Lekker Hapje

Performance Essay

May 2020

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Silent Kings Day in Amsterdam… These streets normally would be packed with people dressing in orange. Today, however, the streets are almost empty, ducks are swimming freely in the canal, birds taking over the sky without airplanes...

Looking through the windows, a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of speculaas cookie that we take for a simple snack, we can’t stop thinking - what is the role we are playing as residents in the urban jungle?

We take this time and space to re-examine our positions in the larger ecological system, and to re-think our relations with the Earth through the simple actions of everyday life in the city.

We explore through performances as an essay at historical locations in the city of Amsterdam, weaving stories from the mythical to the colonial, from the process of food to the consumption of natural resources, and from the land to our mouth.

With the social distancing policies, our usual way of working - cooking and sharing stories together as participatory performance - is no longer possible. However, we embrace this situation as an opportunity to still share a cup of chocolate and a cookie from a distance, as a way to come together and reflect on these social topics.

Recipe A. Cacao for hot chocolate

Cacao, like me, is an immigrant, coming through a long journey from far away lands. Finally, we found each other in this place. Walking among old buildings next to the canals, yet this is not an ancient civilization. A city built on the water designed for ships, Amsterdam is the biggest cacao trading port in the world. But there are no cacao trees anywhere around. How did the cacao come here? What happened on the journey of cacao before we encountered at this place?

Recipe B. Speculaas cookie

I pass by this street every Monday. I sit down. With a drink and a cookie, I watch the buildings across the canal. I see this building, yet I never saw it. It only reveals itself to me when I look through time. How could it be so obvious yet so hidden?

Here I am, holding this famous Dutch cookie. But I think to myself: how could it be, if cinnamon comes from the tropical jungles in Sri Lanka, ginger and cardamom rooted in the Indian soil, and clove, nutmeg and mace hidden among the trees in the small islands of Indonesia?

But what does it have anything to do with me? If I know, would things be different? Would I be different?