theoretical cabinet

Went on a walking tour of Tilburg, Netherlands in Portland last night – The Portland Tour of Tilburg. Khris Soden led a group of about 30 folks around downtown Portland pointing out, amid our familiar geography, the well-known sites of downtown Tilburg (he will do the reverse soon in Tilburg, ‘The Tilburg Tour of Portland’). This proves to be an interesting stretch of the imagination – a very small park appears at the street corner, just one tree in Tilburg (a large column here in Portland), an old church stands in for the bland facade of the Portland Hilton, a collection of news stands arrayed before us becomes Tilburg’s sculpture of the ‘jug pisser.’ A particular favorite was the large green cabinet, a monument and memorial to victims of violence (below, with added not-so-imaginary dotted lines).

This cabinet has a drawer in the bottom into which items may be placed. Once a day a Tilburg city worker comes by and places the drawerful of items onto the shelves behind the glass, an ongoing piece of and about memory.

(Something quite nice about having to imagine this piece, creating a memory for a piece about memory.)

An interesting side note, given all the talk of late about experience, etc. on the national stage: of the 30 or so folks gathered for this tour (a self-selecting group to be sure), by a show of hands, 1) pretty much all were from Portland, 2) virtually the entire group had been to Europe, and 3) most had been to the Netherlands (nobody had been to Tilburg, or it seemed, spoke Dutch). That struck me as somewhat remarkable (not so much the Dutch part) given that it was quite a cross-section of age, gender and dress. Then again, it was an interested and curious group, which probably says a boatload when referenced back to the aforementioned stage.