Cultural Mobility, Global Performativity

A young woman – immersed, it appears, in her reading – sits on a large, beanbagshaped stone chair on Amsterdam's Dam Square. Her pose, if not exactly comfortable, seems balanced enough, although she may have had to put herself into a squat first over her sizeable black travelling bag. Behind her we see a museum poster, one of a series put up there by the Amsterdam (Historical) Museum to advertize its collection when a large bank building was temporarily fenced off in 2009 and 2010. The scene on the poster forms a striking contrast with the calm of the woman's pose: a monumental canvas by Jan Abrahamsz. Beerstraaten, it evokes the fire that destroyed Amsterdam's old town hall in the night of 7 July 1652. The inflamed sky, rendered in part in screaming colours, suggests the event may have seemed to spell apocalypse to some of those who witnessed it, including perhaps the painter himself. The fact that the Exchange Bank, too, was destroyed (it was housed in the same building) offers the potential of a stern cautionary tale in this city of Calvinists and commerce, of seventeenth-century republicans and burghers. In fact, a new town hall was already being built; seen in its entirety, the painting shows the scaffolding behind the waaghuis, suggesting that the fire only sealed the old building's appointed fate – and so, could just as well be cast as a providential sign of benevolence, divine arrangements meshing nicely with worldly ones.

The woman, in any case, is oblivious to the painting, as she is to the tourist draws near where she sits. We know that on her right stands the Nieuwe Kerk, which regularly houses art and heritage exhibitions. Just in front of her is the city's Madame Tussauds; if she looks up, she is likely to see people queue up to see Rembrandt, Lady Gaga, and the Dalai Lama in wax. Just across from her is the Palace on the Dam, the building which Beerstraaten saw completed during his lifetime, and which now functions as a museum and a place for royal receptions.