Phase 1

The Tower of Babel project was a concept by artist Guido van der Werve. In his concept, Van der Werve took the Biblical story as a starting point. In this story, only one language was spoken on Earth and they collectively embraced the same idea: to build a city with a tower that would reach the sky. But God descended after this act of pride, made people all speak different languages, and spread everyone around the world. Because the people could no longer understand each other, construction was stopped.

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What a contemporary Tower of Babel would look like, with just as many people as possible with different backgrounds, languages and voices, was what Guido van der Werve asked with this project. Stichting NDSM-werf and TAAK shaped this question in an architectural installation that expressed a certain polyphony of the city. The emphasis was precisely on the difference, the diversity and the (cultural) richness that lay therein. Watch a portrait of Guido van der Werve talking (in English) about the Tower of Babel and his art practice in the video:

WORKSHOPS‍

The polyphony also took shape in various specially developed workshops in which Amsterdammers and communities with different cultural, political, social or religious backgrounds of different ages participated. The starting point was how they thought about their ideal city and what values were important to them in it. The workshops were given by artists Fouad Lakbir, Tina Lenz, Mick La Rock, Olfa Ben Ali, Bengin Dawod, Rianne van Duin, Brendan Jan Walsh and Perrine Philomeen, who all worked from their own practice and discipline with themes such as ownership, visibility and storytelling and sharing.

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The diverse “building blocks”, ideas and stories were translated into visual outcomes that were placed in the Tower between September 23, 2021 and storm Eunice in February 2022. There were banners, photos, a video, a sound system with stories, a Tower of Babel newspaper made by students at Klein Amsterdam primary school and a homemade brick wall that was incorporated into the tower. Brendan Jan Walsh rehearsed a libretto written by Guido van der Werve and performed on October 7 by the choir and the Promenade Orchestra, specially assembled for the tower. This is how the Tower of Babel became a metaphor for what the ideal polyphonic city could look like and what values and ideas were important to it.

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For background stories about the Tower of Babel, check out the NDSM Online Magazine depot.

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From May 5, 2022, Phase 2 of the Tower of Babel was visible: the tower was under construction, to indicate that it was still a work in progress. In addition to the videos and the libretto, there was a 3D sketch by Guido that illustrated how he wanted to see his ideal Tower of Babel finally realized: with a path where you could walk up and down endlessly. At that time, the path could be walked as a flat route.

Goldendean: BIG FAT TRANS LIGHT MERQUER

Location: Y-HELLING

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The South African Artist Goldendean (Dean Hutton) made inflatable soft sculptures that depicted the contours of their own bodies. Especially for the NDSM shipyard, they created the 'Big Fat Trans Light MerQueer', a hybrid between man and sea monster that seemed to have crawled out of the IJ water — with tentacles. They were inspired by folk tales about sea-lake people, such as the “Mermaid of Edam” and “Mamlambo”, a serpent-like river goddess from South African and Xhosa mythology, who was often depicted as a mermaid. When they were captured, they allegedly brought prosperity.

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Goldendean shared moments of gentle courage to affirm the right of all bodies to exist, be celebrated, and protected. They evoked tender feelings by deliberately pretending to be crazy and playful, sometimes a clown, sometimes a warrior, always vulnerable... Radically soft in an uncompromising world... A tenderqueer invested trust in an audience to respond kindly, to keep our bodies safe together, to give queer space, no matter how we sometimes failed each other.

Johannes Buttner: Free Energy II, Peak Panic

Location: waterfront near Pllek

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In his sculptures, installations and videos, Johannes Büttner (Germany, 1985) addresses socio-economic themes such as energy, work in the digital age and power. In addition, he worked with people with diverse backgrounds: from mindset and business coaches and bakers to people from the “digital working class”.

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Johannes Büttner showed sculptures that he made for Into Nature, an exhibition in Bargerveen, Drenthe, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, where energy was key. Büttner's luminescent sculptures were battery-operated made of aluminum, magnesium and alum crystals. The story went that they recharged over and over again, so that these batteries would provide infinite energy. Büttner had the batteries designed by “free-energy engineers”, an online community that believed that environmentally friendly, sustainable and free energy sources had been around for a long time, but that they were hidden by large companies and governments out of self-interest. Somewhere between truth and fiction, (pseudo-) science and faith, and in response to the lack of opportunities to verify this, the work evoked alternative ways of imaging.

