Prologue: No Sleep Till Veenhuizen


It had just gone 03.45 on the morning of Friday 21st August. In just over twelve hours time I would begin the PeerGrouP’s 24 Hour Workshop – De Afleiding. The cab was on time, my flight to Schipol booked, and I even had a breakdown of the various trains and buses I needed to get in order to find my destination in the countryside of northern Holland. What I hadn’t had is any sleep and this worried me a little. It is this fact alone that must be the explanation for the state of my notes as I re-read them, attempting to glean some sense of what happened:

“Two Bowie T-Shirts spotted before Amsterdam Zuid – a good sign.”

Well that’s no good.

“So far it looks a bit like Ardwick.”

That’s not helpful either.

I soon realise my scribblings are all of this standard and so, in a panic, I look to the inbox of my mobile to see if my sent messages can help piece together my state of mind:

“Message Sent 21-08-2009 @ 04.56: This is no time to be eating a donut.”

I have to face it; I’m going to have to try to do this from memory. Well, here goes…


Part One: Non-Phobic, Word Aerobic.

I arrived safe and sound at Schipol Airport, just gone eight in the morning local time. I remember being pleased that my plane did end up having jet engines after all, although less thrilled about the wall-of-death style loop it took in its approach to the airport.

From the airport I took the Inter City Train to Assen where I would catch a bus to Veenhuizen. This was all done with little fuss as things seem to run on time in Holland and the staff at the station seemed to know what was going on. Equally, and quite embarrassingly, everyone spoke perfect English.

The train itself took a couple of hours so I took the time to make a few notes, the best of which you have already seen, but the journey itself was largely uneventful and soon I’d arrived at Assen bus station.

With an hour to kill, I took a brief trip into town, mainly to find a toilet as the one in the station was broken. I found one in the museum but had to leave my bag at the reception desk as security that I really was just going to the loo, and wasn’t after a free look at the town’s, no doubt startling, treasures.

Why am I telling you any of this?! Damn, I wish I’d made some notes…

Once the bus arrived, I paid my 3 Euro and settled in a seat to be given a history of the area by the bus driver. Let me put this in context. Imagine a person from Holland getting on a bus in Cwmbran and being regaled in faultless Dutch about the history of the area as you were taken to Tredunnock. Such linguistic prowess was now making me feel inadequate and it was no little comfort to finally be met by a recognisable face at the bus stop in Veenhuizen. I disembarked and thanked the driver and saw my partner in crime for the weekend approaching.

“Salut, Mathilde!”

That, my friends, was French.


Part Two: Spreadable Edibles.

We were at PeerGrouP HQ, a single storey building on the same grounds as a prison museum; what looked like a fire station; and an actual prison. I was introduced to Floris and Riet who would taking care of us for most of the weekend, and also artistic director Sjoerd, who sped off in a tractor whilst giving us a friendly wave.

Sitting down for lunch, I was given some idea as to what this weekend would be about:

De Afleiding – Distraction.

The English translation doesn’t sum up exactly what is meant. We were to be taken out of our artistic comfort zones, asked to dig deeper, to work with the landscape and the people around us; to hopefully find a new method of harvesting stories to tell. This was exactly what I wanted. Things were looking up. I was just going to have to get over myself.

We had a lunch with lots of things to spread and sprinkle on lots of other things. This, I soon realised, was as Dutch as speaking good English.

As we were a little early, Mathilde and I went for a walk around the area. She had already told me it was impossible to get lost – she had tried and was rather frustrated that she hadn’t managed it. The land itself was almost totally flat – the only things to shift the pitch of topographic frequency being the channels and canals dug into the earth; the squat buildings; and the effects various hidden feats of engineering that had been necessary to make this area, an area with very poor soil, a place where agriculture could develop.

It was this ‘man made’ feel of the place that fascinated me throughout the visit, and will be something I come back to. We were clearly in the countryside – I was already having problems with insects – but there was something strangely, if not beautifully mechanical about it all: the straight lines, the grid system, the pattern of field–canal –path–trees; what we saw beat a visual rhythm as regular as the chug of the tractor that we were to use for transport.

