#8
ISSUE #8 – 2012 STRICTLY UNEDITED JOURNAL ON THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF NATURE IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
CLUB DONNY
ROOMS SANNEKE VAN HASSEL
And those first leaves, so thin; they unfolded in April. Then came the aphids, their sticky juice making my father curse. In the evening he propped his bike against the tree and when he left for the factory next morning his saddle was sticky. Light-green shiny leaves. My mother opened the windows. Linden scent was blown into the room. From my small bed I could just see the branches. Where I live now I lie in bed for hours. My whole life passes by. Father, mother, our house, Dirk; I bring them together, put them in my room. How quiet they are now they’re no longer around. Little things: tray, dram, snack. Dirk talks about crystal clarity, about a soberness that would do humanity a great deal of good. As twilight falls I fill the glasses. And at night when the lamps came on, that lime green against the dark sky. The house was always dark, at night and in daytime, rooms, furniture, solid dark brown. I could play hide-and-seek all over the place. High summer, mollifying sweet scent of the linden tree pushing against the window, pushing to get in, to fill rooms. In August the little wings fell onto the path. My mother
gathered them to make tea. Linden blossom for when I couldn’t sleep. She’d forgotten to pick them. Eventually she would forget everything. Linden for the memory. Or a window. Where I live now the windows don’t open. That’s because they’re afraid we’ll jump. They’re happiest if we sit in our chairs all day. I’m very good at that, fortunately. I think: good that Dirk’s no longer around to see this. He was quick to feel hemmed in. Threw out the furniture. His parents’ cabinet. My grandfather’s chair. I turned and looked outside while he knocked through walls, made a folding table, almost Rietveld, or not quite. To me a house is walls, corridors and rooms you can hide in. Plus one window, for the light, the air. But he gave me walls of glass. Light that came from above. ‘Everyone can see us,’ I said. ‘Only the birds,’ said Dirk. ‘And you can always get rid of the house, leave.’ But a linden tree would never do that; it can live for five hundred years, solidly rooted. ‘Little bird, I have heard, what a merry song you sing,’ father hummed as he weeded blades of grass from the gravel drive. You never know who’s watching you. I wanted to keep
things for myself. That can be difficult here. Every week they go through my cupboards. ‘Thank you,’ I say. If you’re not nice they’re gone in no time and then the day is long. ‘Hello my dear,’ when they bring me my coffee. ‘Thank you.’ The world is behind my back. I pretend to be knitting. They like to see you keeping busy. I pour drinks for my family. ‘Would you like another coffee madam?’ ‘We’ve just started on the drink,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t matter a bit, madam.’ How we’ve been living in the dark for centuries, Dirk said. How he was going to make a change. Modern, bright, clear. He painted the walls so white you couldn’t see anything any longer. I looked out of the window, at the dark tree trunks. If I twist a stick, air comes in through the holes in a grid at the top of the window. Doesn’t matter a bit if I forget, not a bit; where I live now there comes air from a hole in the ceiling too. Downstairs they keep chickens. They’re in a little coop. Next to it are sycamore trees with scaly bark. In winter you have to prune them.
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DEATH IN MUNICH JOB FLORIS
15:18h The layout is clear: a field with a basic structure of long straight paths, narrow at the entrance, fanning out into a terrain with increasingly wide plots between the paths. At its widest point this trapezium turns into a semicircle, the paths follow the curve, thus enclosing the terrain. A narrow crossing forms the point of contact with the adjacent terrain. This is a square that is slightly tilted in relation to the rounded trapezium and it also has a rectilinear pattern of paths. The slight tilt breaks the symmetrical harness, anticipates the geography of the ground and follows the curve of the stream that borders the south-east edge of the terrain. On this topographic map, the distances are difficult to estimate and no buildings are shown. 15:26h Any tourist even slightly interested in architecture draws up a wish-list of buildings, interiors, ensembles and other canonical places to visit. The contradiction is that the list is usually just as long as the time is limited. Some of these kinds of places hardly lend themselves to a speeddate, so they generally remain brief encounters. The familiar opinion from publications is visited and re-established together with a few extra opinions, thus the lens keeps the building at a suitable distance. This efficient approach does not allow one to become imbued with the tone and atmosphere of the place. 15:33h Three Indians appear from behind the bushes on the left. Small in stature, it’s true, but the surprise is no less for it. They proceed along their path purposefully, take no notice of my presence and, warily and without a sound, they disappear in the low vegetation. On this sunny afternoon a gentle breeze causes the rustling of the leaves to mingle with the sounds of the city. Every bench appears to be occupied by parents with prams, people reading newspapers and whispering couples seeking repose. The air and the green seem more intense here. People are picnicking in the tall grass beside the paths. 15:45h Döllgast remains well-hidden here; a long, thorough search lies ahead of me, combined with the agony of doubting whether I’m in the right place. The relatively unknown architect Hans Döllgast undertook the emotionally charged task 04 < CLUB DONNY #8 2012
of renovating several structures that emerged damaged from the Second World War, mostly institutional buildings, including the Alte Pinakotek. Shortly after the Second World War, the reflex was mainly to erase and forget; the path of least resistance. In Döllgast’s renovations, the traces of destruction – and thus the memory of the crimes of the Nazi era – are retained for as long as possible.
