In early 2018 Lawrence James Bailey made a four-day journey on foot and bicycle around the periphery of Amsterdam. Along the way he made notes and took many photographs. Eventually they formed a written piece which reflected his experiences in Amsterdam’s edgelands.
The Port of Amsterdam, entrance to the Coen Tunnel, or rather as far as foot-traffic with no authorization can get to it. 700 meters away on the opposite side of the North Sea Canal is the tunnel’s exit: the place where our counter-clockwise orbit around Amsterdam’s overlooked urban/rural fringe will eventually terminate.
Trucks speed past, pedestrians don’t belong here. Scrubby grass, footpathless roads, utilitarian concrete and steel, low rise prefabricated depots, company logos, unfamiliar odor. Contorted and entwined metal pipes, tubes, valves, storage tanks, cauldrons, and freshly imported heaps of mineral-like deposits stand safely behind red/white striped barriers and under the watch of security cameras.
The official community here is made up of driving instructors and truck drivers, yet they never touch the ground with their feet or give a voice to this area. Other unofficial communities flourish in these types of areas. And for a certain type of explorer they possess a magnetic pull…
…Under shadows of wind turbines and against the regimented backdrop of oversized extraterrestrial metallic shells: the squatted dock of the A.D.M and the artist village of Ruigoord. Territories gained whilst counter-battling commerce’s conspiracy against spontaneity and fun. Here the distant drone of cars on the highway and occasional metallic clangs from the adjacent docks is offset by birdsong, barking dogs, bleating sheep and the Arcadian sounds of hand-wrought woodworking.
With bucolic flavours in mind we seek out the remnants of the old village of Sloterdijk. Swallowed up by its bigger neighbour during urban spread and re-zoning of the 60’s, little rural character remains. It is now mostly business park, train station, metro line, service industries, mirrored glass, steel, forecourt parking, car mechanics, rumbling highways.
At the foot of the tax office’s regional headquarters, the graveyard of a seventeenth century Church; a stark reminder of two certainties of life: Taxation and Death. Church bell strikes midday, a steady stream of business people pass by the few remaining houses of the former agrarian site. Once the bell rang out to workers toiling in the surrounding fields, it now offers accompaniment to the office employees short journeys to the shops, bakeries and cafes of the close by Bos en Lommer residential district.
The romance of pastoralism lost in the former village is roughly sketched out in the adjoining allotment gardens. Here people attempt to find satisfaction beyond the rat race of modern life.
Earth loving souls conduct communion with nature and co-operation with each other. They build glasshouses, hang oversized plastic butterflies and erect steel and barbed wire fences to keep the urbanisation out.
Moving further south, alongside the A10 is the Rembrandt Park and its petting zoo – closed today due to concerns of a bird flu epidemic. The countryfied character of the park is set against the constant hum of the highway. As the sun begins to go down, long shadows cast by nearby residential towers bring darkness to the parks evening activities.
The Nieuwemeer and Park Oeverlanden. A man-made lake and a man-made nature reserve. Crumpled white tissues stuck between tree branches and used condoms on the ground mark popular secret spots. Solitary and conspicuous middle-aged men pass between trees or stand around in open ground. Highland cattle casually graze in the same location completing a picture of artifice and theatricality. Framed by the ever present drone of a highway hidden behind a veil of trees.
The nearby Buitenveldert Cemetery. Names and dates denoting lives carved into granite headstones echo the distant towers of the Amsterdam World Trade Center. Starlings sing to compete with the sound of the busy road, a plane passes overhead. The snapping of wood being split by a voluntary maintenance worker filling their day with tasks.
Abandoned for the weekend, the only sign of life between the high rise offices of the WTC is the slamming of a skateboard against hard landscape architecture. Exploring deeper into the empty corporate labyrinth a sharp blast from a referee whistle is heard. The landscape opens up into football fields and numerous games are on.
Sunday leagues of the fringe land, playing in fields and behind bushes, precariously tending to empty spaces. Carpe diem iedereen!
Behind newly constructed semi-detached houses the looming specter of past reputations and sad events persist. The Bijlmer, once described as Amsterdam’s Ghetto, still divides people. Expressing opinions about it in the Netherlands is like discussing Brexit in the U.K: best not done at social gatherings or with right-wing family members.
A garden city in the sky became the haunt of high crime rates, unemployment, poorly maintained buildings, poverty and the site of an airplane disaster.
For relief from its past it has become suburbia taken very seriously – space syntax theories, sociology of everyday life, ethnic and class integration, renewal, reconstruction, rebranding – every string is pulled in an attempt to bring balance and harmony to a place of former nightmares.
Leaving civic problems behind us we head east. Exiting one of the quiet tree-lined streets and joining a footpath where the suburban limits meet the boondocks.
Empty cans of booze and blackened tinfoil carpet the ground of a dark grotto hollowed out of a thick bush. In another rustic den a mattress is awkwardly stuffed into a furrow in the earth. Used paraphernalia of condom packaging and rusting soda cans discarded nearby.
Somewhere the cooing of a wood pigeon is interrupted by the warning signal of a utility vehicle reversing, calling us back into civilisation.
Foreign students on smartphones leaving the train station: “I’m late for my lecture, fuck public transport!”. Amsterdam Science Park, the eastern most tip of the city. A new campus of The University of Amsterdam and home to Multistory windowless technological monoliths.
On a new, slightly out-of-place footbridge crossing the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal a spray-painted a message to the inhabitants of this no-mans-land: “MAKE SQUATTING LEGAL”.
Over to IJBurg, the appropriately named Steigereiland (Scaffold Island) and Zeeburgereiland. Primordial swamp/post-apocalyptic wasteland/futuristic modular moon colony. Weird sense of elsewhere and elsewhen amongst self-build homes. A setting for psychological conflict in a J.G. Ballard inspired altered state.
The A10 highway marks the outer limits of Amsterdam North and forms a clear demarkation between urban and rural. Raised on an embankment and lined with a high barrier cutting off any view of the road or its users. Following it feels like walking along the outskirts of an impenetrable walled city.
High-rise buildings and urbanisation on one side, farms, countryside, electricity pylons and villages on the other.
Underpasses under this barrier of the A10 are portals to alternate worlds, allowing pedestrians to be magically transported from high-density housing projects, sports fields and construction sites to farmland, flocks of grazing geese, the chirp of marsh loving birds and quacking of waterfowl.
On the final leg of our journey we become entangled within a twisting lattice of roads, wires, signage, flyovers, underpasses and concrete. It all foreshadows the western side of the tunnel, about 700m away, on the opposite bank of the North Sea Canal, where our four day journey began.
The Center is Dead, Long Live The Fringes! Long live the rough edges with their curious mix of realities, freedoms and misfits. Long live lurking in places where no one looks.
Years ago Lawrence James Bailey moved to Amsterdam to study a post graduate course in fine art. He currently lives and works in the shadowy overlooked corners of that same city.