The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Last week saw a lot of activity with moving house, and of course spending quite some time cleaning up the old one ready to hand it back to our now-ex landlord, Benoît. We had paid quite a large deposit on the old flat (two months’ rent), and we were of course keen to do our best to ensure that we would get all of it back.

I had had a sinking feeling for some time that this would not be so easy. I can’t really put my finger on what it is, but there is something about Benoît which gives me the creeps. It turns out that I am not the only one; Matthias has said pretty much the same thing.

What was a bit unfortunate was that the others were all away when I came round today to hand back the keys: Matthias and Romy have returned to Germany, and Julien is on holiday in France. I didn’t much like the idea of having to deal with Benoît on my own, and it turned out that this was with good reason.

As soon as I was in the door and had given the keys back (and so had no cards left to play) he started acting like a total arsehole. He began a long, somewhat theatrical tirade about how the flat was not clean at all and that he was very disappointed about this fact. This is simply not true; everyone has their own definition of “clean” of course, but the place was easily in the same state as when we moved in. Not only that, but we had to pay €75 then to get it clean; now he expected it just as clean for nothing. He really is such a dick. Needless to say, if it had not been about cleaning then he would have found something else to complain about.

After this performance had gone on for about 15 minutes, during which time I felt myself get angrier and angrier, he proposed giving us back 3/4 of the deposit for now. Of course I said that this was totally unacceptable; we had fulfilled all our obligations and expected 100% of our money back, less any outstanding bills of course. After some further intense argument, I agreed to accept €1700 (we’re owed €2000) now and discuss the rest when he had worked out the final energy bills. This is not an ideal solution, and if he causes further trouble I will make it my business to make trouble for him; I have already been to the huurcommissie (rental commission) to enquire about our rights in this matter, and the law is totally on our side.

So all in all, a shitty way to spend an afternoon. I really really hate angry arguments with people, and the worse here was that I saw it coming but could do nothing much about it until it arrived. If one thing is certain, it is that this only confirms my belief that it is pretty much always the people in this life who have plenty money already who will act the most shamelessly in pursuit of even more. Clearly trying to swindle a bunch of young people with very little money to spare does not trouble his conscience at all.

I woke up quite late this afternoon after a late night yesterday, still feeling a little hungover when Astrid rang to ask if I felt like cycling to the IJsselmeer for a swim. It didn’t really appeal immediately in the state I was then in, but I figured that it would be worth the effort.

So, an hour and a half cycling later, and we were on the shores of the IJmeer (as it is called at that bit) just past Durgerdam. Unfortunately, it seemed like half of Amsterdam had had the same idea; as I have come to realise only too well, the idea of a bit of peace and quiet in the Dutch countryside is more or less impossible.

All the same, we were able to find a spot that was not to crowded and where a little home-made jetty had been constructed for getting into the water. Quite surprisingly, it was not at all cold; perhaps because it is not so deep here, and in any case it is quite far inland from the sea. This was once the sea (the Zuiderzee, to be precise), but has now long since been shut off from the ocean waves. This also means that it is fresh water, which avoids getting all sticky and salty as happens in the sea.

It was very comforting indeed to realise that (large crowds of people aside) it is possible to get to somewhere like this by bike from the centre of Amsterdam. It makes the city seem just a little less claustrophobic.

Just as we were sitting eating some fries outside a café in Durgerdam, Matthias rang me to ask if I wanted to go on a boat tour of Amsterdam later that evening. It seemed like a nice way to round off the weekend, and indeed their time in Holland (tomorrow they return to Germany) and so of course I said yes.

We assembled at 10pm just next to the Holland Casino near the Liedseplein. It turned out that this guy had used his life savings to invest in a small but very well-equipped boat, with which he is giving tours of the city’s canals. I have been on one of the big tour boats before, but this was so much nicer, and also cheaper. You see a totally different perspective of the city, and sipping wine and eating chocolates while leasurely drifting under the bridges makes it perhaps possible to imagine what life is like for the super-rich swine of which there are plenty in Amsterdam. Oh, and his boat is electric, so it is extremely quiet and does not pollute the air. What luxury!

