A preliminary last note

Q: So, now that you are leaving tomorrow, was the residency worth your time?
A: My time, yes. Maybe you remember I arrived with two notions in my mind to dive in deeper here. One being the idea of ‘hope’, as expressed by many political thinkers around the globe as a possible answer to the political hegemony of the neoliberal right. That idea of hope is than opposing the vast presence of Fukuyama’s idea of the End of Ideology. With most governments in the West paying tribute to the notion no other arrangement for society is possible anymore than the economic neo liberal one we live in, hope in itself is becoming an oppositional idea. One scholar who wrote nicely about these matters is Stephen Duncombe, check here.

Q: Nice, but what about the second notion?
A: Let me finish on the first one, please, as I wasn’t finished formulating. I think my time here showed me many people in this time are trying to find a way for themselves to be living, to make a living without falling in the traps of that neoliberal economic trend. It is not that a new formula for living together came out yet, but people are trying rather than merely consuming. As I wrote somewhere: the American Dream turned into the American Nightmare here in Detroit and people don’t buy into that shitty story anymore. That could be a first step to working out a new Dream, one in which solidarity, localities and an end to consumerism are main features. Surely, if you look at Detroit and the changes it undergoes nothing is yet stable for future – some here even think Detroit did not yet hit rock bottom - but the sparks one sees are promising.

Q: Big words my friends…
A: Perhaps, but being the political thinker I am, these are little sparks of hope I will take home and keep on lingering about. Now to get your second notion. That one was inspired by a great book by a Canadian journalist, Doug Saunders, who wrote a book by the name of ‘Arrival City’, in which he investigates the way cities are changed by newcomers coming into town. As you probbly know most migrants move into neighbourhoods where they know people already. Saunders arguments that these migrant communities are the motor for cities, are the bastions for change in the towns they arrive. At a meeting in February last year he even convinced the audience, including me, the Arab Spring started by those newcomers in Cairo. They have been living in some parts of ton and have been making their way up in economical and political spheres. Untill they found out there is this glass ceiling. In order to break that glass the complete system of privileges and ingrown corruption had to be changed. Hence their wish for a complete overthrow of the Mubarak regime.

Q: Again you are using some big words here..
A: Yes, I agree, but the story also reveals to me, that personal stories, when combined, do make for big narratives. And having spend just two months in this town all I actually did do was collecting personal stories, some from today, some from the past, some for the future. So in order to find a common denominator for my experiences here I came up with two notions that were in the back of my mind already.

Q: Does that mean you were really working with a plan here?
A: To say that would be a lie. I struggled with the idea of being in town where so much is happening at the same time and actually being unable to contribute to one of those changes, that for a moment I wondered about the idea of residencies in general. But whilst looking back now there are plenty of new ideas that came into my mind. One of the most predominant being the idea of representation of towns. The ruin porn Detroit is associated with is a great example. The mediatised image of Detroit is – for many outsiders – just that: decay. But one can find completely other images here. So I took to some theories on photograpy, finding Susan Sontag’s ‘On photography’ a great treat again. Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ was a great introduction to the way the USA is represented in pictures, whereas jacob Holdt’s work also gave some socio-political input. I guess I will be using some of the pictures I took in Detroit – not completely ruin porn free, see here as nails to hang some stories on.

Q: So photograpy came in, any other things you would like to share here?
A: Well, having been a curator for many public debates on urban planning and having been sent out by Expodium to dive deeper into the urban dillema’s of Detroit I tried to dig up some stories on urban planning in the USA and most notably on that part of the American phenomenon people call suburbanization. But a lot of reading on that matter is awaiting me. I do know however that the notion of the capsular society will play a big role in whatever I come up with. Raging from gated communities via the American lovestory with their cars to the way people plug their headphones in when walking their dog. It seemed to me public sphere in the USA is smaller than I expected and that the car and the life style connnected with cars has a lot to do wit hit.

Q: Well, again those are big ideas, didn’t you do think or do some ‘normal’ stuff?
A: Hell I did. For the first time in my life I saw a roller derby, I dove into the classic soul and rock sounds of Detroit, and I to be honest I also semi-wasted some of my time on seeing some American movies I had never seen before. On topics I had never considered to be my topics for this residency, but here they seemed relevant. So I saw some movies on the Civil War, on slavetrade and the slavery system. And surely did I do some drinking and eating with new found friends here.

Q: Ah, that was a word I was waiting for – friends.
A: I know, you are as sentinemtal a bastard as I am. So I will affirm you, yes, friends. As Detroit gets under your skin, so do people, no? And I met some real nice people here, friends that were interested in me being me, rather in me the resident. I hope they will remain people I am in contact with, for friend stuff and for commenting on the stories I put out afterwards on this residency here.

Q: You don’t ask the questions, I do. So what are your plans for the follow up of this residency?
A: Well, first of all my girlfriend, who came over to visit me here, and me will spend some days in New York. Than we cross the big pond where it is still holiday season. That offers some time for additional reflections on my time here. Than – as I mentioned – I hope to do something with pictures, something with the found ‘scientific’ ideas on what happened here, and combining all that with personal impressions. In the meantime some institutions here and back home are already thinking of some follow up to things I helped put into motion, as a movie series followed with open discussions.

Maybe even the idea of reframing public space as I tried to do with putting some Loesje posters could be one of the things in future. And there’s plenty more, but you’ll read about it on this blog in due time.

Q: Ah, becasue it is continueing?
A: Oh, yes. See you here again, but for now: Happy Holidays!

Diego Rivera’s murals rethought

On the occasion of the US Social Forum, taken place in Detroit in the summer 2010, political commentator Thomas Ponniah
 wrote a story on the famous Rivera mural’s. He introduced the beautiful works as follows: “The murals illustrate the dignity of the worker in relation to the history of technology - from its origins in agriculture to the factory floor of a Ford auto plant. The most intriguing aspect of the murals lies hidden within the outline of a gigantic stamping press on the South Wall: the press intimates a resemblance to the Aztec deity Coatlicue - the goddess of creation and destruction. Through the image Rivera suggests that in the 1930s the deity revealed herself, in all of her contradictions, as technology. The murals present us with the latter’s dual nature - factories and smokestacks, passenger planes and war planes, vaccines and poison gas - implying that technical progress always offers us the choice between self-immolation or an increase in human flourishing.”

After some alinea’s on the events taking place at the USSF [slogan: Another world is possible. Another USA is necessary] he sums up the social forum. Great workshops, many interesting meetings, no conrete outcomes. Than he gets to an interesting question: What would a contemporary Diego Rivera paint if invited by Ford? Not being sure of the answer himself he suggests self representation.

Self representation than would serve as a strategy to be an individual, to be more than a mere number in the 99 percent, to be existing, to be seen. That might also explain the popularity in the States for storytelling on the crisis. For example see the work of filmers Sílvia Leindecker and Michael Fox who made the documentary film Crossing the American Crises.

I don’t know why storytelling like this is so popular. Would it be because the culture of the USA is not all about cozily getting together and being a society, but more on individually pursuing your goals? Would it be because public space is merely non-existent, something you quickly pass through in order to get your destination? It struck me that many more people here than back home do walk their dogs with an iPod in their ears… Talking about the capsular society.

