Ever since I decided to get Maldoror involved in the Casuariestraat location around 1999 (artistbook exhibition 'Palimpsest' in 1997 was an isolated event after our gallery had to move out of former printing-factory Voortvaren/Concordia), I kept telling people I would not stop working there until my grandfather had died. I considered it an extra-honor to work in the same spaces as he did in the sixties and seventies of the previous century. My grandfather, 'Opa' Jaap Blokdijk, pointed this out to me when he visited 'Palimpsest'. I had no idea. He had worked there as a civil servant of the ministry of foreign affairs, which it was before around 1990 squatters started to use the desolated building.
As soon as he had told me this new fact I had a flashback I had once visited the ministry as a child of 6 or 7 with my grandfather, when a tall man, or so he seemed to me, spoke to me the following words in a rather hostile tone, "Hey sonny, you're not allowed to look at that!" It was probably classified stuff, since my grandfather worked with cold war secrets... But the man was only 'joking'.
In the summer of 2004 Maldoror stopped its activities in the Casuariestraat. But I hadn't turned in my key yet, and our soundgear was still in use. Opa died on september 13 2004, being 91 years old. I miss him dearly.
It's a matter of TIME before we will have finalized this particular archive.

[AB, November 27 2004]

f o r t h c o m i n g | l a s t - m o n t h | r e t u r n 4