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MILLE PIANI

Screen print and epoxy resin on plexiglass,
40x50 cm
2020


Are the choices we make real choices? This work starts with this question and with a photo taken in the NDSM area in Amsterdam Noord: a place that has been changing very rapidly in recent years. This terrain belonged to a shipbuilding company that existed until 1984. After this 90 hectare area of docks and shipyards became derelict, it was bought by the Amsterdam-Noord borough.

In the 1990s, NDSM was largely squatted before the borough underwent a processof urban regeneration process in 1999. A number of squats which were seen as cultural hotspots and legalized across the city including NDSM, which became popular as a cultural incubator zone, despite its relative distance from the centre of Amsterdam. The up and coming area soon started to attract big companies and, as a result, property prices shoot up.  


The original photo documents a section of the construction site through which NDSM is once again being redelivered with large and expensive housing blocks. These will replace the former students accommodations made from stacking shipping containers painted in bright colors that characterized the area. 

I intervened on the photo by creating different layers printed on epoxy resin. The layers construct an imaginary space in between the reality of the construction site that attempts to insert through lines and shapes "other rooms", which are not constrained by the imposition of their specific rules or uses.


*(photographic series about this visible here thenameofthenextsong.com/2018/02/04/interview-with-valerio-cerasani/)