This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave

[fj]

"This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave", Nokia N73, Eerbeek, 2007

This picture is part of a set of images that are what I am trying to capture of designs and objects that instill utter drearyness in me. They are stock shapes and proportions, used in every day things.

Comments

[chucknoblet.livejournal.com]

Thoroughly unappealing :-D

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i am fascinated.
i can see how the grey would get you, and i can see how van gogh must have been ravished by the light in the south of france.
but the dutch are so very sophisticated with the arts and the graphic arts; i'm so interested that this well designed hardware depresses you.
is it just too EEC? or clean scrubby pink cheek dutch? do tell.

[fj.livejournal.com]

The images I took are of objects and visuals that, while well designed, are ubiquitous, unremarkable. But they are always attached to averages: you just know the shower controlled by the faucet is going to be thin and miserly and either impossibly hot or never hot enough. The grout between the tiles feels like visual prison every day. The metal countertop will not scratch nor show, but it is always cold, in a cold country.

BTW, this is all highly personal. I wonder if any Dutch people would recognize my feelings.

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

Having a good time, are we?

Just where exactly are you?

[fj.livejournal.com]

Was in Eerbeek. Right now bak in Rozendaal, family weekend is over. Aside from screaming lower back-pain from the flights and luggage -- everyone said one shoulder is higher than the other when I walk when seen from behind, and why don't I get that checked out -- and Internet withdrawal, it was not bad.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of Israeli bathrooms.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Same suppliers, wanna bet?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Probably. The rest of them don't have the same familiarity, interestingly enough.

[phornax.livejournal.com]

Does the Netherlands buy up failed IKEA designs en masse?

[fj.livejournal.com]

Utterly wrong timeline.

[phornax.livejournal.com]

It was a joke, but IKEA has been mass-producing utilitarian furniture and home fixtures in Europe since the 1950s.

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

I think the "bath house" door with the bench is cool. Do you enter one side leave the other. That's how it is here. Very regimented.

I think I see your point, but *I* don't find these images depressing.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Of course enter on one side and out the other, and always pinch your fingers or have to fuck with closing both doors right. To go into an overchlorinated pool, early in the morning, for regimented swimming.

[badfaggot.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear lord, yes -- flashing back to Sellingen.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I imagine it's what I would feel like if I had to live in your average business convention hotel my whole life. Not miserable enough to cry, too disheartened to try to do anything about it.

[aliceinfinland.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've used those taps! I'm pretty sure at least one of the dorms I lived in for years (here) had them. And many youth hostels.

is that one of those showers ...

[henare.livejournal.com]

that has almost no water pressure?

Re: is that one of those showers ...

[fj.livejournal.com]

Like the rest of the country.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

Yes. Hideous. But all campgrounds are.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Thing is, those proportions and objects and finishes were not used just in campgrounds. They are everywhere.

[sabin.livejournal.com]

I keep reading "This must BE the place I waited years to leave." I just can't wrap my head around it the way you wrote it.
What a very crude way of mixing the temperature.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Because you payed attention; turns out I got it wrong. I fixed it.