Lloyd Hotel

A video art pro­ject for the Cul­ture Embassy of Ams­ter­dam at Lloyd Hotel, in which to a two minutes video in the theme of “hotel”.

The Lloyd Hotel is one of the most legendary build­ings in Amsterdam.
Ori­gin­ally built by the Konink­lijke Hol­land­sche Lloyd (Roy­al Hol­land Lloyd) ship­ping com­pany in 1920, the Lloyd Hotel was used as tem­por­ary accom­mod­a­tion for immig­rants from East­ern Europe before board­ing the company’s South-Amer­ica Line ships to their des­tin­a­tion. Since then the build­ing has gone through the most icon­ic part of mod­ern European his­tory, as well as the his­tory of Ams­ter­dam, in a most iron­ic role of “hotel”: Jew­ish refugees shel­ter dur­ing the Second World War, pris­on for war crim­in­als right after the war, adult pris­on, juven­ile deten­tion centre, squat­ted space & artist stu­di­os until the extens­ive res­tor­a­tion that made in into a hotel  in 2004.

The idea for the video is to dis­solve the building’s icon­ic his­tory into the Lloyd Hotel’s new dis­tinct­ive fea­ture of the en-suite lav­at­ory designs. “Hotel” is meant to provide occu­pants for a spe­cif­ic time a shel­ter, refresh­ment and rest, no mat­ter in a good or a bed way, as a middle point for put­ting one’s past to the rest and pre­par­ing for a new depar­ture. It is intimate.

Although the num­bers stamped on the hand seem to be room num­bers, they are actu­ally the num­ber of occu­pa­tion days in each peri­od of the building’s his­tory; each wash-up for it’s past as his­tory and a new start for it’s time.