zaterdag 1 mei 2021

 

Mayday


Well, I have not added anything to this blog for quite some time because I thought I would wait until I might have something positive to say – reserving the grumpy dissatisfaction about the running of the city for the Dutch-language version, in which you can follow my increasing frustration and anger in your own time.. but by now it's May and I should say something... and as there is nothin positive to say, will have to complain as I do on all the other platforms:

 

 

idiotic renovations in times of climate crisis


Antwerp was a red bastion when I first arrived... it was a quaint but agreeable haven for all sorts of colorful birds, there was a great degree of tolerance, laissez-faire, slightly chaotic but entertaining mix of rare breeds; disagreement existed but it was in a boisterous café-style fashion, most of the time anyway – perhaps there was already a hard-nosed fascist coup under way, but it was not yet obvious, seemingly a minority fringe phenomenon that would peter out eventually...

That was a serious miscalculation...

Gone are the days when you could run into the mayor in a café after a moustache-club meeting, hob-nobbing with citizens, enjoying local ales among the old trees on wobbly chairs on dancing cobblestones, as if Breughel's days were not yet done – a sphere of hippiedom still lingering in the air, remnant from when Antwerp was an attractive haven for experimental everything... There was an expectation that the green movement would be part and parcel of future politics and the social aspects of of an expanding city would be dealt with in an sympathetic and inclusive manner...

But something went amiss – much like 'new labour' across the channel, the socialist movement decided they had to become more liberal, and began a rather curious metamorphosis into something that turned out to be worse than predatory capitalism – a sort of black hole in sheep's clothing, letting in all sorts of intolerant tendencies and becoming so full of itself as not to have to listen to it's electoral base anymore... the straw that broke the camels back was a pretentious and intolerant style-yuppie mayor who would not retreat from a megalomanic project to cover the city with a stinking flyover highway... (along with a whole string of mismanagement and scandal-ridden incidents that sunk the venerable movement in a quagmire of sleaze...)

So, if sleaze is the norm the voters turned elsewhere, opening the door to the the short-sighted flemish nationalism that had already been festering in the underbelly – these also mutated after a general realignment of politics in which all the major parties though they had to change their identities and lost, lost their way, lost their base, lost their credibility... even the greens who used to consider themselves a movement 'living differently' decided to get in on the game and become a political party, making all the compromises necessary to gain power... which they now share as junior partners with a deflated former social platform that calls itself 'foreskin” *and has become all but irrelevant... (*having even dropped the term socialist and stolen the name from the basic philosophy of the movement 'avanti' (vooruit) – they now have lost even the most die-hard socialist sympathisers and handcuffed themselves to a liberal coalition nobody likes...

In the meantime the flemish fascist have mutated into a saloon-party calling itself the NVA – an alliance of themselves, with the former bullies in an ostensibly separate party, but close enough to form a block against the others... These have now been the largest party in these parts for a while and have 'reorganized' the city into a showcase village...

Making away with local and provincial structures the flemish government together with the NVA mayor have torn down most of what was quaint and replaced it with a boring euro-norm attitude that caters mainly for the mindless commercialisation of culture, which in their minds is cold beer and sausage rolls, surrounded by 'flemish' masters and such... in a new designer-surrounding taken from the brochures of international bricklayer-magazines... or rather cement-mixer digest... This great renewal is of course expensive and the mussing-up of the local art historical museum is many years behind schedule and way over budget... as well as turning a perfectly agreeable park and surroundings into a Disney-style driveway for exclusive restaurant experiences... while removing works of contemporary art that might stand in the way of this new enterprise... as do the trees...

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trees for some reason have become a nuisance – for years now the city has been eagerly beavering away at cutting down stately old trees that were not sick nor dangerous because of the insatiable hunger for modern living – trees as street furniture, which you can move around with a scroll & mouseclick – videogame-style... the fact that trees are habitat and part of an ecosystem that takes hears to develop doesn't really compute... sure greenwashing trees (those little sticks left to fend for themselves in shallow cement graves) are springing up everywhere, but room for real nature is disappearing fast, even in the central city park, where instead of digging out the german bunkers left over from the war they pour even more cement into the green zone for – yes restaurants, cafés, (same in the once leafy zoo..) infrastructure etc... already they pumped the water out of the lake, and announce the cutting down of old favourite trees.... where has the time gone when the city built metal support structures for old trees that were in danger of collapsing... (back in the 80's)

Whittling away at the once apparent grandeur of the remains of the golden age, only key buildings remain as tourist attraction while the rest is replaced by excruciatingly boring off-the-shelf design architecture, usually in beige or shit-brown fake brick – like the provincial flat building they just built next to the 'Steen' – oldest remnant of the city... next up is the garden (what remains of it) of the Rubens House Museum, which has to make way for a trinket-shopping experience by renowned architects – the usual glass box.

 

the only thing trees are good for

 

While politics is debating the curbing of new construction in green zones, there has never been as much concrete pourd into these former wildernesses as today – lost chances to create more park space for the expanding city- it is easier to drive a highway though a nature reserve than a suberb, raise a tower block on fields than refurbish derelict industrial buildings... the money stupid...

The rare architectural curiosity like the harbour house, retaining the old fire station and reflecting it's maritime surroundings, was a fluke, expensive but controversial – so the rest has to be a cheap and non-committal as possible... while at the same time giving off prestige allusions...

...so much for the first of dis-may...

and have not even touched on the social... happy Mayday!