Late start, cranes
Everyone got up pretty late today after last night’s party, which made it in the end quite a short day. While Julien and Aşkın remained busy building models, myself and Kamila set out to try and get permission to get the use of a large tower crane.
At the first building site we visited we had no luck, with the foreman saying that he just couldn’t accept responsibility for any safety issues. Frankly, if such cranes are so bloody dangerous that they can’t move something a few meters for us without someone being killed then I don’t think anyone should be using them. This was not encouraging.
However, when we visited a much smaller site, the foreman there said ja straight away. You would think the veiligheidsregels (safety rules) would be the same everywhere, but evidently not. We are to come back tomorrow and do some filming. It’s quite exciting actually; a real big massive fuck-off crane!
The evening involved a talk from Gabriëlle about the arrangements for the show and next week’s assessments, followed by dinner from Food not Bombs, a group who collect food from supermarkets etc. which is just past its Best Before date and make delicious meals from it which they serve for free. It’s intended as a criticism of the disgusting level of waste and overproduction in the West, while people continue to starve in many parts of the world. Is it an empty gesture or something really worthwhile? I would say the second; it’s not hard to admire people who can actually get off there arses and do something about at least one of the unfairnesses in the world.
Last came a lecture from Professor Huang from Taiwan, which I could not really follow unfortunately due to the slow process of translation and more importantly the fact that where I was sat it was pretty much impossible to see the screen onto which images were being projected. I will need to position myself better next time…
