The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

For the second time in a week, I have been in Arnhem. Since the deadline for all content for my graduation publication is next week, some urgency has been leant to the situation. Therefore, myself and Cecilia had agreed to meed today at the Werkplaats.

It turned out to be quite a productive day, with firstly an in-depth discussion about the (now rather long) text that I have written, after which I sat down to revise it based on Cecilia’s comments while she set to work on the design. It was really exciting to see the pages coming together; this has done a lot to reduce my earlier nervousness about the lack of anything visible up to this point.

Something totally unrelated happened today. As I stepped into the train at Amsterdam Zuid, I noticed that the windows of the train were really dirty. About five minutes after this, I was reading one of the many free newspapers which are always lying about in the trains when I came across an article about a freak weather pattern which is currently active. What is basically happening is that sand from the Sahara desert in Africa is getting whipped up high into the atmosphere, after which it gets carried on air currents until it is over northern Europe, at which point it falls back to earth dissolved in rain. Thus, cars, trains, etc. are covered in a thin brown layer of dust.

The idea of this is quite difficult to grasp, I must say, although at the same time quite beautiful. All this brown sand blocking out train windows in the Netherlands was once part of the sand dunes of Africa; an idea which is almost too strange to be real.

I have had quite a busy few days. After a brief meeting on Friday morning with John about by thesis, I headed through to Arnhem for a meeting with Cecilia (the graphic designer from the Werkplaats Typografie with whom I am working) to discuss my forthcoming graduation publication. Unfortunately, all the other stuff which I had planned for the day meant that this ended up being a very short meeting indeed. Back again next week is the plan.

After that, I headed through to Enschede to see a performance of the theatre play Could I Sleep Well? directed by DAI student Yen Yitsu and featuring (amonst others) various other DAI students. It was a very enjoyable event, and certainly unusual. Staged as part of the Balenfestival, it took place in a large half-demolished concrete building, around (and on top of) a table as well as on (and below) a makeshift stage. I have to admit that I didn’t quite understand what the story was supposed to be about, although maybe that wasn’t important. It was worth it in any case for the spectacle!

As it happened I need not have rushed so much to get there, since there was to be another performance in the evening. I ended up being persuaded to help with this by filming the action. I wasn’t too happy with the results of this, since I was of course not familiar enough with the performance to know where people would be coming from and what they would be doing. Still, hopefully it will be useful.

In the evening we took advantage of the fantastic weather to sit outside at a helpfully-placed picnic table and drink beer, eat the free food provided, and listen to old Woody Guthrie songs. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Saturday morning, and I woke up with a bit of a hangover at the DAI house. The first task of the day was to go to the DAI and help Bani with his website (of course we all must produce one to graduate), before heading back to the centre of town to catch the end of a lecture by Tony Chakar, who was involved in the Here As The Centre Of The World workshop last year in Enschede. I only saw the last ten minutes or so of this, which was then followed by something quite unexpected. The lecture was being held in the Grote Kerk (“Big Church”) in Enschede, and no sooner had Tony finished speaking when suddenly there came a booming drone as the organ sprang into life. Not only that, but soon a woman standing high in the upper balcony of the church began to sing in a quite over-the-top, operatic manner. Utterly bizarre, although impressive.

This amazing spectacle over, we were treated to some lunch, served by smartly-dressed waitresses with huge piles of sandwiches on silver platters and artful displays of fresh fruit. A bit posher than what we are used to in the DAI canteen.

Just then, it was time to head off again for the next stage of my nomadic weekend, that is to say all the way to Eindhoven for the opening of the Be(com)ing Dutch exhibition, featuring among others DAI student Rana Hamadeh and occasional DAI tutor Alite Thijsen. This turned out to be quite a crazy affair, with people already hanging about in huge crowds chatting, eating, and drinking when I arrived. As is usual at this type of thing, no-one paid a great deal of attention to the art. That being said, I did really enjoy the show; there was some very nice work present.

I have to admit that I get quite uncomfortable at these type of events, with all those well-dressed wine-drinking types from the art crowd, who all seem to know everyone else and who always have interesting things to say to each other. I find that I get very nervous and that it becomes an effort to avoid awkward silences when speaking to people, which of course makes the whole thing even more stressful. What particularly frightens me is that you really have to do the whole networking thing if you want to get anywhere in art, whether you like it or not. It’s just not my strong point at all.

Despite this, the day was interesting in its own kind of way, with some nice bands playing and some delicious food. In the end though, given the choice between this and yesterday evening in Enschede, I’d choose a couple of beers around the picnic table any time.

My dad has been visiting for the last few days. Mum had arranged to visit my sister in Madrid this weekend, so it seemed like a good idea for him to come here; I have to say that dealing with one parent at a time is a bit easier than two…

Having met up at Schiphol on Saturday, we had some lunch in town before travelling through to Haarlem to visit the Frans Hals Musuem, where Dad had wanted to visit on the recommendation of a friend. In the end we were both not too impressed; this may sound stupid, but once you’ve seen one portrait of a group of stern-looking seventeenth-century regents you’ve kinda seen them all. There’s craft all right in this type of thing, but a whole museum of it is a bit much if you’re not into it in a big way.