It might be precisely for that reason that the Occupy movement, and its’ predecessors in Wisconsin and Madison, touched an open vein in this country. Now people were getting together, they were talking, they were meeting eachother as individuals. Naturally a lot was and will be said on the Occupy Movement, but one thing cannot be forgotten: people met.

Here in Detroit – where the word Occupy has a bizarre idea to it – two events happening tomorrow might be illustrative to that idea. On the occasion of December 6th “Occupy Our Homes" two events take place in Detroit. Two families struggling to keep on living in their homes, threatened to be foreclosed, will hopefully receive mass attention. And than?

Perhaps in this country with its’ cynicism towards all things political it might just be that storyteling is a way to get a political message through. I suppose we all do remember the sixties slogan that ‘all is political’. Back than a certain narrative, and a certain political vision, accompanied the storytelling – what that vision would be today, or tomorrow, still seems unclear. So to end this post: I’d suggest Riviera to paint the dignity of the worker in relation to the networks of globalized finance. From its’ origins in ancient times to this era of hypercapitalism. Orisha God Coatlicue will give way to Ogun, cleaning the roads. That picture should be symbolizing the before mentioned battle between self-immolation or an increase in human flourishing.

Flames Favorite Music & Things

Aarrgghh. Treasures in this town are so easy to find. Yesterday was the special Noel shopping day and night in what people here lik to call Mid Town, an upcoming part in town that had to do away with its’ old name of Cass Corridor because that reminds too many of the not so beautiful last twenty years. The organizing body for the Noel Day Midtown Detroit’s University Cultural Center put quite some energy in having the market succeed.

And it did. The streets were busting with people. Not so common here, as you’d imagined by now. When I spoke to someone waiting at the take away Chinese later on that eve, he just said: “Wow, to see people on the street. That made me think of years gone by. And you don’t know half how happy it made me seeing our pavements all used for what they are intended for: walking people.” So I suppose the day was a success.

But as you all know that in days of success you happen to have those very special moments. The uber success. While following one of the Detroit’s marching bands performing on the street I passed yet another second hand store on Hancock Street. Now there’s plenty more of second hand shops, be it for clothing, for house materials, or for records. This one looked liked it was for clothing, but they did have some records in there as well. So, logically, I stepped in. Then it turned out they didn’t have a few records, they had a dollar dungeon filled with the best sorted jazz and soul collection I’d seen here.

Owner Jim and employee Lerrol took their time for a little talk. They explained me the shop wasn’t the main income for Jim, however the parttime job has to provide for Lerrol. That the shop wasn’t that known in Detroit itself [whereas the record shops in Hamtramck are heralded all over the local media], but that they do attract visitors all the way down from Japan and Germany and England. The 45’s collection of Northern Soul is well worth that visit apparently. But what struck me most and really took the guys in for me was that they weren’t doing the selling for themselves; profits are all donated to an invisible group in town: the retarded. Once a year Jim told me, they even do organise an outdoor concert where local bands donate their time for a over enthusiastic audience. An audience which also climbs the stage to perform themselves. And so Jim said “We have had blind singers climbing the stage. We have had tough cases shining all over when singing on stage.” Now stories like these are exactly why Detroit is in my heart. It has nothing to do with the upcoming Cork nor Midtowns – it has to do with regular people taking care of eachother. Sharing life. Sharing stories. If only all could be so simple.

And that it is not that simple always is proven in the stories of the Detroit blogger John Carlisle. His book 313 is by far the most insightful book on Detroit bottom up that I have read. No stories on government, no stories on companies, no none of that. John went out to meet some of the special characters living in this town, listening to their stories, and then writing them down in a tender way. It made me laugh a lot as well.

Hipster

One of the words popping up when talkin about the changes in Detroit is hipster. Like mentioned in an earlier post it has something to do with gentrification, it has something to do with outsiders coming in, and it has a lot to do with economical perspectives hipsters apparently do have, whereas others don’t. After diving into the history of the word, it turned out Normain Mailer dubbed the term. Check his classic essay The White Negro here.

But the word has more contemporary connotations as shows this Guardian quote: "It seemed to revolve around the desire to reproduce as rebellion these things that had formerly been part of the mainstream market," says Greif, citing the art-gallery porn by the likes of Richard Kern and the conspicuous consumption of meat while in the company of vegetarians as two examples. "There's this idea that they are the agents of change, the true revolutionaries, where the revolutionary change is to . . . make exclusive the pleasures that had potentially belonged to anyone in the past, to celebrate the upwards redistribution of wealth. Not all hipsters arrive in the big cities flush with cash, but they almost always possess some cultural capital, usually a university degree and refined upbringing. They can use this to prevent themselves from ending up on the bottom of the pile, even if their only means of upward mobility are snarky putdowns and a working knowledge of the Smiths.“ End of quote, since who listens to the Smiths these days?

Now the lines above point towards a definition but as it goes with words, another pops up just round the corner. So it seems. Since the possible definitions and explanations given at a conference, yes you read that right, a conference, on hipsterdom aren’t the most scientific proof. The conversations do however make you smile.

So there is hate against hipsters, which seems to be the ultimately hipster thing. Since who has time to worry about words like these, except for me and the cafe latte soja milk sucking hipsters themselves? Or as somebody remarks in a rather silly video on that big web:"If you like the eighties so much, than just get back, and die of aids."

Now that indeed is not very friendly, so to something a little lightlier: Naturally the name can also be transformed to a title dripping off with heavy drops of self irony. The blog Look at that Hipster even developed their own clothing. Shop here. I guess for me the most upsetting in the discussion on hipsters is the focus on the ever present and everlasting now. As if we don't live our live in a society that has been scarred by the past. So, lack of political, or for that matter historical, knowledge just pisses me off. It could be my prejudice but when i think of hipsters I do not think of kids knowing of bands performing befroe the Smiths...That might have been triggered by the first article I read that mentioned the word hipster, which was published by the loving title “Hipster: the death end to Western civilisation”. The first line of that article just sums it up: We've reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum.

One more on baseball, well, starting from baseball

Having written that post on the Detroit Tigers and their claim to fame this season one cannot write about the other side to that story. For in this town all stories do have a flipside. For every story on succes there are stories on loss and pain. Newcomers in town, ‘transplants’ in the local language, are heralded by most and scoffed at by others. Investments in town are welcomed by business peeps and are laughed at by those who like Detroit as it is: a breeding ground for urban experiments. What both groups share is a certain neglect for what was here before. As an European from a museum-alized city [in the sense that we cherish our medieval city centre so much] it is surprising at the least to see that neglect in mainstream media. Because when reading on baseball in town it took some time to find mentions on the Negro Leaugue stadium in Hamtramck.

For the Europeans: As playing in the Major League baseball clubs was forbidden during the de facto apartheid years in US history African Americans organized their own baseball competition. That period started to end with Jackie Robinson’s entry into Major League baseball in 1947. Many claim this moment to be one of the contributing moments to the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.

