One last trip to Enschede
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.