Unfortunately he was a bit poorly on Saturday evening, so we took a break and met up again on Sunday morning. Before the dismantling of the Kunstvlaai mentioned below, we did something I have been wanting to do for a while and which I thought Dad would also like; that is, took a ride on the Electrische Museumtramlijn Amsterdam, a wee tram route which only runs for a few days a week during the summer. All the cars are lovely old wooden carriages from the 1950s and earlier, which rattle and shake their way along the rusty rails past such incongruously modern structures as the ING building all the way to Amstelveen. My dad loves trams and has mentioned them in his recently-published book, and I of course love all mechanical things too. What was particularly endearing was that the driver and conductor, both volunteers I believe, were busy trying to act the part (including loudly announcing the next stop and waving flags while crossing roads), but seemed not quite fully aware of what they were supposed to be doing. It all seemed very amateur, but in a good way.

On Monday we took a trip to Enkhuizen and the Zuiderzeemuseum, a sort of reconstructed village showing what life was like for the isolated fishing people of the now-disappeared sea; having been shut off from the North Sea by the Afsluitdijk in the 1930s it is now a freshwater lake, the IJsselmeer. This was also quite entertaining in a twee sort of way, with men making ropes in ye olde way and buildings with steam-powered washing machines, blacksmiths, and grainy black-and-white films of girls in clogs and these strange white Dutch bonnets that stick up at the sides.

Finally, we took it a bit easier today, just wandering around the Jordaan and looking in bookshops, etc. Our final plan was to visit the flight museum at Schiphol; this was scuppered bigstyle when we found that it moved four years ago to Lelystad (only after wandering around Schiphol for a while looking for it). Unfortunately the website I had checked this morning was totally out of date; just remember, don’t trust anything you read on the internet!

Whist building the huge green archive for the Kunstvlaai the other week, we had been under the impression that it would end up in a skip afterwards. Accordingly, not much attention had been given to dismantling it in such a way that it could be assembled once again.

However, there arose the possibility that it may (or may not) make another appearance, which meant some hasty arranging of what to do with it. Everything had to be cleared out starting at 6pm today (Sunday), which basically involved trying to get the thing separated into the pieces that it was in when it was built, cleaning off all the Vaseline which I had smeared on the moving parts (again without thought for what would happen to it), and get it all loaded into a van. I would rather not have had to do all this since my dad has been visiting the past few days (on which more later), but since I built all the animation mechanisms I was worried that if I was not present it would be quite difficult to take apart.

We ended up having a big enough team though to be able to get everything dismantled, cleaned, and cleared up in a relatively short space of time. As it happened the van was late in arriving anyway, meaning that my earlier stressed state was in fact unnecessary.

Once it was all loaded up for transport to Daniëlle’s studio, I made my excuses and left; I have done more than my fair share of the work on this project!

Hot on the heels of the Kunstvlaai opening at the weekend, this week has been my last ever DAI week, although I will be back for a few days in July for assessments. Strangely enough it didn’t bring on too many feelings of nostalgia, probably because it still seems quite a long way until the real end of my studies.

In any case, there was plenty going on. We started a day later than usual because of Pinkster (I believe it’s called Whitsun in English although I had never heard of it before coming here), jumping straight into action with a “green light” day for the second year students. This was to be a kind of informal presentation at which we would outline the work that we intend showing at the final exams, as well as giving an update on our progress with the thesis, website, and publication.

I was the last on the list, which gave me the whole day to sit getting nervous while awaiting my turn. As it happened it went fairly OK, but as usual I ended up speaking much too fast and showing too much work. Some hard choices will need to be made before the exams. Focus, focus, focus!

Wednesday was studio visit day, with a few interesting chats about my robot project with a few of our visiting tutors. This was followed by a really nice lecture by an artists named Sands Murray-Wassink, interesting in that was something of a performance and not just the usual chat with slides.

On Thursday morning I had a meeting with a tutor from the university about my publication, before travelling through to Amsterdam with the other students from the Here As The Centre Of The World group to once again be present at the Kunstvlaai. This was rather a long trip for such a short few hours, but was made a bit less senseless by a visit to a book launch of occasional DAI guest lecturer Delphine Bedel. Tempting though it was to stay for drinks afterwards, the fact that we needed to be back in Enschede the next morning convinced me to take the last train back, ready to fall asleep exhausted at the DAI house around 1am.

Finally, Friday saw the last of Sanne van Rijn’s performance workshops. As the months have worn on, we have perhaps come out of our shells a little bit, and we were certainly quite enthusiastic and energetic this time. It has certainly been a great experience and a welcome change from lectures in the windowless project room.

Nice though it would have been to stay an extra night and relax a bit, family business meant a Friday evening return to Amsterdam. It’s not quite time to be bidding farewell to Enschede, but the end is in sight.

