For Welcome Stranger Simon Wald-Lasowski transformed his house into a cuckoo clock. Every half-hour a plump turkey emerges from the attic window and releases its long tongue, alongside a scream. Can't face another sad salad! is a technically ingenious artwork that uses a playful, hallucinatory glitch to interrupt the logic of productivity, increasingly woven into daily life as Amsterdam undergoes gentrification. 

Simon Wald-Lasowski has lived in Amsterdam since the late 1990s, with more than 10 years based in Hasebroekstraat. During this time, he has witnessed the city change dramatically with both public and private spaces, becoming increasingly dominated by efficiency, order and the needs of the market. This includes what some call 'Disneyfication', the transformation of the city's public space to support the needs of the tourism industry. Can't face another sad salad! is a metronome of the absurd, providing a small interruption to the logic of late stage capitalism and an invitation to dream different futures.

Part of a serie 
In 2022 for Welcome Stranger, Minne Kersten and Simon Wald-Lasowski made an artwork for the facade of their own house. Minne Kersten her work was finished in September. She installed an air conditioning unit on the facade that instead of functioning as its original intention of cooling the indoor air, was  blowing smoke rings into the outdoor air. These were visible as circular puffs and seen traveling up to the sky, to eventually evaporate into thin air. More info: MINNE KERSTEN - FABULATOR

Fabulator, Minne Kersten 2022, Schipluidenlaan 12F, De Lely, 24.06.2022 - 24.09.2022, photo: studioLNDW

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 about Simon Wald-Lasowski

Simon Wald-Lasowski (b 1980, Paris) collects, studies and builds installations of often mass-produced sculptures and objects, which almost function as an archive of the anthropocene. Wald-Lasowski's multifaceted practice bears witness to a genuine love for trinkets and curiosities, as well as a use of objects as actors within installations. This results in artworks that are colourful and recognizable yet simultaneously uncomfortable as they touch on aspects of life that are taboo, such as alcoholism and over consumption. Simon recently had exhibitions at W139 in Amsterdam and 1646 in The Hague.

"This work is for the ‘paradijsvogels’ or birds of paradise that coloured the streets of the Amsterdam I loved. It’s an ode to the outcasts, weirdos, the queers and the provocateurs that used to shake things up a bit. I miss them - there seems to be less and less space for chaos in a city losing its colourful edge to the doctrine of ‘normaal’ culture, which turns everything beige." Simon Wald-Lasowski

The technical design of Can't face another sad salad!, which is partly mechanical and partly manually driven, was developed by artist Lefki Mevissen. 

Simon Wald-Lasowski in his atelier