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In addition, Johannes showed lightboxes with advertising-like photos of “survival hacks” for a post-apocalyptic scenario. How did you make light in times of crisis? Faced with a pandemic and climate change awareness, 2016's work was now seen differently. DIY creations and creativity to deal with new catastrophes seemed inevitable.

Alice Wong & Crys Leung: COHESION

Location: LOAD OUT

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Alice Wong was a story designer. By showing how our perception of reality was constructed, she tried to turn complexity into understandable stories. For this project, she worked with Crys Leung, communication designer, who investigated the role of media and the relationship to identity in her work.

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Alice and Crys revealed 'COHESION', a large-scale installation that connected fragmented elements on the NDSM. The reflective circle stood for unity and collectivity; one could all come together and become more than the individual parts. Because the total circle could not be understood from a single position in space, the work created an infinite number of perspectives, depending on the point of view. The process of interacting from different angles, heights and distances made it clear how people collectively shaped a shared reality, where no perspective should stand above the other. Visible and invisible, seen and unseen were all equally valuable.

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Designer and Illustrator Luca Boscardin was one of the two winners of the Open Call launched in 2021 by Stichting NDSM-werf. His project Animal Factory consisted of minimalistic metal animals, such as a crocodile and a giraffe. The works invited you to sit on or climb up and thus played with the idea of the NDSM shipyard as an urban jungle.

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Animal Factory was a collection of animals designed in a simple and abstract way, each maintaining the exact size and proportions of the real animals. The objects — a giraffe, gorilla, crocodile and wolf — were characterized by a minimal shape, made of metal tubes and a minimal use of color: each one was painted in a single shade to encourage passers-by to open their minds and let their imagination run wild. Where, from a certain angle, the steel structure did not seem to have a specific shape, the contours of a gorilla were clearly visible from another location. This is how the animals were surprises in the industrial landscape.

With the objects, Luca Boscardin hoped to encourage creativity and multifunctional use of the shipyard. For example, the gorilla could also serve as a play object, the giraffe may have been an alternative workout tool, and the crocodile was a suitable place for visitors to sit down with a cup of coffee. As a toy designer, Luca drew space rockets, fantasy creatures, imaginary characters and super-fast cars every day. Using the life-size metal animals, he gave shipyard visitors the space to use their own imagination and invited young and old to play, hang out or exercise.

Animal Factory was created with the help of steel carpenter Iwan Snel, who was also based at the NDSM shipyard. The entire project was designed and produced in the immediate vicinity of NDSM. Nowadays, they can be found on the west-side of NDSM next to the Noord-Dok building in a park.

For this edition of ADE, Stichting NDSM-werf invited the art and activist group Tools for Action + Floor out to use their site as a public rehearsal space for RÆV REHEARSAL. They invited the audience to rehearse new forms of togetherness. With a Bluetooth speaker system, floating inflatable sculptures and a minimalist techno beat, they moved around the city like a radiant, dancing swarm. The streets became the club, the steps, roundabouts and benches acted as temporary stages.

RÆV REHEARSAL

RÆV REHEARSAL was initiated in Rotterdam in the summer of 2021 by visual artist Artúr van Balen, founder of Tools for Action, and choreographer Floor van Leeuwen. Every week, they rehearsed the dancing swarm in public space with a fixed group of twenty ravers, which in some editions grew to more than eighty people. After two massive editions of Unmute Us, the protest march for a more open event and night culture in Amsterdam, there was a strong need for people to come together, dance and have fun. By dancing, people were able to express their protest in a peaceful way.

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Artúr van Balen, founder and artist at Tools for Action, explained: “Actually, this was intended as a new form of manifestation with the potential to become a protest. We used the rehearsal as a format because, from a legal perspective, it gave us the opportunity to meet with more than a hundred people in the open air, regardless of the changing corona rules.” Floor van Leeuwen added: “I saw the rehearsal as a way to practice collective movement together, coordinate, meet new people and even dance with people remotely, even when they were on their balconies.”

