Housing is a basic human need and a fundamental right, but in practice, the Dutch housing market increasingly functions as a system of winners and losers. Public housing, once intended to provide an affordable roof over everyone’s head, has become highly commercialized and financialized over the past decades.

During The Evening of Our Major Housing Problem, we will focus on the structural causes of the housing crisis. Investigative journalist Thomas Bollen from Follow the Money explores the flow of money and, using the work The Machinery of Housing by cartographer Carlijn Kingma, demonstrates how policy, land scarcity and market incentives converge in a system that puts housing affordability under pressure. How can we adjust the machinery of public housing to solve our housing problem?

Be aware that this event is in Dutch.

Program
19:30 – Welcome
Opening by Brutus director Sanne ten Brink

Discussion & Analysis: Our Housing Problem
Thomas Bollen will speak with two housing seekers (Denise and Moreno) and Mieke Megawati (The Housing Protest).
This segment focuses on the concrete effects of current housing policy on people who are searching, stuck, or protesting.

In-Depth Exploration
Thomas Bollen will present a preview of an animated video based on Carlijn Kingma’s map The Machinery of Housing, providing a journalistic and analytical perspective on the mechanisms behind the housing crisis.

Panel Discussion
Followed by a panel discussion led by Thomas Bollen with:

Tim de Haan (D66, councillor)

Nanne de Ru (developer)

Sanne van Manen (Platform Woonopgave)

Audience Questions
Time for questions and reflection from the audience.

21:30 – End

In a world driven by capitalist efficiency, algorithms, data and AI are deployed to reduce human thought to an optimally performing resource. The productive are exploited; those who do not generate value are marginalized. In the relentless pursuit of profit, neurodiversity is therefore quickly framed as a defect. Our upcoming exhibition AUTONOMOUS shifts this perspective.

The exhibition presents neurodiverse ways of thinking not as limitations, but as essential forms of resistance and liberation, showing that a society that can think only in terms of efficiency ultimately loses its humanity, while different ways of thinking open the perspectives needed to reshape it.

Curated by Ine Gevers, AUTONOMOUS is neurospicy and psychedelic, pushing back against the AI-generated monoculture of the mind. Through large-scale installations, immersive videos and interactive experiences, the exhibition launches a takeover of our computer-controlled, capitalist society.

Across three chapters: Cognitive Capitalism, Y'all got ADHD and Psychedelic Pathways, visitors gain access to multiple realities and ways of perceiving the world. More info will follow soon.

Curator and Research
Following the Brutus exhibition Fake Me Hard (2021), Ine Gevers returns as curator. With over 25 years of experience at the intersection of art, technology and society, Gevers’ research, supported by the Mondriaan Fund, on cognitive capitalism, neurodiversity and psychedelics underpins AUTONOMOUS. Brutus and Gevers share a distinctly inclusive mission: attention for marginalized groups, mixed audiences and deploying art as a driver of social awareness and change.

Rotterdam Art Week moves into the night. Brutus and Operator are back to bring you our signature RAW Afterparty, this time also celebrating the official opening of our new neighbor Roodkapje, known by many as Rotterdam’s multidisciplinary laboratory for art, music, food and everything in between.

From 21:00 till late, live performances and electronic sets unfold across multiple rooms and floors. Expect sounds that push, spaces that surprise and moments that blur the lines between underground art and nightlife.

One combi ticket lets you explore both Brutus and Roodkapje as the night unfolds.