He is a boy of only 21, but his appearance has the agelessness that would characterize him until his death. We see him walk to the North Sea at Petten with a bottle of lemonade gauze and empty it there. The voiceover explains: “Wim T. Schippers makes art for all the senses. We could best call the gazeuse at Petten a kind of fact art. Instead of with paint and linen, he works with facts.”
Damn interesting, but move on – all this took place, “under the interest of the local population” and indeed about twenty people can be seen accompanying Schippers towards the surf. But were there many “locals” there? You mainly see some cameras – and that is also correct, because in fact this was “an act repeated for the press and television, which previously took place on October 29, 1961”.
“Can I have all your attention?” And after the curious silence: “Thank you.”
The entire Schippers is already included in this primordial fragment. Because artists who play confusing tricks are not special in themselves. Schippers, who died last week, also managed to attract a very large audience, which is also evident from the small Wim T. tsunami that swept the Netherlands in recent days. The Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool readers asked to share their memories of Schippers, which generated many responses. Including an anecdote in which Schippers forcefully shouted in a bar: “Can I have all your attention?” And after the curious silence: “Thank you.”
Inimitable program
Attention interested Schippers; audience was essential. That is why he thrived on the rise of the mass medium of television, which he wholeheartedly embraced. In addition, he received a boost from the pillarized Dutch broadcasting system, which provided airtime for all denominations. Once the VPRO was taken over by young dogs, their urge for innovation immediately found its way to all television sets in the country: a naked woman suddenly appeared on screen (Whoopla!) or a Brussels sprouts cleaning queen Juliana (Barend Servet Show). Not that everything was allowed: an interview with God even went too far for the VPRO.
Newspapers and MPs got excited, during the classic Dutch family birthdays – glasses with filter cigarettes on the coffee table – there was a passionate argument about Schippers’ work. In 1986 he recreated exactly such a bourgeois living room in the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg to serve a (at first) full auditorium. to let six sheepdogs roam around: Going to the dogs. The rest of the nation saw it in the News.
Some of the listeners turned down the radio with a sigh
Just not normal. Schippers thus became a liberation artist who brought his absurdism into the mainstream – right up to the daily lives of Amsterdam residents who, when entering into a civil marriage, could end up in a municipal wedding hall he designed (chairs stuck to the wall, rotating stage).
Or on Wednesday afternoon they unsuspectingly turn on the most listened to radio station Hilversum 3 (intended for ‘popular music’), where Schippers colonized an hour of airtime for seven years with Ronflonflon from Jacques Ceiling: an inimitable program full of organized chaos, in which he achieved the minimum amount of ‘popular music’ required by the channel bosses by simply continuing to talk during the records or putting on two at the same time. Jingles followed each other at breakneck speed, without necessarily following what had just been announced. While some of the listeners sighed and turned the volume down, a crowd of fans listened breathlessly.
Lyrical and angry audience
The enormous speed with which Schippers arranged elements to succeed each other was part of the game. There are episodes of the TV show Ceiling over the floor in which the apparently incoherent sub-scenes follow each other so quickly that they look like TikTok videos. But not determined by an algorithm, but by an extremely precise director. Principle: “What someone says should never be the same as what is going on.” Because no matter how much the viewer or listener could have the impression that chaos reigned in Schippers’ universe; in reality he kept everything under extremely tight control. Every stumble, every garbled expression (“Everyone is messing with me”) was written down word for word. The ‘fact art’ that Petten was already talking about was also language art, as described in the book for the Wim T. researcher indispensable Damn interesting, but continue… The language of Wim T. Schippers by Ingmar Heytze and Vrouwkje Tuinman.
Not that Schippers was a great supplier of new words that became widely accepted, although ‘madness’ is to his name. “The language is all cliché,” Schippers once said. “I think I use as many clichés as anyone else. I am more aware that they are clichés, and that is why I let them appear as such.”
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Wim T. Schippers thrived on the confusion he created
Too bad, but unfortunately – the era of Wim T. Schippers is over; if only because the media landscape is so fragmented that there is no longer a place where everything comes together. Dutch television seems completely bureaucratized and outside of it there are no longer places where everyone comes together: bringing together a lyrical and angry (and completely disoriented) audience was at the heart of Schippers’ art.
Finally, there is another creation by Schippers – perhaps his most important work – with which he wanted to evoke a state of wonder in the broadest conceivable group: small children. Click online on any Sesame Street video with Bert and Ernie and you will hear questions that a person can live with: “Bert, I was wondering if it is the middle of the night after we go to bed, or the middle of the night before we have to get up.”