amsterdam

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Shameful lack of content

August 11, 2011 in Asides | Be the first to comment

The tumbleweeds that blow through this blog… Shocking, innit?

Well instead of belaboring this point or dragging out the I’m-so-busy excuse, I will simply point out that it’s been about a year and a half that I have been settled here in the Netherlands. I love it. I delight in all the cultural discovery that there is for me here. I have fixated in particular on a child star, Danny de Munk, as one of my Dutch cultural investigations.

Danny de Munk was a child star in the 80s. He seems to have floated along, with one failed album in English, but otherwise reigning as the highest-paid Dutch singing star.

One tune from his youth, Mijn Stad (My City), stands out for me. The lyrics for this song are astounding. Here is just a small sample:

Hier heb je alles wat je hartje bekoort,
wat ruzie en inbraak, en soms ook een moord!
Je krijgt op je kanis, je fiets wordt gejat,
maar wat moest je doen, als je Mokum niet had
Want Amsterdam, is poep op de stoep,
en haat in de straat, je bent op je hoede,
vooral ‘s avonds laat,
en Dansen bij Jansen,
kapsones in zuid,
een steen door de ruit!

Which translates roughly as:
Here you have everything your heart desires,
Fights, break-ins, sometimes even murder!
Your bike is stolen, but what would you do, if you didn’t have Mokum.
Amsterdam is poop on the sidewalk, and hate in the street
You’re on your guard
Especially late at night, dancing at Jansen,
strutting in the South,
a brick through the window!

I can’t help but love this child star and the culture from which he springs where a song called “My City” is so equally disparaging and loving. Poop on the sidewalk! An honest appraisal, delivered with that eerie whistle that I find escaping from my lips more than once as I idle here in fine fine Mokum.

Do yourself a favour and watch this great video from 1985 of Danny himself singing about Amsterdam’s crime rate and poop on the sidewalk problem:

Postscript: It’s perhaps worth mentioning where I found this song in the first place. In 2004 I was at the Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam and heard a presentation by Merijn Oudenampsen, in which, as I recall, he scathingly took down the I AMsterdam campaign. Of course in 2004 I had no idea that I’d be living in Amsterdam in 2011. All those years later, I remembered the presentation, and found that it had been adapted into an article in Mute. In the article, I noticed the Danny de Munk song lyric, typed that into YouTube, and discovered the video above.

 

My First Foray into Foraging

May 8, 2011 in Urban | 1 comment

As part of the The Middle Kingdom of Weeds Festival (World Wide Festival of Psychogeography and Foraging 2011) I met up with a group of people to do a wander around Amsterdam Sloterdijk and forage for food. The walk also had a caloric analysis angle, wherein we’d weigh what we had foraged at the end and contrast that with the calories expended by foraging. The walk was hosted by Wilfried Hou Je Bek and Theun Karelse.

We used one of Wilfried’s .walk algorithms to direct our walking pattern. We each had a piece of paper with the algorithm on it, which was loosely based on the behaviour of the ghosts in Pac-Man. Embodying the spirit of Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde, we ventured off in search of things to eat in among the underpasses, roundabouts, highrises and industrial estates of this area of Amsterdam. I’ll admit, I was a little sceptical that we would find anything tasty.

But in the end, we did. We found numerous edible green things, including an abundance of wild rocket. Our teams also found a cousin of garlic, wild carrot, unripe sloeberries, and places where raspberry plants were thriving (but no berries today, unfortunately). We mapped some of these finds on the Boskoi Android app so other foragers can find these things.

We met back with the other team at the station and tallied up our goods. We determined that if we had to live off the day’s haul, we’d certainly starve. Key to better nutrition would be getting our hands on some nuts and berries, and adding a little hunting and fishing to the mix. I took some of the wild rocket home and was keen to eat it for lunch, and also compare it to the bag of rocket I had just purchased at Albert Heijn the day before.

Taste testing revealed that the store-bought rocket was considerably milder in flavour than the wild rocket, which had a wonderfully peppery bite. I sautéed the wild rocket with a bit of olive oil and some of the garlic-like stuff we had harvested. Very, very delicious. I think I might have to go back and forage some more.

View all photos here.

 

The Future of Journalism and Cultural Blogging

September 17, 2010 in Art & Culture, My Lectures | 2 comments


Thinking of coming to PICNIC in Amsterdam next week? Be sure to come to a session I am speaking at on September 22 entitled Cultural Criticism in the Age of New Journalism, with Claudine Boeglin, Diana Krabbendam, Wilfried Ruetten, and moderated by Raymond van den Boogaard, Chief Arts Editor, NRC/Handelsblad.

This panel will be followed immediately by the launch of Cultural Bloggers Interviewed, a book by LabforCulture. The launch will feature myself in a Q & A with Annette Wolfsberger, who conducted the interviews for the book. Will I see you there? DM me on Twitter or drop me a line if you will be around.

 

A little Jónsi magic

June 14, 2010 in Art & Culture | 1 comment

Jónsi

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Jónsi (of Sigur Rós fame) perform live at the Paradiso here in Amsterdam. I am not a music critic, and so it’s difficult for me to write about the performance without resorting to what may seem to be clichéd language: transcendent, sublime, stunning – but it was all those things.

I have long been a Sigur Rós fan, and had no doubt after a cursory listen online that the latest solo effort by their lead singer, Jónsi, would be to my taste exactly. That said, it is important to note the differences: Jónsi sings in English, not Hopelandic; the attack and decay happens faster, with only traces of the Takk-era Sigur Rós slow crescendos. It’s beautiful music that deserves multiple listens. In the concert environment, Jónsi was appropriately taciturn between songs, and the performance of the songs themselves was impeccable.

The visuals, which were equally what I was there to see if I am to be completely honest, were in such stunning synergy with the music that it was breathtaking. As you’ll see in the behind-the-scenes video I’ve embedded below, the 59 Productions team worked closely with Jónsi after all his songs were finished, to create a “visual track” to go along with his music. However, it is so much more than that. The animations are emotionally resonant, full of richness and compelling in their own right. The combination of potent visuals and stirring song leads audiences directly into lump-in-throat territory.

 

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