Architecture of AppropriationArchitecture of Appropriation

This essay by Adeola Enigbokan, reflects on "how foreigners (migrants, tourists, expatriates), women, and non-white, 'non-Dutch' people experience space in the Netherlands, and the systemic ways by which their bodies, habits and gestures are rendered inappropriate for Dutch space by local spatial rules and practices." This socio-historical and socio-psychological analysis is now in the collection of the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning.

We flowed, laughing, out of the Stedelijk's heavy glass revolving doors, manned by black-clad security guards, and into the Amsterdam damp. It was midnight, not quite yet Christmas, and no one was ready to let the night end. So we wandered into the winding streets around the Concertgebouw, and settled upon Café Welling. The small, classic café is a neighborhood fixture, with it's worn leather and wood seats and it's older, well-heeled clientele. My first time in Welling was at the invitation of a Russian acquaintance who had lived in the neighborhood for years, and wanted to show me something special. She presented it as a kind of hidden jewel, a ticket into that very exclusive Dutch notion of gezelligheid, often translated as "cozy," but meaning so much more: family, belonging, togetherness, comfort, home, friendship. On that first visit my Russian companion ordered us two jenevers, another Dutch treat: a kind of protoypical gin, distilled from juniper berries, which could be clear and strong, like vodka, but without that liquor's brightness. The drink arrived still in the bottle, along with two tiny glasses, each shaped like a miniature champagne flute, but with a curiously curved lip. The barman poured the liquor at the table, as per Dutch tradition, filling each flute to the lip, so that the clear liquid pulsed into a slight curve at the tip, held in place by the magic of surface tension. We bent over and sipped, my companion reminding me to be careful not to spill a single drop. I was almost entirely successful.

Now, almost a year since that first visit, the dignified café was transformed into a delirious Christmas diorama, with tinsel and lights covering the windows and the ceiling and the walls. It was as though we were packed inside a holiday gift box prepared by someone's faraway and slightly barmy grandmother. It was lovely. The crowd from the Stedelijk party, a who's-who of Amsterdam's art, architecture and curatorial scene, and their admirers, crammed in amongst the regulars, gentlemen and women of Amsterdam Zuid, already drinking for some hours. The space charged and friendly, all very gezellig. A well-groomed older man, with shoulder-length silver hair, pushed back from his forehead into a thick wave gathering at the back of his neck, caught my eye and smiled at me immediately as we entered. I smiled back. We sat at a table in the only free seats we could find, and the silver-haired man stood with his friends, hovering over us. I fingered a pen and paper placed on the table, especially for customers to gather drink orders and submit them to the bartender all at one time. I started to doodle a bit and soon the silver-haired gentleman leaned down, and in heavily-accented English, asked me for a poem. How delightful! I thought.

_What is your name? _

Simon.

Well alright Simon, one poem for you, coming up!

I set about writing a note about friendliness and love, being strange in the city, and finding it hard to be in the right place, with the right people, and how tonight, with Christmas coming, I could feel a miracle was happening: Here, in this tinsel box, I was finally welcome, and asked to share my gift, my way with words, and my warmth.

Dear Simon&

I wrote slowly. I introduced myself to my new table companions, two lively middle-aged women, one Dutch and the other Venezuelan, both long-time residents of the neighborhood. I fell in and out of conversation with my Stedelijk acquaintances, finding it hard to follow their conversation about the details of life in the Dutch architecture world. I bought a round of drinks for the table. Periodically, Simon leaned in to ask how his poem was coming along and to give increasingly demanding direction.

Make it long, not short, many lines, and funny too!

Each time he did so, curiously, he and his friends broke into laughter, exchanging comments in Dutch, and slapping Simon's back and shoulders. I smiled along with them, a bit confused, but assuring him that his poem was turning into something rather lovely. On the third interruption, just as I was starting to feel a bit harassed, the Venezuelan woman intervened. Speaking in Dutch with a somewhat drunker Simon, she asked him what he wanted with me. A heated conversation ensued, in which I heard something about "Zwarte Piet," some gesturing in my direction and more laughter from Simon's friends. A great coldness overtook me, as the warmth of the tinsel box faded, irretrievably. The Venezuelan woman looked at me, her anger with Simon, changing to silent pity and protectiveness.

Don't give him the poem. He doesn't deserve it. He is not a good man.

I crumpled the half-written poem in my hand, and let it drop to the floor. I turned to my Dutch architecture companions to ask for an explanation of what had happened. Apparently, it seems, I reminded Simon and his friends of the Dutch blackface character, Zwarte Piet.

When I enter Café Welling, I feel simply that I am a surprise, a bit unexpected, and in the silver-haired gentleman's first glance I do not perceive malice. Within Simon's universe his request that I write him a poem is entirely appropriate. In some strands of Dutch culture--apparently those strands tucked away across the street from the Stedelijk Museum, just behind the Concertgebouw, and maybe elsewhere as well--it is socially acceptable to associate my dark skin with a racist "children's" caricature, and to ask me to play this role, publicly, and for the entertainment of all who get the joke. In that environment, only the Venezuelan woman, a fellow foreigner, questions this behavior, does not accept the joke, and highlights it as inappropriate. Soon after this interaction, I leave the café, suddenly exhausted, and with a deep sense of my inappropriateness for that place. What had previously been introduced to me by my Russian acquaintance as a site of gezelligheid, now becomes a site of shame and humiliation.

