode in the ongoing surreal conflict between KIRAC, a fringe art group that posts movies to YouTube, and Houellebecq, one of the world’s most famous authors.
was it a performance? Marketing stunt? Or is it part of a true cultural feud? Who can really say
KIRAC, an acronym for Keeping It Real Art Critics, is often described as an art collective whose creative centers are Luitenbeek and author Kate Sinha, who is also Luitenbeek’s lifelong partner. They make films that at first glance appear to be documentaries, or even mockumentaries, and are usually set in the art world. They often blur the lines between reality and fiction, sometimes contradict narratives, and sometimes appear to play games with truth on-screen.
Also, it is often difficult to discern the political views of KIRAC. In one film, Dutch architect and curator Rem Koolhaas is criticized for being “macho” and “patriarchal.” In another article, KIRAC appeared to denounce its commitment to diversity, stating that artist Zanele Muholi’s retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam “has been shown that she is from South Africa and is black and lesbian.” Just for a reason,” he claims. (Muhori now uses they/them pronouns and recognizes that they are non-binary.)
Seen as provocateurs, pranksters, and sometimes art world trolls, KIRAC members often give direct critical monologues to the camera, usually following Sinha’s explicit scholarly analysis or Ruitenbeek’s done in the form of mockery of
“In the broadest sense, we are just trying to make a great movie, intellectual entertainment,” Sinha said. “I think we’re primarily artists and we’ve always been interested in the objects that we create: the movies.”
In a joint interview, Luitenbeek and Sinha said they worked out the concept for the Houellebecq movie with the original author and shot 600 hours of his footage with contractual consent. Luitenbeek and Sinha said Houellebecq only objected when they put together a two-minute trailer for the work in progress.
In the clip, Luitenbeek explains that Houellebecq’s planned “honey trip”, or sex vacation, in Morocco was canceled because the author feared being kidnapped by Islamist extremists. (Houellebecq has a long history of speaking critically about Islam, and some readers find Islamophobic sentiment in his books.)
“His wife had spent a whole month arranging prostitutes from Paris and now everything had fallen apart,” Luitenbeek narrates in the trailer. He also suggests that there are many young Dutch women in Amsterdam who “have sex with famous authors out of curiosity” and recommends visiting the author.
In French court, Houellebecq claimed the trailer invaded his privacy and damaged his image. He asked the court to have KIRAC remove the trailer from all online platforms, remove any mention that his wife had solicited prostitutes, and pay compensation. The court dismissed Houellebecq’s appeal.
Later, in Dutch court, Houellebecq argued that KIRAC had violated contract law and misled him into “acting in a different film than originally intended” (Dutch attorney Jacqueline Sharp). The appellate judge in this case awarded Houellebecq in favor.
The film is still unfinished and continues to evolve, Luitenbeek said. After Houellebecq left the project, KIRAC filmed in and around the courtroom, as well as other moments such as the cockroach show on Saturday night.
Mr. Luitenbeek said he is currently reconsidering the content and that a final decision could take months.
“We started this project with an open-minded attitude towards each other. We saw each other as artists,” Sinha said of his collaboration with Houellebecq. “I feel like he’s backpedaled and put on a different coat.”
Mr. Houellebecq agreed to be interviewed for this article last week, but declined after learning that his quotes would not be made public before publication. (At the Amsterdam event, he again claimed he didn’t speak English, again refusing to comment, but does speak English in the KIRAC film.)
Luitenbeek’s excessive narration and self-paced attitude suggest that KIRAC is looking for humor. But more often than not, the subject matter of that movie isn’t funny.
“They condemn others, but they carve out a safe haven for themselves,” said Renzo Martens, the artist who became the focal point of the unflattering film. “From this safe haven, they are brave enough to cut into the bodies of others.”
The three Dutch institutions KIRAC denounced, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Van Abbe Museum and the Kunstmuseum The Hague, declined to comment for this article.
“There is something menacing about the way they work,” said Tis Leister, senior lecturer in philosophy of art and culture at the University of Groningen. They have a style of filming and approaching and talking to people, which is pretty hostile in a way. “
It’s not just KIRAC’s targeting of artists and groups that is controversial. Over time, that film has evolved into the realm of social commentary, inciting outrage across the political spectrum.
Some viewers linked the group’s 19-minute film, Aren’t You Afraid of Harvey Weinstein? I saw it as being neglected.
Amsterdam’s leading art school, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, has received dozens of complaints from students, former students and teachers about allegedly sexist and racist remarks in the group’s film. As a result, we canceled the screening of KIRAC. Weinstein’s films were endorsed by Right-wing populist Dutch blog Geen Stijl. Suddenly, KIRAC attracted a conservative following.
Although Luitenbeek and Sinha said their personal politics were progressive, KIRAC did not deny the attention and instead made a film called “Honeypot”. To do so, the group persuaded conservative Dutch philosopher and activist Sid Lucassen to have sex with a left-wing student on camera. The aim was to see if this intimate act could somehow bridge the political divide.
More backlash ensued.when De Balie art center in Amsterdam When “Honeypot” was screened, a feminist group submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures calling the film “a glorification of sexual violence.” The petition’s signatories also included Dutch right-wing politician Paul Kritour and some of his supporters.
“It was interesting that these two people teamed up for the film for diametrically opposed reasons,” said Yoeli Albrecht, director of De Bali, who did not cancel the event. “I’ve been organizing events here for over 10 years and have never seen anything like that.”
The ambiguity about the group’s motives only adds to the interest in KIRAC’s work. Many who follow the Houellebecq case are unsure whether it is real or his postmodern KIRAC fiction.
“People are wondering, are we playing games together?” said curator Simon Delaubel, who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, when his students asked him about the group’s work. said he was introduced to KIRAC and Houellebecq were certainly “well aware that it could be interpreted as a stunt,” he added.
But both Luitenbeek and Sinha said the clash with the author was not a stunt. They don’t want to stand in court with Houellebecq, whom they both described as a “genius”. They just want to have a conversation with him, Sinha said.
Mr. Luytenbeek added that when he showed up to Mr. Houellebecq’s speech on Saturday, he thought there was a slim chance that everyone would laugh and hug. “I was very happy the day I went to pick up the cockroach suit,” Sinha said. “After all these horrific trials, we’re back in our domain again: making art,” she added.
Leontine Galois Contributed to the report from Paris.