Mathilde pointed out that this was not only the land of The Hague School and Van Gogh but also Mondrian. I wish I had thought of that analogy. Secretly I cursed her for its cleverness…


Part Three: Radio Controlled Cows

With almost all of the other artists present, we embarked on the first part of the workshop. We were eight in all, as well as Sjoerd, Floris and Riet, and sat on bales of hay in the trailer of the tractor as Sjoerd navigated the ninety degree turns to our first destination.

This destination was a working farm not far from PeerGrouP HQ where we to have out first experience of attempting to integrate (granted, on a very superficial level compared to the lengths PeerGrouP usually go to) into the local community. This is the fundamental working practice for PeerGrouP; they strive to allow the form and content of a performance grow from their own interaction with an area and its people – the stories, the spaces, and a great deal of the time even the performers are already there, PeerGrouP simply ‘dig’ for them.

It was clear to see from the way the members of the company interacted with the farmers (I am ashamed to say that I cannot recall the names of the two farmers, apologies) that this process had already been incredibly successful. There was no mistrust, no sense of anyone being patronised or the notion that the activities undertaken by any present were any more ‘important’ than any another. This attitude came from both sides. There was a distinct lack of ego. It was almost frightening, hypnotic. Had there been some rural Soma introduced to the water supply? Were there a series surreptitious back handers? No – these people just knew each other really well.

Most importantly, nothing was romanticised. A feeling of real openness, a frank and disarming honesty coloured the whole of the visit and was evident from this very first activity. We watched the cows being milked – by machines, ten at a time, with their levels of productivity monitored by the scanning of a signal embedded in a chip in the animal’s ear (this, I am sure is all very yawnsome to those of you who grew up in or around farming, I’m sure, but this was all news to me – apologies if I am stating the completely obvious here).

We saw the immediate aftermath of a calf being born, its mother cleaning the amniotic (?) goo from its hide and pinning us back with one or two protective stares that stamped the maternal bond in our minds as indelibly as the identification number on the cow’s rump. The calf was a bull and would be taken from its mother very shortly due to its worth as a breeding machine. The cow would have a short break and soon be pregnant again. If it had had weak legs it wouldn’t even get this far, it would probably have been sent to slaughter by now.

All of this information was delivered with an almost emotionless quality. What did we expect? This was a farm, a place of work; a factory just like any other. There was no bowing to the ‘Organicista’ prejudices of an increasingly prevalent liberal romanticism towards agriculture and the countryside – towards the ‘correct’ way for it to function. This land was poor land; it had to be interfered with by man to make it work. This wasn’t about purity but reality, and that made it much more pure. This wasn’t the ex-bass player of a rock band cleansing himself in the country to ease off the comedown from over a million pounds spent on cocaine and champers. There were no apologies. But at the same time, even though the cows did not have names (the very idea that they might producing a knowing smirk from one of the farmers) there was still a deep if not flamboyant emotional attachment. This farmer himself had appeared in a PeerGrouP performance. His co-star? His best cow. So I’d hate to think I was making these people sound dispassionate (our meeting the following day with Hans that I will write about shortly would crush that notion anyway) but that PeerGrouP had engineered a relationship with the community that allowed such passions to be taken for granted – as they would be if you were a part of the community. This was their land, they didn’t need to shout about their infatuation with it, it was dug into every irrigation ditch and tire track that crossed it. No apologies and no flags waved.


Part Four: A Fistful Of Nettles

Following our visit to the farm, we got back in the tractor and trundled over to… well we had no idea, our PeerGrouP chums were never ready to ruin the surprise, which bit me on the arse in a most vertiginous manner the following day.

For now though, we were simply heading to camp – a large tent with no sides where were to set up our ‘beds’ and kip for the night.

(Note: I learned that day that kip means chicken in Dutch.)

After setting up the beds, we ate – pancakes, ratatouille, more spreadable edibles – before heading out to a graveyard. However, as Sjoerd surely delighted in telling us, this would mean traversing a canal by leaping onto a tire with some chipboard tied across it.

Now those of you who know me, found the idea of my roughing it in the countryside hilarious from the moment you got the news I was going on this workshop. I am City Man. I don’t own clothes that I ‘don’t mind’ getting dirty. I sleep in hotels if I travel. I need to be near a paper shop or at the very least a kebab house. Taxis must be available on demand.

