Shared Grounds – Life on the industrial edge

Shared Grounds – Life on the industrial edge explores Ruigoord, a cultural free area in Amsterdam, its historical past, coexistence with surrounding trade, and the way the neighborhood preserves its tradition and identification inside industrial stress.

Hundreds of gasoline tanks, trade pipes and a haze of smoke from the chimneys fill the view on my twenty minute bus trip from Amsterdam Sloterdijk to the ultimate cease at Ruigoord. Every time I take this route, it feels surreal to get off the bus in the midst of an industrial space and step right into a cultural free area – a spot the place trade dominates and has pressured the neighborhood to reshape itself a number of instances all through historical past, first as a small island village whose residents had been purchased out and streets buried beneath sand, then squatted by artists within the Seventies, and now a cultural free area.

For greater than fifty years, Ruigoord has been a spot the place persons are related with the land – the oldest cultural free area in The Netherlands. This oasis, set in the midst of the harbour and surrounded by huge gasoline tanks, makes it odd. It raises the query of what it means to coexist with trade, and the way a neighborhood can proceed to protect itself inside it.

Through portraits and encounters with individuals from the neighborhood, I discover how Ruigoord continues to coexist with the encircling trade.