43
44
The method had three stages for each participant. The first one was a small discussion in the meeting place (a café in two cases, the home of the participants in the other). I asked them their age, how and when they got involved in the movement, and some other relevant follow-up questions. My aim was mainly to initiate them to speak. Thankfully, all of them were very keen to do so. During this stage, I took quick notes.
The second stage was the walk. This corresponds to the psychogeographic practice of the dérive. However, for reasons that will be explained later, it is debatable if we can call these walks dérives. I did not give more instructions to the participants as to where and how we should walk. In one case only, I noted at the middle of the walk that I was more interested in personal memories because my participant had started focusing on historical aspects. I recorded the path of the walks with the MyTracks app. Except for this, I did not take any other recordings or notes during the walk. I mainly let the participants talk (again they were very willing to do so) and I engaged in discussion with them whenever it came normally. I ended the recording of the walk whenever the participant said that he had nothing else to show me.
The two of the walks had also a part after that when we walked back together with the participants. There were interesting discussions in that part too, but I want to analyse it separately because it was not actually about wandering but about going in a certain direction for practical reasons.
Back home, I used Google Earth to draw the route we took. (The recording of MyTracks was a helpful primary resource, but it could not be used itself, because the app records a very approximate route, distorted whenever the connection with the satellite is lost, for instance when we walked close to tall buildings, under arcades or inside buildings). I added pins on the route where I wrote down parts of the discussion I remembered as important, places that the participants referred to etc. I also included some thoughts I made myself when passing through places and some discussions that were irrelevant to the movement’s heritage. I did not want to limit my observations to a preconstructed idea of what is relevant to the subject. The routes and
45
the pins created a thick sum of data on the map, which reflects the complexity of the walks and discussions within them1.
The third stage was the psychogeographic map. I gave each participant a collection of instruments (paper, coloured papers, glue, scissors, sellotape, corrector fluid, markers). They could use all, some, or none of them for the map. I did that hoping that it would open up the possibilities for what this map could look like, without me giving ready-made ideas. I told them to focus on personal feelings and recollections and added that no geographical accuracy was needed. In two of them, I also gave a touristy map of Amsterdam, trying to make clear that they could cut it, adapt it etc. I consciously avoid telling them to make a “psychogeographic map” and explaining what this situationist concept is about. I did not want the participants to end up reproducing the visuals and aesthetics of the initial psychogeographic attempts or try to fit their work in a context defined by the researcher, which would be anyways difficult to understand. Generally, my experience both in this and in previous projects demonstrated that participants dislike vague and theoretical input, and tend to ask for very practical directions. In times when I was asked for such directions, I had to give some, attempting to sacrifice as little as possible the openness of the project.
The participants would make the map at home, and I would meet them again to photograph it and have a small discussion on it after one week or so. I decided to follow this way as I considered that having more time would enable them to be more creative. This was proved to be not efficient.
There were big delays and I had to put pressure on them to eventually make the map. I was not able to receive a map from one of the participants, Pieter. For this reason, in the last meeting I did, with Maik, I had him make the map on the spot right after the discussion and before the walk.
1 The maps presented later reflect that complexity. In them, I select and present specific themes that are important for the research. If one however wants to see the whole set of notes I made on Google Earth, here is the link: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1Z3chcvyLhAB8gaUcxPCIIRrbS0CYwr-H?usp=sharing
46
The field encounters
The participants will be presented below with their real names. I asked them if I should use a fake name or an initial instead of the name. Nobody found a reason to do so.
Huib
I met Huib, my first participant at his home, located in the very neighbourhood he defended from redevelopment plans some 50 years ago: Nieuwmarkt. Huib, originally from outside Amsterdam, came to the city to study and found a vivid and varied political movement. What got him more involved was the activities of Action Groep Nieuwmarkt, which he found captivating for its practical character (“Anarchy in action” as he mentioned, indirectly juxtaposing the experience with the more theoretical student movement that had occupied the University headquarters and in which he participated before Action Groep Nieuwmarkt. Inside the movement, and initially for the practical purposes of squatting itself he learned from older people the craft of carpentry. With the group, they squatted a space in the corner of Krom Boomssloot and Koningstraat to transform it into a shared carpentry workshop. He still uses the same space for his work.
