Time travelers arrived a couple months in Amsterdam to usher in a new era of activism and change. They have been publishing newspapers, running amok, and resurrecting the inherited tradition of the Hi-Ha Happenings originally started by the Provos in the sixties. After the success of the first Happening, during which the structure that eats away at the lives of ordinary folk was denounced and partially dismantled through ritual and magic, a second Hi-Ha Happening took place on the 29th of September.
This Happening was a constructive one, in counterpart to it’s destructive predecessor. This came to a climax when at the end of the Happening a new squat was announced: the Time Travelers Hotel. The following statement was made during the revealing, and is thus made public for all those who experience a like minded sense of time-dysmorphia, unrest, urge for change, and willingness to provoke and be provoked.
“What can we learn from the future? If anything it teaches us that we should embrace the more radical parts within ourselves. What used to be a massage parlor will give this happening a happy ending! An ending that will pave the way for new beginnings!
The egg that we find ourselves in is constantly hatching, as constantly new and ever growing projects come again into this world. The world that we have inherited is a broken one. It is a necessity to look towards a future where living is once again possible. Where the vile tar that seeps into our lives as weeds, is rooted out by the stem. This is done not only by expressing ourselves through ludicrous and perfectly reasonable happenings, but also with a physical reclamation of space. This place, located at Rokin, is at the center of a consumerist society. The tourist shop below speaks for itself. This society is sick, and its disease needs to be shown to the everyday ostrich that seeks to avert it’s gaze. The activists from the future have looked upon our timeline, and concluded that the present circumstances are not made to be built upon. How can someone resist the system if they don’t have a stable home to organize from?! How can demo’s be organized when the very streets are filled with those mindless zombies called tourists?! How can life realise itself in a place where it is constantly repressed?! And still it will always find a way. That is why we are here today, to offer an alternative. This place has been squatted!!! It will be a transformative presence, one that will give people an actual place to live. It’s white doors will be opened! It will be a sanctuary to time refugees, this time travelers hotel! Because it is insane that a perfectly good living space should stay empty to fill the pockets of investors and rich magicians. Instead of squatting being illegal, it should be the norm! It should be illegal to evict people from their homes, when all they are looking for is a place to live!
Let houses once more be filled, doors painted white! Make Rokin once more a place for people to call home! Take to the streets, this is a happy ending! And as this night will pass into morning, the spirit of those that take up their arms, crowbars, instruments, and voices, will not die down! But the night is yet long, and we have only just started happening! Free yourself and each other of your shackles! Free yourself of your bonds! As Takland annexes new territory, it grows to be an even larger place of potential, inclusivity, and organization! Want Wet of geen wet: Kraken Gaat Door !!! (With or without law, squatting goes on!!!)”
And so it was that on the 29th of September Amsterdam came to have a new squat, on one of it’s most central and busiest streets. It will be made into a place for people to live, with a social space on the first floor. What was previously a massage parlor had been empty for over four years. The owner, an investor from Belgium, has as of yet not filed a case with the police. The police that were at the revealing were, when it became clear that the place had been squatted for some time already, didn’t wish to intervene. Which can also likely be attributed to the large crowd that had gathered there in good spirits. Thus concludes a very successful Hi-Ha Happening, with a Hi-Ha Happy Ending.
Future Times call out for their second happening on 29 September 2023:
Hi Ha Happening: Provocation Nr. 2
REMINDER: This is a Bring Your Own Orca(/Marine Mammal) event. Mobilize your local Marine life forms and bring them to Spui in Solidarity with the Radical Orcanisation of Killer Whales!
Hear ye hear ye! Gather all you dwellers in, and children of, Amsterdam. For on Friday the twenty ninth of September at nine, a decentralized Neo-Provotarian movement will once again meet at the feet of the statue ‘het Lieverdje’ on Spui for a Happening. A second rendition in a recurring and ever more evocative tradition, it calls on all inhabitants of this corrupted city to happen individually and collectively. It ushers in a new age wherein the structures that we know might come to fall in a cascade of chronological disturbance, floods, evolutionary nightmares, and revolution. As the Spirit of Mokum shows herself before us, the structures that have demanded our servitude and sought to put us in chains might once more come to light, so that we may avert the apocalyptic consequences that will otherwise come to pass. And so it was that even after the first ritualistic unearthing and expressing of unrest and vivacity the government fell, the technobike-conglomerate Van Moof went bankrupt, and orca’s continued their fervent war in the reclamation of their living spaces.
It is thus that we need to be encouraged by these marine mammals who are our fellows, and follow their example by taking back the streets and canals of Amsterdams. Let doors be painted, houses filled. Let Spui, Rokin, de Dam and de Wallen once again become a place for the Amsterdammer. Let it once more be a place where living beings come to be, instead of one where solely tourists come to find an amusement park tailored to their needs. Let it be amusing and dionysian, but not in the boring and deflating hedonistic manner that is the current norm.
And so it is of the utmost importance that we free ourselves of the shackles of the sorry consumer. The ostrich, that flightless bird, is addicted to hate, sensation, mindless scrolling, and illusions of grandiosity and shame. They need to provoke and be provoked. For in our plight we will not only consume commodities, but ourselves and everything around us. And yet there is a different path that we might take, of collective individuation and transformation. We need to manifest change through unashamed expression, in absurdity and beauty. We need to build a new society out of the ashes and rot of one that is unsustainable, as to principles of collective responsibility. We need to happen. For if nevertheless we stay idle, repressed by addictive hocus-pocus and turmoil, catastrophe will come to pass. And in our deformed attempt at flight we would lose our wings, and fall as Icarus into the destructive sea below that will inevitably engulfe Mokum.
Concluding, halt this haphazard hurry, by hi-ha happening!!
Future Times, Amsterdam
future_times [at] riseup [dot] net
https://squ.at/r/9gac
TⒶkland Vrijstraat
Time Travelers Hotel
Rokin 108, 1012 LA Amsterdam, Netherlands
takland [at] riseup [dot] net
https://squ.at/r/9e0a
Some squats in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/NL/squated/squat
Groups (social center, collective, squat) in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/NL
Events in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/NL
Indymedia https://indymedia.nl/node/53810
Radar https://squ.at/r/9mkj
