i sometimes think that the artworld is a world in itself that does not care anymore about the real world. we are living in the same street as the boymans museum, the architectural institute, the witte de with center, the photomuseum and some galleries (all very respected international art centers and at the same time often boring and arrogant). we know that large amounts of state money and other subsidy money is consumed but at the same time however it looks like the institutes do not care very much about the rest of the city. it looks like their standards are very high but at the same time very unclear.
fortunately i am not dependent from their possiblities and have the freedom to cooperate with many others, in particular the professional schools with their students from 15 tot 25 years (the higher the age the higher the ecucation). with those people it is very inspriing to work and hopefully possible to get the fisherman realised. rotterdam started as a fisherman' s village and changed into a world harbour and althoug the harbour is since last not anymore the no 1 of the world it still is impressive and may no 2 or no 3 depending from the way it is calculated.
the interesting issue however is now that rotterdam has 600.000 inhabitants from which half is not dutch (althoghether 162 nationalities) so it still is a world harbour but now with a world of its own and that makes working with those students very interesting. in secondary school with classes of 25-30 students it might happens that the nummber of students almost represents the number of nationalities and i guess that with the fisherman that might be the same.
well with regards to architecture i would love to do the same. i built a number of installations in the netherlands and in other countries and found that i hate arhcitecture but i love building. architecture is static and quite often rigid but building is fun and takes place in close cooperation with others and in a close dialogue with those others and their ideas and specialisms and once i discovered that and developed my ideas through my installations and other work the character of my work changed from an architecture and design orientated approach to projects like the fisherman in rotterdam.
but i stil like building and just between the meetings for the fisherman and other projects i still continue with ther reconstruction of our own house which is slowly transformed in a very colourful, very lively house which is drawing a lot of attention already and possibly will do so more in the near future.