By Timotheus Vermeulen
Two Days, One Night (French: Deux jours, une nuit), 2014, written and directed by the Dardenne brothers, starring Marion Cotillard and Fabrizio Rongione.
My highlights of the year must definitely include Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which really moved me
I saw Benjamin Clementine in concert and was blown away by the guy’s Jacques-Brel-ian voice and performance and Nina-Simone-ish musicality;
the latest film by the Dardenne brothers, Two Days, One Night, was simple but effective;
Mark Leckey’s survey show at WIELS, Brussels, ‘Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Materials’ (on until 11 January), was exciting;
Circa ’87, 2013. Courtesy the artist; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin; Cabinet, London
Installation view of the exhibition Mark Leckey: Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Materials at WIELS, 2014. Photo by Sven Laurent
Videos by Nastia Mosquito and Hedwig Houben at the MUHKA in Antwerp, part of the group show Don’t You Know Who I Am? were both special, as was the solo exhibition of Oscar Santillan at The Ridder, Maastricht;
I loved Adam Thirlwell’s project Multiples, in which a whole bunch of amazing writers from different countries translate stories from languages they are not fluent in not to see what is lost but what is won;
Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis was an eye opener for a political-economist ignoramus like myself;
TV: The Good Wife, Veep, Mad Men;
Richard Smith, solo show at Gisela Capitain, Cologne; Lydia Davis’ collection of short stories, Can’t and Won’t ; Aleksandra Domanovic at the Glasgow Modern Art Gallery; René Magritte at the Art Institute of Chicago; and, finally, my guilty pleasure was the Dutch TV program Thuis voor de guis, the Dutch version of Gogglebox, in which you watch people watch television. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.