AN INTERVIEW WITH VICTOR FEENSTRA - THE ILLUSTRATOROF THE ICONIC THUNDERDOME FLYERS.
Text and pics by Boris Postma
Halfway through the nineties, I started collecting gabber-flyers. I had to do it in secret because my parents didn’t allow me to. Baldheads, shiny fluorescent tracksuits, flags on the sleeves of bomber jackets and militarized rhythms in laser-lit sports halls. According to my parents this wasn’t a good environment for a ten-year-old from Bloemendaal, the Netherlands. The flyers for these events -with images of devils and naked devil women shrouded in skulls- didn’t really contribute to the thoughts we had about the scene. And so I hid my precious flyer collection in a big bag in a bush in the garden, to try to copy and admire them for hours when I found myself at home alone.
What fascinated me most about the flyers were the saturated colours and distinct illustrations. Looking back, these were the consequences of growing up with eighties cartoons and horror, fantasy and science fiction films like Ghostbuster, Indiana Jones, Robocop and G.I. Joe. Those were the genres that by that time I already felt a deep and profound love for. There could also be found some overlap with the imagery of the comic books I collected. In short, my ten-year-old mind was being tickled. It was a love that would never fade away.
One particular flyer was special to me. This was the flyer of the Earthquake-Edition event at the Hemkade in Zaandam, from 1996. I bought it from a classmate for five guilders. The flyer portrayed a robot surrounded by mechanical parts of his mask floating around in a cloud of electricity. Piercing orange eyes contrast with the strong turquoise and blue that dominated the flyer. The robot is framed by something that reminds me of an electronic interface. The information about the event is written in strong typography, the timetable written in the font of a digital alarm clock.
