Keith Café #3: Keith Haring x Music

This series of four ‘café evenings’, open free-of-charge to the public, will be exploring more deeply the many sides of this iconic artist’s life and works by way of presentations, interviews, films, music and a poetry slam. The Keith Café always takes place at a cultural meeting point somewhere in the city. Admission is free.

Keith Café #3

During the third Keith Café on Thursday 21 July, the central theme will be Keith x Music.

Programme

Music: SCHUNCK Pop & Rock

The theme of this Keith Café is music. During an evening of interviews, live music will also be played. Coaches from the Pop & Rock section of SCHUNCK Muziek en Dans will be responsible for organising the musical programme, based on the mixtapes Keith Haring made for friends, music from the LP’s for which he designed the covers, and music by his contemporaries (all born in 1958).

Interview: Meneer Ruys

Meneer Ruys (1976) was born in Rotterdam but moved to Welten in Heerlen when he was just six weeks old. His love for music started at an early age and within no time, he was enraptured by hiphop, a new musical movement at the time. After he discovered Osdorp Posse, an Amsterdam-based rapper group, he turned his focus to this genre. He was one of the first rappers and hiphop aficionados in Heerlen. At the time, Heerlen was a blank on the map for hiphop: the Studio 54 club played it from time to time, likewise the DJ at the Femina discotheque, but in the main, if this was your thing, you were the odd-one-out. In 1995, Meneer Ruys moved to Nijmegen to study and it was here that he started rapping in earnest, resulting in one of the all-time classics ‘Iets Met Dolby’ in 2002. He often returned to Heerlen, where it all began and where he nurtured his love of the genre.

During the interview with Meneer Ruys, we will be asking him about the early years of hiphop in Heerlen in the 1980s and 1990s.

Interview: Elisabeth Dirkse

Towards the end of the 1960s, music fan Hans Dirkse - who wanted to start a club - came to Heerlen. He set one up, together with his wife Judith Dirkse-de Leeuw - better known as DJ Anuschka working for pirate radio station Radio Veronica - and their young daughter Elisabeth. This club became the Shangri-La, a place where Limburgers and Americans from the AFCENT airbase came to dance, the latter bringing their soul singles with them. Dirkse built on his early success and gradually, an empire began to grow: the Happy Night, Luxor, Kosmos Underground, the Bowie Bar and likewise Shangra-Li: all these legendary meeting places can be put down to the efforts of Hans Dirkse. He brought club culture to Heerlen almost by himself.

During the interview, we will be talking to Elisabeth Dirkse, Hans’ daughter, about club culture in Heerlen. Nowadays, she in an internet programmer and teacher, living in Amsterdam. Along with her youngest brother, she previously managed a café-cum-gallery in Amsterdam.

Poetry: Het Belangrijke Genootschap - Sander Ausems

This time, Stichting Borderlines, together with Het Belangrijk Genootschap Met Een Nog Onduidelijke En Steeds Wisselende Maar Immer Literaire Inhoud (HBGMENOESWMILI) will be dishing up Sander Ausems. As part of the Keith Café, he will be explaining how the exhibition has inspired him.

Sander Ausems is a self-taught writer from Amsterdam. He is 23 years old and likes to write about anything that has to do with identity. From our bodies, to the one certainty in our lives: death He tries to grab readers’ attention with stories full of mournful, gentle and highly individual imagery.

Moderator: Wouter Greven

Most of the input for the evening has been arranged by Wouter Greven. Wouter is a film programmer, but also likes to write about film, music and culture in general, and presents and moderates cultural evenings. Wouter will be conducting the interviews at this Keith Café.

Café opens: 7:30 p.m.
Start: 8:00 p.m.
End of Café: 10:00 p.m.