After the small opening discussion in Huib’s home, we walked through Lastage, where he showed me the modern buildings that mark the underground route of the metro, which cuts through the historic urban fabric. We walked inside his workshop, outside of which he met a neighbour and had a small chat. Afterwards, we walked alongside Oudeschans canal, to reenter the part affected by the metro construction, on and around Sint Antoniesbreestraat. In that spot, he met another acquaintance, and they exchanged news for a bit. He then showed me Huis de Pinto. At that point, I considered it useful to pinpoint that I also want personal stories and not so much the historic overview, as I felt that Huib was providing mostly the latter. Consequently, he took me in front of some houses he had lived in and squatted in Jodenbreestraat and Zwanenburgwal, and thence through Ververstraat, where he showed me the squat where his girlfriend at the time lived. Finally, we passed through Binnengasthuis, the squatting past of which I learned for the first time. I ended the tracking of the walk in the app when Huib had already mentioned he had nothing else to show me and he said he would go towards his bike. Passing through the Nieuwmarkt square, we discussed the familiar feeling he has with the neighbourhood and the many people he knows
47
there. The bulk of his acquaintances dates back to the squatters’ movement, Nieuwmarkt, he told me, was for him “a village in the city”.
Figure 1. Our wandering with Huib
Hessel
Huib introduced me to my second participant, Hessel. Hessel is younger than Huib, and he entered the movement approximately 5 years later. Thus, his “peak” days were in the early eighties, when Huib started to be less active. Unlike Huib, his involvement was not located exclusively in one neighbourhood, but in the whole city; he changed many squats in which he was living, and he took a very active role from their foundation to their eviction. Hessel seemed to me more like a “man of the movement”. His scope was not in the single case of an action group but in the movement as a whole. Despite this, he kept pinpointing the local qualities of each of the neighbourhoods, which were the cells of the movement. Hessel has continued to live in squats or legalized squats until today, and he still participates in the movement – and as it seems from our discussion, he is an important figure within it. Hessel led me in a long walk, which started from our meeting point in Spuistraat, passed through Singel and the inner city, to head east and end
48
up in Entrepotdok. The length of this walk corresponds to the variety of regions in which he was active – though it is probably not irrelevant to the fact that he was younger than other participants.
Hessel wanted to meet me in a café – bar across the road from the very important legalised squat Vrankrijk, in the coordinating group of which he participates. Unfortunately, this café was closed that day. We went on a small walk around the block in case it would open after 11 (we had met at 10:55) and when we realised this would not be the case, we moved to the nearby café het Paleis. During our thorough discussion – Hessel was more than eager to talk – he drew a small map to explain to me the grand redevelopment plan of the municipality and the distribution of the squats. This was on his own initiative.
In our walk afterwards, we went up along Singel and passed from a former squat at No 114, where Hessel lived, undertook repair works and finally coordinated the battle against the police during the eviction operation. We then went inside the inner city, passing from the former squatted Wijers complex, to take eventually Nieuwendijk down to Dam Square. In that part of the walk, Hessel was repeatedly pointing at buildings that were uninhabited above ground level. This happens because the entrance of the houses has been removed to provide more space for the shops, in the most commercial and touristic area of the city. In times of housing shortage, Hessel considered this a major waste, and he was remarkably passionate about this.
Subsequently, we headed east through the crowded centre, full of tourists and fast food restaurants. There, Hessel spoke to me about the contribution of the movement to the saving of what is now considered a UNESCO Heritage site – the historic centre of Amsterdam. We passed through the same complex that Huib had shown me by Zuiderkerk and in front of Huis de Pinto, of which Hessel also spoke. Then we proceeded to streets unknown to me, where I saw more squats to which Hessel had contributed, and finally reached Entrepotdok, near Artis. Hessel found it interesting to give me a tour of the Entrepotdok complex, so I (an architecture graduate as he already knew) could witness the very interesting (indeed) architectural solution for the transformation of the old warehouses to apartments. We ended up at the warehouse Kalendarpaand, part of which he had once squatted, and from there we took the road back. When it was clear there would be no more wandering, I ended the recording.
49
Figure 2 Our wandering with Hessel. With red the small walk before we went into the café.
