I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, educator and organiser living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, educator and organiser living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Tags: Amsterdam, art, club culture, film, music, research
RoXY is a collage film I made in 2021 and 2022. It was commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The film shows how the revolutionary actions of dada, Cobra and Provo influenced club RoXY. After its opening in 1987, the club is widely celebrated for introducing house music to the Netherlands, and creating a home for numerous creative communities. In 1999 it burnt down after the funeral of its founder Peter Giele.
The film links Johan Huizinga’s 1938 book Homo Ludens (“playing man”) to postwar movements of art, protest and civil disobedience. It shows rare documentary footage of radical cultural moments such as Dylaby, New Babylon and Love Ball, and features early electronic dance music from Virgo, Future Sound of London and The KLF.
"The most dynamic, colourful and moving documentary ever made about the history of Provo and youth culture of Amsterdam, and especially Club RoXY. This is a must see for all the original RoXY people and future generations, lovers of freedom, creativity love and good times. Made with love."
— Eddy De Clercq, RoXY founder, Amsterdam
”The work underlines how apparently fleeting, hedonistic phenomena, like dance clubs, can be spaces for complex pan-sexual, multi-racial cultures where experimentation, innovation, questioning of norms, and political change are modelled, encouraged, and produced. This work conclusively proves for me that histories, social movements, music, and moving bodies can and should coexist.”
— Tony Cokes, artist and Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Providence
"Peter Giele would be proud."
— Rob Schröder, filmmaker, Amsterdam"