Anyone who has ever lived in a multilingual country will recognize it: the small differences between placeholders in the different national languages — almost the same, but just not entirely. In Brussels, for example, you can just go to the Uphill street living in one language, and, in the Rue de l'Ascension in the other; fun fact and interesting for the local culture. But there is certainly also an effect on how you move through this street. Because a better literal translation of this street from French is ascent street; an almost heroic fact — with the victory of the heights in sight. While uphill it still feels like gravity will keep pulling at you and the top will be out of the picture for a long time. Almost the same but not quite; technically, they are part of the same family. In terms of content, they have a completely different approach — and therefore a completely different perspective when you start your way up at the beginning of this street. An innocent Babylonian confusion from the reality of the city.

At NDSM, polyphony is the core of the so-called Cultural Wharf — the name for this period of temporality and transformation. But you could also just call it a Tower of Babel.

It is less noticeable in this country, but here too, we have a psychologizing effect of placeholders with a deeper effect of how we use them. And perhaps that is most noticeable in our designations for the places where we can move freely: sometimes it is called public space, the other time it is called public space. Offentliche Raum, public space, public space... maybe we have the only language that has two terms for the same thing. Or not entirely. Because technically, public space is wider than public space: the term is used for all places where — given the character of the space — the public should be able to move freely; from public roads and squares, to the entrances to public buildings — such as libraries, post offices and banks, and even virtual spaces. While public space is reserved for public roads, squares, streets, etc.

But with this specification of public space and demarcation to public space, a lot of meaning also seems to be lost. We mainly know public space as a space that is protected by rules, commandments and prohibitions. Uproar in public spaces is quickly seen as a nuisance, making your voice heard is mainly done when you are upset about something and is often accompanied by other noises, drowning out and having to ask for permission in advance. Public space, on the other hand, is about the right to move and express yourself freely. So space for public values and polyphony; and we should cherish them because it is increasingly oppressed between the public (regulated) and the private.

The NDSM shipyard is perhaps one of the last places in Amsterdam where public space really is public space. And that has everything to do with her temporality. As a public space, it is unfurnished in accordance with the rules and undeveloped — a piece of city that is unfinished. And that's why many rules don't apply. It went from an abandoned industrial relic to a sanctuary without much interference. And now, for almost 15 years, it has had a temporary status as a transformation area — but also as a cultural site. Waiting for its final status as part of an expanding city, a strange mix has emerged between the informal and the formal. With as many elements of public space — which can be filled in by individual voices — as of public space with evolving rules and commandments — to make as many simultaneous uses as possible. That chafes, but in a pleasant way. It results in conversations, sometimes discussions, but almost always great new meetings and collaborations between parties that would be less likely to meet in other places. And especially new polyphonic meanings that are being added to the many histories that this place already has. At NDSM, this is the core of the so-called Cultural Wharf — the name for this period of temporality and transformation. But you could also just call it a Tower of Babel — especially in the sense of Guido van der Werve's art project that is now on display and can be experienced at NDSM.

The NDSM wharf is perhaps one of the last places in Amsterdam where public space really is public space.

Now that the transformation is starting to get more hands and feet, however, there is also a run on the last free space. On the one hand, temporary initiatives are fighting to preserve space and new parties are emerging to use the seemingly indefinite space for all the things that the city of today and tomorrow needs. And that's how the first real Babylonian speech confusions arise. The consequences can be significant. Just like in the Biblical story, they could just lead to the decline of this beautiful fusion of public and public space that can give meaning to the city of today and tomorrow.

Let this Tower of Babel be the first of many to be built on this site now and in the future as polyphonic living expressions of our public values.

Text: Liza Folkertsma

I've loved coming to the NDSM for festivals and days out on the IJ, so when hotelship Botel was looking for people to temporarily occupy their rooms, I didn't hesitate for a moment. A week later, I was living at (or at) the NDSM!

When I was running around the Feralda crane at the beginning of the year, I saw the bucket and a strong cauliflower from last year even grew! One of the sculptors advised me to email the foundation so that I could get a yard garden. Once I had done that, they quickly turned out to be full... Fortunately, it all worked out and I even got 2 gardens appointed after a while.

I had no experience with vegetable gardening yet. A few hundred meters away, I started planting seeds in my hotel room and waiting for them to blossom. I dragged two gigantic bags of soil there with a friend — lovely afternoon, what a fun — and planted the little ones from the windowsill in the yard gardens.

There is no way to describe what this “small” project did to me. I watched insects, watched plants grow up, harvested, frustrated with the slowness of pumpkin growth and the speed of poppy leaves blowing. It was an active meditation and I came there a few times a week. I stood in the sun and begged for rain because the wind was drying things out.

“I realized that every moment with plants teaches me a lot of things and makes me wiser”

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When the sunflowers opened, when the dill suddenly gained strength, when the chilli plant found its place after thinning and on the last day I saw how long the root of the apple tree (yes, really!) had become — that's when I realized that every moment with plants teaches me everything and makes me wiser.