Swarms

RÆV REHEARSAL was based on the movement principles of swarms. Like a flock of birds, there was no central point or hierarchically organized movement; the direction was determined by the group as it moved. During each rehearsal, people had to move and dance about three meters apart. Based on these principles, the audience was invited to participate on October 15, 16 and 17 and to rehearse this collective movement together.

Music

RÆV REHEARSAL worked with a different DJ each time. As the swarm moved through public spaces, from iconic places to residential areas, the goal was to find sounds that resonated with the local environment or aroused curiosity. During previous editions, DJs performed such as Sukubratz, a Chilean DJ who combined techno with reggaeton, Cheb Runner, a Moroccan DJ who mixed electronic dance music with chaabi (a style of Moroccan folklore), and DJ Dance Divine, a queer artist from Brussels.

ADE

On October 15, 16 and 17, a group of up to a hundred people gathered at the NDSM shipyard to dance through Amsterdam-Noord. Various collectives, DJs and communities joined this initiative. The line-up was announced later. These were three unforgettable nights where a dancing swarm moved through the city, letting its heartbeat ring during the pandemic and activating spaces with bodies, music and light.

As an echo of the transformations in club culture, RÆV REHEARSAL highlighted the need to explore new forms of sociality and interrelationships by reclaiming and reprogramming public space.

Public Air Filters was one of the two winning entries for the 2021 NDSM Open Call. For this work, artist proposed Anne-Jan Reijn the question is what actually happened in the outside air that we breathe. By filtering air in public spaces, a dichotomy automatically arose: filtered air and unfiltered air. This immediately raised a question: maybe the unfiltered air could not be trusted? The series of sculptures by Anne-Jan was on display between July and October and was changeable during this period. This slow process was, in fact, the essence of the work.

In theory, every cubic meter of filtered air left a residue on the outside of the filters. The artist wanted to play with this residue, creating an archaeology of air filter pollution, where a form of manipulation was allowed. What if that residue on the filters formed the most amazing colored crystals? Did that have a direct psychological effect, making the air we breathed, for example, undesirable or unpleasant? Reijn played with the idea of danger that we couldn't see. Invisible risks that were in the air, such as asbestos or a virus, were scary but could also evoke a form of awe. With this work, the artist offered a different perspective on this issue by materializing the invisible. “We were constantly connected to invisible matter — and therefore the risks — and we systematically tried to eliminate it. At the time, the relationship of trust we had with science and politics was under great pressure,” says Anne-Jan Reijn.

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Under no circumstances did the artist claim that filtered air was safer than unfiltered air: “This was really a work of art that played with the idea of distinction.”

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Also read the interview with Anne-Jan Reijn in the Digital Depot - Online Magazine.

In the spring of 2021, it was quieter than usual at the NDSM shipyard. This had everything to do with the Corona pandemic that gripped the entire country, and the whole world. Due to social safety restrictions, programming at the outdoor area of the NDSM shipyard was a challenge. Nevertheless, at the NDSM-werf Foundation, we looked for ways to make NDSM's public space as beautiful and accessible as possible, even though it was quieter than previous years during this period.

From this idea, the NDSM Yard Gardens came into being: 30 to 50 garden boxes where NDSM residents could use as a small piece of urban garden. All at least half a meter apart, so that users could garden while respecting social distancing”. It turned out to be a great success: all gardens were immediately used by residents, visitors, artists, neighbours, and some entrepreneurs at and around the NDSM shipyard. From early spring to autumn, flowers, vegetables and other plants were grown in the square between the Y slope and the Noorderlicht. Workshops were also given to small groups of gardeners and at the end of the season, a real NDSM garden community was created.