After all our hard work this week, the day had finally come for the opening. We had briefly discussed what to wear yesterday, with the conclusion being that an officey-type look was a good idea. I need no excuse to dress up, and so it was that I spent the whole morning rushing around Amsterdam trying to find a second-hand suit that would fit me. Eventually I succeeded, finding a beautiful old ’70s number, a little too big but close enough.

The opening was at 4pm, before which myself, Emily, and James arrived and made sure everything was ready. The idea was that we would be making leaflets to hand out during the opening, using the photocopier, stapler, and other office equipment available; hence the outfits. In reality, the whole evening became quite chaotic, with the electricity being knocked out (seemingly by our photocopier), and there being in any case huge numbers of people and a lot of noise. It was all very exciting, although not really the time or the place to actually think about art very much. The name “Kunstvlaai” means “art-tart”, more or less, which is not too bad a description; a crazy mess of people trying to make themselves noticed amongst the countless other people doing just the same.

The evening flew by and soon it was chucking out time, meaning a welcome break from the crowds and a chance to relax with some wine and pizza on the grass behind the Westergasfabriek (the venue of the Kunstvlaai). The air was thick with barbecue smoke as people enjoyed the amazingly good weather that we have been having the past few weeks.

Later on, we had a few beers outside on the terrace, at last able to take it easy after a very hectic week. I have certainly enjoyed the build-up to the Kunstvlaai very much, and it was very satisfying to see so many people interested in what we were doing and to be able to explain what the project is about. The idea of course behind all this was to promote the forthcoming book about Here As The Centre Of The World, a book which is unfortunately still non-existent. Time will tell if we have done our job in this respect.

Thanks to James and Emily for some of the photos here.

After finishing as much as possible of the construction of the archive at the workshop in Weesp, Wednesday morning was time to move the thing to Amsterdam. It’s 3 metres tall and weighs who knows how much, which made this a bit of a challenge. Basically it needed to be disassembled, taken down three floors, and fitted into the back of a hire van. This was not made any easier by the fact that we could not use the lift in the building due to an argument between persons totally unconnected to the project…

In the end it was not too much trouble to get it packed in and sped down the motorway to the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. This was a pretty speedy journey because the time limit for deliveries was 12 o’clock – as it turned out, we got through the barriers at 11:55.

First everything had to be hauled into the huge space of the Gashouder, a former gasometer which is the venue in which we are situated. Next it was a case of trying to work out how to put it back together again, followed by work on sorting out the many small problems with it and finishing off the animation mechanism.

By Thursday evening, the whole mechanism was working pretty damn good, if I may say so myself, and should look even better once my colleagues have done their bit and filled the drawers with content. Tomorrow (Saturday) is the opening of the Kunstvlaai, and I can’t wait to see the reaction of the public.

Myself and most of the rest of the 2nd year students at the DAI have been given the task of helping with preparations for the DAI’s stand at the Kunstvlaai 2008 in Amsterdam. The concept for this, thought up by guest curator James Beckett, was for a large archive of drawers which would document the progress up to now of the Here As The Centre Of The World project.

My part in this was to help with the physical construction of the archive, or specifically with one area which I was particularly enthusiastic about – a system which would make most if not all of the drawers interlinked, so that as one drawer was pulled out, another one somewhere else on the structure would magically slide in, and vice versa. Easier said than done.

I had gone through to Weesp on Friday to see progress on construction, and was quite stressed upon finding that it had not really started. This was a big problem for me, because I couldn’t really start on my part until most of the rest had been completed. Today though things were much further forward, and I was really impressed by what the boys had been doing.

What followed was a backbreaking day of kneeling, sawing, hammering, and drilling, in order to get the mechanism I had foolhardily promised to work. At the end of the day, about half of it was working; not too bad.

Afterwards we sat beside a canal and ate pizza as a strange churning, gurgling sound emanated from some pumping equipment nearby; it’s funny how such a sound can be very relaxing after a day of such hard work.

Just a few too many things to think about today. Firstly, I needed to go through to Weesp to check on progress on construction of the archive for the Kunstvlaai. I was not too pleased to find that it had barely started.

Secondly, there were no less than three things which needed sorted in our bathroom; really the landlord’s responsibility, you would think, but he does not see it this way. Firstly the lock on the door was broken (€16 for a new one), secondly the toilet cistern lid had broken again, and thirdly the ventilator in the ceiling has not been working for more than half a year, causing all the paint to start flaking off the walls because of the excessive humidity. Since there were other things needing to be done, it seemed like the right time to do something about it.

So it was then that I unscrewed the thing from the ceiling, which send a torrent of dust and dirt falling from the ceiling and into my face. What was really foul though was when the dust had settled and I looked at why the ventilator was not working; there was a very decayed dead mouse stuck inside it. It was quite an effort to keep a hold on my lunch.

All this unpleasantness was sorted just in time, since myself and Astrid were going through to my coursemate Emily’s birthday party in Haarlem. After such a day it was good to relax, and it was a nice little party. Unfortunately our visit was cut short by the necessity of getting a train back in time for the last bus from Sloterdijk; that’s the downside of visiting folks outside of Amsterdam, I suppose.