Presentation Jeremiah Day - Krakersmonument

Starting 27 June

Please note that the sound component of the monument might sometimes be out of order. To be sure, please bring this sound file with you on your mp3 player:

krakersmonument_soundtrack.mp3

On Saturday afternoon, 27 June, the SMBA presents the 'Krakersmonument' (Squatter's Memorial) by Jeremiah Day. The presentation will take place around 5:30 p.m., at the end of the Stromboliweg, in the western harbours of Amsterdam. As an introduction, prior to the presentation a public conversation between Jeremiah Day and the former artist Raivo Puusemp will take place in Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, beginning at 4:00 p.m. After this a shuttle bus will depart for the Stromboliweg. Frank van Kreuningen, chairman of the Amsterdam Spinoza Circle, will perform the opening ceremony.

As an American artist living and working in Amsterdam, Day's interest in squatting was awakened by a personal experience in July, 2006. Yellow banners with the text 'made possible in part by the squatter movement' showed up on the façades of former squatter bastions like Paradiso in Amsterdam and Tivoli in Utrecht. In America squatting has a highly subversive image, but these banners alerted Day whose work focuses principally on dealing with historical moments to the fact that squatting was not only a political affair, but had also been a stimulus for the creation of important cultural institutions.

The Krakersmonument takes the form of a 'story-telling box', such as can still sometimes be found in older American amusement parks: a sort of speaker on a post which, when you press a button, narrates a story or tells a fairy tale. The story fits with what the listener sees before him, in this case the view out over the Amsterdam harbour. And here it is no fairy tale, but it is also certainly not a history lesson or a political discourse. In a playful way the Krakersmonument combines the official language of monuments and memorials with the creative capacity of fiction and art, so as to function as a way of freely reflecting on this specifically Dutch history.

The basis for the conversation between Jeremiah Day and Raivo Puusemp is an art project of the latter. In 1975 he announced his candidacy for mayor of the town of Rosendale, in the state of New York. After he was actually elected, within two years he saw to the abolition of that community, with the permission of its residents.