16:37h The classical influences on the design are unmistakable. A bit further along, in an open area among the low vegetation, a naked body lies nonchalantly in the sun. A replica of a fallen siren? The distinction between aged marble and bones becomes blurred eventually. The white wire that appears from the head reveals music and circulation. A pizza courier races past on a mountain bike, a strange acceleration in this 15:57h tranquil world, which apparently also serves as a There are no identifying signs. The wild groves shortcut. often narrow the ample gravel pathways to overgrown corridors, as if nobody here is willing 16:46h to support the straight path by pruning every now As arch rivals, Leo von Klenze and Friedrich and then. Ragged old trees with low-hanging von Gärtner must have competed in the design of branches capture the sunlight and thus block their own tombs. Even here, the two Baumeisters every view. It is impossible to visually decide a attached to the Court of Ludwig I apparently destination and move through this lush terrain in wanted to outdo each other. This time in sobriety a directed manner. There’s nothing for it but to and restraint: no Hellenistic scenes, no immense roam around in search. No punishment, with this Valhalla or Befreiungshalle, as a sort of postweather, but it is inefficient: this terrain dictates an edit of their own position and influence that puts ever-slower search. everything in a more modest perspective. Von Gärtner made a redesign for this terrain in Italian 16:16h style, and would later be laid to rest here himself. Series of silhouettes stand in apparently random arrangement. Dead stones overrun by living 17:12h foliage. These structures must have once been The gate squeaks shut, just after the bell tolls, strictly ordered, before being pushed agonizingly precisely when the sought-after structures slowly out of their alignment by roots and come into view in the distance. The pilgrimage branches. Thus, a wonderful scale model of a appears to be complete; all of Döllgast’s subtle deserted city has been created, a forest full of slopes can finally be studied and fathomed. Not fantastic structures eroded by Chronos, sometimes an anticlimax, but of such minor relevance in adorned with ridiculous sculptures, sometimes this untamed environment. An open space offers sober due to the levelling effect of the overgrown sunshine. A soft, mossy mattress beckons. As I lie down the ground enfolds and embraces me. moss and foliage. 16:21h The map of the terrain may not have shown any complicated junctions, but reality proves to be more unruly, once you’re on your way, logic comes under pressure. It gradually becomes apparent that one aspect is completely omitted from the flat, cartographic representation. The overgrowth creates spaces that are far more complex and more richly diverse than in the most ornate Baroque churches. The trees and plants’ own logic competes with the logic of the terrain’s design, dominates and forms an impressive system of diverse, non-designed spaces. Colourful and varied. Monumental and dark. Intimate and high. Low and distant. Lost in the forest, with no white rabbit to follow.
18:15h Places such as these were only built outside the city walls around the turn of the century, for reasons of hygiene, a break with the tradition of using the grounds of a church. The Alter Südfriedhof has now been swallowed up by the city. It is situated in its heart and functions as a green enclave: a municipal park where no icecream is sold, no music can be heard and no barbeques are held. All things contemporary seem to have been left outside the walled entrance. This Arcadian landscape constitutes an anachronism in the dynamic and ever-expanding urbanism, even the sounds from the bustling city are muffled to distant echoes here.
WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THIS NATURE? ZOË GRAY After living for six years in Charlois, one of Rotterdam’s more insalubrious neighbourhoods, in a street where the inhabitants’ passion for music is such that they share their choice of tunes with all their neighbours; and above a garage whose reviving engines and shouting customers start like clockwork at 9am six days a week, a Christmas retreat to the French countryside seemed like a wise idea. Armed with a newly bought sat-nav (a.k.a. marital saviour), off we set for a fortnight of calm, two weeks which the French describe as quinze jours, somehow squeezing in one more day than the rest of us. On our first night in our rural getaway – an ancient stone farmhouse – the silence was, as the saying goes, deafening. Waking in the middle of the night, I feared I had gone blind, but then realized that the shutters were simply shut, keeping out the sliver of moonlight and the haze of the milky way, rather than the usual flood of the streetlamps sodium glow. I was then driven to distraction by an incessant scratching sound – surely a rabid mouse trying to claw its way into the bedroom – I finally realized that it was the sound of my eyelashes on the pillow, tsh tsh, tsh tsh. By day three, when enough wood had been chopped to keep us warm, and wellington boots had been purchased from the hypermarché – appropriately called at this time of year, when all shoppers appear hyper, if not mentally deranged – it was the moment to take a huge leap for mankind. Yes, it was time for a walk. Now, in Rotterdam Zuid, the options for bucolic wanderings are limited, and the best bet is the newly joined up Zuiderpark, which cleverly links previously disparate parkjes into one huge swathe of green, of which the city planners are very proud. This green smile on the Rotterdam map has footpaths, cycle-paths (perhaps the occasional psychopath lurking amidst the trees) and playgrounds for children interspersed at regular intervals. It even has, in some special spots, exercise equipment for the health-conscious amongst the city’s inhabitants, placed at carefully chosen locations where you can crunch your abs while admiring ducks navigating a zebra crossing, or herons nesting under the elevated Slinge metro. The whole landscape is landscaped to explain how it should be used, like a miniature version of the Netherlands, complete with gezellig allotment gardens and designated barbeque areas. There can be no doubt about what one is supposed to do there, which makes rebellion easy. But what of the French countryside, where the rules are less obvious, if not downright invisible to an outsider? For a start, no countryside dweller in their right mind would go for a walk simply for
the sake of it. You won’t catch a paysan tiptoeing through the pansies for pleasure. No French farmer would go for a stroll unless it was with the express purpose of collecting truffles or mushrooms, or unless he was wearing an orange fluo jacket and had a shotgun tucked under his arm, which clearly shifts the activity from strolling to hunting and gathering. Countryside people don’t need to go for walks, because they are out and about in nature all the time. It is their livelihood, their property, as invisible to them as water is to a fish. For the city-dweller such as myself, however, nature is an aesthetic and sensory experience, something to be exclaimed over, painted, photographed, captured in some way or another. For me, a walk is the medium for this interaction with nature. I expect it to clear the mind, exercise the body, and refresh the soul, which is quite a lot to ask from a stumble through the mud. Faced with no limitations beyond the stamina of our legs, the warmth of our coats and the time until supper, we set off. Hands tucked in pockets or – in my favourite pose – clasped behind the back, we four dislocated urban flaneurs stomped off with a host of expectations of our walk. Fuelled by advertising images of the fresh wholesome fun that the countryside represents, and nourished by landscape painting that presents the countryside as an ordered, two-dimensional scene for our personal contemplation, we thought we knew what we were doing. But we were wrong. As often with such forays off the beaten track, I realized there was a mismatch of expectations. A la campagne, my ignorance floors me – I don’t know what ‘make’ the trees are, I can’t tell a poisonous fungus from a delicious mushroom, nor distinguish between the buzz of a buzzard from the warble of a warbler. To further befuddle me, I discovered that footpaths are somewhat of a rarity in rural France, unless you want to embark upon one of the pilgrim trails all the way to Santiago de Compostela, scallop shell in hand. For more modest ramblers, such as ourselves, this left two options: staying on the roads, or trespassing. The former was clearly too easy; the feel of tarmac beneath the feet too urban, the route too obvious to follow. The latter was more tempting, but called for nerves of steel, especially as it was hunting season. This meant that we had to do our darndest to make sure that of us could be mistaken for wild boar by a triggerhappy hunter after a skinfull (or six). By the time we had skirted our first copse, and picked our way along the edge of the first ploughed field – the weight of the mud pulling down our boots – the local toms-toms were in full swing, and all the local dogs and their owners knew that interlopers have been spotted in their fields.
This is another anomaly of the countryside: contrary to the Zuiderpark on a sunny Sunday, the countryside appears empty, abandoned by all human activity, left under the watch of a few sleepy cows. While you could probably rollerblade topless around Ahoy without raising more than an eyebrow, in the countryside your slightest action will be noted by your neighbours, and their neighbours, and their neighbours, until your afternoon’s ambling is the talk of the not-quitetown. In a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Obelix, those most intrepid of Gauls, the locals will shrug their shoulders in inimitable Gallic style and tap their heads – tok tok tok – as if to confirm that your behaviour has merely confirmed their belief in the madness of city folk. In Jane Austen’s world, the wilderness is something to be kept at bay, to be walled out. Whenever the heroine strays from the footpath or dares to go beyond the grounds of the park into the wild woods, you know that trouble is ahead and that her moral compass is a little wonky. The landscape gardeners of Austin’s epoch – men such as the suitably monikered Capability Brown – would probably have approved of the layout of the Zuiderpark, with its carefully allocated zones, although their own designs catered not to ‘the masses’ but to their wealthy patrons and the genteel tourists who visited their manicured parks and gardens. These thoughts were rambling idly through my mind, as I ambled idly through the countryside, wondering whether one might call my current surroundings ‘natural’. After all, the French landscape is as controlled, monitored, adapted and – in a way – as manufactured as the polder landscape of the Netherlands, or its city version, the urban park. Centuries of farming, with its shifting beliefs, patterns and technology have structured the countryside, with occasional outside intervention (whether in the form of medieval invasions, the German occupation during WWII, or – more recently – rules dispatched from Brussels). Is it simply that the rate of change is generally so slow as to be measured in generations? Is that what makes nature seem natural? Examining my surroundings from this more historical perspective, I felt more at ease. Even if I did not understand the codes for behaviour, or know exactly whose fields I had just traversed, or which grasses I now had stuck to my wellies, I realized that I could decode and understand this nature in the same way that I can read a park, or a city. Mankind’s impact on the planet is so extensive that the layering of man-made activity can be explored by the light of the stars or by the floodlights of the harbour. CLUB DONNY #8 2012 > 05
BOMARZO SECRET GARDEN
FROM THE MASONS POINT OF VIEW, THE GARDEN OF BOMARZO ALSO NAMED PARK OF THE MONSTERS (PARCO DEI MOSTRI IN ITALIAN-LANGUAGE), IS A RENAISSANCE MONUMENTAL COMPLEX LOCATED IN BOMARZO, IN THE PROVINCE OF VITERBO, IN NORTHERN LAZIO, ITALY. THE GARDENS WERE CREATED DURING THE 16TH CENTURY. THEY ARE COMPOSED OF A WOODED PARK, LOCATED AT THE BOTTOM OF A VALLEY WHERE THE CASTLE OF ORSINI WAS ERECTED, AND POPULATED BY SCULPTURES AND SMALL BUILDINGS DIVIDED AMONG OF THE NATURAL VEGETATION.