I love that there is room for so many different things at the NDSM. From IJ Hallen to ADE, cafes and theater festivals, crossfit and massage therapy, sculptors and garden gardens. Botel is behind me, but luckily I still live nearby. I go there every week with a smile on my face, despite the wind or rain or bright sun. Beautiful place!

NDSM-werf Foundation and TAAK Foundation invited eight artists to provide workshops for city residents from their own disciplines. The result: an extraordinary collection of works of art that symbolize the city's countless voices. Unlike in the Biblical story, where polyphony actually led to the decline of construction, polyphony was precisely the strength of the work here. In this article, we look back one by one at the different artists of this project, which was based on an idea by Guido van der Werve, and how the works shaped the tower.

Watch here the video interviews that Anna Sidorchik made with all artists.

1. Perrine Philomeen (fashion stylist and creative director)

‍“Like many people, I see fashion and fashion as an extension of your identity. I always like to explore the boundaries of that in my workshops.”

In the ideal city of Perrine Philomene (1992) people no longer say dress to impress, but dress to empower! The collective's youngest artist allowed young people to experiment with textiles as a form of self-expression. Together, they worked on flags — a unique textile symbol for each participant — that still proudly flutter in the installation, including photographic images of participants showing their own flags as fashion items.

2. Mick La Rock (graffiti artist)

“In a graffiti workshop, you give people a bit of freedom that they normally don't experience.”

Going wild with spray cans was part of most participants in these workshops, provided by a famous graffiti artist Mick La Rock (1970), maybe not in everyday life. This made it all the more special to let their writing run wild and their ideal image of the city to pieces to translate. In collaboration with Jeffrey Kroese from Vinger.nl, Mick processed the results into two collages on banners, which can be seen at the top of the tower.

3. Rianne van Duin (graphic designer)

“Children get a bigger voice through these kinds of projects. Then they're suddenly in the newspaper and they have all kinds of things to say that we could take a little more to heart.”

The little people among us also have a big voice and this is for Rianne van Duin (1978) — graphic and 3D designer working at NDSM — an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Together with students from Klein Amsterdam primary school, she created a newspaper for Tower of Babel in which the children themselves make their wishes, dreams and ideas for the city visible in text and images. These newspapers are in a special cabinet in the tower and are free for everyone to take along.

4. Fouad Lakbir (photographer and storyteller)

“The moment you tell a story, you not only create space for your story, but also space where another story can be told. By doing that, you make way for dissenters, for people who live their lives differently.”

An individual story doesn't have to be individualistic at all. That became clear during the storyteller and photographer workshops. Fouad Lakbir (1990). What is your best memory of a city? Based on this question, he started talking to several Amsterdammers, after which they interviewed each other about their ideal city. The special conversations he recorded during the workshops came together in a soundscape that can be heard in Tower of Babel.

5. Olfa Ben Ali (visual artist and director)

“In my view, art has more impact on society when it is created in collaboration with others.”

As part of her larger project 'REFUTEA', French-Tunisian visual artist investigated Olfa Ben Ali (1974) during her workshops with refugees and undocumented people from the AZC, the ritual value of tea. The results of the tea workshop were translated into a poem, an advertising image on a banner and a video projection that bring together the participants' diverse stories about tea and “home” memories. The iced tea was actually served to visitors during the opening of the Tower of Babel.

6. Brendan Jan Walsh (cellist, composer, conductor)

“We need to realize that we can achieve great things as humans, but in how we implement this, and why, there must be room for everyone.”

Working together on the city of the future means for Brendan Jan Walsh that the result contains a lot of individual expressions. He therefore prefers to see a modern Tower of Babel not as a big building made of glass, steel and concrete, but as a living work, where someone can say, for example: “Hey, do you see that flower there? That was my idea!” For Tower of Babel, he gave a literal expression to “polyphony”. At the opening of the project, a choir and a chamber orchestra performed a special piece under his direction, composed by Guido van der Werve.

7. Bengin Dawod (architect and urban planner)

“A city must be developed by the people themselves. This must be able to take place in an organic and spontaneous way.”

Letting people help build their city themselves, both literally and figuratively, brings social commitment. Architect and urban planner helped Tower of Babel Bengin Dawod (1982) participants in creating bricks from natural materials, such as clay and hay, that now lay the foundation for the Tower of Babel as a wall. According to Bengin, these types of low-threshold yet collective activities give people a sense of ownership in their city.

8. Tina Lenz (design anthropologist)

“What I really like about this project is that I've been to more places inside.”

By stepping into various worlds yourself, design anthropologist offers Tina Lenz (1972), together with the participants of her workshops, a gateway to the Tower of Babel. For this project, she worked with Surinamese women, men from the El Moutaquine mosque at the NDSM shipyard, visitors to the Taalcafé near Huis van de Wijk de Evenaar and her friends at the Chinese bookstore Ming Ya. They transform personal stories and symbols with paper into colorful banners that are positioned as four gates in the tower.

What does your ideal city look like? Which voices are included in this? And how can we have a lasting conversation about this with art, culture, games and meetings? These are the questions that came up at Tower of Babel, and will hopefully continue to be answered in a fascinating way not only at the NDSM shipyard, but throughout Amsterdam.

