This is the original blog page from my website before renovating this blog system in a more sustainable version than having one long page with small posts as I am interested in doing more writing. Forgive me for the poor responsive design, my site was initially not meant to be mobile-friendly, not let's be real here, technology has become part of our lives and most of us use mobile phones more than computers, so I used my HTML and CSS skills to make it work, but resizing the images from this original page was hell so bear with me as you have to zoom in a little. A little exercise for your finger muscles, you're welcome.
What's New
A place for updates about my my life and projects, much more reliable than my actual Twitter account which has pretty much turned into a "No Context Caesár" account.
December 17, 2023
Good afternoon, I am currently working on a new blogging system that I will launch in 2024, the site already exists, I'm just having DNS errors that for whatever reason do not work with this blog right now, but it will hopefully be fixed before then :U
Anyways, I have been living in Berlin for almost an entire year now and wanted to do a post comparing my expriences in Berlin so far with the Netherlands and the differences between the two.
So basically, before I lived in Berlin (and honestly before the pandemic even hit) I used to be heaveily involved in the arts & cultural scene in the Netherlands; from theatre, to working at festivals, to things in between like social media marketing for all those cultural organisations, I had built a large network and was so active that I would be messaged by someone for work every other week! My goal was to move to Berlin to build up this exact network here as well, and hopefully even bigger and more international! Unfortunately, things have not gone so smoothly for me yet, especially with the language barrier (In the Netherlands it was obviously easy because I'm a native Dutch speaker, here in Berlin people mainly speak German and occasionally English, these tourists that have only been within the ringbahn and claim people in Berlin speak more English than German have been lying to you).
I had landed one job at a German classical music festival called Klangwerkstatt where I operated the bar in German, it went pretty decent as I had more trouble calculating the change than I had with speaking German (I straight up pulled out my phone calculator because I couldn't find it) Other than that, I have no yet managed to get my foot into the cultural door of Berlin, being not yet fluent in German and not having the time and financial resources for language courses have made it very tricky as I can understand most German, but my brain just errors trying to formulate any proper German sentence beyond mumbling in Dutch or translating Dutch/English sentences word for word to German.
As for English events, there aren't really any big cultural organisations, they're usually smaller foundations or even self-employed freelance companies most of the time. Now the Dutch cultural organisations are usually foundations as well, but I think they have better funding system there or something.
For example
- Theater Utrecht and DOX had besides their programs, a bunch of events for "outsiders" of all age groups to participate in performance projects, discuss themes from theatre plays and performances, as well as dope cultural hangouts and workshops. Often these were in collaboration with Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, which had a bunch of festivals and events of their own as well as their own youth platform whose name I forgot, they didn't hire me but it was dope that they had one as well :')
- Het Zuidelijk Toneel in Tilburg has HZTeam, which is a youth platform for aspiring young theatre enthusiasts! I actually used to be heavily involved at HZTeam, doing social media marketing and the c-word I heavily detest, getting invited to a lot of cultural events and festivals because of HZTeam and getting to make promotional videos through the online HZTV format! This is probably the one organisation that I miss the most, they still exist and I'm sure they'd be happy to work with me anytime, I just wish there was something like this in Berlin, or perchance I have not yet found it.
- Generally, Tilburg of all places in the Netherlands AFAIK gotta have some of the most accessible cultural organisations I have come across, and almost every time the same people are (indirectly) involved in said organisations
- Poldertheater and CC Amstel in Amsterdam used to have the Go!Go!Go! Festival where I originally started out as a performer as I was part of a performance by DEGASTEN youth theatre, after auditioning for Poldertheater, I was invited to be one of the jury members of the 2018 edition of the festival, which also led me to a staff position for Go!Go!Go! itself which allowed me to be part of the programming and social media marketing of the festival!
I am sure these organisations exist in Berlin as well (both English and German), if you're in Berlin and involved with the cultural sector, feel free to reach out to me because I would love to be part of it and I have very large cultural background beyond the things mentioned above even. I am not yet fluent in German, but I am sure my skills are powerful beyond language
Another thing I should mention about Berlin that although getting involved in cultural events has felt inaccessible, actually finding events has not, FOR ANYONE! Of course Berlin, and Germany as a whole, are much larger than your typical Dutch city, but it had not yet hit me how many people live here in Berlin! I go to an event of any size, whether it's free, spenden-based, or any ticket price, there will be LOTS AND LOTS of people presents! It's crowded here! I don't know whether this has always been the case or an after effect from the pandemic which caused people to value their time outside more! Although I'm not much of a people person in heavily crowed places, especially if I came to see a performance or something, I do love how alive Berlin is at any moment of the day and almost anywhere in the city, I have such a large list of oddities I have experienced here that I will be sharing in a future blog post!
Thanks for reading, looking forward to getting more involved in Berlin! I feel like I barely scratched the surface with this post so there will definitely be more blogs from me in the future!
