My good friend Tobi from back home and his second band project, the Reggae / Ska combo Yambalaya have released their first album (title above)! And even though I despise the cover artwork I still demand that all of you buy it. Now. Here's a short piece of footage of their 'work' from the Sunhill Reggae Night.

By the way, if you wanna seem them live: those bastards will be playing at Chiemsee Reggae along the likes of Shaggy, Deichkind, Patrice, Clueso, Shantel and many more. Damn you.

This time I spend the afternoon/evening with Alice who was visiting her grandma in Holland's capital. Again quite a lot of walking, but a bit more relaxed than last time as temperatures were nice and springy and we didn't constantly have to take cover from hail storms inside textile shops ;)

After she'd picked me up from the train station and I had satisfied my hunger with an extremely overpriced shawarma we strolled through the city for some time and had some coffee in a very nice corner bar. The latter seemed to be a popular local after-work place as from about 6 it started getting more and more packed with thirsty dutch workers. The last half hour there I was also 'occupied' by the bar cat, who had chosen my lap as a nice place for a nap. After leaving we only made it another 200m until we stopped to look at a shop window. The people inside saw us and waved us in.

It turned out the shop was an old butchery being used by a couple of artists as a temporary exhibition place called Gallery Shaap and that night was an 'unofficial opening'. A very cool, run down location with lots of charm. As we were told, there's an organization in Amsterdam which gives artists and the likes old rooms, office spaces or shops for free for a couple of months before they're demolished or rented out again in order to avoid squatting (Hausbesetzung). Pretty cool idea actually.

To make a long story short: Alice and I ended up staying for almost three hours – having a couple of beers, looking at the work, making CD covers, signing the guest book and first and foremost having some very nice chats with the laid back bunch of Thomas Reineke (who a.o. made sculptures out of broken car wind schields), Jacob Plooij (who is also a professional violin player), Vilbjørg Broch and Jennette Snape with Thomas being the only 'real' Dutchman. Jacob and Jennette are originally from Australia, Vilbjørg – who by the way was pretty damn drunk as it seemed – from Denmark.

All in all, simply a good time with a good friend, nice chats and some sightseeing on the side which came to an end after another long stroll through the dark alleys of Amsterdam, two dutch 'frikadeller' – weird mutants out of hamburger patties and bratwurst –, a quick goodbye and a 40 minute ride back to Den Haag.

There they are – the final results of the big 'Demonstration Manual' project, which I presented last Friday. A short explanation what it was all about:

The brief was to pick something to demonstrate for or against and make a manual for a demonstration concerning that topic. That was supposed to include everything from name, logo, CI to flyers, posters, banners, info stands and even chants or choreographies, as well as instructions for the city of how to deal with the demonstration. In the process of the project, I decided to go a slightly different way. Instead of doing just one specific demonstration I chose to invent a fictional underground organization – called 'Spilt Milk' – that plans and organizes protests / demonstrations for whoever is in need of one.

What I ended up with is shown below. Two folders with loose pages and a couple of gimmicks. One of the folders holds 12 color-coded manuals with instructions on how to conduct a specific demonstration. That included everything from the needed materials and where to obtain them, costs, number of persons needed, risks (what laws would be broken) and presumed effectiveness as well as preparation and execution instructions. The additional picture is just a small hint of how the whole thing could look. Most of these manuals are actually rather for performance art / flashmob inspired actions than real marches. The toy car for example is part of one of these concepts: instead of walking through a street with posters, mount little flags to remote controlled cars and steer a whole horde of them through the inner city (the people steering them would be located on the roofs of surrounding buildings). The manuals where first printed on regular paper and then copied onto thick textured colored paper.

The second folder holds the manifest of the organization – who they are and what they stand for – as well as 22 full page photographs, explaining the process of how the organization works (how they advertise, how to get in contact with them, how they deal with assignments etc.). You can see six of these shots up close here. The rest of the pictures below show two of the organizations newspaper advertisements (under a fake name), the masks used for the photo story as well as two prepared milk cartons. The latter were supposed to be used for 'secret' communication between client and organization, delivering messages and final manuals hidden inside milk packages and brought to the doorstep via delivery service.

1) Where can I buy one of those?
2) Trinken Sie schüttelnd.
3) Real life gradient.
4) One of the constant reminders that KABK is also an art school.
5) Kinky easter. Thanks Franzi!

Nice little video by my spanish buddy Manu back in Copenhagen. Captures the atmosphere of the calm Scandinavian winter in a very fitting way. At least if you blank out the constant spanish talking in the background...