What should or could a monument be today, for whom, and who decides this? For their programme series (Un) Monumenting, Stichting NDSM-werf invited makers and artists to reflect on these questions by creating a (temporary) work at the shipyard. For (Un) Monumenting #1, the collective Frerara — Frederick Calmes, Raquel van Haver and Raul Balai — invited to make the Drawing Assignment 2020, which they realized for the Amsterdam City Archives, visible at the NDSM shipyard. (Un) monumenting #1 presented Frerara with images from “Breathing of the City”, which focused on understudied Amsterdammers and their stories.

From April 9, 2021, three construction boards at the shipyard showed drawings by Frerara, which they made as part of “Breathing of the City”. The collective saw the city as a “living organ that wakes up every morning and never sleeps in its entirety.” Especially at that precarious time, it became clear who had the luxury of being able to work from home, and who didn't. Cleaners, sex workers, bus drivers; diverse characters starred in the drawings that portrayed, fascinated or embodied the three artists separately. At the building signs, visitors were able to listen to audio clips about the images and/or the people portrayed with their smartphones. The three artists brought together themes such as the archive, transition, art and culture and the city's signature in their work. To do this, they investigated the residents of the city of Amsterdam and specifically into continuing the tradition of keeping the city alive as a ritual. For example, with the drawings, they showed a different face of Amsterdam and created a temporary 'monument' for a number of understudied townspeople. On April 9, not only did the presentation start at the NDSM shipyard, but Frederick, Raul and Raquel also physically handed over the drawings to the City Archives for inclusion. The collection of drawings was published by the City Archives in three separate zines, which could be viewed and purchased, and they worked towards a fine publication that year. What was special was that the topic “Breathing of the City” was submitted by Frerara to the City Archives even before the coronavirus pandemic, and it had only gained in urgency since then.

Continuation of (Un)monumenting

The global conversation about monuments meant that the Foundation used this moment to bring the shipyard's history more to the surface. What could a memorial be, mean, and who had a say in it? And asking who deserved to be present in public spaces and who felt represented (and who didn't)? Based on the wish of the NDSM-werf Foundation for a polyphonic public space, the foundation commissioned several artists to give their views on this on the shipyard. The (Un)monumenting project consisted of several episodes: for each chapter, the foundation invited one or more artists to reflect on the theme of 'monuments' of the future. At that time, work was underway on (Un)monumenting #2, a video work by Turkish-Dutch artist Belit Sağ, in which she highlighted the invisible history of the NDSM shipyard. In the video, a collaboration with the Institute for Sound and Vision, Belit Sağ investigated the role of female Turkish migrant workers at the shipyard using archival material.

Plastic Hypersea is was an interactive, site-specific work by an artist Sissel Marie Tonn commissioned by Sonic Acts and was experienced at the NDSM shipyard in Amsterdam.

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Set in 2099, Plastic Hypersea was a guided, spatial and interactive experience that speculated on a possible future in immunology, merged with the topic of environmental health. As listeners explored the terrain, they were invited to imagine the environment as an extension of their immune system and to consider the many ways their bodies intertwined with microplastics in the sediments of Amsterdam's waterways. Ultimately, Plastic Hypersea asked listeners to leave behind the war metaphors that haunted immunology and to think about a more expansive sense of self.

Produced in collaboration with musician Vincenzo Acquaria Castellana and sound and recording artist BJ Nilsen, the localized sound experience was complemented by custom boat sails and ceramic sculptures created by Sissel that acted as “membranes” encoded with material and immaterial data about the hydrophobic, industrial waste that flowed through the waters of the Netherlands.

About the artist

Sissel Marie Tonn was a Danish artist based in The Hague. Her practice focused on the shifts in perception that occurred when people became entangled in their surroundings, blurring the boundaries between body and environment. Her artistic research often resulted in interactive, sensory installations.

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Plastic Hypersea was built on Echoes, an interactive GPS-enabled mobile app for audio walks. To access the work, you had to download the app from the App Store or Google Play. They then put on headphones and wandered around the area of the NDSM shipyard while following the sails and ceramic sculptures. The gradual unfolding of the work was activated while walking and exploring the environment.