As most countries the United States doesn’t have a culture of raising monuments for the ashaming aspects of their history. But when a baseball park as Roesink Stadium in Hamtramck does still exist, the European culture of maintaining its’ past would surely have propelled that stadium into being a musuem before a long time. Here in Detroit that discussion is just starting. Local historian and baseball fan Gary Gillette dove into the history and local authorities received him to hear the story.

“What would be the benefit?”, was one of the questions during the session with local government in 2010. Like having a historical piece in itself couldn’t be a benefit. But well, as one of the few Negro League stadiums remaining, it surely will atract tourists and “that preserving the stadium would generate national media interest, propelling Hamtramck into the national spotlight.”

Now with such recommendations one supposes it would be a matter of time for the stadium to be on lists for historical preservation, for a small renovation on the stands, and bam to be launched into that national attention. But now, one and a half year later the stadium is a neglected as it was last decades. Serving as a symbol of both neglect for African American history and of the poor economical situation of this city and its’ surroundings. Just this week the mayor delivered a speech Detroit had to be cutting yet another 10 percent on personnel budgets. National media report on the ‘Great Recession’ the US of A is in and Time Magazine ran a coverstory on “Can you still move up in America?” and one doesn’t have to be a great mind to guess what’s the answer.

With foreign commentators writing about Obama finally understanding that building bridges in the divided political landscape that is Washington will not benefit him, but that focusing on and charging at the ‘fat cats’ who got richer and richer over the last decades might do that, the picture emerges: This country is coming to a point understanding the American Dream is destroying more than it builds up.

To some there’s nothing new in that. But to many it seems a new thought. An idea that opens new roads, with directions towards unknown places called equality or sharing. Directions towards a new American dream? Now, that would be something revolutionairy indeed.

"Resurget Cineribus"

Most likely a lot of people did see the Johnny Knoxville report on the D. Link here, here, and here. But than who did read all comments? Ah…
Here is selection by my hand of some of those.

Lived here all my life. The past few years,_ there has been an influx of hipsters in downtown. Why? Because they just adore taking pictures of the central station for their 'art' classes.

I admire the positivity and the DIY attitude, but I didn't see much job creation. This will sound cynical, but how many of the people featured were actually getting paid? or how many were living on trust funds. What about seniors,_ didn't see many kids, will these people start families in Detroit, send their kids to the local schools? I know this is aimed at a young trendy market but you need more than organic farmers markets and bands to revive a city

I have yet to see a city whose core is constructed of 20-30yr old, single people flourish. Skate parks don't make the city money. Raves put money in the promoter's pockets and sometimes leave havoc - after the event. Most artists don't have healthy incomes. And gardens feed only a few. Detroit needs to attract tech companies with tax breaks, alternative power industries with land deals and bio-engineering firms with the keys to the city.

Wow, can you interview anybody who's not a fucking 20 year old hipster. Why don't you interview the 58 year old people who have lived, worked and STAYED_ in the city for decades! They've been "saving" the city their whole lives, even after they've had their places shot up and been robbed. They're not just trying to create a steller rave scene. (don't get me wrong, the rave scene in detroit is great but it seems trivial).

Detroit Tigers

Some of you might know Detroit is home to a Major League Baseball organisation: the Tigers. The Tigers were founded in 1894 and, contrary to many other teams in Major League baseball, never moved to another town. Wikipedia says this about the club: “The Tigers have won four World Series championships (1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984) and have won the American League pennant 10 times. The team currently plays their home games at Comerica Park in Downtown Detroit. The Tigers constructed Bennett Park at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Trumbull Avenue and began playing there in 1896. In 1912, the team moved into Navin Field, which was built on the same location. It was expanded in 1938 and renamed Briggs Stadium. It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961 and the Tigers played there until moving to Comerica Park in 2000.”

And it is on that new stadium i would like to continue. Because to build a new baseball park in a town with so many problems doesn’t seem to be the most logical thing to do. But than, economical necessities more often than not don’t suit the needs of the average Detroiter. As someone mentioned “You don’t get richer not building a new stadium.” And that might be true: building breeds money. Maintaining just costs money. Promptly the Tigers went through some bad years, with the 2003 season being one of the most disastrous baseball seasons played by any team in Major League Baseball history. Quoting wikipedia again: “While the 2003 Tigers rank as the third worst team in major league history based on loss total. The Tigers went 43–119 that season, 47 games behind division-winner Minnesota.” The pitchers of the Tigers were #1, #2, and #3 in the major leagues in losses for 2003—the only time in major league history that one team has had the top three losers.” Things couldn’t get worse.

But now, with the town itself starting to breathe again, so did the baseball club. 2011 saw the Detroit Tigers competing well and making it to the American League series, which is the equivalent of the semifinals, to lose against the Texas Rangers. What pleased the neutral baseball most is they beat the Yankees in the ‘quarter finals’. That, for Europeans, is the equivalent of a Dutch soccer team beating Real Madrid. And not only the Yankees, as a rich club able to sign expensive players, didn’t make it to the final rounds, neither did other rich clubs. Actually other clubs from the ‘rust belt’ performed well this season, inciting Richard Florida to write a pleasant commentary on the “de-industrialized Rustbelt metros”. Read here

As we know, not everything happening in Detroit is new, as also concluded the Frenchies on their blog Detroit, je t'aime , and this picture from the Yes Farm's site just proves that.

Influxes from the outside world

Naturally the situation Detroit is in attracts [media] attention from outside. The former branding of the city as a ruin town, as the living example of the death of the American dream seems to be outdated. So many people here worked so hard to maintain this city, so many people did their best to have some kind of society working, it had to pay off. Whereas Detroit was leading all the wrong lists in many of the USA media, ow the tide is changing. From a town in which one would not even be found death, now the stigma on Detroit is one of 'can do'. From disaster city Detroit turned into 'city of opportunities'. A link to provide you with further insight on that idea:
- Is Detroit the new Brooklyn?

But that idea of course is contested in yet another one [numerous are the publications on this town, and countless the comments they provoke]:
- Detroit: the death of Manhattanism.

Many of the outsiders coming into town at this moment are not wholly trusted by the Detroiters i have been meeting these weeks. As opposed to the white flight from the 50ies, and more recent, now power and money don't leave town, but flow in. That causes Detroiters who stayed here to wonder on the willingness of those people to contribute to non fordist dream of Detroit's future. Are businesses and investment bankers not trying to revive the old system which so deeply hurt this town? Are they here for profits only, rather than for the sake of the community? As some one put it last week: "The new incomers have access to two things most people here don't have: resources and out of town networks. Kids who grew up here during last decades are than again losers - as they don't have these two assets. Who is going to guarantee me the investers will not move somewhere else sometime soon and once again leave us? And in that process having transformed our dream into another nightmare?" Let's see what some of the investers think of that themselves:
- Detroit's fix-it men in their own words

Jon King's books

Anyone having some hours to spend in this town which are not filled in with appointments is strongly recommended to visit Jon King’s books. A heavenlike place for any booklover, and actually for all who are not – they will walk out being booklovers. On three stores, in two buildings there are books books books books books books and yep some more books. The owners, Jon and his wife Toni, and the personnel seem to be the sole people on earth knowing their way in this labyrinth of piles and shelves filled with books from all times. Little corners reveal treausures never thought of. The corner of ‘Detroit’ saw me digging in deep and coming up with some first hand accounts of the ’67 riots, some guide to nineties multicultural Detroit and Boggs’ 1963 “The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook.”
When Toni noticed our excitement for what was all around us she as well got enthusiastic. We were invited to follow her into the second building in which the real treasures are kept. It turned out the second building was more orderly with real categories being sticked to the walls. Now the real treasure digging could start – and Toni next to us [“Yes, i am going to take all your money”] kept on throwing beautiful brochures on urban planning, old citymaps, and historical books at us. And yes, she could have taken all our money, and than some more. Luckily we had a busy afternoon schedule so we had to leave her. Happy and excited with what we found we left and promised ourselves a quiet evening to do some reading. And that evening silence reigned the house.

