#6
ISSUE #6 – 2010/2011 STRICTLY UNEDITED JOURNAL ON THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF NATURE IN THE URbAN ENvIRONmENT
CLUB DONNY
day 1125 Bert De mUYNCk
Last night I dreamed I was being followed. Soon after I woke up, opened the window and watched the city sleep. Looking down, I saw people gathering around the entrance to my apartment building. My initial reaction was to jump, fall and crush them. I believed that while falling my body would enlarge and in a few seconds I would become bigger than the city of Beijing. After that the planet would stop rotating. I looked down again and everybody had disappeared. In the tower in front of me a woman was undressing.
around her apartment. She may not have been beautiful, but she could certainly move her body. And that’s the most important thing. She came to the window, stared in my direction and rubbed her breasts against the glass. As she did this, my thoughts returned to earlier that afternoon. A petite lady had given a lecture about flexible cities, collapsing buildings, while drawing strange comparisons between different cities. It is hard to resist the temptation of a theoretically sound analysis of the contemporary city. Now, so I was convinced, she was standing in front of me, When I started in business in this country, I was the smoking the city away. only architect around. This place didn’t need any of us, or so I was told upon arrival. I was trouble, I never called myself an expert; as always, other dealing in towers and transforming territories. people call you names. Being called an architect Here, progress occurred naturally, building was was harder to face. Because it was true, it felt uncomplicated and architecture had its own like an insult. But I was doing so much more than mysterious ways of being realized. Those times piling bricks on top of each other, considering had their advantages; there was nobody around different ways of putting frames into their places, to criticize you, you could think up the most attaching wood to concrete. outrageous designs and they would materialize, no matter where, the following week. You talked Architects think cities here are more dynamic, to some people, any people, and the next day a but they do get disenchanted. Here, they expect whole neighborhood would disappear. After that their life to be glamorous and to be entertained exhilarating period this country got caught up by big clients, day-in-day-out. These nobodiesin the global swindle of creating livable, green, from-nowhere work here with the sole ambition sustainable, human and creative cities; the future of gaining recognition elsewhere. A client can was determined by feedback provided by experts. smell that craving for escapism. My clients know Experts, as everyone knows, are like vampires; that I breathe architecture. They know I adjust they are only sexy in movies. A few years earlier to the environment easily, smoothly, smartly these experts had talked themselves into a couple and mysteriously. That is because I came here of meetings with the ruling classes and sketched blank, without being preconditioned by anything them a grim future; one of urban disaster, famine, else. If clients want contemporary, I give them war, traffic, social unrest, revolt and an all- contemporary. If others want contemporary with encompassing anonymous urban environment. Chinese characteristics, I give them contemporary Fear would be all that remained, the future reduced with Chinese characteristics. If they want to something that was so yesterday-ish. The same elaborate, they get elaborate. experts that put the problem on the agenda would, of course, be the only ones able to provide the She must have some kind of itch, I thought. solutions. All they wanted in return was money. That is how this country miraculously went from There must be something wrong with the glass, I a building boom one day, to bankruptcy the next. thought. When I left, I was told they needed me. Some architects are so preoccupied with their own Soon after, she was naked and started walking creations that they forget it’s reality that demands
our attention. They deal with reality from a distance, get lost and are unable to see what is really happening; the end of the city as we think we know it. As an expert, your life is dependent on a weird form of self-inflicted euphoria; that doomsday will come tomorrow. On the scale of spatial organization, the contemporary city is located somewhere between the laboratory and the landfill. One architect once said that congestion, economics, dependency and lack of vision have all contributed to the development of the modern city. In those cities, so he argued, people take for granted to spend a lifetime in large sterile apartment blocks. He forgot to mention that most of the people take it for granted that they’ll spend the rest of their lives in slums. Rubbing their breasts against cardboard and barbwire. He also forgot to mention that they will be forced to move territories constantly, that sterile territories will replace their humble habitats, that they will only return in order to roam around in the laboratory and collect the garbage, sweep the dust, pour the concrete, operate the elevator, guard the compound and clean the dishes. The silence surrounding the creation of architecture in this country may be the result of its dismissal of the authorship of the architectural image. This country is built by an army of anonymous architects, invisible planners and unidentifiable property developers, all following or broadening the guidelines laid down by a group of mysterious officials. All this together leads to a situation in which the autonomy of architecture is the central tenet. People passing through the city, on its ring roads and elevated highways, through its avenues or swirling along its intersections, rarely seem to think about who is responsible for the environment they find themselves in. When everything around you is changing, it is difficult to make a distinction between the important and the ephemeral changes. There must be something wrong with the building in front of me, I thought. CLUB DONNY #6 2010 > 03
malakoff haNNe hageNaars
Amsterdam: This man knows how to flirt, his eyes squinting like a puma on the prowl, his compliments descend into implausibility and still I find them hard to resist. In the midst of my confusion as to whether I should or shouldn’t play along, he suddenly lifts me up and sniffs, the scent of my perfume, my body, my breath. ‘This is how we decide about sex in the land where I come from’. His sweet-scented senses intoxicate. Château of Roissy: Thus he would posses her as a god possessed his creatures, who he lays hold of in guise of a monster or a bird, of an invisible spirit or a state of ecstasy. Since she loved him. She could not help loving whatever derived from him. O listened and trembled with happiness, because he loved her, al acquiescent she trembled.
