Mokum – Trippel X ft. Sharla Sookha from Michiel Eijsbouts on Vimeo. Another heartwarming, and kind of hilarious, love song to Amsterdam with the video providing another fine, and kind of hilarious, tour of the city. In Dutch.
A great campaign: ‘Linkse Hobbies’.
A while ago the Dutch populist politician and amateur film-maker Geert Wilders stated: ‘The cabinet must start cutting deeply into all those leftist hobbies that are just wasting billions on the European Union, development aid, subsidies for the environment, art and housing, citizenship courses and all the rest of it. ’
So a group started to wonder what the Netherlands would look like if all these ‘hobbies of the Left’ would disappear… Order your stickers at Linkse Hobby and start marking! And don’t forget to upload a photo! The above picture features the work of inspired artist Serge Verheugen. Don’t disappear Serge! Don’t disappear!
Designer Jarr Geerligs has taken pictures of over 1600 posters as seen on the streets of Amsterdam. Nicely obsessive!
The City Archives have another great exhibition running until June. It features the earliest examples of street photography in Amsterdam. This is a picture of photographer Jacob Olie’s family in front of their house at Zandhoek 10 in the painfully scenic Westerlijke Eilanden. The children and the dog obviously did not have the patience to sit still and are therefore immortalised as ghosts. This street remains pretty much unchanged to this day. But back in the Golden Age days, this was where people came to pick up sand (zand) whenever their property started to sink. It is said that many a riot occurred here during sand shortages. I guess people get panicky whenever their homes threaten to return to the bog from whence it came. Anyway you can download a tour along the settings of these photographs here.
On 12 April 2010, it’s the 49th anniversary of the first human space flight. Join the Yuri party. Around 4 or 5 years ago, Amsterdam was dotted with cosmonaut graffitti. Here are photos of some of them. Enjoy.
Head down to Paradiso this Friday 29 January for the best of Pips:Lab. You can look upon PIPS:lab as a kind of A-Team — where the ‘A’ stands for ‘Art School Dropout’. Actually, they are more like MacGyver — but then with a sense of humour and a taste for Human Growth Hormone. But seriously, PIPS:lab tells a heart warming, and often brain melting, story of what happens when a collective of artists from a variety of disciplines seek to create everything, from software to vocal harmonies, themselves. Combining new media, theatre, music, film and photography — along with tech, chuckles and raw public interaction — PIPS:lab produce everything from theatrical performances to installations. And it’s all done live in your face, right down to the video editing.
For example, their Washing Powder Conspiracy show is a groovy, funny and catchy laundry-themed multimedia theatre concert. And while loose and wacky, the show is still tighter than two people in a washing machine. Everything — from the sing-along tunes and primal screaming right through to the light graffiti artistry and outfits — refers to washing powder. Things that did not quite make sense from earlier in the show are later power edited live to form new backdrops for yet more nonsensical acts of madness. Where else can absurdist speeches about detergents be magically transformed into radical political statements? Meanwhile all the happy chaos is rhythmically backed by a washing machine, three dryers and a sextet of irons. And remember folks, your whites can always get whiter…
Meanwhile, staying in touch with friends and loved ones just gets easier and easier these day. And now it’s even possible to stay in touch with the dead thanks to the internet community DieSpace. Step right up folks! Yes indeed, with laptops, cameras and light sensors, PIPS:lab has created a interactive musical show about post-mortem social networking. And with today’s ongoing ‘grayification’ of society, it’s not such a crazy idea — especially if you believe the onstage marketing manager/show master. Meanwhile… Your mug shot is being projected on the screen since he chosen you, above all others, for a DieSpace Premium Account!
OK, maybe you just got to be there…
I want to be Simon Carmiggelt when I grow up. The prophet Carmiggelt was a local patron journalist saint who filtered bar tales into gentle life lessons and into a very nice living thank you very much… He once said that going out to a bar for one drink was like jumping off a roof with the plan of falling only one floor.
You can also watch the classic Dutch documentary, which he wrote and narrated, Alleman here.
Blijf van me stad af. Positive city propaganda from amsterhoppers Surya & Pharao.
Some nice Amsterpostcards. But for the love of god, you might want to turn down the sound.
‘How lucky I am living in a windmill in old Amsterdam…’ But weirdly very little of the footage is actually from Amsterdam. But windmills and wooden shoes abound!
