van der Lubbe at the Tillsitter Café in Friedrichshain. The heroic movie was said to have inspired Van der Lubbe to set
the Reichstag afire, that gave the Nazis their pretext to start the reign of terror. We took long walks through the former
stretches of no man's land, that had marked the concrete desert of the Berlin Wall, now pulsing with high energy huge
construction works from Potsdammer Platz to Hamburger Bahnhof. Like all tourists we kept strolling up and down
the party mile through Tiergarten between Brandenburger Tor and Siegessaule.
Three months later at the Venice Biennale - june 2001 -, we met again at the opening party of a big show of selected
Dutch artists in some prestigious Palazzo, curated by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, who
had organized the Kassei Documenta of 1982. The party started with cocktails in the beautiful garden op the Palazzo.
Although I was not invited, my partner Marion van Wijk managed to get us in through a backdoor, opened by Suzanne
Oxenaar, the director of the Lloyd Hotel, also in Amsterdam. Our presence was visibly frowned upon by Marina
Abramovic, - the art star at the occasion -, but we took the risk. In the garden the elite of the Dutch art world resounded
in polite conversation and small talk. Apart from the cultural attaché of the Dutch Embassy in Rome, lady Mansvelt-Beck,
who made a disruptive statement on the shoes of the host on the occasion, Melle Daamen, director of the Mondriaan
Foundation (City Theatre), we spotted the usual collection of directors, curators, ministerial delegations, art funding
officials, but also choreographers, casting directors, art academy teachers and a bunch of selected journalists. When
dinner time arrived, the usual hassle about table arrangement started. Who was to sit next to whom? This most
important ritual of social hierarchy made Van Hanegem and I split company with Domburg, who had to sit with his
partner Rineke Dijkstra at an important vip-table. Van Hanegem, me and our partners ended up at a table, which was
most unstable. So Van Hanegem and I started to collect the little cardboards that glasses of beer are to be placed upon.
When we were down underneath the white table cloth, somebody close by called my name. I looked aside and spotted
the shoes of the master of ceremony: Mister Daamen. In serious trouble I rose to my feet to hear the verdict. "I am sorry,"
Daamen said, "but you and your partner were not invited for dinner. And the same counts for you, mister van Hanegem!"
So the three of us left the garden party. As we passed the palazzo entrance, a handsome boyish looking man in a
immaculate dark designer suit, -arms folded in front of his breast-, gave us a compassionate but amused look. It was
Rick van der Ploeg, Dutch secretary of State on the Department of Education, Culture and Science, the man responsibe
for the national contribution to the Venice Biennale. It turned out we had sat at the forbidden table reserved for him and
other high ranking officials. Van Hanegem wasn't worried a bit. "Let's go out and eat a Pasta Vongole around the corner at
the big square, facing the church, where they keep this splendid painting by Bellini. Now I have the chance to go and take
a good look at it", he said and so we did. As we were brdering our dinner, the immaculate man in the dark suit arrived,
asking if he could-^it with us and have dinner together. Something had been wrong with some people, like at Jesus'
Last Supper, so Van der Ploeg decided to leave early. He was familiar with Van Hanegem's works. Also he had seen
Marion van Wijk perform on stage and in the movies. When I introduced myself, he said: "So you must be the wordsmith
from Flushing." Indeed I was. Over dinner a conversation on the London and Berlin art scene developed. London was
expensive, Berlin was hip. Van Hanegem looked at me. Somehow our mind was made up for Berlin. When two other
Dutch artists passed our table, (Desiree Dolron and Cleo Campert)the Secretary of State, - always a gentleman -, invited
them over for wine and food. He left with the two ladies to fulfill another pressing cultural obligation. Deejay Eddy de
Clerck was to swing a big reception of the Prince Claus Foundation, who organized local art sponsoring in third world
countries.