From: Pauline Réage: Histoire d’O, (translation Sabine d’Estree) (Pauline Réage was a pseudonym of Anne Declos. She wrote the book for her lover and boss at the publisher’s Gallimard, Jean Paulhan.)
In Paris a door opens. There stands Pierre. On his face a darkish haze shows clearly in the glaring sunlight; in his long nightgown with a hat on his head, as if he just stepped out of bed, which he has. The first time my partner and I visited his uncle Pierre and aunt Puss in Paris, I was lured along under false pretences. My partner had the run of his aunt’s apartment, he showed me the brasscoloured key, he was free to stay whenever he wanted. What he failed to mention was that his aunt and uncle also live there, that we would actually just be paying them a visit and that both the house and his relatives were in a pretty filthy state. In the back-garden studio of the house in the suburb Malakoff, we slept on sheets we brought along with us, after having dusted all the cobwebs off. One of the toilets had long since ceased to function and the other had not been cleaned in years; the garden it is then! Aunt Puss bought the studio in the sixties and turned it into a Parisian version of a Tyrolean climbers’ hut, wood everywhere, and on the floor she laid large jagged tiles in a pattern of her own design. Books, books were everywhere. She no longer did the cooking. Pierre bought the meals from the petrol station around the corner. Breakfast consisted of old pieces of baguette, washed down with expensive champagne out of grimy little cups. Paris sparkled. I’ve loved them ever since that first weekend. Pierre and Puss, her name apparently derives from ‘sourpuss’, her nickname as a child. Aunt Puss’ grey-haired furrowed head, her eyes a watery blue and red, was still full of thoughts that 04 < CLUB DONNY #6 2010
quickly became ever-greyer and more shadowy. Her skin was covered in razor-sharp grooves, as if every night her head was bound tightly with strings, which were cut loose again in the morning. On our second visit, her speech had already deteriorated into long threads of sound, an incomprehensible fusion of Frenchdutch. Her mind could no longer stand the pressure of those strings and she began down the long lonely road of withdrawal. She mumbled restlessly and her eyes took on that hazy glow, whereby you knew that while she could still see, she was no longer able to comprehend. Step by step her reality disappeared, and nothing came in its place. Like the path from the house to the studio that also gradually became overgrown; from then on they remained in the living room. Puss in one bed, Pierre in the other. Her resting, him reading. They spent summer in the country house in Soisysur-Seine. A typical French country retreat with a main building and two wings. If we didn’t find them in Malakoff, we continued driving to the other house. Puss was looking surprisingly good, we thought. Yes, one evening she had walked into the garden and got lost, the dear waiflike Puss was calmly waiting under a bush, waiting for what? First for darkness, then for nothing, that’s all, until she was found, stone cold. She was picked up by an ambulance with its lights flashing. The days in hospital had done her good. Her nails were manicured and her skin had regained its own colour. A year later: the house in Malakoff is empty again. We drive on to the country house. The doorbell rings. Pierre opens the door and for the first time we see panic in his eyes, desperation. We follow him inside. Papers, books, matches and a handkerchief float in the last remaining water on the floor. During the cold winter months the pipes had burst and water came streaming into the house. Toadstools are growing on the spines of the books, the wood of the windowsill, even on the pieces of carpet on the first floor where the moisture has soaked through. A seventeenth century Japanese figurine is ravaged by white mould. Everywhere, books are lying, standing and hanging out to dry, hopelessly. We help drag the green velour sofa outside, but the thing just falls apart. Woodlice and unidentified moisture-loving insects run for their lives. The soft green fabric and crumbly pieces of wood lie on the grass, recovering. One of Pierre’s suits hangs on a coat hanger in the sun. Meanwhile, Puss sits on a bench in the hallway, her long grey hair loose and hanging down, like threads of dust in the light. The dampness has also damaged the clothes she has on, and holes have appeared in her long shapeless nightgown,
