11 Frisian fountains (2018)

Directed by: Roel van Dalen | 75 minutes | documentary

As part of Leeuwarden Cultural Capital 2018, the same number of fountains will be built in the eleven Frisian cities by international ‘top artists’ – a gift from the EU. The film ’11 Frisian fountains’ shows how curator Anna Tilroe tries to make the population ‘enthusiastic’ for the ‘high-profile’ water artworks, for which space has yet to be found. Autonomous art and the taste of the public ‘do not go hand in hand naturally’.

Will Tilroe succeed in creating support among the population, or will the ‘ambitious’ project fail on the sobriety of the Frisians, who see their beloved market square disappear? Comedian Jan Jaap van de Wal goes into the country and, as a ‘purebred’ Frisian, comments on the process, which could use some humor. “Participation is the worst idea ever,” says Van de Wal. “My first association with most fountains is, ‘There has to be a penis in there’.”

We have more or less copied the synopsis of this documentary, because it covers the load more than nicely. ’11 Frisian fountains’ is about top-down art experience from an international perspective and how this is integrated with the typically Dutch concept of ‘support’. The Frisians are already having trouble with it, let alone an international artists’ group that is in Friesland for the first time and is confronted with residents’ participation. Would it collide?

Atmosphere and pace of ’11 Frisian fountains’ are reminiscent of ‘The Netherlands Amusement Park’ by Michiel van Erp. He used the same show don’t tell principle as the makers of this documentary. Dear Frisian administrators, incomprehensible foreign ‘artists of whom we already have enough here’, join in anyway ‘because Hindeloopen should not be missing between the other cities’, 11Fountains is a project that already has no brakes on the gap between people and elite rides off.

A bat fountain in Christian Bolsward, who would come up with such a thing? Who swallows and who chokes? And who will be happy once the thing is there? Because life is stranger than fiction, and bad decisions only get worse as they’re implemented, you can make a documentary about it on autopilot. ‘That thing could have been better in the Efteling’. In the end you do think: how lovely those Frisians are, how naive those artists are and what little administrators can do about it.