Black and white murals enlarged from 1996 Polaroid photographs mounted on ½” gator board. Wood, kitchen sink, paper, carpeting, cups, glasses, wire, electric lamps and various found materials.

12’ W X 11’ H X 44”D  (24” deep plus standing 20” from the wall)

During the 1990s, I worked in a studio in Rotterdam, ND that was situated on a pier near the Maas River, one of the largest industrial ports in the world. This dilapidated building had, at one time, been a box factory and was now inhabited by artists who had renovated the dark, damp and cavernous spaces into living rooms (with views over the canal), kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, and so forth. The renovations were beautiful and ingenious, and in several of the spaces small trailers provided living space and sat inside the larger working/studio room. While there I came to know a number of artists who lived and worked here. Although living in these spaces was banned in 2010, the Kunst and Complex exists to this day offering studio space for over 30 artists.

At the time I was in Rotterdam there were other such ‘living/working spaces’. Referred to as the Dutch Squatters Movement (1970’s to 2010); artists, cultural workers and anti- capitalist progressives who wanted more affordable, collective and imaginative forms of living occupied abandoned warehouses. Re-using cast off and available building materials often found in these derelict buildings they used their imagination and creativity and whatever free materials they could lay their hands on to ‘build it yourself’ homes and working spaces. With a desire to liberate their city from planning ideas based exclusively on property value they often included spaces for community and other social activities such as exhibition space, artists residencies, restaurants etc. In appropriating parts of the city and re-imagining them, they became a significant social force, and in a sense, changed the city from the inside out, ultimately accredited as having a positive and creative effect on the architecture and planning for Rotterdam.