Yeb Wiersma, Storyville (2010)

The artwork Storyville is a continuous interactive work that started in 2008 as part of the SITE2F7 Festival in Almere. The wasteland SITE2F7 is a still undesigned spot in Almere, a city which is completely drawed up on the architects table. This site knows numerous possibilities for the future. Since 2007, Museum De Paviljoens challenges artists, scientists, writers and designers to think about these possibilities, amongst others during the SITE2F7 Festivals.
Within this frame of mind, Yeb Wiersma worked as an artist together with children and young adults for several afternoons to discover the possibilities of the site. They wandered through the building sites, collected wood, flowers, plants and made-up stories. Because this area has no boundaries, you can play and make associations freely. Untouched by confining regulations or zoning plans. They imagined SITE2F7 was a book or movie in which anything was possible: they wandered around in the imaginary ‘Storyville’. Wiersma considers these types of places at the outskirts of city centers as sanctuaries for imaginationThey invite you to discover and play like kids. Areas like SITE2F7 function as the basis in which adventures can be imagined. Wiersma does not see these terrain as weeds, but as a mysterious garden containing extraordinary scavenges and stories.

De nieuwe bibliotheek
A library, according to Wiersma, is just the same as a ‘wild’ building site: a self-willed sanctuary where you can wander and roam around freely. Numerous stories – thousands of books and dvd’s – fly through the spaceship like building of the library (de nieuwe bibliotheek) which is located in the middle of the new city center. You can see this adventurous ship that sticks out proudly above the mowing field from far. It invites you to come aboard. This new building by the architects Meyer en Van Schooten reminds Wiersma of a sentence from ‘Le Voyage’ by Charles Baudelaire: ‘One morning we sailed away, our heads on fire’. This quote states exactly what happens when you visit the library: it warms and enlightens your spirit. After a visit you can encounter the world with new vitality. ‘Fasten you seat belts. Your trip to Storyville is about to begin’. De nieuwe bibliotheek is opened!

Storyville (2010)
In 2007, Wiersma made a photo at the SITE2F7 terrain on which several books seem to float above the building site, seen from the point of view form a bird. This image is merged in the artwork Storyville. It visualizes the potential dynamics of the young city Almere and the library. The ‘flying’ novels and the construction materials that you see on the photos, Wiersma considers necessary tools to define yourself and your surroundings. They cheer on development and enlightenment in thinking and building. The photo is showed in a light box which reminds the visitor of ‘the enlightened spirit’. Besides the photo lies a small publication within amongst others a short text that can be seen autonomous as well as a support to the photo. A text that serves as a free epilogue and which focuses on the books in the photo.

STORYVILLE | BOOKS
The New York Trilogy: City of Glass; Ghosts; The Locked Room, Paul Aster
Short Cuts, Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
How We Are Hungry: Stories, Dave Eggers
Ask the Dust, John Fante
American Purgatorio, John Haskell
This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Holmes
Things You Should Know, A.M. Holmes
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories, Miranda July
Birds of America: Stories, Lorrie Moore
A gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
The Bell Jar, Sylia Plath
For Esmé – with Love and Squalor, J.D. Salinger
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, J.D. Salinger
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut