commute-a-long

8:30am and 5:30pm
Sep 2, 6, 2019
reprise Sep 28
NDSM Nursery Square, Amsterdam

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Humming away the school and work day, the Commute-A-Long is the inaugural event of The NDSM Nursery Square and takes place throughout September: the back to school season. A sing-a-long commute intervenes in the social pattern of travelling from home to school or work and back again. Contributing a melody to the daily manoeuvres at the ferry boat platform on the NDSM Wharf. Pavements and sidewalks nearby the ferry boats at NDSM Wharf are repurposed as stages for vocal interventions. The Commute-A-Long is a reoccurring series of performances on Mondays and Fridays every week of the month in September. A total of four sets of morning and afternoon sessions (30 minutes each) are performed by various artist and singers.

Commuting, kissing around the corner, rushing for the ferry, giggles escaping from a car window, gum on the pavement and fishing: this is the everyday of Amsterdam’s NDSM neighbourhood. For The NDSM Nursery Square, a project by Studio Makkink & Bey, the studio is researching public behavior in the NDSM wharf and ways in which they can reset it through cultural programming. Together, Stichting NDSM-werf and Studio Makkink & Bey have developed an expanding public square on the NDSM area that will grow over a period of six months. Its basis is a large grid defined by various floorplans with possible setups for available furniture to host and stimulate activities.

With unannounced interventions in the neighborhood, film screenings, site-specific performances and a seasonal ‘artist-in-residence’ at the square – the language and gestures in public space are challenged towards new scripts. Curated by Jules van den Langenberg

photographs Lonneke van der Palen