Jacob Dwyer, Spreekbuis, metal pipe and horn with speaker, on invitation of Welcome Stranger, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij, technical production & install Tom Jaspers / Artvark Projects

From the window of his house in Amsterdam Centrum-Oost, Jacob Dwyer runs a tube down the facade of the building, where it ends 135 cm above the ground in a horn-shaped opening that invites the ear of a passer-by to listen.

In his practice, Jacob uses words and sounds to build worlds and stories. For Welcome Stranger, he has made a construction that takes the form of a ‘voicepipe’; a metal tube originally used to communicate from the wheelhouse to the engine room on board a sea-going vessel. Now, they’re more commonly found in children’s playgrounds. In his work, Jacob deploys the tube as a conductor through which the inside is transported out. Leaning into the horn, one hears a voice speaking within. It describes the room in which the speaker stands and a series of things that may have happened inside it. The work gives a new perspective on housing. Like so many people in Amsterfdam, Jacob experienced the difficulty to find affordable housing, flipping from pilar to post, sublet to antisquat, sofa to mezzanine.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jacob Dwyer (1988, UK) studied Experimental Film at Kingston University and completed a residency at De Ateliers (Amsterdam). His work has been shown in art spaces and film festivals including, IFFR (Rotterdam), IDFA (Amsterdam), Good Children (New Orleans), De Appel (Amsterdam) and BFI (London). In 2022 he released The Devil Museum on vinyl with Mana Records and in 2023 he published Notes on Devils with Building Fictions.

‘When I was invited to take part in Welcome Stranger I, like so many people in this city, didn’t know where I’d be living by the time it came around. Nevertheless, it was exciting to imagine what I would make, as through these thoughts, I could imagine a house. What would it look like? Where would it be? And how would my work function on that threshold between its outside and inside? It made me think about all those
insides which, for the past ten years, have flipped from pillar to post, sublet to anti-squat, sofa to mezzanine, in my constant and seemingly hopeless quest for affordable housing. Remnants of all these abodes travel with me. They enter this work through words and sounds.’

ABOUT WELCOME STRANGER
Since 2020, Welcome Stranger has invited several Amsterdam based artists to make new, temporary artworks on the facades of their homes. In doing so, they are revealing something personal in public space within their own neighborhood. The facades create an environment for new observations, where every passer-by is welcome to experience strange encounters through different parts of the city.

More info you will find here or via the map below.