Street installation and performance

Baby, where are the fine things you promised me? gently invites the public to reflect on the lost utopia of the quarter-acre block. Based on one of the country's earliest models for simple houses for the working class, Baby where...? is somewhere between installation and street performance. The house changes location every day, mysteriously appearing in the city's financial district one day and on the waterfront the next. Curious visitors are amazed to discover that the house is occupied ship-in-a-bottle style by a man who plays music, cooks or shares a cup of tea with passers-by.

Day two - twice the fun

Today I felt like I knew what I was doing there. Kind of.

The day started with gifts. I'm not sure what I did to deserve them but my birthday was last week and I didn't get any gifts so maybe this was like a Karmic Makeover. Here's one of the gifts, a toy with a big head and one eye, potentially the result of a summer of Lowlands festivals.

Happy family - brother and sister.

And this is a girl who spent all of the last day in the campsite toilets feeling utterly sick. So today she was taking it easy, we had a nice conversation and then she came back with this little guardian angel, who is now permanently installed as a kind of guard for the front door.

And this is Jessie, the kiwi guy who is an old school friend of Josh's (yes I know what is the likelyhood and how incredibly common is that and aren't kiwis all one degree of separation anyway) who showed us some kiwi hospitality last night. You don't quite see his black eye and black toenails here though, apparently once we'd had enough he just keep right on dancing.

Now excuse me if I'm wrong, but I think this is Suzan and her sister who stayed and talked for a while and just yesterday wrote to me on this website to say hello. So you see, even though these worlds we create for ourselves are a contrivance, they inform our lives and go with us into the future as every experience does. Actually I know this is weird but there were three sets of sisters that I spoke to that day so I will use my scatter-gun approach to show a picture of them all...

Ok, maybe this isn't funny to anyone else, but I'll show you anyway. This is technically a house party and it all started with my new Bontempi (that's a shittier version of a Casiotone presumably of Italian origin). It started out as a jam and ended in a full scale party hit sensation. Who said you can't have a one-man house party...? The video is the song that just kind of wrote itself, I'm sorry I have forgotten the names of the singers but they did a great job of lyric-writing and general ambiance-setting. Today Lowlands, tomorrow the hit sensation of Ibiza 2010.

I'd say this makes up for a lack of birthday cake wouldn't you.

Here's the video - hit play on the bottom left corner. I left the Arabic version off in case it was just getting a bit culturally inappropriate - what am I thinking?!

And yes, this really is another one of those band shots that is totally uninteresting to anyone who wasn't there. But speaking as one who was there to Gang Gang Dance... WOW.

I think possibly I am giving a rose-tinted version of Lowlands, but that is because my experience in house really was like that but of course that is not the whole story. That night we stayed in a tent with the other 20 thousand or so tents with a physical rocking of the tent walls to the deep sub-base from one of the stages nearby. The next morning we cleared out and it struck me what a materialistic world we live in and that even though experiences like this festival were about ambience and collectivity, it was managed (quite brilliantly though I must say) by a slick consumer machine that was really like every other consumer machine. We live in an age of incredible consumer excess, we all wear new new clothes, we throw away plastic things used once, we buy a new tent because someone in village somewhere is prepared to package it for next to nothing, we have more choice than any other age of human, we have access, wealth, privilege... it's a double edged sword isn't it. I had a great weekend, don't get me wrong. I came away on kind of high. I'm glad I've been to a festival like this. I'm very happy to have been there in my own home.

Lowlands needs you

Or maybe I need Lowlands.

More Lowlands in my life, yes perhaps.

This is my first time being at a big festival of music, and if you haven't been to Lowlands yourself I'm not sure that I can really explain it. Someone spoke to me this on the second day actually and said that Lowlands was like entering a childs world for adults, where everything was there for your pleasure and wonder and the realities of your work or your home life were inconsequential here. There is some truth in that. There were bands sure, but there were also swings and art objects and people just hanging out or wondering around with no particular purpose than to absorb the atmosphere and somehow be infected by it.

So, as you can imagine there were quite a few people dropping by my little house, happy to hang out, talk or just peer in through the window and wonder. And the thing is, if you take away any idea of reasoning or equating what is going on to some sense of purpose then interesting things do in fact happen. Conversations sure, but also just looks or noises.

You know that sensation when you stand at the traffic lights and there is a child in a pram and he or she looks up at you waiting there and they just look at you without any particular agenda, you are there in front of them, moving, blinking, breathing. Well it wasn't quite like that but there was certainly an element of it. So yes, Lowlands needs me and I need Lowlands.

In fact this guy stood in front of what I was really trying to photograph which is the lake. First of all an Opera Singer appeared on a floating tower of umbrellas, carried along by two synchronized swimmers, then I learned that the people waiting on the bank were being ferried by rowboat to a place down the lake where there was a sauna and a Tai Chi master.

And this is Peaches

We didn't bump into each other unfortunately but I did get to see her on stage. Magic.

AAAAAAAAAAAAALST

Aalst is between Brussels and Gent and is yet another one of those charming Belgian cities. I was only here for one day, so no return guests but plenty of curiosity. Josh asked me the other day if I got on with kids. It was a strange question because I realised I didn't get on with kids, I get on with people who are interesting or who are interested in the world and sometimes they are adults and sometimes they are kids.