through which a breast is visible. The air is full of damp, urine, water and a little sweat. The smell of letting go, no control, of decay. Never had I seen the process of death so visible in life itself. It is still too soon though. Water pipes turned off, mopped up, cleared away, and aired. Malakoff. Nature feels so at ease in this house. Dust inhabits the place, and grime is a second layer that covers these two frail people and their possessions. In the studio behind the house, where nobody goes anymore, the plants are forcing their way in, growing through the bricks, sprouting out between the books. There, in disrepair, lies the book Histoire d’O, the scandalous volume about sex and total submission, which his mother wrote in an attempt to bind her lover to her, through language. She too lived here in Malakoff until her death, in the room where Puss and Pierre now lay together on the bed, letting the days drift by. Spots of pink and white mould add a splash of vivid colour to the black cover of the book. The house in Soisy was a gift from her lover. The one for whom she wrote the book. The books are her other inheritance, books everywhere, in the washbasin, the bath, in boxes, behind the curtains. Unbridled books. During our last visit the situation appears to have changed. For the first time Pierre wants to organize matters. A home help perhaps? A nursing home? First he picks up a large folder, unties the ribbon and opens it. Paper creatures (silverfish, firebrats, long-tailed silverfish) scuttle off to a safer spot, plenty of choice, books lie everywhere. Out of the folder he pulls drawings by Henri Michaux, an etching by Manet. Every sheet of paper is yellowed and covered in circles and mould. ‘If there’s anything you want, just say the word’. The cups, the draining-board and the smell in particular make me lose my appetite. Slyly I stuff my slice of the cake we brought with us into my bag. The smell of urine turns my stomach. Aunt Puss. She breathes. She eats, although it can’t be much. She just keeps living. Now and then she walks around flapping her arms like a bird. She has fallen silent, language has abandoned her. She smiles a lot, distantly. How must the world, this room, look through her eyes? The books stand in rows against the mirrored walls, their spines against the glass, turning their backs on the people. The windows are dull with stains and damp and outside the branches scratch impatiently at the panes. Her nails just keep growing, hands like little claws, but harmless. She lives and breathes, but the smell of what is approaching is all-pervading, the smell of the end. Amsterdam: My relationship has ended prior to their death. La mémoire est humide, lucide.
from: lagos to: douala JeLLe BOUwhUis
While visiting Google Earth, one can only wonder about the geographical embedding of a city like Lagos, especially as geographical background information on this, one of the world’s largest conurbations, is so scarce on the Internet. One website I consulted uses the view of Lagos from the stratosphere as an example of the ‘nature-crushing impact of a city’. True, when seen in its entirety, approx 25 x 20 km, the pale grey of urbanity appears to expand endlessly into the green of the rainforest on this section of the West-African coast. Only a few whimsical, green tentacles seem to defy the sprawling urban fabric – small rivers, wetlands and gorges that are probably unsuitable for settlement, as is the case with the characteristic lagoons from which Lagos derives its name. But a closer inspection reveals that the city is not so much expanding into the rainforest, but into a patchwork of small-scale agricultural enterprises that must have developed at least as rapidly as the city itself, paving the way for the incessant urban sprawl. A more thorough examination of Google Maps, photos of cityscapes and empirical evidence, even the evasive grey, sometimes reveals a green spot other than those riversides mentioned previously. For example, Ikoyi, a densely inhabited quarter on Lagos island, the ‘old’ centre of the city, includes a golf course and a polo club, although from street level these areas are barely visible, let alone accessible. There is, however, one large public green area near the city centre: the park that surrounds the National Theatre and Gallery of Art, institutions that are combined in the same building, which is itself an outstanding jewel of late modernist architecture. Luckily, it hardly attracts any visitors so the park remains a relatively quiet zone in vibrant Lagos, perhaps also due to the fact that the park is less suitable for economic activity than any street elsewhere in the city. It is probably also better policed (while making my way through the park I encountered a squad of adolescents who were carrying rifles and monitoring the main road that borders the park; to me they looked like socalled ‘area boys’, but my driver, who fruitlessly asked them the way, maintained that they were police – not that there was much difference, he went on to say, but still). The vast park, partly wetland, seemed perfectly suited for the museum attendant’s goat to graze on. The guard had little else to do, other than collecting the negligible entrance fee from a single visitor a day. Despite its remarkable architecture the museum seems entirely unfit to house art: it lacks both daylight windows and electricity, and only by the dim flame from a cigarette lighter could one discern
