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Welcome to Free Association, a newsletter about the revolutionary potential of collective creativity.

Initially, this is about my research of the social history of club RoXY and its connections to vanguard artist movements in Amsterdam after WWII, such as Cobra, Provo and punk (the book Homo Ludens by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga plays an important role here, but I will come back to that later). I have been doing this research since the summer of 2021, and it has resulted in the release of a 20-minute film, RoXY (2022).

Additionally, this newsletter helps me write a book about the same subject, with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fonds. So I will revisit the books I have read and the films I have watched to unpack some of the footage I have used and the words that are spoken in the film. Furthermore, I will use this space to highlight some of the excluded individuals and communities from the dominant narrative of 20th century art history of Amsterdam, such as the black jazz scene, women’s movement, and the LGBTI community.

Ultimately, this newsletter will explore further association of above movements with earlier ones, such as De Stijl, dada and others, with the aim of salvaging hope, love and resolution for dealing with the present and building for a better future.

I have my eyes set on going all the wayback to 1848, the beginning of Dutch democracy. But first things first.

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