Museum as Hub

Hub Notes: thoughts on borderless living

I had a conversation with three men (a father and two sons) from Holland. They related directly with Van Abbe Museum‘s interpretation of “neighborhood” as “national identity” in their project Be[com]ing Dutch, part of which will be shown at the New Museum as part of Museum as Hub in late 2008. Compliance with the European Union’s open-border exchange has changed Holland dramatically. With Holland being a very small country, the residents feel bombarded. The economy is flooded with migrant workers willing to work longer hours for less, destabilizing the lifestyles of the local, middle-class communities. This family of three in particular spoke fervently about issues concerning quality of life and cultural homogeneity – with the advent of a new community of workers who are not as educated.

The conversation we had was true to the word “discourse” – running to and fro – finding numerous examples comparing this immigration phenomenon between Holland and the United States. One of the topics we focused on was outsourced labor, where major companies in countries such as the United States outsource parts of their service sectors or production to other countries. Although extracting resources from other countries have been an accepted trading practice for centuries, the exchange of production or services have become a critical issue of quality / value surfaced alongside the development of globalization. We laughed at learning that we have both encountered courtesy calls from Indian-accented telecommunicators.

The Museum as Hub projects represent a variety of delineations of the term “neighborhood.” Many engage relationships within local communities that are circumscribed by elements of globalization or multiculturalism. This discussion put the Van Abbe’s project into a specific context of Dutch nationalism and internationalism in the past years, and some local thoughts about it.
-Lena Imamura