Hugues

Journaliste adepte des Beaux-arts et des Belles-lettres, cinéphile invétéré et lecteur obstiné, Hugues est né au Vietnam, a grandi en France et espère peut-être un jour mourir en Italie. D’ici là, rien ne l’empêchera d’attirer l’attention du lecteur bienveillant sur ce que le monde et les hommes peuvent receler de beauté, tout en poursuivant sa quête inlassable du daïquiri Hemingway idéal.

Contemporary art: good Indian karma

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Almost non-existent just twenty years ago, contemporary Indian artists have since made a dramatic entry onto the international art scene. Between age-old traditions and modernity, they are developing an original, abundant language that is both rooted in their daily lives and resolutely universal. Here’s a close-up look at two of today’s stars of Indian art.

Subodh Gupta: spirituality in the lunchbox

If he hadn’t become a world-renowned Indian artist, Subodh Gupta would probably have been a chef. He loves eating and cooking, and recounts how, as a child, he regarded the family kitchen as a kind of temple for prayer. So it’s hardly surprising that this bon vivant, born in northern India fifty-seven years ago, has put so much heart and soul into elevating kitchen utensils to the status of a work of art. Although he expresses himself in many different ways – painting, photography, video and performance – it’s his sculptures made of buckets, milk jugs, frying pans, saucepans and other gleaming stainless steel vessels that have elevated him to the firmament of contemporary art.

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His best-known work, Very Hungry God, consists of at a monumental skull made of hundreds of stainless steel utensils. It seems to represent a voracious, insatiable god, while at the same time evoking the famine that still reigns in certain regions of his country. Faced with this sculpture, situated between modernity and archaism, one is reminded of the Western tradition of vanities as much as of certain Hindu rituals: the goddess Kali wears a skull necklace around her neck, while the holy mendicant of Tantric doctrine holds a skull in his hand as a begging bowl. Through his choice of materials, Subodh Gupta borrows from his country’s down-to-earth everyday life to confront us with universal subjects such as death, religion and precariousness…

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Another object he uses extensively is the famous lunch box, an indispensable meal container in India, where ninety percent of the population use them. In his mobile installation Faith Matters, he accumulates them high up on invisible rails, like the moving skyline of a modern megalopolis. Food travels, transported from one capital city to another in a global market of which some, perhaps in India more than anywhere else, are deprived. In this sense, Subodh Gupta’s art, spiritual as it is, is also political.

Bharti Kher: when art looks at us

At the age of twenty-four, Bharti Kher left England, where she was born to Indian parents, to settle in New-Dehli. Confronted with a culture as singular as it is teeming, with the effervescence of a nation in the throes of change, the young painter trained in London diversified her practice. She tackled sculpture and installation, and incorporated a number of new materials into her work, including the one she would never stop using: bindi. This dot of color that Indians wear on their foreheads, between their eyebrows, is central to their social and cultural identity. It can be the sign of a married woman, but also traditionally represents a mystical third eye, the original point of a universal principle of creation. In recent times, it has gradually taken on the appearance of a fashion accessory, available in a variety of shapes and colors.

Bindy by Bharti Kher

For Bharti Kher, the bindi technique has become a kind of coded language. It lends his pictorial compositions on panels or glass an air of expressionist abstraction, just as it evokes older art-historical currents such as Impressionism and Pointillism. A “third eye”, then, that multiplies meanings, imposes itself as a device of great visual and stylistic variety, and composes “works that we observe as much as they look at us”, confides Bharti Kher.

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By using this central motif, the artist also signals a need for social change and questions the traditional role of women in Indian society, while commenting ironically on the commodification of the bindi as a fashion accessory.

Another Bindi from Bharti Kher

In one of her most famous works, I’ve seen an elephant fly, Bharti Kher takes up her emblematic motif in the form of spermatozoa applied en masse to the body of a fiberglass baby elephant. In India,” she explains, “the elephant is associated with Hindu temple ritual as much as with the most trivial labor of strength. It is at once the romantic symbol of an age-old spiritual tradition and that of the economic and globalist realities of today’s India.”

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From San Francisco to Warhol’s Factory: a compendium of psychedelic art

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Acidic critics of consumer society but never taking themselves too seriously, the artists of the psychedelic movement had a profound influence on American Pop Art from 1965 onwards. ZEWEED takes a look back at the delirious, furious creations of the “Big 5”, a group of hallucinated artists who established the graphic charter of the Haight-Ashbury hippie movement.