Equally I am, its fair to say, not the world’s strongest swimmer either. There is no sea in Manchester, just the Ship Canal – I never had to learn. So the image of me leaping onto a makeshift dinghy to propel myself across an (okay, very narrow) body of water and then scramble up the nettle-strewn bank to get to the other side must have a few of you rolling around trying not to wee right now. Well, those of you who know me very well, hold onto your bladders – it was dark. And no matter what anyone tells you, nettles do sting you even if you ask them not to.

The graveyard we visited was a Jewish one that consisted of a solitary headstone. It was explained to us how this was some kind of egalitarian system, how Jews, Catholics and Protestants were all given the right to buried separately in this area. I think. There was a very long and, given the tone of voice being used, somewhat passionate and often incredulous explanation of the significance of this given by Floris but it was in Dutch and once he explained to me on the walk back just what he had said, I imagine the moment might have been lost as it was one part of the weekend that really didn’t have an affect on me below quite banal surface recognition. I’m still sure I must have missed something vitally important here, as the whole Dutch-speaking contingent seemed deeply moved, but that will teach me for being a mono-linguistic dullard. Much more interesting for me was a conversation I had with Floris about ‘original landscape’ as we cut a daring diagonal back to camp.

Part Five: My Wings Are Like A Shield Of Steel

Back at camp, to close our first day, we were each given a flag to plant in a part of the area we had covered on foot which ‘fascinated’ us. As I have said, it was dark by now so I couldn’t really see anything I would be able to pick out as fascinating. However, it seems I did make some notes about this experience so here they are. I would like to apologise in advance for the phrase ‘the gauze of reality’:

Pretentious Groping At Understanding My Surroundings: Part One of One

I planted my flag in a place I could still see from my bed. I’d like to think this was an accident. It was dark and I couldn’t see where my feet hit the ground, never mind what interested me. So, I closed my eyes and waited until I heard something instead. It was a high-pitched noise, like something you imagine a remote control should make. A bat. Soon, the other sounds of this so-called silent place joined in but the gauze of reality was failing to trap anything and I began to wonder if my ears were making this whole thing up. I opened my eyes. In the distance, lightning flashed behind clouds. There was no thunder. Then to the right of the lightning, again at some distance, a firework blossomed and made me think about whether it had been lightning at all. Then I saw the bat. Like I had been doing, it found its way building pictures of sound. It made me wonder if what the bat saw was more real than what I was seeing now. At least an echo has to bounce back off something solid.

My faux philosophising apart, I was struck by this idea of sound. I was sure it would be the thing I would like to explore if this were a PeerGrouP show and I were a part of it. My initial reaction was to build a huge sound system in the field and play ‘Stress’ by Justice at ear-bleeding volume. My second was to start a pirate radio station with the locals. According to Floris, my second instinct was showing that I was beginning to get this whole thing. It was time for bed.

Part Six: Saturday – Meet The New Boss.

After keeping everyone awake with my snoring, we were gathered together at sunrise for a walk. The mist had settled and my bag was soaking. I was still checking myself for insects and having a piss when we strode off. My head was banging. I’m not a morning person.

The walk was ten or fifteen minutes long and ended up at a large house with a thatched roof. We were met by an impossibly Dutch looking fellow with floppy, yellow hair and a warm handshake for us all. His name was Hans and he owned the gaff. The lot of it. My hackles were up. The last time I had dealt with a landowner, it was a friend’s wedding, and we didn’t really get on. He told me I worked “like a slave”. I told him he’d “Know all about that.”

But this wasn’t Class War, even if Hans was very much in a combat situation. Putting down my red flag for a minute, I made efforts to understand – to not be an inverse snob about this. Hans’ battle was with, what I presume is, the Dutch version of the National Trust. They were trying to nick his land; they were trying to make him reduce his herd to bring down the ammonia emissions in the area. You know, all that stuff the National Trust does. Most of this was delivered in Dutch with Floris translating quietly for me and, once again, things might have been lost in translation but I just couldn’t get it. This land had been in his family for at least five-hundred years, he earned enough from it to never have worry – his estate was worth at least ten million Euro – but he seemed to feel hard done by.