Dutch lives unfold in the space between what is _normaal _(normal, standard, correct) and what is toegestaan (allowed, permitted, as by law). Both categories, normaal and toegestaan, indicate different forms of "appropriateness" and "appropriation," what is natural and acceptable, on one hand, and what is proper to oneself and one's group on the other. These forms of appropriateness and appropriation describe the boundaries of what is properly "us", spaces and behaviors that belong to us, and not to "them," the outsiders who cannot decipher what is "toegestaan," and in their bodies and behaviors are too far out of the ordinary. There is, within these boundaries, very little room for serious difference, for excess. Staying within these boundaries, like jenever poured into a curve at the lip of the glass, without spilling over, is the key to "appropriateness," to fitting in, in urban spaces coded "Dutch." My very presence in Café Welling this December night represents a kind of spilling over. For Simon and his friends, it may be "allowed" (toegestaan) for me to be there, but it is not normal (niet normaal). Within this logic, the elaborate poetry game, associating me with Black Piet, is actually a way of making me "homey," recognizable, gezellig. Through writing the poem, participating in the game, I who am not Dutch, not white, can be made familiar and comfortable, normaal. I am a foreign territory that can be appropriated and make myself appropriate at the same time, by association with a blackface character that is as Dutch as apple pie. Who is more gezellig in grandma's tinsel-wrapped gift box, than the beloved Zwarte Piet? In a matter of minutes, I go from woman to caricature, a figment of a Dutch imagination, a part of the holiday decoration, an amusement. My voice, my poem, my expression, my gift, is limited, shaped into a form I cannot choose. This is my narrow opportunity to "integrate" into Café Welling, to become a part of the surroundings, to "fit in." In order to become appropriate for this space, I must let my body, and my poetic expression, be appropriated by those who arrived before me by accident of birth and color. That is the price of admission into gezelligheid.

The moment I realize I am the joke, I retreat. I physically recoil. My hand crumples the paper into a tiny ball.

There is a dull pain in my chest, in reaction to the Venezuelan woman's piteous glance. I ask her what Simon is saying.

I won't repeat it. It's nothing good.

Her refusal to translate his words provides me no relief. I need more, an acknowledgement that something is happening to me, to the space around me: I am shrinking. Simon and his friends are too close. My body is taking up less space. I can't breathe. I am no longer appropriate for the café, and I can no longer appropriate space within it. I must tell this story immediately, and I do, to those nearest me. Soon, my architect-friend says he is leaving. He has to drive to Belgium early in the morning. I gather my things and begin to get up. He says:

Don't worry. You can stay here if you want.

I don't want to stay here. I can't.

I understand in this moment that he has not perceived my shrinking, my smallness. Has he not noticed my body being possessed by Zwarte Piet? Has he not noticed the glass wall of silence that has formed around me, isolating me, distancing me from my surroundings, exposing me to further attack? How could an architect not sense this change in space? I am no longer filled with warmth, and all this tinsel is claustrophobic. I am suddenly cold, and very tired. This is not only a change in mood. This is a change in physiology. This is a change in the very quality of the space.

Later I write to my architect-friend:

Hey was great to synchronize in the city last night. You were right when you said I am waiting. I am in a holding pattern here, which I am not used to. I love cities, and finding their flow, their creamy centers, even or especially when those creamy centers are actually the peripheries. I usually never have to wait for this, because I have a way of being, always open and ready to go inside. Also, I move towards my fears, and am rarely paralyzed by them. And I have a funny bone, and find a lot of humor in the everyday. Why am I telling you my city-lover's CV? Well, because here, I have reached a limit--a brick wall. At first I felt it was to keep me out of the creamy center. Since Dutch brick is so famously hard, I was worried by this: how could I get to the cream? But then, I got a glimpse, in the face of the Black Petes which seem to follow me around these days, and in some other interactions, that makes me feel that there is no cream at the center, that there is really just a kind of emptiness, a monstrous horror, hidden away behind the wall, while we are all directed to " doe normaal" and ride our bikes in spirals around the canals. This vision fills me with sadness, and a new kind of fear that paralyzes me. This is maybe why it appears to you I am waiting. I am afraid there might be more horror behind the doors.

I am writing to ask for your help. I would like your help in really looking at the monster hidden behind the wall of normaal. I would like you to help me with this because I get the impression that you understand what I am talking about, and that you sense the horrors under the old churches, and the new high rises, and in the way people imagine their pasts and futures.

Could we please find a way to do this together? I am asking about more than a book or an exhibition or some art-architecture thing, though it could be all that or something more. I will leave this place, and there will be much I won't want to remember. But I would like to be able to say that I did not leave before I found the hidden monster, and that I did not run from it, and that with the help of a capable friend, we were able to face it. Together.