For some, the hippie years conjure up images of bell-bottoms, floral shirts and Woodstock. For others, they embody one of the major social and political protests of the 20th century, with sexual liberation to boot. But few remember that the San Francisco of the Sixties, cradle of hippie culture, was also the site of graphic experiments of unparalleled originality and one of the most notable milestones of American Pop art.

Wes Wilson

LSD had a lot to do with it. Without this synthetic hallucinogen, the psychedelic movement (from the Greek psyché âme and dêlos visible) would probably never have seen the light of day. Nor would the rock bands that swarmed the West Coast of the United States at the time, veritable mouthpieces and main means of protest for the hippie community.

Frisco, freaks & LSD

In San Francisco, they perform at two not-to-be-missed venues: the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom. Psychedelic mass events are held here several times a week, combining crazy rock music, unbridled substance abuse and light shows that increase the effects of the latter tenfold.

Victor Moscosso

It was in this delirious atmosphere that psychedelic art developed. Bill Graham and Chet Helms, the two great promoters of the time, financed several hundred posters to advertise concerts by The Charlatans, Greateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd.

From the Velvet Underground to Pink Floyd

Plastered on the streets of San Francisco, they appear as counter-culture manifestos, their fluffy, undulating arabesques, colors as intense as they are exuberant, and their almost illegible liquid lettering functioning as cryptic propaganda against the conformism of American society in the 60s.

Alton Kelley

Among the dozen or so major artists who conceive and design them, five have become legendary as the “Big 5”.

Art Nouveau & Optical Art

There’s Wes Wilson (1937-2020), a horticulture graduate whose first poster, entitled Are We next, features an American flag adorned with a swastika: an unapologetic condemnation of the United States’ growing involvement in the Vietnam War; Victor Moscovo (b. 1936), the only one to have benefited from artistic training, who declared that the creation of psychedelic posters had forced him to forget everything he had learned at art school about conventional graphic design – he was also the first of the “Big 5” to have his work exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Victor Moscosso

Another major figure was Rick Griffin (1944-1991), a Californian with a passion for surfing and the author of underground comics and memorable record covers, as well as the duo of Alton Kelley (1940-2008) and Stanley Mouse (b. 1940), one a brilliant designer, the other a virtuoso draughtsman, whose joint work has been compared to that of the brilliant French poster artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Big 5

The psychedelic experience of taking LSD and the light effects of light shows are their main sources of inspiration. But they also drew on the color theories and optical art of Josef Albers, painter and teacher at the Bauhaus, as well as Art Nouveau and the poster artists of the Viennese Secessionist movement (Gustav Klimt, Alfred Roller and Koloman Moser).

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Sometimes, they even appropriate motifs from posters by the Czech artist Alfons Mucha or the Frenchman Jules Chéret. And some art historians detect in their drawings the influence of the European Surrealist movement, which in the 1960s was the subject of numerous publications and acclaimed exhibitions in the USA.

Whatever the case, the boundless creativity of this brilliant quintet brought something new to the graphic arts, something never seen before, a new vision of the world. So much so, that after them, American art will never be quite the same again.

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Flower Power as seen by three contemporary artists

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Flower power, Art,

If the Flower Power movement influenced a whole generation of artists in the late 60s, its spirit has since continued to inspire numerous designers and visual artists. Among them, the great Takashi Murakami, Rebecca Louise Law and Kapwani Kiwanga. Portraits in bloom.

Rebecca Louise Law: the emotion of a touch of paint on every petal. 

Born in 1980, Rebecca Louise Law would undoubtedly have thrilled the flower child generation. After studying painting at Newcastle University, she abandoned her brushes in 2003, ”  without, however,” she says, ” having stopped painting. For her pigments have now been replaced by flowers, and the canvas by the sometimes immense empty space in which she inscribes her impressive installations.

One of his most striking works, Community, was created at the Toledo Museum of art in Ohio. It involved the suspension of over a hundred thousand flowers, some fresh, some dried, sewn one by one to long copper wires streaming from the ceilings. Visitors are given free rein to move among this luxuriant plant life, a sensual, delicate explosion of color, texture and fragrance. The power of his installations also lies in the fact that they are inscribed in the passage of time. His tableaux vivants fade, discolor and dry up, and emotion is born of this fragility.

