Be(com)ing Dutch – Van Abbe Museum – 24.05 – 14.09. 2008
Avant-garde Citizens, 2007-ongoing
Samm´s Story, Janneke´s Story and Mpia´s Story
Avant-Garde Citizens (title inspired by the essay We Refugees, written by Hannah Arendt in 1943) is a research into the life and diaspora of refugees and undocumented migrants in the world today, with the Netherlands and it’s rizomatic network as a departure point. The first four video-portraits/testimonies, so far, form the core of the work. They are recordings of people which all have been denied asylum in The Netherlands and also share the experience of having been detained and imprisoned in one or more of the country´s detention- and deportation centers and prisons (8-13 months each) for not possessing a legal permit to stay in the country.
In continuation of those first four recordings have we opened up the frame and aim at recording video-portraits/testimonies of other people which in different ways are related to the issue, such as lawyers, prison-guards, prison-directors, thinkers, activists and politicians.
So far we have recorded a video portrait/testimony, of a Dutch activist engaged with the issue, Janneke´s Story, which is one of the videos presented here. She tells of how she together with a group of activists “body-locked” one of the deportation centers in The Netherlands and how she got arrested for it and imprisoned under the immigration law since she did not reveal her passport or other identity documents.
The entrance side (and the two short sides) of the container bears the floor-plan of the Detention-center Boats (bajesboten) in Zaandam, showing the 10m² two person cells. which opened last year and is the most recently built detention center in The Netherlands. The street side of the container bears the works title and three large posters with stills from the three videos showed inside the container.
Thanks to allincluded (www.allincluded.nl), Samm, Mpia and Janneke for there collaboration on the project.
Photos: Peter Cox
See also: www.vrijheidvanbeweging.nl
