i am living in an area in the middle of rotterdam, near the city center and very near the museums. but most of all right in the middle of many many people from many different cultures and that is more inspiring then all the cultural institutes further in the street. convsrsation with most of those people is limited, maybe because i do not have much time. there is contact, there is mutual help and respect and sometimes luckily more then that but most of all the atmosphere is full of hidden stories and experiences. people keep keep those for themselves, like for excample those who fled from iraq and live for the time being in rotterdam. the air is full of stose stories, experiences, and most of all their music. now that summer comes the car windows are open again and music from many countries floods the streets here. it is pleasant but at the same time the atmosphere is very dominant as well. living here simply means being part of that cultural proces full of very tense emotions and very strange people. there is a lot of agression in the netherlands and it is almost an emergency landing procdure to help searching for the oxygen masks for us and many others that offer a way out of the madhouse.
at the same time there is the drive, the lust, the fun, the eagerness and most of all the need to be an artist or at laest to pretend to be one, whatever that may mean. it is as you say: we see the "truth", each person for himself, and we react, whether by doing something or by not doing so. there is indeed a kind of freedom in working with many others, all allowing them their interpretation of the situation/truth/reality and at the same time not allowing them to define precisely their issues and in that sense kill the livelines of the whole situation. it is interesting to get closer and at the same time stay away allowing the other and yourself space to keep your feelings and ideas for yourself. it feels almost like mountaneering: continuously you have to look ahead to enjoy the environment and experience the world around you but at the same time you have to watch carefully your feet and hands to stay alive i.e. not falling down.
i began as an architect, but more and more started to hate architecture and at the same time to love building more and more. the fisherman is one in a series of an ongoing proces of try and error, working alone, working together, designing, not designing, most of all breaking away from conventions. i made proposals for "houses", one for example for a "house" of frozen water (1000 tons of frozen water, cut from the river, at the end of the winter/start of the spring) which would melt away as soon as the wheater gets warmer/but which can only be built at the end of a very cold winter: the project wil disappear as soon as it gets realized (would love to realize it but so far tried hard: i visited an presented the proposal in a.o. iceland, finland and northern japan but so far without luck). Another house-project, which was realized, was a wireframe of a house, built in turku, finland in 1996. there are more houses, and the step from one "house" to another is small. from the turku house to a fisherman is just as small and that makes working in this way interesting.
written ferbruari 2005 as part of an email to nicholas hlobeczy