Rebecca says she has always had a strong relationship with the natural element. “I feel at peace and safe in nature. Its ever-changing cycles fascinate me. It’s a permanent celebration of life, and that’s what I’m trying to do too: celebrate life.” But the happiness her work brings her is no less worrying. It’s urgent that governments work together to put an end to industrial greed and rampant consumption, or we’re going to lose our magnificent natural world,” she confides.

We need to open our eyes to social problems, because if someone is struggling to live, they may not care about the land. It’s vital to get to know our neighbors and help them out if need be. We’ll never get ahead if we don’t communicate with each other.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Human history fades like flowers

Kapwani Kiwanga, one of today’s most celebrated young artists, is interested in the shifting, vulnerable history that quickly fades and is reborn. Trained as an anthropologist, this 42-year-old Franco-Canadian, born of a Tanzanian father, has won some of the most prestigious international prizes in contemporary art over the last two years. In her most emblematic work, Flowers of Africa, awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2020, her innovative hybrid art takes an unexpectedly critical look at human history.

The genesis of this powerful installation finds its inspiration in the process of political independence in African countries. As a rigorous academic, Kapwani first and foremost carried out extensive documentary research. She is particularly interested in the numerous photographic reproductions of events linked to the decolonization process: summits, congresses, speeches and official meals… But instead of focusing on history as we are supposed to understand it, she prefers to devote her attention to what we don’t look at: the floral decorations that discreetly adorn these events.

His highly original approach combines history and botany: historical research is doubled by the ethnobotanical research required to analyze the floral composition of the time, and the means available to a modern florist to reconstitute it as faithfully as possible. Flowers of Africa is a highly poetic and fascinating reflection on history. Not only does it broaden our way of looking at history by including other elements, in this case plants, but it also insensitively suggests that the past never has the permanence we want it to have, and that it’s pointless to try to write history in marble. Memories and monuments fade just as much as flowers.

Takashi Murakami or the unbearable lightness of flowers

Credits Getty Images

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, a ubiquitous figure in contemporary art, needs no introduction. Such is his prolixity – even if he has his own studio where hundreds of assistants work on his works – that it’s hard not to fall in love with his cartoonish universe, saturated with supercharged colors.

He soon adopted the foral motif, whose flatness and profusion of tones combine the lack of perspective of traditional Japanese painting with the frivolous fun of contemporary manga.

But behind this apparent superficiality lies a deeper aspiration, like another artist whose influence he readily claims: Andy Warhol. In 1964, Warhol created his famous Flowers, kitschy silkscreens based on a dialectic of nature and artifice in the age of mechanical reproduction. Murakami’s two pieces, Wahrol/Silver and Wahrol/Gold, echo them, echoing the darker preoccupations of the famous Pop artist.
The same ironic critique of consumer society is apparent. But also, through the evocation of the fragility of the natural element, an awareness of the impermanence of things and the ephemerality of our lives. It’s as if the joyfulness of the plant theme and the abundance of colors were meant to remind us of the inevitability of our impending demise.

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Mama: canna-publishers with your best interests at heart

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Mama Editions, cannabis, books

Pioneering authors and founders of Mama Éditions, Tigrane Hadengue and Michka Seeliger-Chatelain were among the first in France to give hemp and cannabis their letters of nobility. Today, they continue their innovative work, never losing sight of the mission they hold dear: to raise awareness and do good.

 

ZEWEED: Mama Éditions will soon be celebrating its twenty-fourth anniversary. What led you to embark on such a daring adventure? Tigrane: First and foremost, it was a meeting with Mishka, whom I knew at a very young age because she was a friend of my mother and stepfather. I was in my twenties when she asked me to work for her as a press attaché at a Swiss publishing house, where she published several reference works, including Le Cannabis est-il une drogue, subtitled: Petite histoire du chanvre, and Le Chanvre, renaissance du cannabis which, in a way of combining form and content, was printed on hemp paper. This book was a landmark in that it dealt in particular with the agricultural textile hemp that is so much in the news today, almost thirty years later. Then, with the same publisher, we worked together on a cannabis anthology: a thousand-page collection of texts by over a hundred authors, ranging from Herodotus to contemporary scientists and Nobel Prize winners. It’s now a reference work; some even describe it as the Lagarde et Michard of cannabis!
It was after working together on this project that we decided to pursue our own publishing projects, following an artisanal approach that runs counter to the industrialization of the publishing world.