Hidden histories

A few days later, a few days filled with stories, a few days of exploring the D. Not only by driving around, by meeting people, by talking, but by taking leaflets, reading the signs on the streets, and already in this first weeks various layers of histories shape up. Having been impressed by reading Doug Saunders’ book ‘Arrival city’ on the arrival and consecutive ‘landing’ and empowerment of migrants within their own communities I’d like to look at Detroit as an arrival city. Waves of African Americans were coming to town in what was called the Great Migration – the migration of African Americans from the South to the North between 1890 and 1970. They arrived in a town that by then knew great Polish, Ukraianan and Greek communities. Nowadays the town of Hamtramck is referred to as Banglatown, whereas South Western Detroit is widely known as Mexicantown. The latest wave of immigrants are the socalled hipsters, being attracted by the vibrant scene they created for themselves, not necessarily connected with anything already existing in town, and the cheap housing possibilities. What will be a next wave of migration? And will the flagrant segregation that existed, and exists!, once be someting of the past?

What station to get off at?

An event by Expodium and Friso Wiersum, Utrecht The Netherlands, in collaboration with CAID, Detroit, USA.

Friday, 28th of October
CAID, 5141, Rosa Parks BLVD

Doors open for refreshments at 7.30 pm. Conversation starts at 8 pm.

WHAT DO DETROIT, THE BALKANS AND INDONESIAN SHADOW PUPPETS HAVE IN COMMON?

SHOULD WE ‘HURRAY’ HIPSTERDOM IN DETROIT?

Since 2009 Expodium has been coming to Detroit in order to set up a program based on exchanging experiences and knowledge about urban challenges. The program started in 2010 and recently, the fifth resident – Friso Wiersum - arrived.

Expodium and Friso will introduce the program and touch upon various issues Friso hopes to address to during his dialogue-seeking stay of 9 weeks.

Spacious limbo-ism

First impressions
First impressions are always the most funny ones. The ones that give shape to your frame for understanding all things one is gonna encounter. Now my first impressions here were as one could expect: the USA really does look like all the images one knows from TV and movies: huge cars, big people, many ads along the road, and those dinners and delicatessen we all dreamt of. The car we drive in here swallows a 120 litres of gasoline. When the battery run empty some guys, each one of them weighting at least what us three weight together, helped us out at the gas station. And to finish the story at the gasstation: they did serve some awfully good Mexican food. So actually now new impressions there.

Spacious
But than to something that did strike me. We all know Detroit’s notoriety as the town where things, to say the least, didn’t exactly go as once planned. Economies failed, corporations decided to leave town & fuck over all their employees & their families, and hence the drop in population size from over 2 million to a mere 800.000 at the moment. I suppose everybody reading these lines heard about the word ‘ruin’ porn– the eagerness of seeing and preferably photographing the abandoned and deserted desolate and sometimes halfly burnt houses, so no need to dwell upon that – but what I did not realize is this: when these houses, factories, and other lots were taken down the sites weren’t developed and thus the town has an enormous amount of empty space. And Detroit already looks like a spacious town to me, having grown up in busy neighbourhoods in Europe. Every direction one looks shows open space. So even though Detroit is a big town it has a village feel.

Lethargy of living in limbo
And connected to that feeling is the very citylike idea of a village being more relaxed, more connected, more community like than the towns most people live in today. But than, for some among us who did grew up in villages, those little towns also had the dready long afternoons where nothing was gonna happen and you did know at beforehand. Numerous were the afternoons when homework was done and you didn’t know what else to do. That in some way also is the Detroit experience. It is the quietness of a post conflict zone where new life has yet to gain shape. It is the limbo time in which we don’t now what tomorrow will bring. It is the spacious surroundings that are so wide we don’t where to start filling them in. It’s the lethargy of not knowing where to start ‘cause there is so much to be done. It is the poetry of longing for a future finally starting.

Detroit Techno...The Horses Mouth

Why listen to my childish ramblings...on and on...about Techno when you can go straight to the Pope.
Why indeed?...I give you Dan Sicko's website

http://techno-rebels.com

"narrating the evolution of Techno music"

He is the guy who wrote the book
Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk

AND he is a Detroit native and a REAL Techno specialist & writer, so what more do you want?

-fries?!!!
-you want fries with that???!!
-AND a milkshake???!!!

"{"":":":";'P{p[pKKKlklK|\''\'\\|\\++ (=swearwords)

YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD....just wait until I can lay my hands on you!!!

The hour of judgement approaches

At last, things are coming together! Following from my last post, I now have permission to hold a performance at John K. King's store. This will form the first part of a two-part piece, the second of which will (probably) take place in Cass Park, also on the West Side of Detroit. Watch this space for more details...

Unfortunately, it will only be possible for a small number of people to be present during the performance, due to lack of space. Because of this, and because I want to make something which lasts somewhat longer than the remaining period of our time in Detroit, I also intend making a video work - of which the performance will form a small part.

This work is provisionally entitled Michigan left, after the the strange traffic arrangement of that name which is (almost) unique to this state. The basis of it is: to go left, you gotta keep going, turn left twice, go back the way you came, and then finally right. For me, this over-complicated and mixed up way of doing something simple spoke right to the heart. And of course, like most over-complicated and mixed up things, there's a good reason for it in the end (as usual, Wikipedia will tell you more). And it agrees to a great extent with how I have felt about my (almost) eight weeks in Detroit.

So I've been busy with two things - preparing the performance, and filming as many shots as I can for the film - since it will not be so easy to fill in any missing ones when I return to the Netherlands.
And to satisfy my desire to get busy with tools and bits of metal, I've been building the thing below - it's a sort of bricolage camera dolly (thanks for the photo Ben!).
I can't tell you how good it feels to be doing something practical, after all the weeks of meeting, thinking, drinking, and absorbing. In the end, artists are supposed to make things. And if you don't make things, you don't understand shit about what life is all about. Well, that's how I see it, at least.

But all this doesn't mean that I've stopped thinking about what it means to be here. Continuing from what I have written earlier about what exactly the point is of our being here, I would like to turn to the issues faced once you have accepted that you are here for a good reason.

