‘Fieldwork’, is a process based work initiated within the frame of ‘There is a wall to be crossed, and I am the wall’.
Start date: 3rd of November 2018
In Amsterdam, in the neighbourhood of Betondorp
It aims to be an investigation into making closer to home.
In the month of February 2018, I moved to the neighbourhood of Betondorp, in the East of Amsterdam. For the first time, I realised the potentials and pitfalls of being grounded within Dutch context.
Following the mantra of “bloom where you’re planted”, I proceeded to engage with my immediate surroundings, digging into the history and current composition of the neighbourhood where she ended up living. This neighbourhood happens to have a history merging housing ideals of living integrated within nature through the concept of the garden-village, workers struggles in trying to build with a material (concrete) which 100 years ago just happened to pose issues of abandoning craftsmanship for mass production. There are ideals, and then there’s realised living. There are shared spaces, and then there’s current city development.
An attempt to sort through them all, no matter their complication, will nonetheless be made, in time.
As an initial step into the process one line of thought was drafted.
THE TREES
It’s in the nature of local Dutch initiatives of neighbourhood remodelling to treat nature as concrete: flexible, modular, removable, cheap. During the month of October, 2018, dozens of trees have been cut down and removed because of work on a portion of Betondorp, part of a larger scale updating of local infrastructure. The action happened without proper warning, creating a puncture in the otherwise calm neighbourhood. The local population reacted. In an attempt to tap into that trauma, the sudden forced break with the natural, I made a gesture which required no applause, almost no presence.
‘Fieldwork’ began with this action on November 3rd, 2018, and will grow from there.
Start coordinates:
52°20'22.8"N 4°56'21.7"E
No time was set.