< OGRE (ANTHROPOMORPHIC HEAD) USED AS A SHEEPFOLD summer houses or exotic glasshouses. Bomarzo is situated not far from Viterbo and Soriano and was originally called Polimatrium, city of Mars. Like Soriano, the village is elevated and here too a structure towers above the old houses: a castle converted into a palace, which also formerly belonged to the Orsini family. At the foot of the village, hidden away in a small wooded valley, like a pearl in an oyster, lies the sculpture garden. There in the sacred grove, a small temple can be found, a deliberately twisted house and the stone monsters: sphinxes, bears, sirens and the three-headed Cerberus.
VICINO ORSINI The residence’s gardens were created by Vicino Orsini, the Duke Pierfrancesco of Orsini. He was born in 1528 and died in 1588. An educated humanist, he was interested in the Arts and was their patron. He devoted his life to the happiness of his House and his wife, Julia Farnese. After Julia Farnese’s death, he created the plan for this garden. He didn’t call this garden a giardino, but Bosco Sacro, a Sacred Grove or Bosco dei Monstri, the Monsters’ grove. Monster must be understood in the Latin meaning of monstrare, which means to show and demonstrate. This then means that from stop to stop, from stage to stage, each element is a component of an immense, very neoplatonic poem to his lost love. The Park of Monsters remained in oblivion till 1954 when it was bought by Mr Giovanni Bettini who with loving care has managed it. 06 < CLUB DONNY #8 2012
of fabriques – grottoes, japanese bridges, pavilions, Chinese jiosks or pagodas, Roman or Gothic ruins, tombd, pyramids, obeliisks, small temples – where used, according to their structure, as meeting places or as rooms for meditation,
HYPNEROTOMACHI POLOPHILI WAS FOR THE FIRST TIME PRINTED ANONYMOUSLY IN 1499 IN THE EDITORIAL OFFICE OF ALDUS MANUTIUS >
HYPNEROTOMACHI POLOPHILI In 1551, Vicino Orsini, who has fed his ideas reading Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, asked the architect and archaeologist Pyrrho Ligorio to install monsters, including sphinxes, around his park at Bomarzo. He wanted not only to provoke amazement and wonder in visitors to his park, but first and foremost to create an esoteric itinerary ‘to illustrate as far as possible the fecundity and fullness of his intelligence and his imaginative faculties’. The constructions, inspired by classical antiquity and the Orient, sometimes essentially decorative in function, were not the products of chance, rather they marked the boundaries of pre-planned itineraries. All types
ANEKDOTE: ‘ONE DAY DALÍ LEFT ROME TO VISIT THE PARK OF BOMARZO WITH A CORTEGE OF CAMERAMEN, FRIENDS AND EXTRA’S, DETERMINED TO HAVE HIMSELF PHOTOGRAPHED HOLDING A CANDLE AND CONVERSING WITH A WHITE CAT IN THE JAWS OF THE HUGEST MONSTER. THE VILLAGE OF BOMARZO YIELDED BLACK CATS, GRAY CATS, BROWN CATS, GINGER CATS, BUT IT TOOK HOURS TO FIND A WHITE ONE. DALI WAS SO PLEASED WITH THE FOTOGRAPHS AND THE EXCURSION AS A WHOLE THAT HE VERY NEARLY BOUGHT THE PALAZZO [OF BOMARZO], WHERE HE PLANNED TO HOLD A MAGNIFICENT BALL FOR ALL THE BEGGARS IN ROME. HIS WIFE [GALA], PREFERRING SMALL PARTIES IN HER HOTEL APARTMENT IN NEW YORK, VETOED THE PROJECT.’