There are practical difficulties, analytical difficulties, as well as moral difficulties. The first of these needs no explanation - anyone who has spent any time in a foreign country will know what I mean.
The second, the problems of analysis and observation, stem from the fact of your own otherness and newness, and that also of the place in which you find yourself. In the first instance, there is the difficulty of distinguishing that which is typical from that which is special - for if you are seeing everything for the first time, how are you supposed to know what happens every day and what is unusual? Whilst cycling in Poland a few years ago, I wrote about this too. Time will eventually erase this difficulty, which is in part the advantage of us spending an entire summer here. But of course, who is to say that this season is typical, or this year? All the time, I find myself making guesses and piecing together clues about what is really happening, what is really characteristic, and what are in fact ephemeral aberrations.
There are other problems, too. As I stand in line at the gas station, or waiting for the lights to change, I am torn between finding everything around me endlessly fascinating, or else so banal that I feel nothing but despair. What am I to think of the packet of Twinkies before me, or the traffic light swinging in the breeze? Are these things iconic, immortal, telling, poetic in the extreme, shining examples of what it is to be human, American, alive, and finite? Or are they simply objects, commodities, as meaningless as words in a dead language? I don't know, I really don't, and this constant switching between one and the other, right before my eyes, makes it harder than it already was to form any sort of concrete opinion about what I see.
And to the moral difficulties - these at least are easier to explain. How long must you reside somewhere before you have the right to criticise it? I have dealt with this question before in the Netherlands - where, incidentally, I feel totally within my rights to say anything I feel like (and where, incidentally, I must pay the same taxes as everyone else, behave as a responsible citizen, and respect the law, but may not vote).
But here, it still seems too new, too recent a development in my life. There's stuff here I just don't get, where I want to scream “why can't you just be like us?”, however much I know that I cannot and I should not do so. Other things I can be much more positive about. And of course, two months since leaving home, I am doubtless forgetting a bunch of annoying Dutch/Scottish/European habits too. I've also mentioned this point before, shortly before returning from China. And oh, that was a hard one.

Interesting links about Detroit...

I guess we could also see this blog as an intro to Detroit for outsiders and for

European artists in residence to come...so I will just post some links to the history of

Detroit Techno and the city in general for people who wants to know more.

For people who are about to come, already here in body or in spririt.

1.

Here a link about the Detroit Electronic Music festival...sometimes called Movement,

at other times it is called something else. I came a bit too late for this one, usually held in the end of may, could maybe be great start for the 9 week air period.

Knowing that for a LOT of Euro people who wants to come here, Techno is one of the great reasons...

This link is nice because it is just one liners and gossip from all the Detroitian Techno legends who with tears in their eyes could for the first time make mom and pop understand what a monster that they have unleashed on the rest of the world. This was the first time, that average people in Detroit could kind of grasp how HUGE techno is outside of Detroit (and USA).

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1186

2.

A nice documentary about Techno music (from Detroit).

With a lot of insider gossip and jealousy

which makes you understand a lot about the city and the scene.

Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May got to become best friends after Kevin knocked Derrick May out with a couple of punches!!!!

Funny to see how slick Derrick is, you can kind of understand that someone wants to punch him out, but also very charming of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIEbkSpNXGE

(part 1 of 9)

3.

Underground Resistance documentary (10 min),

Where you get a feel for their anger with the world of corruption and decay

but also the love for the music

and the political dedication and general passion...VERY good!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI4cBPgETnU

4.

A very nice and well produced video documentary about the legendary Richie Hawtins

(aka Plastikman from Windsor, across the river...). Very informative about Detroit techno

and scene...very good!

Also nice is the different vibe of white boy Richie and Mad Mike Banks,

They compliment each other to tell the same story...but different!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc6474KUBV8

5.

Ok French documentary on Detroit Techno, but everyones speaks English...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSX_r0u3uzE

6.

Critically acclaimed docu. about the rise and fall of Detroit by Julian Temple, who also did

a couple of very famous Sex Pistols film...very beautiful!

http://rutube.ru/tracks/3971045.html

7.

Johnny Knoxville (of Jackass fame) tried to go against the grain and NOT do a classical film about Detroit...i.e. "ruin porn", crime, decay and how BAD things are in Detroit.

But an uplifting Detroit LIVES! film...

(by the way "ruin porn" is not what I first thought it was...it means people who are obssessed with taking photos of ruins in Detroit (usually Europeans or defenitely "out of towners",

much despised by the locals, who are quite sensitive about it...and quite sensitive about a LOT of things.

Despite Johnny's good intentions to "do the right thing" it STILL backfired...

The Detroitians were pissed off that most people who were interviewed for this film where "New York Hipster"people with money who just moved in to poor Detroit to escape the high loft rents of Williamsburg.

Oh well...at least Larry Mongo is in the film, he IS from Detroit and never left!

Even people FROM Detroit who lived in New York for two years!!! and then came back are suspect in the eyes of the die hard Detroitians

They're a VERY hard crowd to please...

I am trying to tell people in Detroit to chill out a bit and not be soooo pissed off all the time.

In Amsterdam we also get tons of American tourists coming to smoke pot with a VERY one sided interest in what Holland has to offer. If we would go and be pissed off in Amsterdam the whole time about it, we wouldn't have any energy left!

Detroit people needs to relax and accept that the ruins are unique in the western world and that that is partly the reason why people come here in the first place (and spend money)

so chill out a bit and just go with the flow!

We are all very sorry that we were not born in Detroit and that we weren't here when the car industry broke down, or that we haven't lived here since 1973 or...or...or...

We apologize for ALL that, but we will still come to Detroit to take photos of your ruins.

So BACK OFF!!!!...local angry guy....You're blocking the view of the ruins!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMysMDHdb4

More Techno and Race...

So last night we went to see Underground Resistance play for free in Highland park.

They did a very jazzy set under the name Timeline, with a saxophone player and

a slick, flowy guy on keyboards. It was a nice mix of techno and free jazz. After that the

revelation of the night came on, DJ Al Ester. Swinging and dancing like a madman,

he played a very housey set, with singing divas and all, but the way he mixed it, and how

much fun he had with the FX's and taking out the high's, mid's and low's in a super synchronized

set was a true joy! After that the highlight of the night was supposed to be Juan Atkins

"the Godfather of techno" as he was announced, who was part of the legendary "Belleville Three", the other two being Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. But this was a sad, sad affair to have to watch, Juan couldn't mix two tracks

together to save his life, and he dropped records on the floor, had the needle skipping back and forth on a track for bout 20 seconds (which is a loooooooong time if you're DJ ing in front of a extremely knowledgeable crowd (I am not talking about me here...hehehe)).

A couple of times UR's manager Cornelius, who was the MC of the night between the acts had to try to save his ass, by encouraging people AND Juan to get into it again. Juan just looked lost and looked as if he was suffering more than we did. I TOO mix like shit, but at least I do it because I think that is they way it should sound, it is part of my "vision" (or lack of it) and I am really into it while DJing, but with Juan it was just painful. He seemed to be totally somewhere else. He fucked up a reunion of "the Belleville 3" at Awakenings in Amsterdam, by mixing like crap and just not being present. It was extra sad because you could really feel the potential of the music, the track selection was awesome, his own mega hits

as Cybotron "alleys of your mind" and "cosmic cars" and Kraftwerks "numbers" boomed out of the system, and for a moment you felt "wow" this is why I came to Detroit, to be able to hear Juan Atkins pump Kraftwerk into a beautiful summer night at Highland park. But the overwhelming feeling was one of sadness. Well at least Underground Resistance and DJ Al Ester was blockrocking!!! After that we went to the incredibly sleazy temple bar in the most run down part of town, an AMAZING bar! So the night was still perfect in the end.