some colourfully painted portraits of famous Nigerian officials, in addition to some sculptures and an empty pedestal sporting the curious memo: ‘curator this object is kept for maintenance’. The main gallery spaces were walled-off anyway. In the park, though, I encountered open-air landscape painters, an image one doesn’t usually associate with Lagos. Partly hidden, but in fact just some 200 meters from the museum entrance, a group of artists joined forces in what is known as ‘Universal Studios’. Their compound was originally intended as parking space for the vehicles of the museum staff, but in the permanent absence of any staff at all, they arranged for its informal conversion into a studio complex. Their work consists of market-orientated woodcutting, painting and elaborately laboured scrap sculpture; their presence in the park is completely unexpected. Some years ago they actually helped Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan to produce their ‘Monument of Sugar’. One wouldn’t call Lagos ‘lush’ although recently some modest investments in artificial nature have been spotted. The strongest impressions of the city consist of exhaust pipes directed towards the streets, incessantly billowing clouds of black smoke from electricity generators that run on gasoline, and the grim slogans spray-painted in black on many of the houses, stating ’this house is not for sale’. As I was told, this is not to ward off prospective immigrants, but to prevent hustlers from selling the house during the owner’s absence. How different the Google impression of Douala, some 800 kilometres to the east! Sumptuous trees dominate this former capital of Cameroon, a city of a yet unknown number of souls, estimated at somewhere between one and four million and supposedly the second-rainiest spot on earth. The satellite view of this part of the Wouri delta, partially obscured by clouds, shows hardly any agricultural activity but instead reveals what appears to be a genuine rainforest. More than that, the city looks as though its inhabitants more or less landed in the jungle and had not yet had time to urbanize their environment. But the actual settlement today is a deception. Douala is a place of the kind for which the term ‘crap city’ was invented. Some blame this predicament on civilian upheavals in the in de 70s and 80s, after which the government relocated the capital to Yaoundé and remained unwilling to reconstruct the old one, but in actual fact Douala looks and feels as if it has always been just as it is today. The respectable contemporary art centre Doual’art, an almost alien feature in this context, gave the crap image a different turn
by commissioning a local artist, Joseph Francis Sumegne for a large public sculpture. In 1996 they realized La Nouvelle Liberté, a work made out of old car parts and other scrap material. Towering above the city’s busiest traffic junction, the surprisingly elegant and impressive figure of over ten meters-tall offers Douala its very own version of the Statue of Liberty. But after such urban distractions, one could actually discern that Douala, nevertheless, offers fertile ground for mango, banana and even coconut trees, suggesting that the locals are able to live from what this urban fruit garden has to offer. Ultimately, a small shed is better for the environment than a Lagos villa. In Douala I met the sympathetic writer Lionel Manga, who is also a part-time environment activist – another surprising feature in a city that obviously has many other problems to deal with. Manga had visited the Philips company in Eindhoven to find out what could be done to get energy-saving light bulbs introduced in Douala. Personally I experienced that large parts of town have no electricity supply at all; an evening approach by plane revealed a deep darkness, as if we were indeed landing in the forest, so I was a bit puzzled by his initiative. In Lagos, such a change could really make a difference, given the ubiquity of the old-fashioned, constantly-burning light bulb – probably one of the reasons behind the notorious unreliability of Nigeria’s electricity company NEPA. While writing down these memories of a trip to West Africa more than a year ago, I got to see a small