THE GARDENS OF BOMARZO A great deal has changes since the nineteen forties. The gardens have been freed from the worst of the overgrowth, the sculptures have been partly (though not always expertly) restored, committees and working groups have become involved in what now counts as an important piece of Italian heritage and one of the masterpieces of landscape gardening.
BOMARZO SECRET GARDEN
MICHIEL KOOLBERGEN In his fascinating study Het laatste geheim van Bomarzo, art historian Michiel Koolbergen (1953-2002), who already authored a book in 1984 about the influence of gardens on the work of contemporary writers and artists, attempts to decipher the ‘secret code’ of the sculpture groups. According to Koolbergen, it has now been established that the sculpture garden of Bomarzo was laid out by Vicino Orsini, a descendant of one of Italy’s oldest and most famous families. HELLA HAASE Hella Haasse (1918-2011) was less certain of that in her essay De tuinen van Bomarzo, though she too could not deny the influence of Vicino. He certainly contributed the last structures to the garden, although according to her the actual initiative for that came from the onegeneration-older, one-eyed Orsino Orsini, whose wife, another Giulia Farnese, but just as stunning as that of Vicino, had openly been the mistress of the Borgia pope Alexander VI. THE LEANING TOWER (TORRE PENDENTE)
> STRUGGLE BETWEEN GIANTS (LOTTA FRA I GIGANTI)
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While for Koolbergen, Bomarzo is a lover’s garden, for Haasse it is a ‘park of sex and violence’. The figures responsible for the garden's creation are just as different as the purposes behind it. For Koolbergen it is the courtly Vicino, in all regards a model of renaissance nobility, pure in body and heart; for Haasse it is the disfigured Orsino, as twisted in body and mind as the sculpture garden he conceived. CAREL WILLINK The Dutch painter Carel Willink (1900-1983) made various Bomarzo paintings in the nineteen sixties and eighties, with intriguing titles such as: Unnecessary witnesses and The eternal scream. He placed the sculptures from Bomarzo Park in vast, barren planes, as though on an oversized stage, on which they scream at us inaudibly and thus impotently. MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ The Argentinean writer Manuel Mujica Lainez (1910-1984) created his own reality regarding the origins of the sculpture garden, which he first visited in 1958. The result was the bulky novel Bomarzo. Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) had read Lainez’s novel Bomarzo (1962)
and he visited the writer at home to ask him to write the text for his composition. Lainez complied with the request and wrote three texts in prose and three poems, in which the life of his novel’s character Vicino Orsini is summarized. The prose pieces are intended to be recited by the ‘narrator’ and are alternated with the poems, which are partly sung and part recited by a baritone. This is all accompanied by a chamber orchestra, comprising two violas and a viola d’amore, two cellos, two contrabass, a harp, harpsichord, piano (for duo), celesta, wind instruments and percussion.
Used sources for this page; Ger Groot – Monsterlijk geheimschrift; De beeldentuin van Bomarzo NRC Handelsblad, 08/08/’97 and Michiel Koolbergen – Het laatste geheim van Bomarzo. A warm thank you to Willie Stehouwer for pointing out the subject Secret Garden.
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THE INTANGIBILITY OF OCCUPY ULTRA-SHORT NOTES JORINDE SEIJDEL Last autumn a great many cities and towns, including in the Netherlands, from Amsterdam to Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, were characterized by the playful encampments of the Occupy movement. Various squares, fields, indistinct grass strips or just a few square metres of pavement were occupied and dotted with the now familiar instant tents, which appear suitable both for nature-loving hikers and activists and the urban homeless. But while Occupy in places like New York City was publically supported by renowned institutions, such as The New School and Columbia University and by eminent intellectuals, including Naomi Klein, Naom Chomsky and Slavoj Žižek, the movement’s intellectual profile barely got off the ground in the Netherlands and many here continue to associate it, laughingly or irritably, with vague and grubby public inaction, instead of a new form of global resistance to the tyranny of the market. It was in any case remarkable how in a short time and more or less simultaneously around the world, these unique biotopes appeared; places where life takes possession of space and time by claiming these dimensions for an indefinite period. By now, we also know that life went on as usual on these activist urban camp sites, counterparts of the recreational rural camp sites and of occupying nature, and that they had medical posts, kitchens, libraries, massage salons and various ‘assemblies’, while inside the tents all manner of personal desires were expressed passionately. (Wherever you camp, nature inevitably pops up and the meeting of souls occurs in a broad sense – ‘Let’s occupy each other’ – as the Italian intellectual and activist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi campaigned for so energetically, in order to encourage solidarity and empathy in the urban space.) At the same time, however, these Occupy camps were monitored and patrolled by guards, something that one certainly does not associate with everyday life, but rather with a national emergency. Thus, the encampments attest to both a domestication of 32 < CLUB DONNY #8 2012
the resistance that has become embedded in the everyday and the militarization of public space and public life, in which screening, protection and tightened control take place. If one considers the heterogeneous population of these places, from activists and concerned citizens to tourists and homeless people, the question as to the nature of the Occupy camps is reiterated. How do these embody the topical, social and political? They seem, above all, to be places full of internal contradictions that include features of an army camp, internment camp, holiday camp and a refugee camp, but also of a demonstration, a commune, a festival and a symposium. As a place and space, Occupy at any rate appears to be a departure from the continuous space and regular order of time and, thus, in Michel Foucault’s terms manifests itself as a heterotopia and a heterochrony respectively – terms he presented in order to describe spaces in which a different regime prevails than in the outside environment. In his thinking, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben regards the camp as the bio-political paradigm of the current era – bio-political being a designation for political systems in which bio-power is wielded, that is to say, all sorts of domination methods in order to control life. The paradigm for modern politics is no longer the city, but the camp, which has now become firmly embedded in the heart of the city, according to Agamben. He sees the camp and its inhabitants as a model to indicate that citizens are increasingly deprived of their rights and that they increasingly find themselves in spaces where a national emergency is declared and the normal order is abandoned. And in his book The Coming Community (1993), Agamben talks about the community of the future as no longer being based on shared identity or shared opinions that can be represented. In it he refers to, for instance, the protest in Tiananmen Square, the Square of Heavenly Peace in Beijing where on 4 June 1989