I was talking with a Dutch artist who now lives in Detroit,

as we were dancing in front of the stage.

We were SOooOoooo surprised to see so few people at the festival.

If you have Underground Resistance, Juan Atkins and DJ Al Ester (trust me he is one for the future) playing for FREE on a warm beautiful summer night in Vondelpark, you would probably be able to get more than 80 people to show up???!!!

Ok..earlier in the evening there were more, and it also had to do with Juan Atkins crappy set, but STILL???!!!.

One of the reasons that she came to Detroit was her love for techno, the same as me.

And it's a story often told, Detroit Techno is HUGE in Europe and Asia but has soooo little support in Detroit itself (or the rest of USA for that matter).

Last weekend I went to a Chicago house picnic festival IN Chicago.

The 21st annual edition of the Chicago House Music picnic and it was PACKED!!!!

Even though you had to pay 10 $ to get in, 1000s of people were grooving and dancing to Frankie Knuckles and the Chosen Few among others.

And what was also very interesting, I was the ONLY white person at this picnic, I am serious!!??

Here...check this video from last years picnic and try to spot any honkies...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQUZqbLX8CQ

I don't know why race, class and music is so interesting to me, but you could make tons of anthropological studies on this subject and it would be very revealing. Rio de Janeiro was another very interesting case, with its Baile Funk, Samba and Bossa Nova, but Brazil is much more racially mixed than Europe and USA.

The Brazilians that we had living with us in Bijlmer last summer in Flatstation were shocked to see the extreme separation between the very black Bijlmer and the very white grachtengordel,

they couldn't believe it!

see for more information...

http://www.fffuck.org/projects/brazilian-air-program-0

http://www.flatstation.nl/agenda

http://www.fatform.com

Anyhow...So Chicago house music has MASSIVE local, black support and Detroit very little local, black support. At the Underground Resistance concert, there was a bunch of De.Bug t-shirts and European football shirts (soccer), which made you suspect that at least part of the audience were European fans who had come a long way to see this spectacle.

So why does Chicago House connect and Detroit techno not?

While in Chicago we also went to see Moodyman, a DJ using the Chicago sound, though originally from Detroit and according to his wikipedia page...

"He is outspoken on the current state of dance music, decrying the lack of black techno and the white domination of the genre."

and...

"An outspoken voice in the normally non-confrontational world of electronic dance music, Moodymann (Kenny Dixon Jr.) is committed to keeping a distinctly black imprint on techno and house."

So for all of us who thought house was..."one nation under a groove" where race, gender, class and sexual orientation would all be absolved into one fruity love juice drink.

Moodyman is again bringing RACE into the mix!

I once read a very interesting little piece about house music in De Appels F.R David publication

where someone wrote a piece about house music debunking the myth of all the love bullshit, saying something like...house was born out of an atmosphere of racism, homophobia, transvestites trying to save enough money to go to Brazil to do sex changes,gay prostitution, drug addictions, and suicides...so this "love dream" surrounding house music needs to be at least more nuanced. If someone knows who wrote this text I am happy to include the name

(I couldn't find it) in this text.

After the Moodyman concert me and Chris had a small after party together with two black transvestites and a white gay guy in their very tiny appartment.

Stumbling out into the bright day light the morning after, I thought we had a very fitting ending to a night out in Chicago, sampling the local house music scene.

But I DO have a little theory as to why Chicago is so succesful and Detroit less so when it comes to hooking up to local (black) support. Chicago house music is much more linked to soul, gospel and R n B. Tons of screaming little divas who sing on top of the house tracks, so the links to other classical black forms of music is very clear. Detroit Techno's VERY obvious flirtations with Kraftwerk (especially) and European (white) electro pop and new romantic music (as they called it in the UK). Takes the music into an another direction, less rooted in classical black music forms.

Detroit techno is much less connected to classical black music styles such as Gospel and Soul. On the other hand it is very much connected to the ideas of "Afrofuturism"that you can find in the works of Sun Ra, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Funkadelic & Parliament, Africa Bambaataa or even Grace Jones.

There is something very sad about the state of music, if we STILL have to discuss race and music, as in...

Can black people sing the opera and country music?

Can white people techno?

Can white people rap and sing reggae?

Just like we whites know what we mean by a whigger (me?!), someone who totally wants to jump into blackness, Detroit techno kids could possibly be seen by the local black population as bounty's

(brown on the outside, white on the inside).

But this is not something I know enough about, but I will research this further here in Detroit.

The problem with this kind of knowledge is that it is often not spoken out loud, it is a gut feeling, and maybe something that you would not say to a white person (if you were black).

But on the other hand these stereotypes DO play a role and to try to totally ignore this debate would do a disservice to the development of music and the ideas surrounding it. In the case of Techno I think that black Detroit Techno stars are TOTALLY accepted in Europe and no one even thinks of race

as an issue in techno, whereas in Detroit I get the feeling that the black population in general thinks that the local techno kids got a bit TOO close to European electronic music, as if they were not proud enough of "their own" musical heritage.

Almost like a sort of betrayal, and of course betrayal is different if you are part of the majority

i.e. whites going black, than if you are a supressed minority, blacks switching to white music.

But to even be able to TALK like this we would have to accept certain musics as "white" and "black" and I think this could be very dangerous. BUT...on the other hand it could ALSO be dangerous to NOT see the history of music and its links to its past. How could you understand reggae or hip hop OUTSIDE a context of racism and the history of the oppression of black people?

I guess it is important to understand where a music comes from and its roots and history, but music is in its essence is universal and it explains why hip hop now works as a great vehicle of expression for oppressed people all over the world, be it Banlieu kids of Arab descent in Paris or Palestinians in Israel.

And I think THIS brings me back to my old argument...Europeans are VERY good at contemporary art for A REASON! Which is also why Indonesians in general are less good at it, but good at other things, such as shadow puppetry for example. And this is NOT meant as a racist statement that Indonesians can never get good at art, or that white people can't rap. Everyone can get good at anything...BUT, you need to live in an environment that stimulates that growth

where you can develop, and compete against the best. That Eminem could get good at rapping growing up in Detroit does not surprise me, or that Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson could get impulses from abroad AND at home and develop a scene that later influenced the rest of the world.

And this is where racism get's confusing when I give lectures. When I for instance say...if you lived in New York in the 80's with the possibility to listen to KRS one and Public Enemy,

and having radio station playing hip hop 24/7 chances are GREATER that you too could become a good rapper, no one has a problem with that.

But If I say that...if you grew up in Europe with the Dokumenta, the Venice bienale, amazing museums where the best of the best are collected and discussed, with newspaper articles on a daily basis discussing art shows, with the best artists, critics, collectors, galleries and so on aso...chances are that you will become a GREATER artist faster in Europe than in Indonesia, who lacks the necessary infrastructure to feed this necessary development...then I often have a problem and people accuse me of racism.

