Living Building 
Three channel video installation, developed during residency at CBK Zuidoost Amsterdam
Netherlands / 2024 / three channel  4K video on HD / 9’30"

The video installation Living Building is based on the music performance Bijlmersymfonie which took place on Sunday 7 July 2024 in the idyllic courtyard garden at the Geldershoofd honeycomb flat in Amsterdam Southeast. The symphony was a final chord for the Geldershoofd building, which is to undergo extensive renovation and as a result of which residents will move out. In Living Building, the musical performance was edited into a new mix, a medley of the songs provided.

Su Tomesen developed the performance Bijlmersymphony with residents of the flat. She got to know people at Geldershoofd, gained their trust, made every effort to involve them in her project, collected music that was close to the residents' hearts. She layered the suggested songs in an editing programme and experimented with them, until a composition sounded appealing to her taste. The ambition was to find magic in the mix.

At the performance of Bijlmersymphony at Geldershoofd, there were four speakers and 14 residents spread over four balconies. Together with conductor Hurvy Howard, the artist made sure that whoever's turn it was pressed ‘play’ at the right time. Every song, every part of the score was manually deployed. There was a 100-strong audience that got carried away, literally and figuratively, by music by Dutch, Surinamese, Antillean, Malian, Ghanaian, Afghan, Tajik, Iraqi, Polish, Palestinian-Chilean, English and American artists.

‘With the symphony, I staged the reality of the Bijlmer. On summer days, windows are open and music from different cultures blares between flats, people hang around on the street with a boombox.’

Supported by: CBK Zuidoost, Amarte Fonds, Cultuurfonds, Stadsdeel Zuidoost, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Mondriaan Fonds and Rochdale