Come and have a quick look at Tower of Babel in the fall of 2021 and be inspired! The tower (decorated with most of the works) will remain on display until the end of 2021.

How did this project start for you?

I came to the so-called Free Energy conspiracy theory on track by watching videos suggested to me by the YouTube algorithm. The protagonists in the Free Energy The Internet's niche claim that there are better, cheaper, and more efficient and ecological ways to produce energy. This caught my attention because I think it's one of the biggest challenges we face today. There are voices in that scene who are sure that this knowledge is being suppressed by the authorities and the oil or nuclear lobby. However, this seems to me to be a conspiracy theory. I found videos and guides from Free Energy prototypes, such as machines and batteries, that promise to produce energy without wasting resources but by using undiscovered energy sources. What fascinates me is this idea of making inventions that should revolutionize our society and our way of life. It's like looking for the “stone of wisdom”: trying to make gold with alchemy, inventing machines that bring peace, and so on. Some of these projects work as a perpetual mobile machine (which is impossible under the laws of physics), others use energy fields from the Earth or space. Their creators (critical voices would say “pseudo-scientists”) make the fair point that there are many things we don't know yet — just like humanity believed the Earth was flat for a long time. That brings us to another niche of the conspiracy theory on YouTube.

What do you find most compelling about these theories?

I find it interesting to see how these “utopian” machines are claimed as disruptive technologies and how they are presented in these underground scene. The tech industry loves disruptive technology, referring to a catharsis or cleansing storms that wipe out old systems and habits. Presentations of tech products are usually less questionable than when presenting a perpetual mobile machine. And I agree that there are good reasons for this on one level. On the other hand, the tech industry largely determines what is seen as utopian today and also what should be swept away by their disruptive technology. We are constantly confronted with new technologies that promise to make our lives better. This technology is also so present that it is very difficult to beat around it. When you are then confronted with a presentation of a machine that produces electricity and thus drives a light bulb — and its inventor tells you that this offers an opportunity to change the world and liberate humanity — that is somehow poetic.

I'm not sure if this Free Energy movement should be brought to light.

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I got in touch with some of these hobby scientists and asked them if they would provide me with some of their inventions. Eventually, I started working with “crystal batteries”, consisting of sticks of aluminum, copper and magnesium, that make tiny LEDs blink. The myth of these batteries is that they last forever as an endless supply of energy.

The second work, “Peak Panic,” includes two photos — one of a Coca-Cola bottle mask, and the other shows a DIY candle made from a light bulb. It was interesting for me to revisit this 2016 work through the lens of our current times and the global pandemic. I knew DIY masks and protections from protests and also found manuals for building them in Prepper community forums, which are preparing for all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios. When I saw images of people wearing these items in supermarkets and public transport at the start of the pandemic, it felt like the battlefield was expanding. We've become accustomed to masks and other safety measures as part of our awareness to take care of ourselves. It's interesting how easily these things can change, and how a homemade mask can take on a new meaning over time.

What role do the elements of light and visibility play in your work?

I'm not sure if this one Free Energy movement “must come to light” or that everyone should know about it. I don't really think so. I'm not trying to give this specific group of people a stage and visibility. Rather, I project my own story about how these ideas are told and developed and confront that with an aesthetic of science fiction and utopian architecture. I don't know how these batteries work. I don't even know if they work. People might say, “These batteries will work forever!” Do we believe in that or not? Or maybe, we just hope it works, fascinated by this promise.

I enjoy leaving the protection of an art space behind

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For me, the beauty of light is that it reminds me of things that come to life. Electricity brings a machine to life: when it blinks, it works, and that's when we begin to identify with it.

What is it like for you to show your work in the public space? What do you find valuable or important about that?

I like to show my work in a public space and enjoy leaving the protection of an art space behind me. Frames, protective walls, the white cube, or simply the fact that we call something an “art space” — all of this makes us handle objects carefully. It is a challenge for me to produce work outside. How does it enter into a dialogue or communicate with the place where it is being exhibited? What is it doing there?

How do you expect the audience to respond to the work? What kind of interaction do you think they're going to have with it?

The audience may consist of a few people who deliberately come to see work, but most people just walk by. I try to work with a research background, but that can also be understood by people who do not share this knowledge.

Your work was previously shown at Into Nature in Drenthe. How do you like to transfer your work to other locations?

The images were first exhibited in nature, and now they have moved to NDSM. That means they already have their scars — they've seen a lot. They come from their forest retreat, where they recharged in the shade of the trees, and now they're out in civilization. Already a little bit injured, a little bit dirty, and they're likely to get hurt even more in the near future, I hope. I wonder what they will look like in a month. Maybe it has some graffiti on it — I would really like that. The first location was a nature reserve, which was really beautiful and had forces like wind and rain at play. But at NDSM, there was not only bad weather, but also a carnival in the background, and people coming out of the bars were probably drunk. I'm really glad that my work is facing that.

The exhibition '(Come To) Light' can be visited free of charge at NDSM in the winter period 2021 - 2022, with different durations and dates per work.