HOME 
PUBLICATION 
Ams­ter­dam Stories 

Ams­ter­dam Stories

by Eduar­da Neves, 2017

“The fic­ti­tious is nev­er in things or in peo­ple but in the impos­si­ble verisimil­i­tude of what lies between them: encoun­ters, the prox­im­i­ty of what is most dis­tant, the absolute dis­sim­u­la­tion in our very midst. There­fore, fic­tion con­sists not in show­ing the invis­i­ble, but in show­ing the extent to which the invis­i­bil­i­ty of the vis­i­ble is invis­i­ble” (Michel Fou­cault – Dits et écrits III, p. 225).

In Ams­ter­dam via Ams­ter­dam (2004) and Ams­ter­dam Sto­ries USA (2012), two films by Rob Rom­bout and Rogi­er Van Eck, to ques­tion becomes the hermeneu­ti­cal tool that does not set out to deny mean­ing or suc­cumb to it, but to make his­to­ry be told in a dif­fer­ent way.
We are not before a ran­dom inven­to­ry of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, at which we would arrive through the nar­ra­tive of his­to­ry or nar­rat­ed his­to­ry. We hear voic­es that give us back the real­i­ty of the con­di­tions of exis­tence. In their essen­tial­ly ana­lyt­i­cal dimen­sions and appar­ent sim­plic­i­ty, there is no place, in these images, for pure forms: it is about lis­ten­ing to those who have their own voice rather than to those who speak on their behalf, as we are told in Ams­ter­dam Sto­ries USA.
Over­com­ing the poten­tial­ly nor­mal­is­ing log­ic of the “win­dow into the world”, of the ref­er­ent and the sim­u­lacrum, art­works, as social sys­tems of mean­ing, con­front us with struc­tured and struc­tur­ing spaces through which we grad­u­al­ly organ­ise and project meaning:

“Our two basic mod­els of rep­re­sen­ta­tion miss the point of this pop geneal­o­gy almost entire­ly: that images are attached to ref­er­ents, to icono­graph­ic themes or real things in the world, or, alter­na­tive­ly, that all images can do is rep­re­sent oth­er images, that all forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion (includ­ing real­ism) are auto-ref­er­en­tial codes. Most accounts of post-war art (…) divide some­where along this line: the image as ref­er­en­tial or as sim­u­lacral. This reduc­tive either/or con­strains such read­ings of this art.” (Hal Fos­ter – The Return of the Real, p. 128).

The pres­ence of the real does not mean to assert real­ism but to defend a poet­ics that finds in real­i­ty the truth of appear­ance or, in a Niet­zschean man­ner, there is no truth oth­er than appear­ance.
The “filmic text” is shaped as a space of com­plex inter­tex­tu­al­i­ty and becomes a place of dia­logue: every­day life, social rela­tions, urban vio­lence, death, pover­ty, racism, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, seg­re­ga­tion, lone­li­ness, free­dom, hap­pi­ness, ideals, ways of life, col­o­niza­tion, war. Texts that over­lap in lay­ers, through which we hear that, although Amer­i­ca projects itself as a land of big cities, “most Amer­i­cans are insu­lar (…) they do not know what hap­pens out­side their bor­ders”, although we can also speak of “a decent, gen­er­ous, tol­er­ant people”.

« In the wan­der­ing of these trav­ellers who renounce cer­tain­ty, is expressed what we are in becom­ing, our becom­ing-oth­er, what we grad­u­al­ly become, but also what still sep­a­rates us from ourselves. »

Like­wise, in these Ams­ter­dam Sto­ries, if on the one hand there is no room for excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, on the oth­er a cer­tain geog­ra­phy of mem­o­ry reminds us that, when we think we are already close to anoth­er place, to anoth­er time, we might have, after all, nev­er left. In the wan­der­ing of these trav­ellers who renounce cer­tain­ty, is expressed what we are in becom­ing, our becom­ing-oth­er, what we grad­u­al­ly become, but also what still sep­a­rates us from our­selves.
As Michel Fou­cault not­ed, the ship is the het­ero­topia par excel­lence:

“the boat is a float­ing piece of space, a place with­out a place that exists by itself, that is self-enclosed and at the same time is giv­en over to the infin­i­ty of the sea (…) you will under­stand why, from the six­teenth cen­tu­ry until the present, the boat has been for our civ­i­liza­tion (…) the great­est reser­voir of imag­i­na­tion. The ship is the het­ero­topia par excel­lence. In civ­i­liza­tions with­out boats dreams dry up, espi­onage replaces adven­ture, and the police the pirates.” (Michel Fou­cault – Dits et écrits III, p. 46).

In the boats of Ams­ter­dam Sto­ries, dreams do not dry up and con­tin­ue to plough across the sea.

A for Ams­ter­dam. A for Amer­i­ca. Actu­al­i­ty has announced itself. There are no hap­py stories.

Extract of Ams­ter­dam Sto­ries USA, by Rob Rom­bout and Roger van Eck, 2013