exhibition by Nigerian documentary photographer Akintunde Akinleye in Amsterdam. A couple of years ago he won a World Press Photo Award with a picture of the devastation in Lagos after a gas pipe explosion. This time I was drawn to one of his photographs of a perfectly manicured and capriciously embellished lawn square in the midst of an infrastructural knot. Various websites contend that this new and unprecedented ecological activity by the city authority precedes a major investment by Chinese traders in a commercial district not far from this particular square. The modest and artificial presence of green in Lagos does not, however, convince the visitor of any environmental care whatsoever. The rainforest has already disappeared with the settlement of farmers and the subsequent urbanization of their land. The governmental mismanagement and environmental neglect in crappy Douala, in contrast, leaves the visitor with the contradictory but definitely more pervasive and lasting impression that there’s very little that separates it from its original habitat: a deep green paradise. CLUB DONNY #6 2010 > 05
in nature’s time gaiL satLer
I am very drawn to haiku and to impressionist paintings, especially those of Monet. Both fuse seeing and feeling and eliminate elaboration of ideas. Descriptions so that the capturing of seeing/ feeling can be spontaneously experienced. These works offer glimpses of the ordinary, guided by capturing the essence rather than the accuracy of representation. For haiku, the constraint of form is mediated by juxtaposition. There is often a seasonal reference, to set place and time. For impressionists form is secondary to capturing light and presence in the moment. Monet once wrote about his process: When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here is an oblong of pink, here is a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naïve impression of the scene before you. Upon my own reflection of these forms of expression, I find myself attracted to these visceral and intuitive works because they express my feelings as a city dweller wherein my environment is dominated by the spatial and temporal formality and constraints of structured living. Grids rule as do the urban colors of grey and black. Punctuality is a must; time is money. In addition to a visually ordered landscape, there is an undercurrent of the clock, not the biological but the economic one. Yet in my daily life, the visceral approach is also how I experience the city. It is as Monet wrote a series of impressions, slices of life that complete a scene but only in an ephemeral way. In doing so, it offers respite from a hyper and often grey world. To reset my own biological clock, I seek escape through the flora and fauna that grow and inhabit in spite of human encroachment. Framing these is ultimately the sky, day or night. I think I have left a timed and measured world but upon closer exploration. I am in the world of Nature – the mother of all clocks and architectonics. I am moved to write about these reflections in what I call verbal sketches, a rapid, loose, uncensored accounts similar to Monet’s sketches or, in French, pochades. I begin my seasonal countdown, marking time through the flowers that come and go.
32 < CLUB DONNY #6 2010
Daffodils: lucky seven One of the first signals of spring are daffodils. A conical cup of bright yellow surrounded by six triangles in the same shade resting atop a bright green tubular stem. The daffodil is so angular, so bold. Its pungent scent is no less brazen. What breaks up the rather severe geometry is the ruffling at the tip of the cone. Spring is a season of subtleties, of pastels and hinted scents. Yet this harbinger of the season is as fearless as can be.
buildings, people moving, stores filled with merchandise. What gets my attention are the chrysanthemums in planters along the streets and at buildings’ entrances throughout the city. Their compact form embodies all that makes nature remarkable; perfect symmetry, precision in the number of petals needed to complete their shape of circle within circle. The petals alternate to reveal each and all. Individual and whole in perfect harmony; sturdy and delicate in a spectrum of colors so vibrant – yellow, gold, terracotta, magenta; even the whites are standout. Some are multi-toned. Gold and crimson, white and magenta. Here too harmony is achieved. Each color allows the other its space and glory and combines to be made even more glorious by their union. There is a slight scent if you move closer and a perfectly yellow circle at the very core. Such abundance in this tiny package. They are autumn perfectly captured; they are style and substance in perfect balance, like all of nature’s creations.
