On 13 December we will launch two different audio walks that take you through different corners of Amstelpark. The Last Human by Petra Ardai and OVER|ONDER|HOUD by KETTER&Co. We will kick off the walks with some coffee, tea, croissants and an introduction by the creators. From 13 December onwards, the audio tours will be available as soon as the park opens.

Programme

11:00 Doors open
11:15 Introduction to De Laatste Mens (The Last Human) by Petra Ardai with short listening session
11:30 philosopher, visual artist and lecturer in urban design and planning Martijn Huting and Petra Ardai in conversation with the audience
11:45 Introduction to OVER|ONDER|HOUD (ABOVE|BELOW|HOLD) by Irene Fortuyn and Hannah Sweering
12:00 Conversation with garden historian Erik de Jong and the gardeners
12:30 Outside! Let’s go for a walk!

THE LAST HUMAN

The first work to be introduced this winter Saturday is The Last Human – an immersive audio walk through Amstelpark by Petra Ardai/ SPACE.

Imagine: you are the last human on earth… Armed with nothing more than your phone or tablet, you wander through the park while voices of plants, animals and machines observe your every move. Are you a memory from the past, a clone, or the last of your kind? What makes you human?

During this event, we will delve into The Last Human in a special way. We will start by listening to a special excerpt together: how would the park change if it were allowed to do its own thing? For about 10 minutes, we will open our senses and explore how the landscape could develop if given the space to do so.

Afterwards, Martijn Huting, philosopher, visual artist and lecturer in urban design and planning, will examine The Last Man together with its creator Petra Ardai. He places the audio walk in the tradition of earlier “last men”, such as those of Nietzsche and Fukuyama, who now have become somewhat stuck. It is time for a new last man to start walking again. This is a short, interactive session in which the audience can also participate.

Team: Petra Ardai (concept, text, voice), David van der Heijden (sound and music), Marta Pisco (audience engagement), Sophie Leferink (strategy)

With support from AFK, Stichting DOEN and the Lira Fund.

After Petra’s introduction of De Laatste Mens, the creators of KETTER&CO will introduce their podcast OVER|ONDER|HOUD in the presence of the characters from the podcast.

OVER|ONDER|HOUD

With OVER|ONDER|HOUD, KETTER&Co created a monument to maintenance and the park’s gardeners. The work pays tribute to what often goes unnoticed in a society focused on innovation and progress. The knowledge of and involvement with the parks that the gardeners care for are made visible by adding their personal signatures as annotations to the park landscape. This creates a monument that unlocks their ideas, philosophy and in-depth knowledge of the park and makes the gardeners’ love tangible and shareable. Three statements by Luis Nobre Canha and Claus Schaapman have been immortalised in Amstelpark.

Recorded in their own handwriting, made from pruning and planting material from the park in question and cast in bronze, they form small memorials to the connection with the landscape.

The podcast OVER|ONDER|HOUD originated from conversations with the gardeners while walking through the park. Together with cultural, park and garden historian Erik de Jong, they guide us past beautiful and moving places, making the invisible layers of the park tangible: from hidden history to ecology and daily care.

The experiences and insights shared during these walks have been made accessible to the public and in addition to through this podcast series and the fysical monuments themselves. Presentation Claus Schaapman, Luis Nobre Canha, Erik de Jong / Editing: Marco Sweering/ Production: Hannah Sweering, Irene Fortuyn

About KETTER&Co

KETTER&Co is a collective that focuses on local agendas, practices, stories and materials through design-based research. It originated from the artistic practice of Irene Fortuyn and has developed over the past seventeen years into a collective of designers, researchers and writers. They initiate and develop projects that centre on themes such as collaboration, sustainability, care and maintenance, emphasising the importance of involving future generations.

OVER/ONDER/HOUD stems from a year-long residency by KETTER &Co in the Amstelpark in 2019-2020 entitled Tuinbazen: Making the Commons. In this project, they explored the role of the garden boss as manager, educator and inspirer, asking whether a park can become a communal garden and bring park users closer to the park’s caretakers.

About Petra Ardai

Petra Ardai is a pioneering artist, theatre maker, and scenario writer specializing in immersive and interdisciplinary storytelling across various media, including live/serious games, interactive performances, multimedia installations, and living heritage experiences. She is the artistic director of the art initiative SPACE, explorers of the continuous present, rooted in Amsterdam and Budapest.
With a background in documentary theatre, Petra’s docu-fiction narratives balance fiction and reality, making complex issues such as polarization, inequality, migration, unprocessed historical past, and climate change intimately relatable through the politics of the personal. The projects construct imaginary worlds around the fundamental question: “Who owns the Future?”