Fort van Sjakoo
The Fort van Sjakoo is an international activist bookshop operated by a collective of volunteers, located in the centre of Amsterdam. A ‘disillusionary’ event was orchestrated for its opening. Initially the entire windowed facade of the shop was covered with brick-printed wallpaper, behind which some hundred metres of green polythene tubing was hidden. The performance began with a ‘Romeo’ climbing up to the shop’s first-floor balcony to meet his ‘Juliet.’ Then the hidden tubing was inflated, bursting through the brick-wall veneer and out onto the pavement, into the hands of the onlookers, who then dragged it down the street. In this way the shop became physically and narratively ‘opened’ to the public, with a performance that also referenced the then-recent times of squatter confrontations and building demolitions in this neighborhood.