 

ZW: Was it difficult to publish books on hemp and cannabis in a French society that is still very reticent about these subjects?
Tigrane: It’s true that, for a long time, our approach was perceived as overly polemical. However, our work has always been extremely meticulous, respectful of the legal framework. All our books are preceded by warnings from doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers. Unlike other publishers, we have never resorted to provocation. What’s more, we’re keen to put forward opposing but complementary opinions, to go beyond reductive judgments, and to reject any Manicheanism. These subjects are far more complex than that, just like cannabis, which can range from non-psychoactive to highly psychoactive.

“Unlike other publishers, we have never been provocative” Tigrane

Michka: I remember that in 2001, we had a stand at the Salon de l’Agriculture in Paris to promote the first edition of one of our books entitled Pourquoi et comment cultiver du chanvre (Why and how to grow hemp). The book, which was registered with the Ministry of the Interior and perfectly compliant with the law, was presented surrounded by hemp plants certified as “organic agriculture” by the Ministry of Agriculture. However, police officers on duty happened to pass by. They considered that we were inciting drug consumption and that our hemp plants were comparable to those you’d find in an Amsterdam backroom. As a result, I was taken manu militari to the Quai des Orfèvres, while our stocks of books and hemp plants were confiscated… On the bright side, the police arrived at the same time as a group of journalists visiting the show. This coincidence gave us unexpected publicity. The next day, we found ourselves on various TV news programs denouncing the police officers’ mistake. I remember one TV reporter reporting the incident with irony, saying: “At Mama Éditions, the Marshalsea had hallucinations!”

“There’s a lot of movement in the United States, even though this nation has perhaps gone the furthest in repression. That probably gave them the time to realize, before anyone else, that it was a false trail.” Mishka

ZW: Do you feel that attitudes are changing in France?
Mishka: France is still very wary of cannabis in general. However, attitudes are changing, even if a little too slowly. Many countries around us are in the process of legalizing therapeutic hemp, but suspicion of THC remains. Hemp is the honest cousin of cannabis, which continues to be perceived as dishonest. That said, there’s a lot going on in the United States, a nation that has perhaps gone the furthest in terms of repression. This no doubt gave them time to realize, before anyone else, that this was a false trail. In any case, those who were thrown in jail there not so long ago must be stunned to see that their fellow citizens today are selling cannabis legally and by the dozens of kilos while paying their taxes.

ZW: If you had to defend the virtues of cannabis, what would be your main argument?
Tigrane: Cannabis is a scientifically undisputed remedy. In the ophthalmological field, for example, we know that it treats glaucoma by lowering eye pressure, and that it provides relief for multiple sclerosis sufferers. It can also be applied in the treatment of cancers, as it is a first-rate antiemetic. In fact, THC has been clinically proven to prevent chemotherapy-induced nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite. The trouble is, in France, since cannabis is classified in the tables listing all the so-called hard drugs, we all too often refrain from informing people about its possible therapeutic virtues, for fear of inciting the consumption of narcotics. It’s heartbreaking that, in the land of the Enlightenment, we’ve reached a stage where people who simply need a natural, side-effect-free remedy can’t access it.

“Several of our books, some of them costly to produce in terms of iconography and translation, have become benchmarks, and the grants and subsidies we’ve applied for have never been granted” Tigrane

ZW: Have you received support throughout your work with Mama Éditions?
Tigrane: No, we weren’t really supported. Instead, we felt blacklisted. And the fact that our publications on hemp and cannabis today represent only a minority didn’t change the situation. The truth is that several of our works, some of them costly to produce in terms of iconography and translation, have become benchmarks, and that the grants and subsidies we have applied for have never been forthcoming. That’s an economic point of view, but it seems to answer your question about the support we could have received. You could say that, from an institutional point of view, it wasn’t us who were marginalized; it was rather the others who marginalized us. But that hasn’t stopped us from meeting our public, our booksellers, our librarians, and seeing that, little by little, a certain number of media or institutional circles who, twenty years ago, were telling us: “You’re kind, but this isn’t California; this is France, so stop sending us your press kits. We’ll never talk about Mama Éditions!”, and now they’re asking us for exclusives and interviews. They seem to have realized that we were pioneers, forerunners, on subjects that have become social phenomena, such as hemp, medical cannabis, CBD, but also new spiritualities, shamanism, biodynamic gardening in an urban environment…

