Just back from two days in Amsterdam. And a fine trip it was. Visited lots of my old haunts and discovered some of them were still there. Chief among those was the "Fort Van Sjakoo". A radical bookshop which has been on Jodenbreestraat since 1977.
To be fair I only ever dealt with them since the first time I went to Amsterdam in 1981.
From a radical political point of view, things appear to be very different. In 1981, with the squatters movement in particular and all sorts of other campaigns and struggles there was more of a feeling of ferment and striving for a new world than seems to be evident these days.
Nowhere was I reminded of this more than when I sat on a bench in the sunshine in Museumplein and recalled that one day I had been there with a million other people protesting against nuclear weapons. That was a phenomenal demonstration.
I don't think I have ever been part of a larger gathering. Perhaps the demonstration in Glasgow against the Iraq war in 2003 was larger by proportion of population. The demonstration where Tony Blair cravenly fled by helicopter from the "Scottish" Labour conference, rather than face the demonstrators.
Both demonstrations of course shared a similar outcome in being ignored by the rich and powerful who it was hoped would be so terrified by the sight of a risen people that they would immediately concede our demands.
No such thing happened of course.
I rather share the view that the wealthy only listen when they can be forced to the table. This doesn't mean violence. Gandhi and the Congress Party were (for the most part) non-violent but they certainly made life difficult for the British imperial rulers of India. They simply made India impossible to govern.
They didn't do that by appealing to the good sense of the Raj. They organised strikes and civil disobedience of all kinds including withholding tax payments and a host of other tactics.
Anyway, back to my bench on Museumplein. The memories came flooding back as I paid my fifteen euros to get into the Stedelijk Museum, so recently renovated that even Google Earth shows it as a building site still.
The Stedelijk is the modern and contemporary art museum. Just as I remembered, great on the Mondrians and my favourite Chagall, "The Fiddler".
As always something new strikes one. This visit it was a series of photographs by Eva Besnyo. A Dutch-Hungarian photographer of Jewish heritage, the image that spoke to me most was her portrait of Dora Gerson.
Dora Gerson was a German-Jewish singer and film actor who was hounded out of Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. She moved to Amsterdam and lived underground during the occupation. Trying to escape to neutral Switzerland, she was captured and consigned to Auchswitz where she was murdered in 1943.
Her portrait by Eva Besnyo is full face, unflinching and knowingly addressing the photographer. Taken in 1936 when Dora was already a refugee it is tempting to read into her expression the apprehension of her fate in so few years time.
Eva Besnyo survived the occupation and lived in Amsterdam until her death in 2002. She was involved in radical feminist agitation till the end of her life and photographed much of the happenings, demonstrations and occurrences that she participated in. She was certainly taking pictures during the time I lived in Amsterdam.
None of that side of her work was on show in the Stedelijk yesterday.
There was a very disturbing exhibition by Aernout Mik, a visual artist. Video pieces dealing with asylum, civil war, imperialism and migration. Some of the footage was created from unshown newsreel coverage of the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.
The banality of the shots ensured no inclusion in the news casts but did make them material for Mik to artfully juxtapose across two screens.
Family life carrying on under siege, Kosovar fighters relaxing behind the front lines, civilians fleeing in every direction during an air raid alert in Belgrade.
Chetnik women fighters heading for the front line with perms, ear-rings and lipstick.
Air raid sirens wailing and the population, some running, some unconcerned, some hying to shelter and other strolling along.
Real footage made self-conscious art.
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