2024
With Lina Mittendorf.
Mapping ‘living things rather than space emptied of life and available to be conquered or colonized,’ Wasteland Root Ales explores the contested urbanized landscape of Amsterdam Nieuw-West. Taking up notions of terrain vague, an improvised clandestine bar was set up on an abandoned parking lot, between temporal housing units for migrants and students, a squatted piece of land and motorways.
Located next to the controversial Startblok-Riekerhaven complex, a temporary housing unit that caught attention in 2022 due to a fire revealing the lacking safety infrastructure and precarious housing conditions, Wasteland Root Ales served as a meeting point in an otherwise abandoned and unused space. Following the tradition of medicinal ales, a ‘fermented lightly alcoholic drink without the addition of hops’, Wasteland Root Ales was an explorative tasting session and social gathering. The medicinal ales were brewed with dandelion roots, a resilient herb, known to grow even in the hardiest contexts; through the cracks of concrete and urbanized landscapes. A symbol of resistance, its roots are a bitter diuretic tonic, activating the body’s metabolism and helping detoxify and get rid of extra fluids.
Located next to the controversial Startblok-Riekerhaven complex, a temporary housing unit that caught attention in 2022 due to a fire revealing the lacking safety infrastructure and precarious housing conditions, Wasteland Root Ales served as a meeting point in an otherwise abandoned and unused space. Following the tradition of medicinal ales, a ‘fermented lightly alcoholic drink without the addition of hops’, Wasteland Root Ales was an explorative tasting session and social gathering. The medicinal ales were brewed with dandelion roots, a resilient herb, known to grow even in the hardiest contexts; through the cracks of concrete and urbanized landscapes. A symbol of resistance, its roots are a bitter diuretic tonic, activating the body’s metabolism and helping detoxify and get rid of extra fluids.