ZW: On this subject, how do you explain this return to favor, this craze for subjects that have long been scorned?
Mishka: There are a lot of things going on in society at the same time. We’re living in a time when the worst horrors can happen, but on the other hand, there’s a segment of this society that’s experiencing a kind of elevation of consciousness, a spiritual search. The important thing is to choose what you focus on; that’s what makes you part of this world or that world. For me, it’s first and foremost a choice and an individual process.

Tigrane: There’s also the fact that after having been so disconnected from nature in the broadest sense, i.e. the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, you start to realize the price you have to pay; you become aware of the side effects of this disconnection, in terms of depression, energy imbalance, the feeling of no longer knowing the meaning of your life, the reason for your work. These consequences are far more harmful than we ever imagined. It’s a wake-up call that tells us we need the simple things that make us feel good. This reconnection with nature is something fundamental, existential, sometimes even vital. We can do so much good for ourselves very easily, simply by returning to the elements.

ZW: Alongside your work as authors and publishers, you also created the Musée du Fumeur in Paris in 2001. Can you tell us about this initiative?
Tigrane: Mishka and I both have curious, open minds. Beyond our interest in hemp and cannabis, we took great pleasure in exploring the world of tobacco. Not cigarette tobacco, which is artificially cured and packed with hundreds of particularly harmful additives; but real tobacco, I’d say: that of the first peoples, ceremonial, shamanic tobacco, or the brown tobacco of our French countryside. We’ve discovered that, in contrast to cigarettes, tobacco was once used in the West in ways that were not synonymous with public health scourges but, on the contrary, with enjoyment and the art of living. The world of the cigar or dark tobacco pipe echoed traditions going back to the peace pipe, to the cigars of the Lacandons (an ethnic group living in Central America), which are gigantic compared to our cigars and which do not prevent this people from counting a significant number of centenarians. It’s a completely different kind of smoking, the opposite of the compulsive aspect of cigarettes. With cigarettes, you never reach satiation, because they’re calibrated to make you dependent. On the contrary, for these primitive peoples, tobacco offers an experience of satiety and contentment, so that once you’ve consumed it, you don’t wonder when the next one is coming. It provides a fullness, a completeness, a satisfaction that begs for nothing more. And then we discovered the treasure trove of cultural and literary riches associated with the act of smoking, in its noblest sense. This is what we wanted to share with the public…

ZW: As pioneers in so many fields, how do you see the future? Are you optimistic or pessimistic?
Tigrane: Basically optimistic. By nature, and I’d even say by duty.
Michka: Yes, it really is a duty to be optimistic. Today, we don’t have the time to waste energy feeding what we don’t want. On the contrary, we need to focus our eyes, our whole intention, our direction, on what we want to see manifest in reality.

Website: www.mamaeditions.com
Insta : @mamaeditions 
FB : @mamaeditions

 

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Jean Lassalle, interview, cannabis

Jean Lassalle, pre

Jean Lassalle, ex-deputy and a cappella star of the hemicycle, came down to town to talk hemp with ZEWEED. A

Amsterdam a victim of its own success?

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Amsterdam was the starting point for a new, revolutionary and pragmatic approach to the fight against drugs. A unique model which, although it has borne fruit and influenced the global debate on decriminalization and legalization of cannabis, now seems to be in question.

Avant-garde context

At the dawn of the 1970s, Amsterdam looked like the meeting point par excellence of the European counterculture. The Vondelpark, one of the city’s largest parks, had become a gathering place for hippies and other urban tribes in search of revolution. Artists, musicians and free spirits squat in the Jordaan district; punks gather in the emblematic Melkweg concert hall, and the “Provos”, the Dutch political-libertarian movement, organize happenings to challenge authority and promote social change. But behind all this good-natured effervescence lies a much darker picture: the Netherlands’ long trading tradition has made this small country a hub for the supply of drugs of all kinds.