The chances of there being TRULY great contemporary art outside of Europe and USA is smaller, just as there are slim chances of there being fantastic samba bands outside of Brazil, NOT impossible, but less probable.

This is the problem we now get when we debate the globalization of every art biennial, we need THIS many artist from Sudan, THIS many women, this many gays and this many peadophiles and rapists, it just doesn't automatically create quality.

And in general I think this is the most amusing aspect of the Venice biennial for instance, to see the amount of crap art from Uzbekistan or Iran. Would it be possible to assume that democracy is neccessary to create good art? Probably not...Brazil did amazing stuff during the fascist era, China is also doing amazing art. In the case of China you could also add that they have different taboos than in Europe, which creates a interesting grey zone (from OUR perspective) the by now very famous performance "I'm gonna eat a little fetus with a glass of chardonnay" would not be possible in Europe. So so much for freedom in the democratic world hehehehe...

So here the west and the east are complementing each other in the taboo world.

In China the artists can't talk about Tibet and democracy, and in the west we are not allowed to eat fetuses or use dead AIDS women on ice in our installations, but we STILL get by.

But of course, every year the gap is closing, and the best way to increase quality is to let the Sudani artists compete with the best of Europe, just look at football.

And this is also why it is such a good idea to have artists in residencies, to spread the knowledge.

BUT...also infrastructure is necessary, if there are no contemporary art museums in Sudan, or art magazines, or artschools, or critics, or galleries, or biennials, or or or....HOW are they gonna get good? And if there is no critical mass who is interested locally it doesn't HAVE to be a HUGE dilemma. Look at Detroit techno, but it would help!

But on the other hand, what is the problem if not every country in the world are good at contemporary art, I am sure that they are good at other things. If they have drive and fantasy they have to get rid of their energy somehow.

At the Sao Paulo bienial last year there was this HUGE debate of how underexposed the Nigerian artists were, or the Sudanis or the Angolans and I basically said...well maybe you should get GOOD at art first and THEN we can talk!

Of course I know that this is a radical thing to say, but imagine if we would come with quotas for the next reggae sunsplash festival in Kingston!!! You don't have ANY artists from Mongolia, zero reggae artist from Poland and no gay white dancehall stars...what's up????!!!

We would get laughed out of town!!!

So to the all the Nigerian artists of this world I say, you want to participate in the next major biennial in Europe? Then make sure that you create a good art scene where you live, start art schools, galleries, debates, art magazines, radio programs, academies and so on...

create a critical mass, create a scene...Just like they did with Baile Funk music in Rio de Janeiro

or with Kwaito music in South Africa or Kuduro in Angola or Dancehall in Jamaica or Country music in Nashville and so on aso...

Or to quote KRS one "If you can't rock your own neighbourhood...". And of course this will take time and money, but it is not really about money, as we have seen in the examples mentioned above.

Of course it is also unfair to compare art and music, since we can't upload installations, paintings or sculpures and send them as MP3's as of yet.

So music has an ENORMOUS advantage in how fast ideas can spread over the world,

with a decent internet connection you can be on top of all the developments in music ALL over the world. We are not there yet with art. Which is the reason why London, Berlin and New York will REMAIN art centers for the forseeable future. Whereas in music, Rio de Janeiro, Angola and South Africa can EASILY overtake London or New York in musical invention and probably already has.

Of course, developments in the art world is also related to first world power, racism and economy also. Look how hard women had to fight to enter the art world, but they did it and the developments in Europe have been very succesful on that front...

Ok I am blabbering on...I don't really know what I am saying, but that is why I am saying it...

to find OUT what could be the truth...so please feedback me with ideas and critique.

finally I will give you two links to an old Detroit Techno argument...

1. Underground Resistance- AfroGermanic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyAxHaem24

celebrating the links between Germany, Detroit and Africa...

And as a piss take off that, another Detroitian (DJ Ass ault), who is basically just ripping up that argument with his hit "Nigga Music", which the first time I heard it... I just thought it was a bad/good joke, but if you understand the heated debate about techno music and race here...it is much more subtle and deep than I first thought.

2. DJ Assault-Nigga Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hax6NGNCEhw

Jonas Ohlsson reporting from Detroit, thanks to Expodium in Utrecht!

Storms and magazines

Last week, I bought three old copies of “Life” magazine from a bookshop in Ferndale: one each from 1948, 1958, and 1968. Twenty years of American history, bracketed.
What struck me the most is the weird version of reality presented in the advertisements, and to a lesser extent in the editorial content, of a perfect, white, middle-class America, where everyone's material needs could easily be met and the scope for further technological improvement of domestic life was unlimited. So long, that was, as gender, class, and race roles were strictly maintained. Objective accounts of history present another picture.
What were people thinking? Did anyone really believe any of this? Or was hypocrisy silently accepted as a necessary requirement for an orderly society?
This got me thinking a lot about how far we have come, or how far we have not come. As the media of the 1940's peddled the stereotype of the perfect wife preparing the perfect casserole, we are now bombarded with images of a hyper-optimised, performance- money- and status-obsessed ideal lifestyle.

Detroit is interesting because it is hard to be fooled by such promises here. It is sometimes described as the West's first post-industrial city, but it's post-a-lot-of-things too. I see a life after corporate capitalism here, where the big-name retail outlets don't bother to set up shop, advertising is conspicuous by its general absence, and a generally slow pace of life has taken hold in response to the practical difficulties involved in getting things done – an example of which will follow.
Detroit is the end. But it is also the start of something else.

On Saturday afternoon, unable to deal with the sticky heat on Farnsworth any longer, we headed over to Belle Isle for a swim in the river. We were not the only ones with this idea.
But almost as soon as we were in the water, everyone was told to get out again. There was a storm coming; it is not a good idea to be in the water when lightning hits.
Very soon the water was empty, and most people decided to head home. And so we were left with the beach to ourselves, and a fantastic view of the storm coming in over the downtown area in the distance. Soon the Renaissance Center (headquarters of General Motors) and the rest of the city was invisible, as if it had just melted into the sky.
Then suddenly, without warning, the storm hit Belle Isle beach. We were struck by a wave of hailstones and sand whipped up by the wind, giving us just a few moments to grab our things and run back to the van before everything was blown away. With everybody inside, we slammed the doors shut and waited for the worst of the storm to die down. We could not see more than a few metres outside.
Leaving Belle Isle was made difficult by the heavy rain, fallen tree branches, and the huge number of people trying to do the same thing. As we finally made it back towards the East Side, our way was continually blocked by fallen trees and flooded roads. About an hour earlier, we had been sitting in bright sunshine.
By the time we reached home, an eerie calm had descended, along with a strange yellow glow in the sky. It felt like the end of the world.
Besides the fallen trees, all the traffic lights in the area had stopped working, along with the internet connection of everyone on the block. It was four days before we were online once again.

In the meantime I have been doing a lot of reading, cycling, and sitting on the porch. Here's to the offline life.

Space out in Holland...It's not an option!

When we came here two weeks ago there was a literal Dutch invasion of Detroit,

Expodium was here, as well as Partisan Publik and Fonds BKVB and

their artists in residence hangers on.

