TRANSLATIONS FREE TO BE FREE AMSTERDAM
Free to be Free is a performance that includes various languages; Dutch, English, Papiamentu, Sranantongo. We encourage the audience to let go of the idea of understanding every word, and find meaning in the intention of the performance, the movement, images. The poetic texts are in various languages and have not been translated. Please find the translations of the informative and historical text on this page.
Enjoy the performance and journey through time!
Wat does freedom mean to you?
DE WAALSE KERK - PART 1
JEANNIE
The Walloon Church
Built in 1409. After the Oude Kerk, this church is the oldest church in Amsterdam. Due to the rise of Protestantism, in 1578 a large part of this monastery site came into the hands of the city, which also established the headquarters of the VOC and Oost-Indisch Huis there. This church was made available to French-speaking Protestant refugees from the Southern Netherlands and France and was henceforth called The Walloon Church, the Eglise Wallonne.
JOMECIA
The Walloon Church
A graveyard of stories through time
The floor is covered with gravestones, marked with the names of wealthy families. Marked with family crests.
Here is the grave of Sara Chevalier. Born in Paramaribo. Her parents were Huguenots and owners of the plantations Acecibo and La Liberte in Suriname, of which Sara became a shareholder. Sara came to Amsterdam and married trader and banker Jacques Christoph. After his death she continued the trading house. She was a trader. She managed plantations and was involved in the slave trade.
JEANNIE
The grave of family Godin is also located here. Paulus Godin lived on the Herengracht, in the current mayor's house. He was co-founder and governor of the WIC, and director of the society of Suriname. He obtained the Asciento de Negros, a WIC contract to deliver enslaved people to Curaçao for shipment to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. Paulus Godin was an elder and delegate of this church.
JOMECIA
The Walloon church, a graveyard of stories through time
The graves, the foundation of this church, was paid for by money obtained through trade, through exploitation. Buried in the house of God, in the house of reconciliation and redemption.
JEANNIE
The house of God as a refuge for religious refugees
JOMECIA
The house of God, with shares in the WIC
JEANNIE
The house of God that invests in international trade, in slave trade
JOMECIA
How is it possible? That the cycle of violence continues?
JEANNIE
How your ancestors had to flee because of their faith
JOMECIA
And found safety in this church, in this city
JEANNIE
You know the stories so well
The injustice, the violence by loved ones, by your fellow man
JOMECIA
How is it possible that you, in turn, disregard your fellow man?
JEANNIE
You don't see them as people but as inferior
JOMECIA
Punished because of their faith
JEANNIE
Because of the threat you think they pose
because of ignorance, revenge, blind hatred, righteousness
JOMECIA
How can it be? That the cycle of violence continues?
JEANNIE
Until today.
JOMECIA
Until today.
JORGEN
Building sanctimonious churches
In the name of
Building plantations in the east and west
In the name of
With churchgoers' money
The barbarian appoints himself director of a society.
Godin, Goddamn Paulus Goddess
Convinced that his Wealth
Would be a pearl chain ladder to heaven
His head too big for his conscience
It's easy
To trade the names of strangers
When the stench of the ships
Doesn’t burn in your eyes
When you don’t have to throw
The dead bodies of chained children overboard
Godin, Goddamn Paulus Goddess
This is where you are buried
In a stone bunk bed of your family
Your name continues to rot away
Precisely because of all that wealth
Who we as your God
Have suffered
Godin, GodDamn Paulus Goddess
​
DE WAALSE KERK - PART 2
JOMECIA
Amsterdam, a cultural melting pot. People came from different places to this city because of freedom of religion, because of trade opportunities. In the 17th century there was a Black community in this neighborhood. They came as sailors, soldiers, as free men and women.
But many of the Black community were brought to this city against their will, from Asia and Africa as servants, enslaved people by VOC representatives or plantation owners.
JEANNIE
This was the case with Christina Adriana van der Gugten from Batavia.
Christina was the daughter of an enslaved woman in Batavia, who had to work in the house of Adrianus van der Gugten and his wife. When they returned to Amsterdam around 1754, they took Christina, barely five years old, with them without her mother.
Around the corner from here is the Spinhuis, there by the gable stone which depicts a person beating a young woman with a whip. Have you ever seen that gable stone?
Christina was imprisoned there for 14 years and had to do forced labor, spinning, because of an "unseemly lifestyle" and constantly running away from home. When paying a fee, you could watch Christina. As a ‘specialty’, you could see this so-called 'swartin' from Batavia spinning.
JOMECIA
Christina was named after the person who owned her, his wife and where she was born.
Christina Adriana van der Gugten from Batavia
Batavia, now Jakarta in Indonesia
This name was imposed by her owners. To appropriate her, as property.
But what would her own mother have called her? What name would she have whispered, rubbing her pregnant belly where a little girl was growing?
JOMECIA
Amsterdam. The city of a boy named Frans, born in Amsterdam. He was the son of Angolan parents, Domingo Fernandus and Fransisca van Angola, who got married in the Oude Kerk.
Frans was baptized in this church in 1633 at the age of 7
Converted to Christianity
Seen as human
JORGEN
I speak Dutch, but do not understand the language of the church. The church where you sing loudly about life because you are afraid to die.