Well here is someone I got on with. She even helped us pack up at the end. It's funny isn't how you get along with people sometimes, I know people will think I'm a hippie flake for saying it, but I think it just comes down to a certain energy. When you relate to someone's energy then you are immediately responsive to them.

She took a photo of me too - which was only fair I thought.

I think I need a haircut.

Got some nice pictures today too. I like collecting pictures of this house, not because I'm narcissistic (though I may be) but because every picture is surely a picture of the person who drew it, just like a photo is equally about the person who took it.

Artists, Drug dealers and Skeletons (but not necessarily in that order)the

And I thought yesterday was hot.....

My temperature gauge was up in the mid thirties despite being in the shade. It was a pretty relaxed atmosphere though so the stress was not high and thanks to the coffee cart next door people were not left wanting.

The view of my house is taken by Josh (who is traveling with me for a couple of weeks) from the side of one of the best theatres I've been in. This theatre group built their own theatre that they take with them and is made entirely of plywood, a true proletariat theatre - Mister Brecht would have been moved, I tell ya.

Cool picture huh, here is the artist who drew it.

And this is the artist who was traveling around in a wheelchair bumping into things, we've been bumping into each other all over Holland over the past weeks so it was nice to see him.

And here is an artist who I'd forgotten by face but I have had his picture on my house wall since Vlissingen I believe. He drew this great image which is a bit of a personal favorite and gets a lot of admiration from others. He just put his head in my window and said hello again, so it was a great honor to get a picture of him this time.

In fact the occasion sparked some copy-cat artists as well. Not bad huh.

And here is the skeleton. Not in the cupboard but at my front door. I wasn't scared though. I wasn't... I wasn't.... honest.....

I wish for the life of me I could remember what I gave her to read. I hope it was nothing that I had written.

Ah yes, so now you're thinking, we've seen the artists and the Skeletons, now what's this guy doing.

It was near the end of the day and I noticed this guy (probably about 10 years old) with his smooth 70s sunglasses and I thought, isn't that guy too young for a beer? Well this is Holland, but... no, in fact it's not beer at all, it's softdrink of some sort, I'm sure of it. Then he catches my eye and says, 'He Mijnheer' (mister), 'want some coke?' and holds up this white bag. I broke into hysterics immediately then asked if I could take his picture. I don't know if he was in training, or whether the dutch sense of humour is lost on me, but I've seen enough America movies to know about as much as this kid knows. Even if it is sugar (that is if his mates haven't cut it down with rice-flour, that much sweetner in your bloodstream would have you bouncing off walls and pulling tricks like this.

on the Boulevard

And then there was a great silence.

What can I say... there were days of traveling, and an unreliable source of internet connection. There ARE photos though and a rather poor memory that goes in and out of focus like an old super 8 camera.

This is was Den Bosch, which really was a very big festival. There was far too much to do and see to hang around the internet spot and write about what happened the day before. Josh, my friend from New Zealand was en route with me as he makes his way slowly to Berlin, so it was double-the-fun.

Hot hot hot was Den Bosch, and though it's toilet suicide to accept beer through the window, the sweat on this woman's brow (try zooming in) will attest to the fact that it was pushing mid 30s in the direct sun. It was the best beer I'd had in a very long time.

It wouldn't be right to mention Boulevard festival without mentioning Frans. Many people I spoke to came back here year after year, either as a helper or as an audience. It's that slight degree of separation between performers and pubic that make festivals like this float my boat. Frans plays a character called Fritz who wrangles people onto the navettes to get to shows and until I stood in line to get to a trapeze show I had little appreciation for what he did. This, his 15th year of performing/wrangling means that he had it down to a fine art. What's more, he was happy to show me and Josh what was what in the festival.

And this apparently is an installation that has been at the festival for a number of years. It couldn't help reminding me of The Muppet show.

A is for Alkmaar

Not the Cheese Market was the name of the festival and speaking as one who never saw any cheese, I can guarantee the authenticity of that name. Alkmaar is just 25 minutes from Amsterdam and in some ways it bears some similarities yet in some other ways it had a way all of its own.

For some reason I got a lot of gifts through the window. Here is a bunch of wild flowers from genuine Alkmaar fields.

She came baring gifts including this one of an Alkmaar emblem, just to prove that there is a cheese market that goes on somewhere in town.

Check these artworks out.

And this is my friend who was born in Chile but lived most of her life in Holland, we had a great conversation about being at the margins of society and what it is like to feel like an observer. In fact, that was the theme of the day, observations.

Mean tats - Alkmaar styles

And in case real flowers aren't your style, here are some that will last a little longer.





These two are brother and sister, on holiday here but both on opposing windows, one of them sees north, one of them sees south. Imagine what it will be like when they grow up a little.

So this jigsaw turns up from my window, turns out it's from Yolanda who lives in Haarlem. Backtrack here a little bit. Haarlem is about 15 minutes south of Alkmaar and was just a name on a map that I randomly chose to stay on the way here, so I booked into the local youth hostel. Yolanda has worked there for 5 years (from memory) since training as a goldsmith so we had a conversation about what it is to make things and stop making things and what you do with that energy. Everyone has that creative energy I suppose, we just find different things to channel it into.

Then this turns up, delivered by Renate who also works at the hostel. There is one piece missing, I don't think it was intentional but it seems significant since Yolanda was not able to be there in person. So this is puzzle is a kind of tardas, a portal to another place.