it is time to start with new projects. i have been working already for a couple of years on my shanghai and berlin proposals. slowly these begin to take shape. the shanghai project was conceived many years ago during a stay in a summer cottage near savonlinna in finland and the berlin project has already been presented at the goethe institute in rotterdam in 1998. the theme of the first project is international exchange, the theme of the second is peace.
both the proposals for the shanghai project and the berlin project will take some time to make. it is essential to get good pictures and a good visualisation of the ideas, but a good exchange of ideas with as many people as possible beforehand is just as essential. i hope to visit berlin in the near future and shanghai a little later. i know berlin quite well. i have been there many times for an extended period and feel that if necessary i could live there.
i have never been to shanghai however, but saw many pictures, talked to many people and off course searched the internet. what i saw wat interesting. i also saw the many historial links between rotterdam and shanghai. i read about the voc, the history of delfshaven, the pelgrimfathers and the old trading routes from centuries ago.
some days ago our prime minister, jen peter balkenende mentioned the days of the voc, the days that holland was a great nation so to speak and proudly mentioned that that were inspiring days. well in a certain way i agree: there certainly was a lot of courage to board a wooden vessel and spend many months on the sea, hundreds of years ago, with a fair change to get seriously ill or suffer a serious shipping accident. but those were also the days that some were more equal then others: that was part of that history as well, and i suppose that that was not what our prime minster had in mind.
i am thinking of a sea trip from rotterdam to shanghai along rich harbourcities and pour harbour cities. i am thinking or large floating objects, made in the same way as the fisherman, that make that trip. and i am also dreaming of an exchange project: students from those harbour cities are invited to come to rotterdam for a certain period and students from rotterdam take their place in their hometowns. i think that in that sense the project will connect cities and students. i also think that in that sense rotterdam as a future youth capital can strenghten the relations between students worldwide.
the objects could continue their trip from rotterdam to shanghai and from their to hawai and san fransisco and from there slwoly back to rotterdam. later trips in other directions might be possible, building in that way a complete global network of harboer cities and their students around the world.