The church where the white preacher
Preaches the white word of God
To a white parish
Even though this is all I know and have seen
I don't feel this is all I know
I can't go anywhere
I can't think alone anywhere
It's hard for me to be anything that I am not
What could I do?
Who would I be?
In the name of the church
In the name of the church
In the name of the church
VOC-COURTYARD
JOMECIA
The VOC courtyard, where men gathered with the hope of working on a VOC ship. Work as a deck boy, as a cleaner, as a sailor. And inside, behind that door, is the VOC room, the place where the board of the VOC, the Heren 17, met around a large table and made decisions about the colonies, about the fate of people in those colonies.
The place where we are now was THE center of colonial power in the 17th century. And this city was the place where ships sailed to Sri Lanka, South Africa, Indonesia, Senegal, Madagascar.
JEANNIE
What appears in the mirror when you have no conscience? Who appears in the mirror when you deny history?
MICHAEL
Whatever image you tell yourself to see, the mirror will know
JOMECIA
How do we overcome the fear of the unknown?
MICHAEL
What makes them have something we believe is ours?
JOMECIA
How can we nurture this need to make the world bigger without fear of the unknown?
​
JÖRGEN
On the first ship
I observe
Red White Blue
Horizontal
They speak with spit under their tongue
Low in their lower jaw
And chop the language together without emotion
JEANNIE
Discover more and more
I'm discovering more and more things that I don't know
I thought I knew about this city
And learn how, in the name of this city, plantations were built in colonies around the world
I thought I knew about these colonies
And learn how they are connected to other colonies
From France
Spain
England
Portugal
JÖRGEN
On the second ship
I observe
Red white blue vertical
On the highest mast from the stern
When they speak a lot of mucus sticks to their lips
Their spit dies in the corners of their mouths
Emotion a rocket of syllables
JEANNIE
There is continuous fighting, over land, trade, power, people
How the indigenous people first had to fight the Spanish, negotiate with the Dutch, and establish borders with the French, the Portuguese
Discover more and more
How the slave trade went far beyond the Dutch colonial borders
How people were kidnapped, sold and shipped under the Dutch flag
To Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Curaçao, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil
Discover more and more
How language was used as a weapon
How language was taken away
Had to adapt
How a new language was always imposed
How creole languages ​​emerged from these intertwined conquests
JÖRGEN
Red yellow red horizontal
On my hostages' third ship
When they speak, spit builds on their tongue
It flies out when the face turns red
Followed by threatening hand gestures
Fingers become knives
Arms become swords
JEANNIE
I'm discovering more and more
How racial thinking is designed to put one person above another. Divide and conquer.
A construct that places white over Asian over Black.
I have been painted white
Learned to see the world through the eyes of a white mother
But my skeleton speaks my father's language, Bahasa, Indonesian
I am double-blooded
Adapted for survival, split by a trade route
Like this building, I feel like a collected collection of knowledge, prosperity, hidden stories, shame in the dark, at the mercy of what the municipality needs
I can be used for any battle
My deepest story has been punched out of me
Like faces cut out of a photograph
My skeleton speaks Bahasa, Indonesian
I am welcoming to everyone, but I don't speak my own language
JÖRGEN
Red left green right vertical
The fourth ship is a harbor
Run by those spit talkers who want to sell us
Hellish journeys across seas filled with their sins
Hostage in the devil's wooden belly
Seduced by the devil's sweet tone
Baptized by believing barbarians
Who think they can make people out of people
All the colors
On all those masts
Ola kora ku sin bida
Nan Wesu sin tera
Nan wowo sin mama
E luna ta lusa e morto na awa
My journey comes to an end
In a multilingual plan
To set us free
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GARDEN
JEANNIE
I have to learn
To listen
To my grandmother's knowledge
How everything moves
I have to learn
To listen
To the legacy around me
That resonates in my heart, in my dancing feet, in my restless hands
Tn my genes
Because the one
Who could tell
Doesn't tell anymore
I hear you, grandma
In the stones, I hear crying
In buildings, I hear mourning
Whispering in the darkness
Stories that are being shared
Stories that are being told
Stories that are being heard
Undisturbed
sssst….!
Be quiet!
Don't say so much
Listen more
Listen along
Listen to me
Ground
Ground me
Nothing is mine
Ground me
I am grounded here, but a bastard
I put my ear to listen to the ground
Ground me, I belong here
Water try to listen to what I’m saying.
Because I sometimes say something, that I don’t hear myself
JOMECIA
In the name of the wind
The head can think again
In the name of the sun
Find warmth within ourselves
ALL
In the name of borders
Keep finding them
In the name of resistance
We stand up
JOMECIA
Or she stays seated on the bus
To stand for herself and others
For those who were not heard, not seen, but carried
ALL
In the name of transformation
JOMECIA
I continue to immerse myself in the icy water
Until my body can no longer feel
Until I can no longer hear my own thoughts
In the name of listening
In the name of healing
In the name of transformation
And each time, another person is the main character in the story of creation.
Today it’s you, tomorrow it's somebody else.
In the name of listening
In the name of healing
In the name of transformation
​
THE END
