Bik Van der Pol — The Smell of SuccessSmell of Success
a project for Zuidas, Amsterdam 2008
What is the public sphere of the Zuidas? During a research-period in the Zuidas, Bik van der Pol questioned the existence of the public realm in the Zuidas. They searched for a diversity of spaces where people publicly meet, discuss and articulate societal issues and conflicts and influence political action. They searched for a discursive space where the public sphere can be seen as 'a theatre in which political participation is enacted', a space in which public opinion can be formed. They concluded there is none. The kind of discursive space where a community can be formed may only exist inside: inside the bars and restaurants where people meet after working hours to take a drink before they travel home. The public space at Zuidas itself consists of infrastructure for transportation of goods, people, cars, trains. The desires underlying the Zuidas are ruled by the hegemonic ideology of success, of becoming a major financial centre, with La Défense and La Rive Gauche in Paris, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and Docklands in London as premium examples.Can these desires perhaps be traced in the public sphere? Is it possible to locate the success Zuidas wants to breath? Can the smell of success of the Zuidas (its architectural and physical structures, its function, its daily uses) be defined and imagined as transcient? These questions resulted in a mapping of the Zuidas by other means, through a a study into the smell of success in collaboration with a perfume specialist and through a searching for the ultimate and miraculous symbol of luck, premonition of success: the four-leaf clover. 41 were found around the Zuidas.
looking for four-leave clover