over a million students and citizens demonstrated against the regime of the Chinese Communist Party, an uprising that was brutally suppressed. According to Agamben a community was formed there, which did not share a single concrete demand. It is tempting and simultaneously perilous to apply these theories, behind which lie grand philosophical-political ideas, to the Occupy movement, its encampments and its resistance without a platform. But it is clear that the authorities, traditional media, and some of the critics and the public find it very difficult to grasp Occupy and its presence in space and time. It is significant in this respect that, for instance, the VVD in Eindhoven – so as to be rid of the activists – no longer wanted to see the protests there as a demonstration, but as an ‘event’, for which different laws apply. And out of incapacity and frustration the same VVD argued for the Occupy demonstrators to have their social security benefits cut. In order to halt this disorganizing phenomenon, freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate are trampled underfoot. Last winter, under pressure from the authorities and the icy weather, the Occupy encampments in many places were dismantled or abandoned. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the movement has dissolved or collapsed. After all, it has an unprecedented parallel presence on the global social networks: in a sense, the physical encampments are no more than ephemeral materializations of digital activism, and therein, perhaps, lies the newness, radicalism and potency of Occupy. Erasure is not an option. As soon as one of the encampments is disbanded, a new one forms elsewhere, online and/or offline, as a junction or ‘node’ in a network of physical and virtual lines and connections. It is indeed about a reclamation of time and space, and thus ultimately about a redistribution of the communal. Amsterdam, February 2012
GREENHOUSE FRAGRANCES CHRISTIE ARENDS
The mild, familiar aroma of warm, damp soil and plants, mixed with the sickly smell of a rotting process, combined with the humid heat of the palm house in the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen always brings back many childhood memories. It’s funny how the tranquillity and smells of bygone days can be regained in the centre of a big city. But the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen is not just any old place in the middle of a bustling city. It almost literally constitutes the heart of the city that is so tremendously dear to me. And there in the middle of the city, as a back garden to the apartment of my dearest friend, lies the Botanical Garden. With those magnificent old palm houses and exotic greenhouses full of cacti, ferns, palms and many plants that I’d never seen before, let alone that I knew even one by name. The latter is not so surprising, considering I can rarely provide the correct name for any plant. My lack of knowledge on plants and flowers is truly phenomenal and above all intriguing, bearing in mind the place where I grew up. Not to mention my lack of green fingers. A fig tree might be the only tree that I am familiar with; it’s one of the few plants I managed to grow on my own city balcony. Incidentally, it’s odd that I’ve never noticed that tree in the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen. But I never really looked for it either; I generally tend to just wander around when I’m there. Back at the door of the palm house in Copenhagen, which, when opened, emits a fragrance that inevitably takes me back to times past, to my father’s eight thousand square metre workspace, where he grew flowers with love, knowledge and patience in a place that to me was mainly an immense playground. As a young girl I learned to walk on the long, dead straight paths that led through the greenhouses, and a few years later I learned to ride a bicycle on them. In the winters it was comfortably warm there, sometimes even tropical, and I played hide and seek among the plants with my nephew, girlfriends and the boys living nearby, and we built temporary scrap wooden shelters for the goats and chickens, for whom it had become too cold outside. Wearing
just a T-shirt, flared trousers and I myself forever in wellington boots, we paced up and down in the greenhouse, which had a very special fragrance. Warm, damp soil combined with the plants, all of which also had their own smell; I recognize that fragrance immediately. In the mid seventies – I have a vivid recollection of it – my father, always up for an experiment, decided to cultivate heleconias for a few seasons. Huge plants with flowers that most closely resemble a parrot’s crest and which transformed the entire greenhouse into a tropical rain forest. At least, that’s how my seven-year-old imagination was able to picture it with ease, when at the height of summer, 30 degrees outside, 37 in the greenhouse, I would be endlessly running back and forth under the sprinkler installation in a bikini. I think there cannot be many better places to grow up. Though my nephew of the same age lived on a farm and I thought that too was really exciting. I mainly knew about terraced houses with pocketsized gardens from my classmates, who I used to visit sometimes to play; usually indoors, usually something involving Barbie dolls. Meanwhile, my brother and I were each given a patch of ground in the garden – which, incidentally, was my mother’s domain – where we could grow our own plants in order to develop our ‘green fingers’ at a young age. It may have been under the assumption that what’s learnt in the cradle lasts till the grave, in my case, however, it was also pointless. Nothing survived; even the valiant African marigolds gave up in my little garden, with the exception of the now majestic oak tree that I received on national tree-planting day in 1978. As I got older, I used the greenhouses less and less as a playground. It was now an economic factor where I had my first part-time job and where the money was made that enabled me to go horse riding, go out and later to study. The fact that I had absolutely no aptitude, nor ambition to run a company like that of my father was already clear at a young age and my brother also decided to take a different path. My relationship with the greenhouses, the plants, the delicious smell and the warmth petered out.
