Currently at gallery W139 through March 13 in Amsterdam is the exhibition Two or Three Things I Know About Provo, an exhibit installed (their word, not mine) by dutch graphic design trio Experimental Jetset.
Provo was an Amsterdam-based anarchist political, social and art movement in the years 1965-67 that profoundly influenced anarchists, situationists, hippies and radicals through the end of the 60s in many countries and for decades beyond their short existence. The Provo activists created many provocative public political spectacles and street theater, published publications and pasted posters up in public. They created happenings, organized direct action, published a magazine, and provoked the police. They published a manifesto, won a seat on city council, interrupted the wedding of the dutch royal monarchy, and published white plans, a series of proposals to address social problems in Amsterdam. These included their famous White Bicycle Plan (a plan to close central Amsterdam to vehicles and have the city purchase 50,000 bicycles to be left unlocked for anyone to get around the city). Other plans dealt with contraception, the direct election of policemen, car-sharing, pollution, auto accident deaths, squatting and more.
The exhibition at W139 is unique. One of the members of Experimental Jetset, Marieke Stolk, is the daughter of Provo co-founder Rob Stolk. At the exhibition talk I attended, Marieke spoke about her (now-deceased) father and his transition from Provo to a professional printer. Influenced by American journalist A. J. Liebling’s statement Freedom of the Press is for those who own one, Stolk first became a printer because he could find no one else to print his radical publications. Over the following decades he transitioned from an activist publisher to a prolific printer responsible for cultural prints and publications throughout Amsterdam and beyond.
The exhibition consists largely of hundreds of posters, magazine pages, manifestos, photos and ephemera collected by Marieke that document Provo’s activity through her father’s publications. Color-copied and simply taped to the wall, they are arranged in clusters, with color-coded tape. A pamphlet distributed at the show and possibly available on Experimental Jetset’s website (though I couldn’t find it) explain the groupings and what the objects are. I took dozens of photos and then my phone/camera died; these 3 images, including the one with two Experimental Jetset members and W139 Director Tim Voss, survived by being posted on facebook. And the gallery W139 has posted a small image gallery on their facebook as well.
Can’t see the exhibit in person?
Lots of information can be found here on Experimental Jetset’s site, with links to many images and articles on Provo. There is an excellent English-language book Provo: Amstedam’s Anarchist Revolt by Richard Kempton, published by Autonomedia and distributed by AK Press.
An audio collage or posterwall of sound curated by Experimental Jetset can be listened to below and you can download the extensively-annotated relating pamphlet. This recording comes courtesy of Red Light Radio who originally broadcast this; they are an online radio station broadcasting nearby the gallery in a former prostitution window in the Red Light District.
W139RADIO with Experimental Jetset on Provo @ Red Light Radio 02-28-2011 by Red Light Radio
