Stroom: Summer travel
2003 July 5th The Hague The script of a city, a summer journey

In commission of the centre of fine arts CBK Stroom (www.stroom.nl) in the Hague

.This tour brings the participants in minibusses to several scripted places as shoppingmalls, trainstations and cityhalls. The travellers are guided to undertake simple actions to bring the scripts to the surface . As they are travelling in different busses, they are surprised by the actions of the unknown fellowtravelers. Epilogue: I enjoy preparing work like this a lot.

For each minibus I made a set of lessons in being an ‘active observer’ accompanied by educational material. One group had to carry different objects like bright red shopping bags of a foodstore not present in this shoppingmall but known by everybody. Or carrying the triangular van Gogh postercontainer in the white marble cityhall of the Hague. Another group was wearing nametags and making constant notes on clipboards. The third group did little actions like swapping eachothers coats on the meeting point at the central station. The fourth group were carrying the plants I worked with in several streetchoreographies before (see art in public spaces/streetchoreographies).

In my merry nomad digital diary I wrote in July: this travel inspired me a lot. It gave me new idea’s for example to direct people through the internet to public spaces to create a choreography together.

Less then a month later the Dutch press makes mention of the worldwide manifestation of the flashmob: people directed through the internet to make a public choreography together !