Summer guests 2024 with Sana Valiulina

Man in a possessed world, like a sling swinging between good and evil. That will be the common thread of VPRO’s summer guests tonight with Sana Valiulina. Known of her books “The Cross” (2001 – about life and sexual freedom in a Moscow student flat), ‘Children of Brezhnev’ (2014 – about love and betrayal against the background of the economic and mental decline of the Soviet Union) and ‘Winter showers or Am I integrated enough?’ (2016 – a reflection of the Netherlands after living and working here for 25 years).

Man, fluctuating between good and evil, fascinates her. On her summer guest evening she wants to give the floor “to people who share this fascination with me and who give it an artistic form, each in his own way. For I am convinced that only through art we can truly see and understand ourselves and each other.”

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Sana Valiulina, born in Estonia, has lived and worked in the Netherlands for 35 years. In her work, the Estonian past is discussed in the questions about her parents’ lives and about her student days in Russia. I wonder what art she shows, so we can “seriously see and understand” and each other. The art from Estonia? – Russian art?

By the way: that fluctuation is an Estonian cultural thing (to put it popularly). The ‘kiiken’ (kiik is waved), standing on a huge swing, just as long until you swing upside down, was invented by a Estonian. They are also predominantly Estonians who break records with them and get the Guinness Book of Records.

The ‘kiiken’ is “tudengisuve parim elamus!” in the video below on the T-shirts of an Estlabnd swinger. Which means “The Best Experience of Student Summer!”

Let that be part of the Olympic Games on the next occasion.

The presenter is tonight Jelle Brandt Corstius. At the 2011 Summer guests, our full-tribute reviewer Molovich still flared off because he has the timing “of an autistic farmer whose cows are about to calves.” According to Molovich at the time, De Brandt Corstius was “a means to make the most clumsy remarks at the most sensitive moments”.

But that will not be so speeding tonight, because it can be different. Two episodes later, Jelle Brandt Corstius was “sharp, charming, funny, complimentary, understanding, to the point, relaxed” and “be sure to give his conversation partner the stage she deserved”.

That was, according to our reviewer, because Brandt Corstius understood his guest. And there’s a big chance of that tonight because both are, each in their own way, Russia connoisseurs. Sana Valiulina knows the Russian influence in Estonia from her parents’ past and has lived and studied in Moscow.

Jelle also burns Corstius has lived in Moscow, as a correspondent for Dutch and Belgian newspapers. On the VPRO website he writes about tonight:

I got to know Sana Valiulina through the documentary Wend your body to the sun, which she made three years ago with director Aliona van der Horst. It is how the great history of the Second World War and the Soviet Union gets a face: the face of her father, but also that of all those other young men who became a toy of totalitarian leaders. I also wonder how she sees the Netherlands. And how her relationship to Russia and the Russians has changed since the invasion of Ukraine.

What all that will be seen can be seen from 8.15 pm at the VPRO’s Summer guests on NPO 2. We would like to hear your comments during the broadcast below. Here you can read the review of our Max Molovich.