A couple of weeks ago, I was walking aimlessly into town and passed by this decommissioned water tower.

It looked like it usually does except that there were crafty signs and decorations made out of pallets and people wandering about. Turns out it was part of the Blikopener (literally “can opener”) festival.

The main attraction was an art installation that was in the underground water basin next to the water tower. There was a desk (also made out of pallets) at the entrance set up with little glass jars that each contained an LED candle. Each had a numbered spot on the wood where it sat. I believe there were 20 of them. The people running the festival handed each visitor a candle so that they could keep track of how many people were in said water basin at any given time.

A couple of miscellaneous pieces were in the building above the water basin.

The water basin itself felt a bit like a miniature catacomb but without the corpses. A fog machine supplied some mist and the place was dimly lit with more of those LED candles in jars. In a few different clusters, film projectors showed loops of space missions such as the moon landing and various rocket launches that ran forward and backward.

A few other people were down there – I saw about five total, but for much of the time, I was the only person I could see or hear, which was just the right amount of creepy for the intended effect.

Above ground and behind the building, the yard was filled with paper airplanes and umbrellas. A band composed of an MC with torn up clothes and a guy operating a laptop (and performing backup yelling) while wearing a mask provided some ironic entertainment, and a snack bar offered grilled hot dogs as well as some vegetables and stuffed mushrooms, couscous, bread, hummus, beer, and so on. They served it all on biodegradable materials.

Most of the audience was fairly young, but I met a middle-aged couple next to me. The fellow owned a software company of some sort that he was currently phasing himself out of – he had studied software engineering at the Delft University of Technology a while back. The woman worked in human resources somewhere. I hesitate sometimes to talk to random people here, but they were quite approachable.

Also, before I left, I spoke with one of the organizers at the entrance – he was a young guy named Dieter. The conversation of telling each other our names went something like: “Hi. I’m Mike.”

“I’m Dieter.”

“What is it? ‘Peter’? ”

“No, Dieter.”

“Ah, like Dieter Rams?!”

“…”

“Oh, he’s an industrial designer. Maybe you don’t know him.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s a certain niche.”

I found this bio through the Blikopener website, and I think this is the Dieter I met. He has some involvement with the industrial design faculty at TU Delft. Oh well.

Also, I had a temporary Russian flatmate about a week ago (more on that later) who had a son named Wassily. I had a similar conversation about understanding that name.

“Ah, like Wassily Kandinsky?!”

“Who?”

“Oh, he was a famous artist.”

“Oh, okay. I don’t know him.”