After-Post, Amsterdam (2026)
curation, book-making, writingMalaria Prevention Centre, Lagos (2025)
architecture, research, commissionA Mosaic of Embodied Knowledge, Fes (2023)
architecture, research, animation, drawingA Mosque for Camden (2025)
architecture, research, drawingThe Ummatic City (2025)
art, research, drawingbook-making, art
Future Archeologies (2023)
drawingThe Docklands (2025)
writing006 This Knowledge is a Burden
Originally published in 2026 as a contribution to the Anthology on the occasion of Owen Brouwer’s exhibition After-Post in the Muesum Het Schip, Amsterdam.
Rocks rearrange at the bed of the canal as a houseboat creaks through the night to its next mooring. The migration of digital numbers to an offshore account goes unnoticed.
Beneath a silver moon, the city hums - a nest of flowing oís, 1ís, voice notes, corner bricks, multi-factor authentication alerts, shopping lists, ironmongery, data packets, food cart labels, signage, and other civic detritus.
Flows of ornamental information stream as glistening sinews through the fabric of these streets.
When we observe this system in its entirety, it appears as a shimmering ghost.
This is the algorithmic universe of the city, each piece of knowledge and experience glitters in a dazzling mosaic.
000
The cobbles clack against the heel of the craftsman, as he treads his ordinary route home. He has spent the day hacking away in the workshop. It defeated him again. Still, there was always tomorrow.
Leaving the workshop, he enters a world of beads, woven into a web spun over an uneven urban terrain.
A deep red-brown fired brick, sits abruptly at the corner, its radical angle calling into doubt the orthodoxy of its neighbours.
A bright yellow signage board proudly claims the position of the new Surinamese Tropische Winkel.
Electric train lines whir as the commuter wagon pulls out of its temporary refuge.
Steam erupts from the make-do window vents of a Vietnamese restaurant.
A buffed angular clip perches on the edge of a shopping cart discarded on the street corner.
The cobbles continue to clack.
The dim street lamps cast a soft shadow from the figure of the craftsman. Crossing the canal bridge, his trench coat huddles him tightly, bracing against the sharp cold bluster down the canal.
As he turns the corner of the bridge, something else catches his eye.
There is a sculpture planted on the brick hand-rail of the bridge, one that he has seen countless times.
Locally known to be the work of Hildo Krop, the prominent artist of the Amsterdam School. An angular human form, heroic in stature.
The grains of stone on its angular face appear to vibrate. Subtly at first, but soon unmistakably. The chiselled-stone sculpture begins to shake its leg. Its neck cranks out of its fixed angle. Piece by stony piece, its parts start to emerge from its rigid form. In no time at all, it is writhing with an alarming vigour. It appears to be in discomfort.
The cobbles stop clacking.
“SIR”
“Sir?”
“Will you listen to me? I need someone to lend an ear. For years and years nobody has listened to me. I am not in a good way. Iíve held weighty burdens all of these years. Why wonít anyone just wait and listen for one moment?! Not even once.”
The craftsman removes his glasses.
“I’ve seen you pass by me every night! I hear you talking to yourself about this and that, this and that. For a while I thought you were an explorer, and then I ruled that out, you clearly don’t leave the city! For months I was convinced that you were one of those trinket-merchants of the Dappermarkt. My current hypothesis is that you might be a disc-jockey. Anyway, I prefer not to know for sure. Guessing is one of the ways to pass the time here.”
“Here, I need to give you something!
Please, take these.
They’re yours.”
ooo
The ziggurat-step parapet of the terraced houses lining the street glistens under the glowing moon.
The craftsman scans the streetscape around him for other people.
Stepping through the steam billowing out of the Vietnamese restuarantís window, he considers what he should do with his new knowledge.
The pistons of a motorbike chug below its flickering red lights.
The distant murmur of a dormant server lies expectantly for incoming data to process.
The steel poles of the trinket-merchants stalls clink, as they are dis-assembled.
As one of the parts of this algorithmic universe pulls into focus, its story unfolds.