Like I said, I might have missed something, or it might have been the old Socialist in me being unreasonable again, but I couldn’t find cause for the fury. He had however given us a few good, strong cups of coffee and let us do the Dutch Chicken on his land so for that he had my thanks.

Part Seven: Same As The Old Boss?

Following coffee, however, Hans took us out to see his beehives. He showed us around the ancient burial mounds where he had planted Douglas Fir trees. And it started to dawn on me – what I had missed out on. As Hans spoke about this land, the same buried heat burned in his words, as did the farmers from the previous day. He loved this land and life that lived upon it.

Now, I can’t claim to have completely got my head around it but it did make me think of my antipathy to some ‘country’ concerns back home – the whole ‘you couldn’t possibly understand if you live in the city’ argument you often get. I still don’t fully understand the incandescent rage of the Countryside Alliance et al, but I began to think that perhaps the faintly fascistic whiff I used to get from it was brought to the party by me than the other way round. And while far from getting anywhere near supporting their views, I was beginning to understand the seed of that rage: there is something of the politics of minorities at play. People are being told how their lives should be lived by other people that they don’t believe understand the life lived there. Also, because of their minority status in terms of vote wielding power, the countryside sees itself as getting the thin end of the democratic wedge in terms of being able to instigate any change that might rectify this. Radical action seems a lot more understandable under these terms whether I agree with what they seem to be fighting for or not.

Of course, a tribe of cannibals who indulge in child sacrifice might tell you ‘you don’t understand, this is how we live’ but perhaps incidents like this should not be dealt with in terms of reductio ad absurdum. The emotions at play here are already quite absurd – they are about pride and love and all kinds of intangible nonsense. For instance, Hans could tell you where each one of his Douglas Firs was located if you showed him a photograph of the tree. He knew them individually. Even though they were measured in hectares of cash come maturity, just like the farmer with his favourite cow, Hans could still have an emotional attachment to something that would end up a commodity and there was definitely something almost paternal about the way Hans expressed himself in terms of the land.

So, whatever historical events had turned this land into the hands of his family, this was his land. He worked it himself and made it pay. He had grown from a boy to a man here and had only ever wanted to be a farmer. He loved the land here and saw himself as its protector. The Dutch National Trust had wanted to turn the small river on his land into one that meandered more prettily. Hans thought the river was just fine as it was. I could make sense of that. It bled into the conversation Floris and I had had the night before about who gets to decide the features of an ‘original landscape’. For now, wider implications about my feelings toward land-ownership had to be put aside – I could trust this man.

And I must have trusted him. Otherwise there was no way I would have climbed the 18m wooden ladder he had constructed to his suspended tree house in the pines. 18 metres. That’s just shy of 60ft. And I am shit scared of heights.

Still, as I said, I trusted him enough not only to climb it but to have some more spreadable edibles and then climb back down too. The distraction had worked.

Epilogue

Upon our return to the camp, we discussed all of the experiences we had been through during the workshop and presented a small performance each to sum up our findings. I shan’t dwell on this (and not just because my performance was utter rubbish) but because this workshop didn’t feel like something that needed a summative appraisal. Much like the work PeerGrouP must do (and I am totally arguing from ignorance here having never seen one of their performances) there was something open ended about the whole thing – and not just experimentation for its own sake but experimentation in the best sense – a search for something unattainable given present, perhaps previously unknown restrictions.

At the risk of falling off the pretentious tightrope only to crash into a safety net of hippy bullshit, the stories and ‘truths’ I had discovered were there before I arrived and would still be there after I had left just as PeerGrouP said they would be. My role was to dig, and this act of digging and the discoveries I made for myself were the summation of the experience.

More than anything I was proud that I had broken through my natural cynicism and took part in this ‘excavation’. I certainly left my comfort zone in terms of the physical landscape but also in terms of my mental, perhaps moral and certainly creative landscape. I realised can be quite binary in my attitudes but this experience allowed me to explore those grey areas that I often thought were simply an excuse for wooly thinking; here, the ambiguities seemed to reveal a much deeper truth and–

Christ, I’m going to stop before I start sounding like Wavy bloody Gravy.

I loved it. End of.


Matthew David Scott 25/08/2009