Pieter
My third participant, Pieter, is age-wise on the opposite side of Huib from Hessel. He participated in the movement from 1968 to 1975. This means that his last years of involvement overlapped with the first years of Huib, but he is a generation away from Hessel. This is maybe reflected in his interests. He presented the movement as “a critique of urban planning”. Pieter was active in
“Woningburo de Kraker” (See Owens, 2009, 48). This group was active until roughly 1970 when it gave its position to Action Groep Nieuwmarkt and other groups (Pieter’s recollection). I also came to understand from our conversation that he held the somewhat detached role of the photographer during various events. Pieter is a professional photographer. Many of the images that we have from the squatters’ movement are his. I was not able to determine exactly how much his identity as one that depicted the movement overshadows his identity as one who acted in the movement; however, I got the impression that this happens to a certain extent. As we got out of the café to start our walk, Pieter took out his camera. Through the walk, he stopped in several places to take photos.
50
I met with Pieter outside the Waag on Nieuwmarkt square. He wanted to take me to a café on Kloveniersburgwal which was a major meeting point for the movement. However, to his disappointment, he found that this café no longer existed, and we ended up in the café inside the Waag, where we had our initial discussion. In our walk, he showed me places linked to Woningburo de Kraker, such as their “headquarters”, in a building that was eventually demolished for the construction of the metro. We walked around the Nieuwmarkt neighbourhood and through Lastage, to finally take down Sint Antoniesbreestraat and reach Huis de Pinto. There, he asked me if I had been inside, informing me it now functions as a community centre. We proceeded and wandered briefly, spending most of our time in front of some honorary plaques, where Pieter spotted his name. Soon after we exited Huis de Pinto, we ended our wandering.
Figure 3 The wandering with Pieter. In turquoise the small walk to the now-closed café before the discussion in café de Waag
Maik
I came to contact with Maik through Dos Elshout, professor at UvA. Maik became part of the squatters’ movement in the 1990s, and he was active till some years ago. He lived for 7 years in Silo, a former warehouse, and for 21 years in ADM, a squatted space in the port. He is part of a new page in the history of the movement, what he calls ‘’the happy 90s”, which came after the
51
violent “punk 80s” (and the “hippy 70s”). His squatting activity was centred on creativity. His view of the movement has commonalities with Hessel’s and Huib’s, but also many differences. From Maik, I learned another, previously unknown to me story, when paths of creativity merged with those of the movement by the banks of Ij.
The walk with Maik was very different from the others. It was a straight route from our meeting point at Pakhuis Wilhelmina to Silo, following the southern bank of Ij. Maik had decided this route before the meeting. In this case, I could not claim that we did any kind of “wandering”. The route we took though had an interesting impact on the discussion, which further differentiates it from the others. To a large extent, the issues we discussed each time concerned places and buildings that were not next to us, but which we were viewing in the distance. We talked about Silo as soon as it appeared on the horizon, before reaching even the Central Station. Similarly, we talked about NDSM and other existing or perished places and buildings on the other side of the Ij, as we were seeing them.
Maik started drawing his map by positioning the Ij. His squatting story coincides with the banks of the body of water, from Silo to ADM and from Wilhelmina to NDSM.
Figure 4. Our wandering with Maik. In yellow some lines of view, indicating places that were seen from other places during the walk
52
Some methodological problematisations
I will discuss here some problematisations that came to my mind after I conducted the fieldwork.
They have to do with downsides and gaps in my method, as well as with thoughts that came into my mind as I was assessing what I did with the participants and how I did it.
Identity and number of the participants
In the case study presentation, I discussed Kadir’s (2014) warnings about the excessive highlighting of some positionalities within the movement and the neglect of others. Sadly, my research will not be an exception to this rule. This is not thanks to my choice. When I started the research, I envisioned a sample of around eight to ten participants, who would cover different genders, ages, and if possible ethnic groups. It was proved that participants were more difficult to find, and all of my plans to gain access to big numbers of former squatters failed. Squatters of the past have taken very different routes in their lives and they are not to be found in a specific organisation or space. I contacted contemporary squats, but there are very few people there who were already active in the period I am interested in (before 2000). Moreover, the activists I contacted were busy campaigning and running their spaces. They had no time to spare for research. The fact that the research would be conducted in English may have discouraged others.
A lot of places and people I contacted never responded. Therefore, my only access was through a series of contacts provided to me by a Dutch classmate and a Dutch professor. These resulted in the four interviews I had. Another one, with a female squatter, was cancelled last minute.