I met up with Laura this afternoon at the Blue Tea House in the Vondelpark, just in time to get under the sticky-outy roof bit before it started to rain (complete with thunder). Little Sara was there as well, peacefully sleeping through everything.

It was then a nice surprise when we were joined by a former co-student of Laura’s, Eduardo. We had stayed with him and his girlfriend a few years ago in Barcelona, and now he is over here with a bunch of blokes for his stag weekend. I didn’t actually know they had those in Spain, but well, yes, they do.

Without thinking anything of it, the boys soon had a bunch of beers that they had brought themselves cracked open, which conveniently avoided the queue at the bar (as well as being much cheaper). I knew that this would cause a problem sooner or later, but when a woman from the bar came to complain I just explained that this was “completely normal in Spain” and that they didn’t know any better. Of course that is total nonsense (probably) but it got us off the hook. The boys had in any case bought three bottles of wine from the bar, so it would have been nice of them to let us away with it. That is not the Dutch way, unfortunately.

Regarding Dutch ways of thinking, I was quite curious about how the recently-imposed smoking ban was being observed. When it came in in Scotland a few years ago, people just seemed to pretty much accept it immediately. Here though people have a strange way of interpreting rules: for example, hash is of course “sort of” legal, even though it is not at all officially. Clear?

Well, of the three bars we ended up in this evening, people were still smoking in two of them. Perhaps this was just coincidence, but perhaps a sign of how things will turn out in the long run. Of course, if and when the owners start getting huge fines things might change quite quickly.

As if I have not had enough to worry about with graduation recently, there has also been the looming reality of the fact that we had agreed to leave our current flat at the end of the month. It has proved to be a lot more difficult than I had thought to find something new; what I really wanted was just a room somewhere, so that I would not have the hassle of dealing with a whole flat. The problem is that there are so many people looking for a room in Amsterdam that there are crazy prices being asked for the tiniest filthy spaces, which people will probably still end up paying out of desparation.

My plan had been to find somewhere as cheap as possible, regardless of size; I now have a studio space of course, which means that I am not so troubled with lack of space as before. I was in fact getting pretty desparate this week, such was the seeming pointlessness of my efforts up to this point. However, all this changed when I heard that Olivier, a friend of my current flatmates Romy and Matthias, had a room spare in his flat. The price was pretty reasonable, and it’s a nice flat. There are two small things wrong with it though;

1. It is in a tower block. Nothing so much wrong with this though it seems, unlike in Scotland this one does not smell of urine and the lifts also seem to work.
2. It is right next to a motorway. This is a bit more of a problem. It does have double glazing, and when the windows are shut it is fairly quiet, but as soon as you open them it sounds like a jet engine is running just outside the window. I guess I will just have to get used to it.

All the same, beggars cannot really be choosers, and I was more than happy to take the room.

Just as a sort of challenge, I decided to try and move all my stuff with the little bicycle trailer I recently built. It has been really hard work, but after about ten trips everything has been moved. I have certainly received some strange looks from people on the street.

Things were not quite over yet with the DAI, though. Gabriëlle had wanted the large green archive which we had constructed for the Kunstvlaai in May, and which was now sitting in numerous pieces in my studio, to be brought to the DAI and assembled in the canteen. Myself and a few other students had arranged with her that if we drove it to Enschede in a van paid for by the DAI, we could use the same van to move stuff out of our studios and back to Amsterdam. For me, this was a win-win situation; get rid of the bloody archive which had been filling my studio, and get all the heavy things I had at the DAI back to Amsterdam.

Of course, this would only be possible with a lot of lifting, carrying, pushing, and sweating. Myself, Anna, and Julien were the lucky three who would carry this out. We set off fairly early from Amsterdam, but it was still almost 12pm before we reached the DAI. Things then took even longer than expected because it was not possible to take anything though the AKI (who occupy the same building as the DAI), meaning that everything needed to be carried along a narrow path and up three flights of stairs. It was very disheartening to see all these countless pieces of the archive piling up in the canteen without the pile in the back of the van getting any smaller, and with the knowledge that we still needed to load our own stuff in by the same route and get it all back to Amsterdam.

