Slauerhoffstraat, Reading Room, 2018
SLAUERHOFFSTRAAT is a special event as a part of the self-organised exhibition titled "Home Sequence" organised by Sascha Pohle and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, taking place over one weekend on 13-15 July 2018 in the private homes of Amsterdam-based artists. SLAUERHOFFSTRAAT is conceived by Yunjoo Kwak based on her long-term research project "Unfinished Odyssey" since 2016. The project investigates the history of Dutch military architecture by reflecting upon the world’s military conflict, colonialism, migration and geo-political narratives between the Netherlands and Indonesia. Together with her artist, musician, writerfriends and participants read and talked on the Dutch poet and novelist Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936) at her house located in Amsterdam Nieuwe West, Slauerhoffstraat. After a childhood plagued by bouts of asthma, he studied medicine in Amsterdam, where he also began writing poetry. His first work was published in 1921, and by the end of his life he was considered as one of the most important writers in Dutch language. In 1923, Slauerhoff signed up as a ship's doctor with the Dutch East India Company on the China-Java-Japan route. This nomadic sensibility was highly unusual for the time on which Slauerhoff was writing; it both harks back to 19th century Romanticism and anticipates today's extreme mobility. Slauerhoff’s restlessness and contemptuous hatred of Holland are prominent themes throughout his work, from the first volume, Archipel (1923; “Archipelago”), to the last, Een eerlijk zeemansgraf (1936; “An Honourable Sailor’s Grave”). Other negative elements are also apparent, such as the revenge wish and preoccupation with violent death and the destructive course of history. During the reading and sharing, a few issues such as the European colonial culture, rejecting history and the forbidden "other" were the central topic. The key readers and speakers are Katayoun Arian, Clare Butcher, Samuel Vriezen, Anna Hoetjes, Sander Uitdehaag, Patricia Pinherio de Sousa and Teresa Maria Diaz de Nerio.