The subtlety of lilacs Later, lilacs, in hues of paler purples and white emitting softer and more pleasing fragrances fill the landscape. A white lilac bush is nestled, protected from strong ocean winds. Unlike its purple counterparts, this lilac’s scent is less pungent, but no less fragrant. It compels me to move closer, breathe longer and stronger. A small monarch butterfly is perched atop one of the bouquets, in no hurry to move. As it lingers, it gently opens its wings. It has found the perfect place to soak in the sun and the scent of the lilac. I, in turn, am treated The audacity of nature to this double dose of subtlety, awakening me to After a winter snowfall, the city goes about the beauty afforded in this manner. recovering. Shoveling, digging out cars, attending to events postponed by the weather. For the Come the wild roses umpteenth time, it seems, I take my boots and Late in May, come roses, or more specifically wild walk in the brown-grey slush. There is nothing roses. When a rose is a rose. redeeming it seems, until I look and see one purple Bushes grow on the side of a road. They encircle and one yellow crocus in the crack at the front and enliven a stretch of parkway at the beach. Pops steps. Their colors are so much the brighter amid of fuchsia, white and pink punctuate the many the soot tainted snow and grey brick. These tiny shades of green. The six petals unfold and emit signs of life, unwilling to wait to be less than their their unmistakable fragrance. Mention wild roses beautiful selves, reveal the wonderful audacity to anyone who has encountered them and it is this of nature. Life goes on and can bring with it feature they retell in words and facial expressions, redemption and hope- multifold! ones of wild abandon and sheer pleasure. I am amused and also puzzled by the idea that these The city is filled with small gestures of this flowers are called wild, especially here because wilderness. Pocket parks and sideway cracks, they civilize what is an otherwise bland stretch of planted pots and window boxes, all backed by the gray concrete and black tar. Why would anyone larger green gestures on rooftops and abandoned opt for civil rather than wild at this moment? elevated railways. I consider which of the forms Why would anyone opt for domesticated roses, civilize and persist; which delight and energize. subdued, exacting praise and reverence over ones For me the answer is clear. Natural gestures as that elicit the purest form of astonishment? well as human elements can coexist for they are I suddenly understand Gauguin’s decision to move intrinsically connected, one complimenting the to Tahiti over Paris and why I will rethink what the other on this canvas we call the city, creating a wild can mean and evoke. tableau, complete but never finished. Constantly renewing and offering ways to astonish. Allowing Chrysanthemums: style and substance us to be guided by natural time. In a place defined by uncountables; soaring
urban farming
kLaar vaN Der Lippe & Bart stUart On the morning of Wednesday 14 July 2010, the Amsterdam-Amstelland police department discovered a large marijuana plantation in our shared studio building. This, it emerged, was located in a secret space belonging to our neighbour. For years we have managed the entire building and the green spaces around it ourselves, mindful of our philosophy of collective responsibility. July 14th is the public holiday in France to commemorate the storming of the Bastille. The start of the French revolution in which the people seize power and demand ‘freedom, equality and fraternity’. Suddenly, 5 detectives appear. They inspect doors and windows. Then force the entrance. This is the moment of truth. A helicopter has previously collected evidence with a thermal camera. Temperature differences inside a building can be measured to within 2ºC from a helicopter. The required grow lights create a tropical climate, making the space much warmer than its surroundings. Time passes between taking the thermal images and the raid itself, so what the raid will discover remains uncertain. In this case it proves rather disappointing: the cannabis nursery is a reasonable size, but only contains 1600 small plants. Evidently the crop has just been harvested. That is unfortunate. The nursery is orderly, professional and well organized. Ventilation pipes run across the ceiling and 12 large carbon filters stand next to the entrance. During the flowering period, the plants develop a strong odour, making it necessary to filter the air thoroughly. Extra floors have been added in the space, thus enlarging the growing area. The plants stand in big trays with special soil, while an irrigation system waters them automatically. Special nutrients ensure rapid growth and high yields of THC, the active agent of the cannabis plant. Mind-expansion is manufactured with utmost efficiency. The maximum is achieved in a short period of time. The plants develop like top-class athletes, and yet, this is not a maintenance-free machine, the plants require daily attention. Moulds and infections are a constant threat, temperature and artificial sunlight need to be fine-tuned for an optimal result. The estimated yield is 1600 x 25 gram= 40 kg. At a value of 3.50 euro per gram, the return amounts to 140,000 euro per 8 weeks. Minus costs. The