The spirit of “Koss” or the path to a policy of tolerance

In the notorious “red light district”, no one hides from selling, buying and using heroin, cocaine or LSD. The police authorities are overwhelmed and, in addition to public health problems, competition between dealers rages on, often degenerating into pugilism. Meanwhile, every Saturday morning on public radio, a young man with long hair and a wide-brimmed black hat is gaining in popularity. His name is Koos Zwart, and he’s none other than the son of Irène Vorrink, Minister of Health and Environmental Protection. Not content with informing his listeners about the price of drugs available in Amsterdam, he advocates tolerance and is brimming with ideas. It was he, for example, who suggested to the management of Paradiso, the hottest club of the moment, that they get rid of the dozens of drug dealers operating in the establishment and hire an “in-house dealer” to better control the prices and quality of the narcotics on offer.
He was also no stranger to the way in which the huge Holland Pop festival organized in June 1970 on the shores of Lake Kralingse, near Rotterdam, unfolded. With almost 100  With more than 1,000 people gathered for three days to listen to Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane or Carlos Santana, the police are faced with a conundrum: how to manage what is shaping up to be the largest gathering of cannabis smokers ever seen in the Netherlands?
Then, inspired by the spirit of Koos Zwart, the police and festival organizers agreed to experiment with a new policy: everyone would be able to smoke, and even sell what they wanted; in return, dozens of volunteer doctors and mediators, backed up by a squad of police officers dressed as hippies, would make sure that everything went smoothly. In the end, the festival was a success, with no fights or overdoses, and the experience was one that would give the Dutch government ideas. In fact, the all-repressive approach no longer works in Amsterdam. We need to change our strategy and come up with something different.

“Opiumwet”: the revolutionary law in favor of soft drugs

At the end of 1971, an initial study committee proposed a gradual move towards the “decriminalization” of narcotics. The following year, another committee published a report that finally convinced the ruling coalition. In 1976, a law known as “Opiumwet” was passed, one of the finest examples of Dutch pragmatism. The aim was to focus police and judicial efforts on hard drugs (heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, etc.), while reducing the stigma and prosecution of cannabis users. This truly revolutionary innovation also paves the way for the creation of state-approved coffee shops; specialized establishments where the sale of small quantities of cannabis is tolerated under certain conditions: no under-age customers, no advertising, limited on-site storage and a maximum sale per person per day of five grams. This policy has the added advantage of controlling the quality of the cannabis sold, thereby reducing the health risks associated with the consumption of poor-quality products.

In the decades that followed, coffee shops multiplied, becoming an integral part of the Dutch urban landscape. And, although this tolerance has given rise to controversy, data show that hard drug consumption in the Netherlands remains relatively low compared to other European countries. This has not prevented the authorities from adjusting their policies. In the 1990s, for example, measures were taken to reduce the number of coffee shops in certain urban areas and to limit their concentration near schools.

Towards the end of coffee shops?

Despite these marginal adjustments, Amsterdam soon emerged as a beacon of tolerance in a sea of repression. Little by little, the city established itself as a destination of choice for foreigners in search of risk-free experimentation. So much so that it is estimated that around 30% of tourists visiting Amsterdam do so primarily for the coffee shop experience. Yet, with over 20 million tourists lining its canals every year, some of the deleterious consequences of this overtourism played a direct part in Femke Halsema’s election as mayor of the city in 2018. Committed to reducing the nuisance this trade inflicts on local residents, this former leader of the Green Party is banning cannabis smoking on the streets of the Red Light District from 2023; a measure coupled with tighter alcohol restrictions and earlier weekend closures of cafés, bars, restaurants and brothels. In a radical move, the city’s mayor said she was prepared to ban coffee shops to foreigners.
This threat is subject to the effects of other drastic measures designed to curb overtourism: an increase in the tourist tax, the introduction of strict regulations on seasonal rentals, the banning of cruise ships from the city center, and a ban on the construction of new hotels in the city. For the municipality, the tourism crisis is an opportunity to renew Amsterdam’s image. According to the municipality, the “Renew Your Gaze” campaign launched in 2023 is designed to attract a different type of visitor, one more interested in the cultural riches of the Dutch Venice. Far from completely turning her back on an avant-garde heritage of tolerance towards drug use, Femke Halsema said she was in favor of regulating hard drugs such as cocaine and MDMA. “We could imagine that cocaine could be obtained from pharmacists or via a medical model,” she recently told AFP. To be continued.

 

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