A film by Kristina Benjocki and Stijn Verhoeff,
4K single channel, stereo sound, 17.35minutes
Kristina Benjocki and Stijn Verhoeff's new short film offers a poetic exploration of the Plan van Gool housing complex in Amsterdam Noord. Commissioned by Welcome Stranger the film Het Hoogt en het Laagt (The High and the Low) alongside a related program was on view between the first of June and mid-September 2024. Joke de Wolf wrote a review Omgevinggeluid for De Groene Amsterdammer.
The Welcome Stranger 2024 edition included Sarah van Sonsbeeck, Jacob Dwyer, Stijn Verhoeff and Kristina Benjocki who developed works about their immediate, lived environment. In Amsterdam Noord, Verhoeff and Benjocki streamed their new short film online, via the in-situ QR code, right on the corner of their home. The film is a catalyst for conversation between strangers and aims to bring them together in an unfolding process of filmmaking itself. Next to this, several gatherings took place, including guided tours through the neighbourhood led by architect Frans Schotman and a lecture by architecture historian, researcher and journalist Roel Griffioen. Most of these gatherings took place inside Het Breedveld - the meeting space and the archive - of the Plan van Gool Association of Renters. Het Breedveld is the last remaining location of four, originally meant to be used by those living in the housing complex. Our activities, film screenings, conversations and discussions, contributed to the postponement of Het Breedveld eviction.
The Plan van Gool housing complex was built between 1966 and 1972 and consists of ten L shaped apartment buildings, each five floors high. Van Gool made them ‘as high as the treetops, so that all residents would still have contact with the ground floor’. There are a total of 1138 appartments, with an average surface area of no less than one hundred square metres. Striking are the futuristic air bridges, which form an alternative walking route as ‘streets in the sky’. It became a unique neighbourhood of rhythm in concrete where for more than fifty years many thousands of people lived and resided; from the beginning pioneers who literally gave life to the space, to migrant workers who later came from all directions. Some think the Plan van Gool is hideous, others seek the neighbourhood especially to live there: ‘I am glad there is no colour in the architecture. Colour is created by the trees, plants and people, and not by the architecture,’ says a resident during an audio walk from the website of Museum Amsterdam Noord. The Plan van Gool has many faces and carries a rich history which Verhoeff and Benjocki attempt to capture in their short film.
