On residency at Mediamatic, Amsterdam
2010
Amsterdam Noord is a city of bicycles, but I spend most of my time
here walking. I walk to get to know the city, and as I walk I collect the
traces of the lives that are going on around me…the traces of memories,
of conversations, of relationships. I collect the detritus on the streets for
the same reason that I observe people’s conversations, and ask them
questions about their lives: to collect and preserve the memories of a
place that I don’t belong to.
Story 3: Biking and the Kindness of Strangers
Story 4: Cultural Misunderstanding
Story 10: Little Dog, Big Bite
Story 11: Talking in Arabic
I often meet people from “my part of the world” here in Amsterdam
Noord. But we don’t always have a lot in common.
On one of my walks, I met a 43 year old man from Egypt and all he
wants to talk about is compare prices between Cairo and Amsterdam
Noord. He loves Amsterdam Noord. Shirts at H&M are cheaper, although
meat is more expensive, and there are more thieves. But at least he can
“be himself.”
I met another Arabic speaker from Morocco, a 35 year old man who
watched me collect objects in the street and wanted to know what I was doing. Remembering the incident with the children, I warily responded
that I was an artist, and he exclaimed that he hated artists.
When I asked him why, he told me that a Dutch artist had made a
movie about him. This man had gotten Dutch nationality, but in order to
get the Dutch passport, he had to renounce his Moroccan one. The artist had been intrigued by his story and had filmed the Moroccan in the embassies and bureaus as he did the paperwork; but in the end, the film painted a picture of the man’s life in Morocco as torture, while his new life
in the Netherlands was bliss.
The man was furious. He had given away his Moroccan passport for purely pragmatic reasons, but still loved it there. He therefore was determined not to trust anyone who called himself an “artist.”
I tried to explain that not everyone is like that.
Then I tucked his story away in my mind as I continued to gather my objects in the street.
