LLOYD
HOTEL

  Audio Visu­al (video with music track)
 2′07″
 Spring 2006
 Ams­ter­dam, THE NETHERLANDS

  The Lloyd Hotel is one of the most leg­endary build­ings in Ams­ter­dam. In April 2006, the Cul­ture Embassy of Ams­ter­dam at Lloyd Hotel and our class’s audio-visu­al men­tor Car­olien Scholtes col­lab­o­rat­ed to assign us a video art project, in which each stu­dent cre­at­ed a two min­utes video in the theme of “hotel”.

 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.

 My 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.