‘Utrecht Hooligans’, 50 jaar voetbalgeweld

Dit boek geeft een fascinerende inkijk in de geschiedenis van de oudste harde kern van Nederland. Vergeet Amsterdam, Rotterdam en Den Haag. De absolute pioniers van het Nederlandse hooliganisme zijn de jongens van FC Utrecht. Die de aftrap namen begin jaren zeventig.  Zoals op zondagmiddag 1 oktober 1972, wanneer  Telstar uit Velsen op bezoek komt. Ruim 9000 supporters wonen de wedstrijd bij,…

(more…)

We have mentioned the Upchurch Train Crash of August 1944 several times on this site. It is a part of local Upchurch history. For the 70th anniversary of the crash,  a feature was used here. 

As a follow up all these items, this is a personal account, received from Peter Jacobs recalling his father Bert Jacobs, travelling on the train.  We are grateful that, with permission from Peter Jacobs, the article is reprinted here, first.

The Sittingbourne Train Smash as remembered by Bert Jacobs of Greenhill, Herne Bay, Kent.

Written by his son Peter S. Jacobs

Bert Jacobs, was in an extraordinary train crash caused by a doodlebug (V 1) during the war in 1944. He relates his memory of the experience.

This is Bert Jacobs in 1954 and this is his story as told by his son Peter Jacobs.

“I was travelling from Chatham to Herne Bay. I boarded the train in the second carriage. It was one of those carriages with compartments. I found a seat, with my back to the engine. The service was running a few minutes late, so after leaving Chatham we were travelling at a fair speed to make up time, I suspect. Suddenly, we heard an explosion which sounded like a bomb. The other passengers around me dived for the floor, as was standard practice in those days of air raids to avoid flying shrapnel. I didn’t, and I don’t know why. At that moment there was a screeching of brakes and the sounds of the engine trying to bring the train to a halt. I sat upright, which I think was due to me being thrust back in the seat by the force of deceleration. There was then a horrendous noise with buffeting and a shuddering. The carriage shook and it was obvious we were being derailed. We kept moving. I just sat rigid. I could do nothing else. There was then a huge bumping and the carriage started sliding sideways and tilting. A loud tearing sound all around us was deafening. It was the result of the carriage being torn apart. The roof split above me, and the parcel rack collapsed causing something to fall, hitting me on the back of my head. We came to a halt. The carriage was on a lean. Many of the passengers around me were mangled, on the floor by the breaking up of the carriage. The upper structure had moved separating from the floor, pinning those who had taken cover. It was dreadful, with blood everywhere.  Can’t remember anything of the commotion other than there was noise.  I sat there for a moment, a little dazed; caused probably by the falling object from the rack above. Realising that I could get out by standing on my seat to a split in the roof, I hauled myself up and inched my way through the gap. When on the roof, I cautiously walked down the rounded carriage top to where I could slide off to the embankment. I sat on the ground feeling slightly disorientated. I surveyed the scene. The engine and first two carriages had jumped the chasm where a doodlebug had hit and blown up a road bridge. This had been only a few yards in front of the engine. All of the carriages behind the one I was in had remained on the lines and halted exactly to where the rails disappeared.

 I felt that I would be best to get out of the way of all those rushing to help, ambulance people and the suchlike. I knew where I was, so I walked to the A2 and caught a bus to Faversham, and then on to Herne Bay. Reaching home rather late to my distraught wife, I immediately took off my clothes, and had a bath. Then I had a meal and went to bed. The next morning I picked up my clothes which fell apart in my hands. They must have absorbed an acidic liquid. I could feel a definite bruise where I had been hit on the head. I concluded that the falling object that I had been hit with must have been something like an accumulator, and the acid had spilt over me. Do you know, the insurance paid for a new suit? As for my head, I have always had a tingling feeling at that spot ever since. And what is more, since then, I have never travelled in the first two carriages of a train. I was lucky. There were quite a number killed in that smash, and many more injured. 

It was reported in the Daily Mirror a few weeks later. The toll that was mentioned was nothing like the numbers I witnessed. Censored news media, I guess”.

 Bert Jacobs lived at that time at:-

           Inglewood,

           Poplar Drive,

           Greenhill,

           Herne Bay.

Twice a year, the resident artists at the Rijksakademie open up their studios for each other, advisors and employees during the internal open studios. Ideas for projects are being tested and work is discussed with fellow residents and advisors. The artists will present the outcome to the public during RijksakademieOPEN, December 1 and 2.