Thus, my sample is small and completely male. Moreover, regardless of their differences, all four are people who were “personalities” within the movement, influential activists and artists. What is missing is the very important viewpoint of people who were briefly engaged, people that squatted only for a specific reason, such as housing or artistic space. As we discussed, these categories were much less audible but had the majority in numbers. In a way, the sample that I managed to secure affirms the observations made by Kadir of the predominance of white men in representations of the movement. It seems that the people who my Dutch acquaintances "had in mind” when I asked for squatters were all in that category. Unsurprisingly, it was not the first time that they talked about the movement. Huib for example had participated in a documentary before. Anyways, this limitation impacts the wider relevance of this research’s output. The research
53
satisfies the task of testing and discussing the methodology, but bigger research with a more diverse sample could reveal the important potential of the methodology in bringing in the fore suppressed narratives.
Are the wanderings dérives?
A question that troubled me was whether my walking practice can be called a dérive. After all, how can one create an “organised spontaneity” with a participant? Our wanderings cannot be considered spontaneous, despite the fact that they included spontaneous moments. Neither was there some kind of ‘disorientation’, at least from the side of my participants. Though, as we already discussed, none of these elements is necessary for the dérive (Sadler, 1998).
Whatever may be the answer to the abovementioned question, the sure thing is that the experience cannot be defined the same way for the researcher and the participant. More or less, participants walk in streets they know, having in mind some places they want to show me. On the other side, I walked in streets I knew less or not at all, without knowing which turn we would take next. As we wandered, I let myself be carried away by the participant. I did not control the sequence of images I would see, sounds I would listen to, situations into which I would dive.
Even while we were walking through familiar streets, I encountered them with new eyes. I was coming across aspects of the space I never knew before: the former squats, my participant’s home when he was my age, the home of his girlfriend back in that time, the friends he met on the streets. In other words, I met with different realities. One of them was the personal and social world of my participant. Other realities were located in the dimension of time, and others were
“hidden” qualities of the space, some of which I could never suspect on my own (like a hidden layer of insulation in a building shown to me by Hessel).
In conclusion, we could schematically say that these walks are composed of a kind of open mobile interview (for the participant) and a dérive (for me). In further research, the first could be analysed with several of the established analytical tools for such cases (e.g., discourse analysis, ethnography etc), always through a psychogeographic lens, which in this case means through the emotional qualities of the space. The second could be analysed in an autoethnographic mode.
54 Are the maps psychogeographic?
The maps counterpart of the project can be considered only partially successful. The insights produced by the participants’ maps are interesting, and especially Hessel’s map can add to the analysis. But the maps are not at all close to their psychogeographical goals. They are to a certain extent, still technical. They provide a simple answer to the question “where have you been during your involvement in the squatters’ movement”. In an attempt to not influence my participants, I had given the least descriptive assignment that it was possible for the map. This attitude however worked in a destructive way against any psychogeographical quality of them. In future research, I would advise a more guided assignment for the map. This description can be based perhaps on the different categories of space that were invented by the situationists. These are unities of ambience, plaques tournantes, contours and paths of least resistance (Sadler, 1998). A researcher can “translate” these categories into simple questions that can be asked to the participant, who will have to “answer” them on the map.
Nevertheless, failure to comply with psychogeography was not the only downside of the maps produced. This would be not especially concerning on its own, as I have already accepted that I will use tools inspired by psychogeography and not per se psychogeographical tools. The most important issue is that the maps that the participants produced were closer to historic maps than emotional maps. The participants depicted things that could be considered their “official stories”:
the ones that they would tell to a historian or a journalist. In contrast with the various personal information that the walks provided, the maps were impersonal.2
I also attempted to put the idea of collage into the making of maps, giving my participants a set of tools that they could use for it, as well as a touristic map of Amsterdam. The situationist psychogeographic maps, like Naked City, were at the very end collages, using pieces of atlases of Paris. Collage, especially when the abstracts that are used reflect normalised, authorized and
2 Strangely, a previous project that I had done in the same direction (in a religious community for the purposes of my internship), despite being far less planned and ambitious, managed to receive more personal and emotional qualities through the maps. A big difference I find is that my previous project was concerning a specific building. It is maybe difficult for participants to put down personal qualities on a scale of a city.