The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

One of the requirements for graduating from the DAI is that everyone must prepare a website. Obviously I already have one – you’re reading it right now – but this is not really what they are looking for.

Since we do not have a graduation show, the website is meant to highlight our work, our “artistic statement” and act as a portfolio.

I have been really keen to keep going with this website, which I intend to do, but from now on I also have lots of things to see and do at my brand new, just-today-launched website – www.chrismeighan.com.

Last week involved quite a bit of work, since it was my turn to be assessed this week at the DAI. Last year they had assessments for everyone in both December and July, but this time the first round have been spread out between October and January. This made the whole thing a bit less gruelling, but it also meant that if like me you were in the last group, there was a lot of waiting around to get it over with.

The assessment took place on Thursday, preceded by a very passive week indeed. I had spent both Monday and Tuesday waiting around to be seen in my studio, which was not so very exciting, and on Wednesday we had forgone the usual meeting for the DAI private group for a visit to Rijksmuseum Twente. This was though to quite an interesting exhibition of the works of Emo Verkerk, with some very nice portaits in very diverse media – often what you might describe as found objects used as a means of drawing: a duck made from a gravy dish, a chair with its base made of mirrored glass, bicycle reflectors used as eyes. None of this appeared gimmicky, though, and was very beautiful in a certain kind of way.

Myself and Bani have been planning to reprise our project last year in Beetsterzwaag for quite some time, but have never quite got round to it. Part of the difficulty with this is that he lives in Enschede and I obviously in Amsterdam, at the opposite end of the country. We got a chance to speak a bit though this week, and agreed that it would be good to do something focussed on the UT campus where the DAI is situated. To literally get an overview of the place, Bani took me up to the roof of one of the taller buildings on the campus, where you could see way way across the countryside for probably at least 20km. The air is certainly fresh up there!

Finally Thursday came around, and it was time for me to make a good impression. I was second from last, which further added to the nail-biting tension and desire to get  it over with. In the end I was fairly satisfied with the result, although certainly not 100% in agreement with the opinion of our guest reviewer, Macha Roesink from Museum De Paviljoens in Almere. I could not help getting the impression from what she said, particularly to others but also to myself, that she was speaking for a constituency which doesn’t really like art very much, in the sense of being able to become lost in it and enjoy it for what it is.

This is a criticism it is sometimes quite easy to level at people on the curatorial/critical side  of the art world. For example, one fellow student was told that if she was to continue painting pretty pictures (very nice pictures, in my opinion), she would be wasting her time “doodleing”. If this is where we are going to I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with the art world, at least not that particular one and what it represents.

With all that over with, it was time to relax. For once, I didn’t head straight back to Amsterdam on Friday night, and instead stayed until Sunday. It was really nice to relax a bit in Enschede and not be thinking about the DAI, especially since it involved having dinner cooked a few times at the new DAI house, staying up late, and drinking lots of beer. This would certainly be a good start on my wanting to be a bit more social this year, although having a hangover three mornings in a row was the unfortunate side effect. I can never do things in moderation it seems, always either living like a hermit or caning it every night. One day I will grow up a bit, perhaps; I lose count of how many times I have said this.

There have been big changes lately, which have not yet had a mention here. My friend Laura became pregnant last year (my flatmate Andy’s the dad), and just over two weeks ago gave birth to a little baby girl, Sara. This is all quite lovely and exciting, I must say. They are the first of my friends of my own age to be having babies, which really does seem like a big thing; which of course it is. I went up to Alkmaar to see the wee soul the weekend before last, and it really does still seem quite amazing, the business of new life. Of course people have babies all the bloody time, but when it’s people close to you it has a lot more significance, that’s for sure.

That aside, the other change is that due to all this, Andy is moving out and into a new house with Laura. This of course means a new flatmate, of which more later…

Anyway, the new house. It’s in Amsterdam-Noord, and is in fact a real house with a wee garden and an upstairs and that sort of thing. I must say that I am a little bit jealous, me in my small room up three flights of stairs. They’re not moving in for another few weeks, and in the meantime, there’s still quite a lot to be done to it.

This was where I came in. The bottom floor of the house is floored throughout with ceramic tiles, fine in Spain perhaps, but a bit chilly on the feet here. The plan then was to lay laminate flooring on top, and make the place a bit cosier. This is not the kind of job that you really want to be doing on your own, and so I had volunteered to help.

Having never done such a job before, it took a bit of fiddling about at the beginning. It’s necessary to keep a gap of about 10mm around all sides of the room to allow for expansion, and on top of that the walls turned out not to be completely straight. After about half an hour we had got not much more than two rows done, and it looked like we’d be at it at least the whole weekend. Thankfully though things got a bit quicker after this, and we were soon racing through it. Cutting round door posts and kitchen cabinets added more complications, but we still managed to get everything finished in one day.

I do have the feeling that people in twenty years will possibly look on laminate flooring the same way we now look at black ash furniture from the ’80s, but all the same the place does feel a bit more homely and inviting. Not only that, but there’s always a good feeling to be had when standing back and admiring the results of spending a day labouring at something physical like this. Sore knees, rough hands, but something useful done.

Of course, it is traditional pretty much everywhere to celebrate New Year, and nowhere more so than in my native Scotland. I had arranged a wee party last year, the first year that I had been in the Netherlands at this time. Since I was planning to be once again in Amsterdam, I decided that it would be nice to arrange something this year, and emailed the other DAI students to see if anyone was still about and felt like meeting up. Of course, many people had gone back to their own countries for the time being, others had their own plans, and so it ended up being a very modest party indeed.

In fact, almost non-existent. Having only decided to actually email people on the 31^st, it ended up just being myself and Astrid, and one solitary guest in the form of Jae-min. A few others got lost along the way, due to the trams shutting early, etc.

OK, so one guest was more than none, and I had made sure to go buy some fireworks as is traditional here; this meant we had something to entertain ourselves with, and so as midnight tolled and everyone else in Amsterdam went crazy and started setting off bangers and firecrackers in the middle of the street, we were ready to do the same. You can buy quite a lot of (small) fireworks for €20 or so, and it was nearly 1am before we had set them all off. We could have done with some really big rockets, though.

The next morning I did feel pretty down, however. I came to the realisation that I really don’t know so many people here, which seems so very different to when I was still living in Scotland. In the last half year or so I have become less and less social, which has naturally not helped the situation. It seems I need to make a bit more of an effort and meet some new folks.

When you have lived in a place for a long time, as was the case in Glasgow, you build up a large network of friends and aquaintances without even realising it. In the excitement of moving to another country, I had not really noticed that this was of course not the case here. Now that the shock of the new is past, it feels quite lonely all of a sudden. In any case, I need to get myself out and about a bit more in 2008, that is for sure.