Covid and Amsterdam

If a tree falls and nobody sees it fall

A change of direction. I did this essay last year as part of a (northern) Summer paper on urban environments that I did. I doubt the exhibition referred to is still going.

I didn’t put too much effort into it, but hopefully it’s a reasonable read of a time in Amsterdam very recent but distant also.

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Since February 2020 the world, especially the Western World, has been in a series of lockdowns and other measures to try and avert the worst impacts of a pandemic. The Netherlands is no exception. Epidemiologists are though divided (e.g. Anders Tegnell, Sweden) on whether these sorts of measures are effective and you don’t have to look too hard to find well known epidemiologists who challenge the idea that we even have an epidemic¹. The Euromomo² site on excess death statistics in the Netherlands will also provide evidence that the current pandemic is not particularly out of the ordinary and that the influenza seasons of 2017 and 2018 had impacts greater or equal to the impacts of the Corona virus over the last 18 months. Almost everyone in Amsterdam will have internet access so these contradictory narratives are easy enough to find.

Add to this that the restrictions around COVID-19 have also been levied on the poor³ more than they have been on the rich and there’s an undeniable element of class involved in who feels the pain of the restrictions the most. Poorer citizens are for example more likely to live in cramped accommodation. They’re more likely to have jobs that cannot be done online, or places at home available for them even if they can. Protests are often incubated in such environments.

In January 2021 these tensions between Government directives re COVID restrictions and middle and working class opposition to them came to a head in the Netherlands, Amsterdam included.

These Corona protestor’s stories are though completely missing in the “Corona in the City” exhibition at the Amsterdam Museum with its 584 stories (an online exhibition). Their protests that garnered worldwide attention are nowhere to be seen in an exhibition ostensibly about Corona in Amsterdam, and in fact the protests are mentioned only once in derisory passing⁴. Are these protestors voices somehow worth significantly less than others? Is the museum not a contested space? Are the curators of this exhibition blind, unable to smell and deaf?

On the other hand you won’t have to spend much time on the Amsterdam Museum site to see that it gives an extraordinary amount of space aimed at a specific demographic, a left wing one focused on identity politics.

Is it then really a true record of Amsterdammers’ experience of Corona if it excludes many demographics in almost exclusive favour of one, a somewhat imaginary one at that. if it understates the experience of the majority and vastly overstates the experiences of the much smaller group? Where does what’s left of the (subsequently fallen) Netherlands Government lie in all this? Who do they represent?

Leaving the Museum for the moment maybe this is the unstated Amsterdam, a world away from the fantasy at the Museum, to a place where a climate, a strangely appropriate word, of resistance and COVID, of class resistance to diktat.

If you have constant restrictions on your mobility, your ability to do your job, your income, your ability to pay your rent, your rights to see friends and family then who indeed should be surprised if you take to the streets in protest, especially if you think they’re unjustified restrictions you’re protesting against. And it’s the only place that you have to express your art as well, even if it’s the sort of art that almost always meets with the disapproval of those (supposedly) in charge.

From the lack of sight of your protest, not my Amsterdam.

To the smell of burning bicycles⁵

To the taste of your own blood

To the sounds of horses, of batons on flesh and bone.

Places

Dam Square - some of the COVID-19 protests happened here. It is a common site of protests.

Molukkenstraat, which is where the protests started by some accounts. It is certainly where they were concentrated in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Museum, where a digital exhibition is focused on stories of peoples experiences during the COVID-19 epidemic and the restrictions it entails. But does not include protests.

Museumplein square, where the protestors met police on horses. It’s also, along with Dam Square, another common focus of protests.

And in Eindhoven (specific places not known) Woman injured by water cannon
Bikes burning

Footnotes

1. e.g. John Ionnidis. I think many more can be found on the Great Barrington Declaration, accessed 16th July 2021 from;

https://gbdeclaration.org/

2. https://www.euromomo.eu/

3. The Economist, Economically, Covid-19 has hit hard-up urbanites hardest, June 19th 2021.
accessed on 15th July 2021 from;

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/300337962/economically-covid19-has-hit-hardup-urbanites-hardest

4. Bronte Wilson, ANTIBODY Anti Body Body Club, 2021 Amsterdam Museum; accessed 15th July 2021 from;

https://www.coronaindestad.nl/en/antibody/

5. Makes me wonder if cycling is a class issue in the Netherlands.

Bibliography

I amsterdam, Discover Oost, accessed 15th July 2021 (video above)

BBC, Covid-19: Dutch police break up anti-lockdown protest, accessed 15th July 2021 from; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56393820

Euromomo, European mortality monitoring, accessed 15th July 2021 from; https://www.euromomo.eu/

Great Barrington Declaration, accessed 16th July from;

https://gbdeclaration.org/

The Economist, Economically, Covid-19 has hit hard-up urbanites hardest, June 19th 2021. accessed on 15th July 2021 from;

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/300337962/economically-covid19-has-hit-hardup-urbanites-hardest

Vonk, Caroline, Restrictions, accessed 15th July 2021 from;

https://www.coronaindestad.nl/en/restrictions/

Wikipedia, Molukkenstraat (Amsterdam), accessed 15th July from;

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molukkenstraat_(Amsterdam)