Korean resident Min Oh showed a minimalistic, well thought-out performance called The Suite while an alternative version of the same performance was projected on the wall.

Min Oh, The Suite, 2012 Video and object-installation: Min Oh. Performance: Lisa Vereertbrugghen (alternate version for the Rijksakademie internal open studios)

What made the performance alienating was the contrast between the digital projection on the screen and the analogue, physical happening on stage. A female model was struggling through various wooden sculptures in absence of a soundtrack, while the sound from the clicking of high heels from the projection interfered with the actual sound from the live performance. Oh started the internal open studios leaving the spectators warm and fuzzy, but at the same time cold and estranged to begin a day of new impressions and experiences.

Present Forever is a remarkable exhibition on a remarkable location. 55 artists were invited to make work for FATFORM in their new residence, a parking garage in the Bijlmer inAmsterdam, right across the road from where they were seated in the past two summers, the Kraaiennest. Lees spacious but still big, 3500m2 or two full circles of concrete.

The organisers (for reference they are Ad de Jong and Manuel Klappe, who also organised BeeldHalWerk in Noord in 2010, in cooperation with Daniela Bershan, artist and one of the founders of Fatform and Bas Oudt, exhibition designer) hand-picked 55 artists and invited them to make new work if their time allowed and over half of them did. Their selection gives an accurate cross section of the current state of the art. Ranging from young artists to established heroes, a good dozen of the Rijksakademie alumni and a current Rijksakademie student, Bert Jacobs, whom I also asked about his work for the expo.

Did you make work especially for the exhibition? At this moment my work focuses primarily on experimenting with abstraction and figuration, with color and the skin of the canvas. Recently this resulted in a search for a way to thicken/enlarge the physical spaciousness and presence of the canvas by throwing it out of the framework. PRESENT FOREVER, taking the future and a strong physical presence as the basis, came with the 'assignment' to take a risk and to radically focus on the core of one's own artistic practice and think about what could be the direction for the next ten years; making a daring 'future' work out of that. In that sense my own practice and the idea of this exhibition came together, hoping that the work itself could get an extra dimension because of the space it would lean in. How does your work relate to the theme "present" - and future? It's not a thematic exhibition and as such it is not necessarily a relation with present as a theme, but being present and how to be present.

What is your vision for the future? Searching, developing and changing my practice What is special about this exposition? I already knew and worked with the FATFORM crew and seeing all the hard work and the progress they made in the last three years resulting now in this big exhibition PRESENT FOREVER and a great festival day with a lot of different performances and all kinds of music, food and lots of visitors was nice.  Next to that FATFORM has created space for a music studio, a dance studio a taekwondo gym and more spontaneous interludes with music, talks, smaller exhibitions and food over the last couple of months. Because of this mixture of forms and people it is great to be part of this initiative by  participating in this show. Is the ‘Bijlmer’(The Bijlmermeer, or colloquially Bijlmer,  is one of the neighbourhoods that form theAmsterdam Zuidoost ('Amsterdam South-East') borough (or "stadsdeel") of A"sterd’, Netherlands a good place for an artist to be? I think the Bijlmer can be a good place to be and I believe every place can be interesting for everyone, also for an artist. In the years that I had my studio in the Bijlmer it was not only the studio or the place that I liked rather it were the people that I met in the years working there. This is how I got connected with people working and/or living there and that's what makes the Bijlmer and FATFORM for me a nice place to be. Quite specific is that FATFORM also attracts people from the neighborhood liking the place, helping out and setting up for example a music studio. I think it's important that a big group of people can be involved in a project such as this and all in their own way contribute to the FATFORM project or the other way around. All the work forms one exhibition and the central theme is discussed among the works: where are we and where do we go from here? Another binding factor is that they are all handmade. No photography, no video, no new media. New forms, crafted by hand, present in their physicality. It suits the place. We are in a parking garage in the Bijlmer, which could be a very framed location. Still the viewer walks in and out of the garage during the exhibition: sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. Some works underline the space and work with it, like a Jaguar spinning upside down or a shelter hanging from the ceiling. Some works deny or ignore the space altogether, and some transform it - into a gallery, a cave, a different space, a non-space, a private universe. Many of the works will only be shown here - so go, visit!

(the exhibition can still be visited until September 30th) http://fatform.com/projects/present-forever/ http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/resident/bert-jacobs