Trip

THE HOMETEL PROJECT
An artistic Odyssey: 60 art-performances in 60 hotels. From 1-1-2000 I navigated within the Amsterdam hotel world - 1 hotel-a-day (and night). For two months I lived in hotels, gathering image- and text-material originating from these hotels, documenting my day-to-day experiences. I engaged everyone at hand: hotel-guests, the staff & the incidental by-standers. I used the hotels' fascilities to the max, utilised the rooms and often ‘back-door’ entrances. The regular hotel life ran parallel to art-related happenings. Numerous collaborations & small-scale publications were a weekly event. In the end HOMETEL became a series of intense performances, closely linked and followed by the media, in the times before Instagram. All was showcased thru a daily VLOG (before the word vlog even existed). I was given free space in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant I ran a weekly column.

Some of the performances did not work out as planned. Others turned out bigger-than-life itself. Most were open to the public, e.g.:
• Hotel Tulip Inn housed a lecture on ‘The Love For Photography’ by performer Nel Berger, followed by a photo-exhibition curated by me, which included Holland’s leading photographers and their single, most favourite works.
• Improvised in the Fresco Room of Hotel Arena the ‘Hometel Cinema’ did a screening of the Dutch low budget and highly acclaimed “Fl.19,99”, a film about a high-class hotel and its guests at the brink of the millennium. After the screening the temporary cinema was quickly transformed back into a dance-venue by the film viewers.
• Hotel Seven-One-Seven’s library featured an intimate ‘Poetry Reading’ by artist, graphic designer and poet Melle Hammer. To commemorate the evening Melle added the unique copy of his verse to the library’s collection.
• As the very1st guest of the not yet opened Lloyd Hotel I projected slides of empty interiors and created ‘perfect’ rooms in completely empty & desolate spaces. Placing myself in these imaginary hotel-rooms I interacted with the images, which resulted in an illusive photo-series and video.