SEXYLAND was an art project in the form of a temporary society. For 365 days, the club had a new owner every day. He was able to implement the program as he wished, ranging from art expressions to sporting events, from gangster rap to stroboscopic light dinners. SEXYLAND was a tabula rasa that could be described in any way. SEXYLAND strived to mark every unknown corner of Amsterdam and show the enormous diversity the city had to offer.

In 2021, Sexyland moved from the NDSM shipyard to the other side of Amsterdam-Noord under the name: Sexyland World. As part of Sexyland's departure, we spoke with stakeholders Aukje Dekker and Samira Ben Messaoud in a podcast episode of NDSM X. Listen to it below.

On the way to school or work, kissing behind a corner of a building, sprinting to the ferry, giggling from a car, chewing gum on the ground, fishing in the dock: daily activities at the NDSM shipyard. In NDSM Nursery Square, a project by Studio Makkink & Bey they looked at daily activities at the NDSM shipyard asking how they could reprogram them through cultural activities.

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From October 2019, there was a temporary square to visit where there was space to intervene with a flexible infrastructure and influence the behavior in the shipyard's public space. The square therefore never looked the same, moved with its visitors and was sometimes coloured by artists in residence. For example, park furniture could be borrowed and there were singers and artists who sang to the sailors during rush hour in September.

Artist Antoine Guay built a bread oven in a container, after which the bread baked therein was distributed to visitors on a number of Saturdays in exchange for a nice gesture or action. City poet Gershwin Bonevacia spent a while at Nursery Square as a “poet-in-residence”. A documentary was also shown in the Nursery Square of Nina Swaeny Cherry. And because this was also a public square, by and for Amsterdammers, designer Jurgen Bey and curator Jules van den Langenberg also invited local residents and parties at the shipyard to make their own programming proposals.

The New Zealand Artist Ilke Gers (1981), living in Rotterdam, makes installations, performances and publications in which movement, behavior, social and spatial conditions play a role.

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Stichting NDSM-werf asked Ilke Gers to temporarily intervene in the outdoor area of the NDSM-wharf, where a structure of rules and laws — unlike other public places in the Netherlands — is largely missing. Gers looked at the NDSM shipyard beforehand to see what behavior, use and actions are taking place. By working with a 'script' for chalk lines, she came to a temporary visual work. Has the current era changed her view of the behavior and use of public space? The lines were visible until traffic movements or weather prevailed and the work faded. Ilke Gers' outlines, which are normally used for sports fields, made other forms of play, actions and meanings possible in response to the 'public' nature of the NDSM shipyard.

She described her way of working as “site-sensitive” instead of site-specific, where it was important to her how a space feels, what behavior determines and shapes a space. The focus was on its porous aspect. To elements you may not be aware of at first glance.

'Flipping the Bird' was a photographic work by visual artist Jaap Scheeren (1979). Three images of nature were exhibited on 6 x 3 meter billboards spread across the NDSM shipyard. This photo project held up a mirror to the viewer and showed how we related to nature in both a very serious and absurd way.

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Whoever went to the northern banks of the IJ encountered a number of rebellious animals. A rat, a swan, a squirrel raising their middle fingers: Scheeren created a world where he followed his own logic, intuition, and rules, always with a humorous twist. With the photo works in public spaces, at the NDSM shipyard and around the Tolhuistuin, the photographer told a story about a person who wanted to make contact with nature. The absurdist images, which also appeared earlier in Het Parool appeared, from October 17, were shown on large construction boards (6 x 3 meters) at various locations on the NDSM shipyard. The title of the work referred to looking at animals and nature differently, but also to the English slang for “raise your middle finger”. Jaap Scheeren: “My goal was to become aware of people's position in relation to nature. How did we naturally become part of it again?”

Scheeren's exhibition was the first in the new program series 'NDSM Billboards', with which the NDSM-werf Foundation provided space for artists on large construction boards: “In addition to the building signs on the western part of the NDSM, we gave artists the opportunity to post their artistic statements on building boards. With its 10 hectares, the shipyard provided a beautiful background for large images. In addition to established names, we also wanted to give young talent a chance on the billboards to make their work highly visible to Amsterdam in response to the context of the NDSM,” says curator Petra Heck.