Saturday August 31th we will have a last conversation and screening of ‘Het Hoogt en het Laagt’, a film by Kristina Benjocki and Stijn Verhoeff. You are warmly invited to join us. Especially for this last edition there will be guest speakers. More about that soon! The meet-up & screening will take place in the ‘Bewonersvereniging’ archive and office space, Bovenover 241 in Plan van Gool.
Benjocki and Verhoeff made a film that offers a poetic exploration of the Plan van Gool where they reside. It attempts to capture their multifaceted habitat in image and sound and is based on dialogues with residents and includes detailed film footage of daily activities and work in the neighbourhood. They would like to continue these conversations and as such, the process of filmmaking itself. The encounters this summer are to gather input for the longer film Benjocki and Verhoeff intend to make.
We would love to meet you!
Plan van Gool
In the late 1960s, architect Frans van Gool was commissioned by the City of Amsterdam to design the “Plan van Gool,” a concrete housing complex in the vast polder landscape of Amsterdam-North. More than 1,100 ‘stacked porch houses in nature’ appeared, in ten flats connected by footbridges, with a gallery on every fourth floor. It became a unique neighborhood of rhythm in concrete where many thousands of people lived and resided for more than fifty years; from early pioneers who literally gave life to the space, to guest workers who later came from all over the world. Some find the van Gool Plan hideous, others seek out the neighborhood precisely to live there: I’m glad there is no color in the architecture. Color is created by the trees, plants and people, not the architecture,’ says one resident. The Plan van Gool has many faces and carries with it a rich history.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Kristina Benjocki was born in 1984 in Zrenjanin, the former Yugoslavia. She has exhibited her work at various institutions and platforms worldwide, including Rijswijk Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia; Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen, Belgium; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia; Izolyatsia in Kyiv, Ukraine; the American University in Beirut, Lebanon.
Benjocki’s oeuvre is strongly influenced by archaeological practices and reflects on archaeology itself. Her work makes us aware of how narratives are constructed and how these constructions influence our perception of the world. She examines the conditions under which fragments of time are collected, recorded, documented, represented, shared, omitted, repressed or overlooked, and the implications this has for knowledge and the formation of identity and community. Central to her work is the archive, which she sees as an instrument for writing new histories.
Stijn Verhoeff is a filmmaker and writer. In addition to his own projects, he often collaborates with other artists, writers and musicians. Since 2022, he has been a board member of Fossil Free Culture NL and an advisor to the Student Council of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute. Stijn Verhoeff was born in Amsterdam in 1981.
Het Hoogt en het Laagt (The High and the Low) is the second collaboration between Benjocki and Verhoeff after the film While the Pile of Rubble Grows Towards the Sky, which came out last year.
“We wanted to focus on the neighborhood and work within it rather than from within our own home. The interviews, observations and collaboration with the community are at the heart of how the film was created.”
Find out more about Welcome Stranger and previous artworks and projects here.
More information about the current program and locations that come with it visit welcomestranger.nl. And also keep an eye on instagram:@_welcomestranger_
