P.E.T. Other Tours #1

Blind tour – Amsterdam 2004

This guided tour around the city center of the Dutch capital introduced it’s passengers to New Amsterdam and to the potential reality of a progressive, prosperous and well-functioning multi-cultural society.

On a 45-minute trip on a bus with blinded windows, Blind Tour dealt with the relationship between the visionary and the propagandistic, and with the element of seduction.

Produced for and presented at Populism - an exhibition-project by NIFCA that took place in Vilnius, Oslo, Amsterdam and Frankfurt throughout the summer and early autumn of 2005. For more information about the Populism show, please visit www.populism2005.com.

In cooperation with the Amsterdam Tourist Office and Stedelijk Museum.

 


Public Educational Tours is a continuous series of guided bus-tours, and a project about history writing.

Our conception of existence and idetity, as well as our visions for the future are lagely defined by our officially documented history. The information recorded here not only documents past events, but also creates and shapes those to come and is consequently an immensly powerful political tool.

As history writing can never be an objective documentation, it is necessarily selections of events based on the documenting individuals, institutions or nations subjective choise. This, in turn, depends upon factors like political and financial interests along with a specifik (traditionally male Western) point of view in terms of religious conviction, national and cultural background, social and educational status, race, gender etcetera...

From this perspective, the representation of the state of affairs in our history-writing cannot really be said to be less fictitious than any other individually conceived interpretation, presented by anyone, and at any given point in time.

production year: 2005

duration of the project: 1/5 - 22/5 2005

guide: Rian Beex, Stedelijk Museum

assistent: Stine Loft Rasmussen

photo documentation: Andrea Stappert

idea, manuscript and arrangement: Annika Lundgren