electricity was tapped off illegally and it turns out the outside world, and a grey outward appearance. that our collective has been footing the bill for Only those involved know your power and what years. you are worth. Together you constitute your own realm in which mutual trust is the precondition ‘It’s a game of cat and mouse’, explains the and the limit. Together or not at all. Together or detective. ‘After two harvests, you’ve recovered the enemy. From behind a bush we record the your costs, and after that you’re home and dry. observance of the brotherhood. Until we come along and it starts all over again’. Two days later it becomes clear a decision has Can we have a look? We are allowed in, as the been made. Perhaps the State has won a battle, forensic examination has already taken place. though certainly not yet the war. Our studio turns Inside we furtively take photos. out to be the battlefield. The initial provocation: The plants do not feel like nature. It is a kind of the windows are smashed. After another two false reality: artificial and forced. They seem like days: the gas installation is destroyed, followed slaves, prisoners. What are we seeing here? Is this by personal items, and then the threats begin. a field, a field with a farmer? Or is it a plantation, We make constant and emotional appeals to our with a planter and slaves? Is this Babylon or a justice system, we ask for its representatives, the sweatshop? police, to intervene, for their protection. They, Urban farming or urban exploitation? Our world however, are not that easily persuaded to launch a or another world? counter attack. Is there really a battle? Do we have When we re-emerge we see the neighbour watching legitimate and convincing evidence? In the eyes of from a short distance. We quickly conceal the the law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. camera and don’t greet each other further. The administration of justice is not based upon opinions. An independent witness is necessary The door to the nursery is the portal to a parallel before making any decision that involves direct world. Our neighbour is now visited by very confrontation. Correct but impossible: in this different friends and colleagues. Bigger cars, asymmetrical warfare the tactic is precisely to bigger mouths. Previously a quiet one-man remain unseen. Operations are stealthy and covert. business, now a lively conductor arrogantly After each successful attack and failure to produce waving directions. The growing floors are evidence, the neighbour becomes increasingly demolished noisily, bonfires are built. Fire, more raucous: victory, victory. fire. We watch the black smoke in amazement. In front of us a ritual is being carried out. History The culmination occurs on a Wednesday morning. rewritten. The raid becomes a rampage, the quiet The fire brigade arrives just in time to prevent the life behind closed doors an exuberant screaming studio being razed to the ground completely. After outside. Hidden horticulture is now exhibitionism. inspecting the scene, the detective shakes his The whole thing reveals a frustration and rage that head: no CCTV images, no evidence. ‘Basic rules goes deeper than the simple cat and mouse story. of investigation’. We nod compliantly through our This is not just the loss of lucrative business. tears. This is about the division of roles: who is the cat and who the mouse. Of course, having a secret By now the peace has returned. The opening life is complex. Being a successful grower is an between the worlds has closed. The plantation exercise in humility. Although you easily make as stands empty. Soon we are holding an open house much as 5 police officers per month, you have to to find possible tenants. We can almost return to continue driving the same size car. You can’t wear the studio ourselves. Now and then we think about expensive clothes or jewellery. Don’t discuss your the plants. And about all the secret gardens behind business model. Keep quiet about your successes, the facades in the city. As an image though... never complain about setbacks. You are unable to report robberies, have no standing or respect in CLUB DONNY #6 2010 > 33
DONNY’s FavOUrites
