The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat)

PROGRAMME STAGE

introduction and outroduction
by Marga van Praag, journalist and reporter, as part of Holland Festival project The Elders.

musical performances
- The Disintegration Loops by American composer William Basinski by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Manoj Kamps
- performances by soloist and school choir 

personal stories
of people who are or were involved in various ways with the Euterpestraat/Gerrit van der Veenstraat area

PROGRAMME AUDITORIUM GERRIT VAN DER VEEN COLLEGE

De Oorlogskoffer (The War Box) 
documentary by Vanessa de Gaay Fortman and Pim van Bezooijen in cooperation with Interakt Productions
start: 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00, 18:00, 19:00
length: 31 minutes - free entrance and exit

exhibition Oorlogskoffers
made by pupils of Gerrit van der Veen College,
and information on audio work by pupils as part of The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski

PRACTICAL INGORMATION

• Limited seats are available at the performance of The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat). You can bring your own chair or cushion.
• - Keep in mind that it can be hot. 
• - There are no catering facilities, so bring your own drinks if you wish.

ANOHNI:

‘I lived on Gerrit van der Veenstraat for one year in the late 1970s as a 7 year old child, and my English family was ignorant to the events of thirty years previous. Astonishingly, we never questioned the story behind the Mezuzah embedded in the wall by our front door. To me as a child, the neighborhood was a place of refuge and creativity; it was the site where my imagination first unfurled. Euterpe, a Greek muse of music and lyricism, delivered her gentle promise to me. I played, unaware, in the street where a few decades earlier the Frank family themselves had been contained, awaiting deportation, at the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung.

I was shocked to finally learn the terrible history of Euterpestraat. During WWII, the former girls' HBS across the street from my home had been converted into the headquarters of the Dutch section of the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). On the internet, I saw black and white images of SS flags casting shadows over my childhood dream.

Gerrit van der Veen was an artist and a Dutch resistance fighter. By changing the name of the street after the war, city officials contextualized the neighborhood as a site of a heroism. While the resistance fighters were indeed valiant, many other Dutch people actively supported or fearfully turned a blind eye to the removal of their Jewish neighbors rather than risk their lives to try and prevent it.

Around the world, children often find themselves playing in anonymous chasms of genocide in which their environments were previously purged of their original inhabitants, and of their biodiversity, before a sense of “peace” resumed. The necessity of forgetting is central to the success of extractive, late-stage capitalism. In order to keep consuming, we cannot be derailed by the resonance of truths and histories embodied within the materials and spaces in which we bathe.

The teachers at Gerrit van der Veen College have developed a curriculum that addresses the situation in which they find themselves, instructing diverse, artistic teenagers within walls that housed extreme human cruelty. Discussing the ways that the history professors face this challenge was intensely moving to me. Those teachers and students are the heroes of Gerrit van der Veenstraat now, working by themselves to excavate and tend to the memories within the building with such dignity.

I would like to create a window where the memories of Euterpestraat, Her beauty, Her kindness, and Her collapse, have time to breathe for the broader city, as a gift to Amsterdam. It is because of my tremendous love for this neighborhood, and my gratitude for the way She held me as a child, that I wish to honor Euterpestraat now, with greater insight into Her Truth.’