December 6, 2023
Happy Nikolaustag to those who celebrate! It's been a minute since I wrote a blog here. I take that back, it's been nearly a year bruhhh I'm sorry life happened and I rebranded this entire site because I was on the job hunt and hid my old blog posts so employers would think I'm a sane person when browsing on my totally normal website. Anyways, I am finally planning on actively using my website again! Thanks so much for the 100,000 pageviews you guys are insane! I have so many life updates from the past year, I'm figuring out whether I'm gonna keep this blog or start a whole new blog system altogether. Also planning on starting a newsletter as a "notification" system for new blog posts as well as fun bonus material for the subscribers. Think of it as a digital goodie bag
In other news, I had the honour of remixing the song ocean factory by my friend dillakash, go peep! Turned the song into the soundtrack of apocryphal Nintendo Wii shovelware that was banned from the Wii Shop Channel in early 2009 after several children reportedly dislocated their shoulder while trying to make it past the tutorial level:
January 1, 2023
Happy New Year everyone! I finally finished my brand new 9:25 am album MessageBoard2000!
A musical love letter to internet forums, a forgotten communication medium from the pre-social media era. This Webcore / NEO Y2K album lets you float through the forgotten cyberscapes of the old web.
July 19, 2022
It's been a whole month since I last updated my blog!
As y'all might remember from last month, Internet Explorer has ended their support and will now convert to Edge. A netlabel called Sunset Grid came up with the idea to make a compilation album dedicated to Internet Explorer. I had the chance to send a track as well, so enjoy a brand new 9:25 am track called IExplore.exe has stopped working forever.
June 19, 2022
Happy Juneteenth kings 💛
Back in Februari, during Black History Month, black experimental/vaporwave artists from all around the world joined forces to work on a masterpiece of an album together.
That album is Griots!
Huge shout out to Tekeo for organising this!
griot (noun) /ˈɡriː.oʊ/ - In parts of West Africa, someone who passes on his or her society's history, especially through stories, poems, and music, and who takes part in ceremonies such as weddings and funerals
June 15, 2022
Today is the last day that Internet Explorer will work as a program. Microsoft announced that they'll end the support and Internet Explore will turn into Microsoft Edge.
Me, who grew up with Internet Explorer, had to write a goodbye note to Internet Explorer and pay its respects.
Internet Explorer is shutting down in three days. I haven't used IE in a decades but it was the browser I had used for the majority if my childhood.
— Caesár (@CnaVD) June 11, 2022
Whether you loved or hated Internet Explorer, it'll be the end if an era 💛
That's a nice and sentinental message, right? I didn't think too much of it when I posted it than I would with any other tweet expressing my goodbyes and respects to computer software.
However, I was then notified that my tweet had been embedded into an article of the Indian newspaper IndiaTimes.
That was hilariously surreal and crazy, I did not expect that at all! That made my day!!
A few days go by when I notice I have a few notifications from different social media apps as well as an email on my phone.
As it turned out, I was approached to do an interview about my tweet by no other than The Wall Street Journal!!!
This has been the craziest thing that has ever happened to me so far. I truly feel honoured to have been one of the spokespeople for Internet Explorer in it's last days!
Thank you Alyssa for the interview!
May 27, 2022
My band, glass remnant's album Monochromium/Monotonium, will release today, come check out the visualiser of the album below!!!
You can listen to the album on all streaming platforms, and buy it on casette and minidisc on the netlabel Fish Prints.
May 19, 2022
A few months ago, I was approached by the netlabel Civic Duty Records, to contribute to their compilation album Mistranslationwave Vol. 2: Subversion, and I'm happy to announce that the comp has finally been released! Featuring a brand new 9:25 am track It Is No Longer Safe To Turn Off Your Computer.
All proceeds of the compilation will be donated to Marin County/San Francisco Food Bank.
May 10, 2022
It's my birthday, I'm now a quarter decade old!! Not a better day than my birthday to drop a New Age song lol (How am I single?)
I have been working on a Webcore album for about a year now that will sound similar to the track above, the track itself won't be on the album, though.
Here's the live set from URL60: TIMEWARP, by the way. I havent been able to proprly update my website due to my browser having errors when opening Neocities.
April 22, 2022
I'm doing my first solo set at a URL festival, check out URL60: TIMEWARP on April 30, 60 artist doings 60 second sets for 60 minutes straight!
Subscribe to the Twitch!
April 3, 2022
The glass remnant set from Cream Fest is now available on YouTube, check it out!!
March 30, 2022
Decided to make a news page. I do have Twitter, but it's turning into my own "no context" account, so I decided that starting a news page to share updates is a better idea!
Also wanted to share this, I am part of an Ambient/IDM group called glass remnant, and we released our debut album a few months ago!
Excited to announce that glass remnant will be doing a live set at Cream Fest this Friday on Twitch, come check it out!! I made a crazy visualiser for our set and I can't wait to share the creamy experience with all of you!!
Part of the Yesterweb Webring
Previous
Random
Next