The locals were understandably perplexed and wondered why so many Dutch people were suddenly interested in Detroit.

One of the reasons concerns urban space and freedom (or the lack of it).

In mega densely populated Holland every square meter is planned, booked and spoken for.

The relatively new situation in Detroit of urban shrinkage, frees up so much space,

space that can now be redefined.

I always had a theory about the Dutch

The reason why they legalized prostitution and drugs were not only for economical reasons,

even though the Dutch really likes money and are good at making it

( but not as good as the Swedes...njä njä njä njä njääää=teasing 1).

The prime reason for it was the lack of chaos in their surroundings.

The Dutch had controlled everything that would have been called nature in thee olden days,

even the ocean was cut up into small controllable grachtengordel, polder pieces.

In Sweden I sometimes go into to the enormous forests just to feel small and get a bit scared.

It puts me in place and in awe...

Nature is something uncontrollable, the forest (and nature in general) is a symbol for the unconscious, for "the other", for the unknown...

There is nothing scary, wild, or uncontrollable in the Dutch landscape

(except ganja smoking Italian tourists on bikes)

and THIS fact created the need for some semi legalized wildness in the form of "ladies of the night" and drugs...Until recently I also used this theory to explain the great love for culture that the Dutch used to have. Culture as the unknown...wild, scary, thought and emotion provoking.

How scary and unknown can a musical get??!!

If we take away the mind expanding possibilities in Holland of drugs, hookers and culture I think Holland will have collective panic attacks on a MASSIVE scale in a very near future.

People will realize how small and claustrophobic Holland is.

The new powerful political right is doing everything in its power to make Holland even smaller, to make the Dutch bitterballen walls come closing in...they come closer...and closer...

and closer...and....WHUAAAOAOOA!!!!!

Focus on your breathing Jonas!!!

fhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu....IN....fhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...OUT!

I came to NL as a Swedish western allochtoon in 1996,

and since I come from a richer country than Holland (njä njä njä njä njääää=teasing 2)

I am in the unique allochtoon situation that no one will think I came here for the money or for the social security checks (they're MUCH fatter in Sweden).

So I think I can afford (hehehehe...) to be blunt and speak freely.

I don't have a right to vote in Holland, but I voted FOR Holland 15 years ago when I moved here, with my life, my time, money, ambitions, passions and dreams.

So I DO have a right to be critical.

Holland NOW is not the Holland I came to 15 years ago.

But I will stay and fight.

Thatcher, Reagan, Bush...Rutte?!

KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

(famous MC5 song which made Detroit famous as the pre punk city...

Iggy and Stooges also helped out, hence the name, Detroit-Rock city!)

see here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6nasmkg7A

Politically I also think it would be a good idea to stop focusing on Wilders.

VVD is hiding behind Wilders and not the other way around and now the new right in Holland can let all their wet little neo con dreams become a reality. Wilders is not the problem, we have populist right wing manipulators in every country, massaging the assholes of all the "Henk & Ingrids" of this world. The weak CDA (the warm "socialist" christians of the right) and the strength of the VVD is the problem.

But also...as artists and culture makers...

let's spend some time for a little bit of self reflection and self criticism too.

After the murders of Pim & Theo, Holland suffered one of their greatest trauma in recent history....how many of us artist did anything to deal with that drama in our art?

How many of us didn't just continue with our own discourses,

when maybe this could have been a good time to get hip to the now.

But we better get hip to THIS game quick though, otherwise the only option left will be...

tune in, turn on, drop out!

But even that won't work....Wilders, Donner, Zijlstra and Verhagen wants to shrink Holland mentally into an even smaller hobbit country...and there are not enough drugs in the world to MIND EXPAND our way out of that dark, tight, scary shithole.

So our only choice is to fight back hard.

Let's GO!!!

C U on the other side....

Techno, from Germany to Detroit & black...the race is on!

When I left Bijlmer we had a goodbye party on the rooftops of Kraaiennest.

Coincidentally a Detroit DJ from Antwerpen played...

there was synchronicity in the techno/house.

Techno in Detroit is not like Dancehall in Kingston or Baile Funk in Rio de Janeiro.

The only ones HERE who cares are big eyed Danish tourists and Swedish/Dutch artists in residence. The techno stars of Detroit...Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills, Kevin Saunderson, Drexciya, Aux 88, Detroit Grand Pubah or Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman from really VERY neighbouring Windsor in Canada, really a stones throw away (even a girls throw) can eat their Coney Island? hotdogs in Detroit in cognito.

For them in seems to be impossible to be prophets (one) in their own hometown.

Bob Marley never seemed to have had any problems skanking in Kingston

and there is this old hip hop saying "if you can't rock your own neighbourhood??!!"

"...we'll rock Berlin, Amsterdam and London instead",

seems to have been the techno godfathers answer.

If you listen to mainstream radio in the USA, it is as racially divided as ever.

There is Rock music for the honkies and Hip Hop for the blacks.

How did this happen?

How could Detroit build up such a strong scene with so little local support from its homebase.

So different from other strong musical scenes where truly new inventions are being developed

on a daily, weekly basis.

For example Baile Funk (Rio de Janeiro), Minimal (Berlin), Dubstep (London), Cumbia

(all of South America except Brazil), Kuduro (Angola), Kwaito (South Africa) and so on aso...

In an interview in local magazine BLAC, Carl Craig explains "There is so much more recognition of the contributions Detroit (Techno) has made outside of Detroit, and defenitely outside of the U.S."...Just as Eminem had to work a bit extra hard (or did he) to be accepted in Hip Hop. Race seems to have played a part in Detroit techno too, but more from blacks who didn't consider Techno or House black enough. This month there is "Black music month" on the local radio stations, "celebrating the musical contributions Blacks have given to America".

"turning poverty and misery into swagger and style". And THIS seems to be the point too, not only race confusion but also class. Many of the stars of the Techno scene came from middle class background and weren't slinging crack in the projects. "Black music month" will NOT celebrate the black musical contributions of Techno (too middleclass and white) nor Chicago House (too genderbending and gay). But Techno DOES connect to a long tradition in black music, that of a liberating Afrofuturism..."space is the place" that goes back to George Clinton and P-Funk, Sun Ra and Afrika Bambataataa.

A longing for something else and new that they ironically also shared with

the German post war experimental Kraut movement of the late 60's and early 70's.

To quote the singer of Amun Duul..."we were tired of Nazism and Germany, but we also didn't want to make Anglo Saxon music (The Beatles or Rolling Stones)...we wanted to go somewhere else...so, space seemed to be an option". These ideas brought us the experimental genious of Faust, Can, Amon Duul, Neu, La Dusseldorf AND...Kraftwerk, which later got picked up by Afrika Bambaataa. The legendary DJ in Detroit who infused the local scene with all these new experimental ideas from Germany and Europe and mixed it up with Prince and P-funk , was called "The Electrifying Mojo (Charles Johnson). He had a radio show on a radio station geared towards the African-American market, and here he managed to experiment and break down gengre, racial, class and gender barriers. Not a bad achievement for a little DJ.

So the circle is again round...from Germany to Detroit and black.

This text is dedicated to The Electrifying Mojo and all other barrier breakers!