Reassembling the archive proved to quite a tricky task, particularly since it has been two months since its creation and because it was never built with the intention that it would be dismantled, put into storage, and put back together again. This combined with the fact that I was the only one who knew what went where meant that it took about two hours to get it assembled.

Finally, everything was packed in and we were able to head back west. It was certainly an exhausting day, but productive at least. Now I really really feel like the DAI has come to an end for me.

This was it; after two years of studying, and the assessments earlier in the week, we were to receive our diplomas and launch the publications on which we have been working. This important event took place at Casco in Utrecht, a nice middle point between the extremes of Enschede and Amsterdam.

In the end, various reasons conspired to create a situation where very few students were actually in a position to graduate; thankfully, I was one of them.

The afternoon began with a discussion between us, the students, guest publication co-ordinator Emily Pethick, and the artist Tomo Savic-Gecan. This was specifically about the idea of launching a publication as an alternative to exhibiting, since the idea of a graduation show is deliberately avoided by the DAI. Following this we had a little party with some music, drinks, food, and distribution of the publications. I did not have so many with me, since I have been struggling for the last two days to get them finished; each individual one needs special treatment from my machine, which “signs” each copy. Since it is so slow, I only had around 60 of the 200 copies printed with me.

During all these celebrations and increasing level of drunkenness, Gabriëlle took us each aside one by one to present our diplomas, various pieces of paper, and also a little present. Mine was a book about how to deal with anxiety about what other people think about you. I would like to say that this is not something which troubles me but that would not really be true.

After everyone was gone, and the dishes were done, we all met for a drink at a bar elsewhere in Utrecht before saying our final goodbyes. Although many of us will remain in Amsterdam, there are others who I may really not see again for a long time if ever, which made things a bit sad. Still, all good things come to an end.

After two years of hard work, the time had come this week for my final assessment at the DAI. The assessments took the form of four long days in the DAI project room, during which each student would have to speak once for around 25 minutes about their work.

My turn was last of the day on Monday. I had thought a lot about how to make sense of all the things which I have been doing during my time at the DAI, and how to make a coherent presentation of this in such a short time. I had decided, following advice received at the green light meeting in May, to only show a selection of my video works and also the machine which I have been constructing. This proved to be a good decision, since even with this restriction it was still difficult to fit everything into the time available.

I must say that I was very pleased with my presentation, and the feedback that I received was 100% positive; this is the first and only time that this has been the case. Just as well it’s the last time. I must admit that I am not the sort of person to ever feel totally satisfied with anything that I have done, but I was able to allow myself to feel good about things for a few hours at least.

With that out of the way, there remained three further days of listening to the presentations of others. Of course I was very interested to see what everyone has been up to, and it was very nice to see how many people have made very significant progress during the last few months, but all the same it was quite an act of endurance, stuck inside a windowless room in rock-hard seats and with no air conditioning. I also felt quite ill for most of the week, which made things even worse.

Finally though, the week came to an end with the opening of a little exhibition by Manami in her studio, and an enormous Chinese takeaway for everyone. And of course, a party afterwards in the DAI house.

Now that most of the requirements for graduation are completed, I have finally found some time this week to complete a work which I have been struggling with for several months now. Yes, it’s the slow-motion fast-action piece which has been mentioned here a couple of times, a fairly simple idea which has taken quite a lot of effort to realise.

This is especially so since I decided that it should become a series of four videos, rather than the original one. The idea is that some repetition would increase the effect.

So it was then that, with Astrid’s help, I have been making video recordings in various locations across the city: the Ten Katemarkt, the Museumplein, the Marie Heinekenplein, and of course the Zuidplein, where I have been countless times now in search of the perfect shot.

With that all done, all that remained was to process and edit the video. For this, it was necessary to collect various sounds. One of the more interesting of these was the sound of pigeons taking off. To get a recording of this noise, I stood in the middle of a square where there were lots of pigeons, and put a small digital recorder borrowed from Julien on the ground. I then threw crumbled pieces of biscuit on the ground, and sure enough, soon there were hundreds of pigeons surrounding me. All that was necessary was to make a sudden movement, and the filthy birds were soaring up into the air. It must have been quite a strange sight for any passers-by.