AA WALK AUDIO TOUR #001
Sick and tired of the homogenized, colourless and commercialised monoculture offered by the tourist-trap, exploitative corporate city of Amsterdam?
With its first Walk Audio Tour Amsterdam Alternative guides you through the city’s subcultures, the squatter scene, alternative lifestyles and forms of creativity, it tells the stories of an alternative Amsterdam that doesn’t want to disappear and struggles to come back to the surface.
The route takes you past a few still existing and a couple of free spaces and squats that have been evicted in the past. It starts in the centre and ends in the east of Amsterdam. The audio tour is available in both Nederlands and English!
Walking duration: ± 1,5 hrs.
Average duration per stop: 4-6 minutes.
Total duration: +/- 2,5 hrs.
Every time you’ve reached a new location start the audio for information.
Locations:
1) Spinhuis – Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185
2) Vrijpaleis – Paleisstraat 107
3) De Slang – Spuistraat 199
4) Maagdenhuis – Spui 21
5) Het Fort van Sjako – Jodenbreestraat 24
6) PlantageDok – Plantage Doklaan 8
7) OLVG – Oosterpark 9
8) Joe’s Garage – Pretoriusstraat 43
Credits
Direction and Voices: Koko Christiaanse and Phoebe Spence
Music and Audio Production: Daniel Leix Palumbo
AMSTERDAM AS A SORTING MACHINE – AA PODCAST #002

The 2nd podcast produced by Daniel Leix Palumbo for Amsterdam Alternative is based on on-going research conducted by Jaap Draaisma, which comes along with a documentary and an online article recently published on AA.
In this podcast, Jaap tells more about his research and the documentary, explaining how Amsterdam has turned into a Global City, where temporary conditions are the new common denominator. Amsterdam is now a sorting machine, organised around the new economy’s flexible working contracts and the shortage of long-term, affordable housing. The city is characterised by a continuous turnover of people, where both newcomers and Amsterdammers are kicked out if not among the few successful. This is a self-sustainable mechanism for capitalist production, but it destroys the city’s social life. Finally, potential strategies to struggle and stay in the city are discussed.
Credits
Interviewer: Tommaso Campagna
Interviewee: Jaap Draaisma
Intro: Maria Plichta
Music and Audio Production: Daniel Leix Palumbo
BIJLMER, FROM GHETTO TO GHETTO COOL – AA PODCAST #001

An experimental podcast produced by Daniel Leix Palumbo and Maria Plichta for Amsterdam Alternative. It investigates the relation between art, creative spaces and gentrification processes in Amsterdam, with a more specific focus on the area of Bijlmermeer, south east of Amsterdam.
With the intent of foregrounding the voices of those who are active in the area, the research has been conducted by interviewing artists, organisers, cultural brokers etc., who know the Bijlmer intimately and could provide insights into the current developments in the gentrifying processes within a wider historical and political frame. Thus, the research becomes an artistic output, where fragments of the interviews are rearranged and recombined to create something akin to an audio collage or an experimental podcast. The voices of interviewees are supplanted by relevant archival audio files and electronic sounds and synths, creating a background for the voices of the ‘neighbourhood witnesses’. The intent of the project is that of showing commitment and politicising the issue through artistic action, reclaiming creativity from the capitalist city, opening a discussion which aims to present new alternative solutions for the residents in the Bijlmer.
Credits
Research: Daniel Leix Palumbo, Maria Plichta
Music and Sound design: Daniel Leix Palumbo
Interviewees: Angelo Bromet (Prospect Eleven), Jaap Draaisma (AA), Mitchell Esajas (The Black Archives), Julian Jansen (Senior urban planner Municipality of Amsterdam, OCCII), Lyubov Matyunina (Artist), Ben Minnema (Heesterveld creative community), Wouter Pocornie (Architect & Urbanist, Prospect Eleven)
Audio archival sources: The Black Archives, Open Beelden