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Can't face another sad salad!, Simon Wald-Lasowski, 2022/2023, photo: studioLNDW
Lily van der Stokker, Roofterrace with Hot Tub, 2021, photo: Gert-Jan van Rooij
Welcome Stranger, Stadhouderskade 112, 1992
backroom 2nd floor. Photo: Cary Markerink
Lucas Lenglet, Schaepmanstraat - Kempenaerstraat, photo Luuk Kramer
Bastienne Kramer, Warmtebeeld #10, foto Gert Jan van Rooij
Esther Tielemans for Welcome Stranger, Scenery 2021, carwrapfoil on façade, photo Thomas Bennen
Fabulator, Minne Kersten 2022, Schipluidenlaan 12F, De Lely, 24.06.2022 - 24.09.2022, photo: studioLNDW
Welcome Stranger organizes temporary art interventions on the streets of Amsterdam. Every time artworks pop-up in diverent streets throughout Amsterdam. Artists are invited to make new work for on, above, or with their own homes. In doing so, they work in the unexplored area between personal and public space. For example the cuckoo clock that Simon Wald-Lasowski made of his house. Every half hour, a plump turkey emerged from the attic window which, arriving at the farthest point, rolled out a long tongue and let out a creaky scream. The technically ingenious artwork was like a playful, hallucinatory glitch. Similarly disruptive was the air conditioner Minne Kersten hung on her house which blew smoke rings into the street; or the red wire fencing that Lucas Lenglet mounted in front of all the windows of his corner-facing house, turning his home into a cage. Some contributions went further: Smàri Robertsson developed three new performances, which he enacted from his window during the three months his work was commissioned. Radna Rumping presented a radio show from her living room as a companion piece to her self-guided neighborhood walk with audio essay. Invisible to the listener, she dipped into her built-in closet where she keeps her record collection, from which she played Donald Byrd's song Stepping into tomorrow. In these ways, Welcome Stranger meanders through Amsterdam and is claiming public space in an unassuming way.
In the 1990s, Welcome Stranger began as a series of quirky projects in a house at Stadhouderskad 112. Anything was allowed, and so it happened: walls painted with coffee grounds, a piece of the floor and ceiling cut out to create a recessed seating area, and for a short time, an iguana lived in the former bedroom. The emphasis of this and later projects was on collaboration. In the process, sometimes substantial disagreements arose, but friendships also grew. At a certain point, the initiators felt that all the possibilities of the house and the Welcome Stranger concept had been exhausted and closed the project. Only for the time being, it turned out, because new editions followed in other locations, and a foundation with the same name was established. After having led a dormant existance there is a new impuls happening. A revival inspired by the need for such experiments in these times.
Can't face another sad salad!, Simon Wald-Lasowski, 2022-2023, photo: studioLNDW.