Half a year later Domburg, Van Hanegem and I were living on separate locations in Berlin. Domburg at Friedrichshain
(hip East), Van Hanegem at Schöneberg (old West) and me at Pankow (outskirts East). Regularly we met for dinner at each
other's appartments, went to openings together and did elaborate sightseeing. Reichstag, Alexanderplatz, Gropiusbau,
Checkpoint Charley, Platz der Republik, concentration camp Sachsenhausen at Oranienburg, a Hohenzollern castle on
Pfaueninsel at Grosser Wannsee, proletarian Eisenhüttenstadt near the polish border, the Kraft durch Freude sea resort,
built but never used by the nazi masses on the island of Rügen, the site of Goering's stolen top paintings at Karinhall
near Lake Döllner. We saw the important exhibits at Neue National gallerie, Deutsches Guggenheim, Altes and Neues
Museum. Went to openings at Bethanienhaus, Galerie Hetzler or more obscure spaces at the Scheunen Viertel, with
good Italian pasta or gut bürgerliche Deutsche Küche (German kitchen) around squatted places like Tacheless or
Hackesche Markt. We had a great time. Attended each other's birthday parties, discussed new developments in our
career opportunities, saw elections and soccer games on television. In the early Summer of 2004 we even did an exhibit
together in a small Friedrichshain art space, called Drei mal Drei (3x3).
IV I
Then it was time for me to follow the call of duty and say goodbye. I left Berlin and settled for a studio in Flushing.
Bart Domburg parted in 2006 and went back to Amsterdam. But Van Hanegem kept his studio in Berlin and started
migrating back and forth to his Amsterdam studio with occasional stops at Flushing.
Flushing nowadays is a vivid working class community with a rich historical background, mainly because of its
strategic location on the southern tip of the island of Walcheren, which for centuries controlled the mouth of the Scheldt
river, leading up to the important Belgian ports of Antwerp and Ghent. At the end of the Middle Ages, Flushing was the
main entrance to the United Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, roughly comprising the territory of what is now
called Benelux. During the Austrian and Spanish domination of the Habsburg dynasty (1500-1800), which pretty soon
led to the Dutch eighty War of Independence (1568-1648), Flushing was the second town that liberated itself from foreign
domination. With a little help from the Watergeuzen (Beggars of the Sea), a rebellious bunch of pirates, who fought
the regular navy of King Phillip II, the local population rose to meet terror. On small ships, that could navigate the ever
changing flow of the tides and hide behind the shallow sands when the fighting became too rough, they won battle after
battle. Once Flushing was seized by the soldiers of the Prince of Orange, dubbed Wiliam the Silent, political and military
conditions stabilized in favor of the emerging Dutch navy.
Some generations later, Flushing gave birth to the world famous admiral Michiel de Ruyter (comparable only to
Lord Nelson), who not only battled Spanish fleets, but also the combined French and British armada, that sought to
destroy the small independent Republic of the United Seven Provinces. Flushing and Middelburg by then had gained
some level of prosperity, mainly by monopolizing the slave trade from West Africa to the America's.
Originally the Van Hanegem family came from Breskens, across the Scheldt river, opposite of Flushing, in an area
called Staats Vlaanderen (Dutch Flanders), a tiny strip of no man's land, sparsely inhabited by a tough and sturdy
borderline population, who rationally belong to the Calvinist north, but emotionally share a deep affinity with the
Catholic south. Old family legend tells the story of a great-grandfather Van Hanegem, who - as a ferry-man -, carried
the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte safely across the Swin in 1810. By then French empire was crumbling under
heavy British naval attacks, that had reduced Flushing to smoking pile of rubble the year before. In 1811 the little
emperor returned Flushing to inspected the new fortifications and meet his new wife Marie Louise in Middelburg,
who had traveled over Antwerp. When questioned about foreign heritage in Flushing, Ab drily commented that during
his teenage years (1970-1984) the old Arsenal of the French garrison at the nearby fisherman's harbor had been occupied
by Whitsun and Pentacost Communities from Brabant. German Bunkers were favorite tourist locations. On the
weekends, during his teenage years in the 70s, Van Hanegem went to De Piek (the peak, the pike but also the guilder,
which was the price of a glass of beer). In this club Ab met his peers, drinking beer, chasing girls and frequently
listening to poprock by Dutch and British bands.
After forty years de Piek still functions as a temple of pop culture. Ab went to see the movies in a cinema called
Alhambra, a place frequented by the SS elite during the Second World War, when the island of Walcheren was part of
I V
Domburg, Van Hanegem and Dalstar at Venice Biennale, spring 2001
