NETHERLANDS: The mythical Robodock festival hits the docks of Amsterdam

Record ID: 402062

  • Title: NETHERLANDS: The mythical Robodock festival hits the docks of Amsterdam
  • Date: 26th September 2010
  • Summary: GIANT BIRD FENIX MADE OF WOOD AND PEOPLE HEAD OF FENIX AND CITY
  • Embargoed: 11th October 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Netherlands
  • Country: Netherlands
  • Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA7WXEOGCBZBNRECWHEFZBAVADG
  • Story Text: Robodock is a mythical extravaganza of the industrial age: blazing fire sculptures, special FX orchestra, water canons and sirens.
    It came up from the ashes after a two year break on the newly reconstructed Amsterdam docks on Friday (September 24).
    It tells the tale of a fire bird known as The Fenix that sings a dying song.
    The organisers describe the event at a "hypnotising industrial fairytale" in a "cacophony of overwhelming mechanischal soundscape".
    "It's a new form. It used to be a festival, but this is much more about inviting artists to come together from all over the world and make a theatre production ourselves," Maik Ter Veer, creative director of Robodock said to Reuters.
    One had to be there to understand and rumour has it that Amsterdam's local authority doesn't get it as the festival is running out of sponsorship funds.
    Robodock also has a political dimension in that tips its hat to squatting - the occupation of empty buildings - that will become illegal in The Netherlands next week.
    "It's also a tribute to the Squat movement. In one week squatting becomes illegal, becomes criminal, after forty years of tolerance. In the last 40 years so many cultural initiatives and so many cultural institutes all have come from the Squat movement and next week it's criminal [offence]," said Ter Veer.
    Robodock began life in 1998 calling itself a event of cultural self defence and grew into one of the most creative cultural festivals in the world with its low-tech robotic industrial art and sound.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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