‘Kip aan het IJ’ was my pitch for a public sculpture for the Schegpark, a newly build park located behind the EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam North. Surrounded by new build for all layers of society the sculpture had to be designed to activate and connect. Alongside being envisioned as ‘an iconic sculpture with international allure for public space.’
This area in the North is special to me; I started my work with Eddie the Eagle Museum here 15 years ago, witnessing gentrification and being part of it. Amsterdam North has a history of projected utopias, from the Garden Villages to ‘Het Plan van Gool’—all spatial fantasies about a better coexistence.
So when this assignment came I thought; in a time where everything is available and the world is on fire, what still makes us think? Everyone talks about community, but are we still able to build one? When I thought about what would suit and challenge this neighborhood best I’d say we need something active, not passive; dynamic, not static. It should involve shared ownership, be intergenerational, and rely on the participation of the neighborhood. It should foster care and allow people to experience how other beings can give back to us, moving away from an anthropocentric lifestyle and seeing our entire ecosystem, not just humans, as central. So I developed a megalomaniac chickencoop the potential house for 15 chicken. It would start with 15 ceramic chicken and it would be up to the neighborhood to adopt one and change it for a real one. I lost by one point from Teun Castelein but hey like this is still exist in some utopian world.