I’d moved into lodgings by then and although I still came home regularly, I no longer visited the greenhouses very often. Thus the announcement that the land had been sold and the greenhouses would be demolished barely affected me. It was good that this place, which had given me and particularly my father so much enjoyment and love, could now provide my parents with a carefree life. The greenhouses were demolished in the summer of 2003 and I particularly remember the beauty of it. The frames about to collapse, with an optimistically flowering amaryllis here and there among the cables, glass shards and withered plants. On a warm Sunday afternoon I bade farewell in my own way. The heat of the day made the earth parched and brittle and an insipid smell hung in the motionless air. There was not a breath of wind that afternoon and it was deathly still. It felt unreal. I made countless photos and a video, as if I were documenting a monument. A monument on the verge of collapse, it’s true, but in my eyes it was above all beautiful. A monument to the carefree days of my youth. During those weeks my father was quieter than usual and sometimes a little absent. We, the rest of the family, were all agreed that it was a wonderful conclusion to a working life that had been mainly bountiful and largely carefree. The photos were developed and I had a few printed as a gift for my father. I thought they were stunning. The beauty of the lines, nature growing rank, the bright sunlight and the many contrasts made me very satisfied with the results on the day I gave him the photos. My father felt differently. When he saw the photos he buried his face in his hands. The tears ran down his cheeks. He saw only his life’s work, which all that time he’d had to watch being demolished and dismantled piece by piece. What for weeks had been an inconsolable dim recollection had now been mercilessly captured in the photos by me. He had absolutely no interest in the aesthetics of light and lines and he did not even begin to see the beauty of decay. I thought my father would be pleased with the photos I gave him that day, instead it became the day my father cried.
CLUB DONNY #8 2012 > 33
DONNY’S FAVOURITES
JACQUES MAJORELLE Jacques Majorelle was born in 1886 within a family of artists. Since 1910 he discovers Egypt and the Nile. He visits the orient with a new look, deprived of all orientalist fantasies. In 1919 he settles in Marrakech to continue his career of painter, where he acquires a ground which was going to become the Majorelle garden. Since 1947 he opens his garden’s doors to the public. THE ENGLISH RIVIERA METRONOMY Devonshire, England’s Metronomy have traveled an impressive stylistic distance in the short span of three albums. The group began in 2006 as glitchy electronic smirkers, proffering a garishly irreverent take on chinstroking IDM. Yet for their third full-length effort, The English Riviera, they’ve fully transitioned into a sleek, urbane pop-rock outfit, taking polished cues from the well-heeled likes of Steely Dan and Phoenix. THE GARDENS OF ALCATRAZ WWW.ALCATRAZGARDENS.ORG For more than a century, gardens were an important part of everyday life for officers, families, and prisoners confined to Alcatraz by sentence or duty. Many of the plants selected by these unheralded gardeners proved to be excellent choices for the harsh and barren environment, flourishing through the four decades of neglect that followed the prison’s closing. Alcatraz’s current visitors experience an island that is alive with colourful plants gathered decades ago from around the world, and complemented by newly introduced plants. These historic gardens not only illustrate the importance of gardens to the human spirit, but also the ecological benefits and aesthetic possibilities of sustainable gardening. TODRA GORGE Todra Gorge is a canyon in the eastern part of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, near the town of Tinerhir. Both the Todra and neighbouring Dades Rivers have carved out cliff-sided canyons (Arabic: wadi) on their final 40 kilometres through the mountains. The last 600 metres of the Todra gorge are the most spectacular. Here the canyon narrows to a flat stony track, in places as little as 10 metres wide, with sheer and smooth rock walls up to 160 metres high on each side. The scenery is spectacular. SALVADOR DALÍ AT BOMARZO WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=-QB0CDOQJTI Salvador Dalí at Bomarzo, 10 November 1948, video historical archives of Istituto Luce, Rome. SYLENE STENOPHYLLA FLOWER IN BLOOM AFTER 32,000 YEARS Fruit and seeds that were found in a fossilized squirrel’s burrow in the Siberian permafrost have been thawed and revived by Russian scientists. Several seeds have produced flowers. This is being seen as a pioneering experiment. The Sylene stenophylla has become the oldest plant ever to be regenerated. The white flower even has viable seeds. The plant looks similar to a modern version, which still grows in the northeast of Siberia. PREFAB HOME WWW.MUJI.NET/IE/MADONOIE Join MUJI prefab home line: prefab houses are modular shelters which are environmental friendly, flexible towards family sizes, comfortable and minimal. FROM YOUR OWN CITY UIT JE EIGEN STAD (from your own city) is a promising new Rotterdam initiative on urban farming, which kicks off this year. The idea is to produce food on a small and large scale in sophisticated ecological circuits. This mainly concerns the ‘fringes’ of the city, in disused industrial locations, on the roofs of office buildings, in former showrooms or temporarily available green spaces. UIT JE EIGEN STAD aims to initiate a transformation by actually producing food in these places. This makes the urban farmer into an urban nomad, completely attuned to the dynamics of the city. The Marconistrip will be the first location utilized and from this place-making location, scores of temporary satellite locations can be set up and operated elsewhere in the city.
Club Donny is a biannual magazine on the personal experience of nature in the urban environment presented by Samira Ben Laloua, Frank Bruggeman and Ernst van der Hoeven. PAGE 01 / 36 Rotterdam, Marconiplein (frontpage) + Nijmegen, Valkhofpark (backpage), Ghislain Amar PAGE 02 Amsterdam, Andre Dekker TEXTPAGE 03 Rooms, Sanneke van Hassel TEXTPAGE 04 Death in Munich, Job Floris TEXTPAGE 05 What to do with all this Nature? Zoë Gray TEXTPAGE 06 / 31 Bomarzo PAGE 7 / 30 Bleiswijk, Mathijs Labadie PAGE 08 / 29 Amsterdam, Loes Martens PAGE 09 / 28 Can Tho, Vietnam, Wytske van Keulen PAGE 10 / 28 Tai O, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Ernst van der Hoeven PAGE 11 / 26 Hermosillo, Mexico, Chris Kabel PAGE 12 / 25 Shanghai, Rubén Dario Kleimeer PAGE 13 / 24 São Paulo, Parque Ibirapuera, Jan Konings PAGE 14 / 23 New York, Central Park, Janine Schrijver PAGE 15 / 22 Mount Vernon, Virginia, Huib Haye van der Werf PAGE 16 / 21 Langvik, Torsnes, Norway, Eric Roelen PAGE 17 / 20 Maine, Atlantic Gallery Maine, Jeanne van Heeswijk & Marcel van der Meijs PAGE 18 / 19 Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, Frank Bruggeman TEXTPAGE 32 The Intangibility of Occupy – Ultra-short Notes, Jorinde Seijdel TEXTPAGE 33 Greenhouse Fragrances, Christie Arends TEXTPAGE 34 Donny’s favourites PAGE 35 Érezée, Belgium, Taufiq Hosen
HONEY (BAL) Honey from Turkish director Semih Kaplanoğlu 1963, awarded with the Golden Beer, Berlin 2010. Yusuf is an only child who lives with his parents in an isolated mountain area. For the young boy, the surrounding forest becomes a place of mystery and adventure when accompanying his father on the job. Yusuf watches in admiration as his beekeeper father Yakup hangs specially-made hives at the top of the tallest trees. With the skill of a tightrope acrobat, he must often suspend dangerously from the uppermost branches to gather honey. Yusuf’s anxieties escalate when his father must travel to a faraway forest on a risky mission. His father gone, Yusuf slips into silence to the distress of his pretty young mother Zehra. Days pass and Yakup still does not return. Yusuf summons all of his courage and goes deep into the forest to search for his father. A journey into the unknown...
TRANSLATION / Mike Ritchie DESIGN / Ben Laloua/Didier Pascal PRINTING / die Keure, Brugge PUBLISHER / post editions www.post-editions.com SUBSCRIPTION / www.bruil.info ISSN: 1879-7466 © 2012 Club Donny www.clubdonny.com The authors and contributors. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
SPECTACULAR VIEW WWW.DAKVANROTTERDAM.NL Spectacular to see our homecity as a panoramic rooftop scenary.
This publication was made possible by, TENT, Rotterdam and ’s Zomers, Rotterdam www.zomersbloemen.nl
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