sensational bikes www.ericroelen.nl We love the bikes from Club Donny friend Eric Roelen. The fixed gear bikes are handmade and composed of new and used items. bangalore urban food garden httP://jgarden.in Over the last six months, Chandra has done eight installations for families in individual homes and apartments and one for a group of social engineers in a bank colony. He believes that organic terrace gardening is a simple and powerful means for the middle class to roll up their sleeves and get more involved with issues concerning their lives the sPace lady The Space Lady is San Francisco’s most enchanting street musician. Whether on keyboard or accordion, her music stops sidewalk traffic even in this multi-task town. She usually performs wearing a steel helmet with angel wings, making her easy to recognize but belying the credibility of her haunting vocal interpretations of well known songs. the beekeePer next door In March, New York City made beekeeping legal, and in so doing it joined a long list of other municipalities, from Denver to Milwaukee to Minneapolis to Salt Lake City, that have also lifted beekeeping bans in the last two years. Nationwide, hives are being tucked into small backyards and set alongside driveways. Beekeeping classes are filling up quickly, and new beekeeping clubs are forming at the same time that established ones are reporting large jumps in membership. naoshima jaPan the benesse art site A series of art projects developed on Naoshima Island, located in the Seto Inland Sea. Its facilities includes the Benesse House, the Chichu Art Museum, the Art House Project, and Honmura Lounge & Archive; their sitespecific activities and artworks focus on contemporary art in harmony with the natural beauty and local culture of Naoshima. The Benesse House was designed by acclaimed Japanese architect Tadao Ando. sPinning flowers ep wizards httP://whizards.bandcamP.com/album/sPinning-flowers-eP Oh boy. This is a must. We are so chilled right now its starting to get uncomfortable. Wizards have so very generously put this excellent Ep up for free download on their bandcamp. Make sure you bring some thermals to this party. Pok fu lam A residential area on Hong Kong Island, at the western end of the Southern District overlooking Lamma Island. Pok Fu Lam can claim several firsts in the history of Hong Kong: It was the place where Hong Kong’s floral emblem, Bauhinia blakeana, was first discovered; the site for Hong Kong’s first reservoir, Pokfulam Reservoir (1883), and the site for Hong Kong’s first dairy farm supplying milk and cattle to the Hong Kong community. At the centre is the indigenous village called Pok Fu Lam Village which is often mistaken as a shanty town but is a historic village that has existed since the beginning of the 17th century. zaPPata romana www.urbanarchitectureProject.org About 50 community-run green areas mapped: little urban gardens, play yards, edible gardens and areas for walking, resting, or simply talking. Citizens and associations acting together to reclaim the abandoned areas in Rome. More than 100 sites together with the 65 spontaneous gardens registered by the Rome municipality. Urban farms too and other interesting experiences such as Partecipation Houses, “Punti Verdi Qualità” and green areas maintained by established associations. anne geene Perceel nr. 235 encycloPedie van een volkstuin isbn 978-90-815515-1-9 Unique photographic universe, a meticulous account of what there is to explore in a neglected plot of exactly 245 square meters new york the anti restaurant suPPer club movement Some call these secretive supper events underground dinner parties, others call them anti-restaurants, or guerrilla gourmet. The ‘anti-restaurant supper club’ is where passionate foodies who dislike the constraints or are simply bored of restaurants, open their doors to the public by hosting as many people as can fit around their dinner table and feeding them. They have gained a following among food lovers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who have an opinion on local versus organic, prefer intimate and casual to grand and ceremonial, and are open to meeting people and building connections in new ways. 34 < CLUB DONNY #6 2010
Club Donny is a biannual magazine on the personal experience of nature in the urban environment presented by Frank Bruggeman, Ernst van der Hoeven and Ben Laloua/Didier Pascal. PAGE 01 / 36 Shanghai, Birdhead PAGE 02 / 35 Texas, Bert de Jong TEXTPAGE 03 Day 1125, Bert de Muynck TEXTPAGE 04 Malakoff, Hanne Hagenaars TEXTPAGE 05 From: Lagos To: Douala, Jelle Bouwhuis TEXTPAGE 06 Bamboo PAGE 07 / 30 Veldhoven, Mei Wah, Bjorn Staps PAGE 08 / 29 Nantou City, Taiwan, Joris Landman PAGE 09 / 28 Shanghai, Birdhead PAGE 10 / 27 Tokyo, Tsukiji Fish Market, Ernst van der Hoeven PAGE 11 / 26 Lagos, Green Cirkel, Akintunde Akinleye PAGE 12 / 25 Saint Aignan, ZooParc de Beauval, Anouk Gielen PAGE 13 / 24 Napels, Ben Laloua PAGE 14 / 23 Oberhausen, Liesbeth Doornbosch PAGE 15 / 22 Shanghai, Frank Bruggeman PAGE 16 / 21 Mantingerzand, Drente, Denise Collignon PAGE 17 / 20 Tokyo, Homeless shelter along the Ara-kawa river Itabashi ward Krijn Kristiaansen/ Cathelijne Montens PAGE 18 / 19 Pingquan Village, Hebei Province, Zhu Shikun TEXTPAGE 31 Bamboo TEXTPAGE 32 In Nature’s Time, Gail Satler TEXTPAGE 33 Urban Farming, Klaar van der Lippe & Bart Stuart TEXTPAGE 34 Donny’s favourites
TRANSLATION / Mike Ritchie PRINTING / die Keure, Brugge PUBLISHER / post editions www.post-editions.com SUBSCRIPTION / Bruil & van der Staaij www.bruil.info/ ISSN: 1879-7466 Club Donny www.clubdonny.com © 2010 Club Donny The authors and contributors. Reproduction without permission prohibited. This publication was made possible by Municipality of Rotterdam Department of Art and Culture.