The Vultures of Amsterdam Land

Why I love the Girls of the Red Light !

It is easy to remain confused about the importance and sometimes even the basis of a well formed opinion these days! Although maintaining a fixed perspective is of course a very constrictive means of living as well, but the level of personally biased information we are constantly being fed can be enough to eschew even a well informed yet open minded opinion.

Personally ...... I love the Girls of the Red Light District ...... every single one of them !

Its easy to forget that aside from the services they provide for the braying members of the British , American and German stag parties ......cheering and jeering in their alcohol and drug induced manias at the pretty little creatures that adorn the windows and doorways of Amsterdam's Red Light District.

Unfortunately, no! The watered down , Walt Disney , everything for recreation and indulgence has led us far astray from the functionality and importance of the original purpose..... kind of in the same way that organized religion , or even the military complex abandoned their lofty ideals for the glitz and glamour, pomp and ceremony of the mere ritual , the presence and the visage.

When it comes to the girls of the Red Lights , it is of course important to keep in mind that there are some fairly macabre elements at play in this world , I also know that the machinations of evil and greedy people ..... certainly in this day and age, tends to hold the perverting sway to to the formation of common policy! but remember this ...... hell hath no fury like a women scorned !

Unfortunately what the great middle class tourist trade tends to forget, is that the city center of Amsterdam,Venice or even London, Paris or Berlin Have become are ready rendered scenes for you your selfie stick and your facebook page. These places are now filled with minimum wage service staff, for the students and tourists that occupy these once proud hubs of culture and enterprise !
All so the great middle class tourist can for a week or so of their meager existence are able and enabled to feel superior to their fellow human beings , under the insane justifications of working hard and deserving this !?

If we remove the attitude of being perpetually hard done by ......of all of those preconceived notions that ' we work as hard if not harder than anyone we know' and the idea that we simply deserve all of the little superficial treats and indulgences that our ill gotten wages will afford us !

Let us try to remember that a young women selling an intimate experience foe a mere fifty euro's, is a person. A person that went through a youth an adolescence and a whole lifetimes experiences, prior to you drooling at her and daring your mate to ' have a go ' because his wife or girlfriend or whatever isnt here on holiday with them ! from an impartial observers point of view ...... it is all a terribly tawdry mess !

Personally I liken these girls more to nurses than the Hollywood nympho whores from our warped western porno interpretations.
I am sure there are some girls that are being exploited, but these days especially in places like the Netherlands this is becoming a much less common occurrence.

Which is exactly why the natural fabric wearing feminists ideals , and common argument that these women need to be saved is so misguided and in truth dangerous !

Let is just imagine for a moment that the world is not like the advertisements we attempt to build our lives around, that not everyone has perfect teeth , perfect hair and a perfect sense of well being to match the balance of some high interest account and a perfect balance of work and home life !

lets for the sake of this little story , imagine that we are.... perhaps a little older than we are ..... or less attractive than we are ........ maybe we were divorced widowed or even perpetually single ? Hard to imagine for some ! but thsi imaginary position of loneliness is very real to some ! And it is for these people that the ever welcoming embrace of the Girls of the Red Light District will remain ever important !

In an age where the internet offers poor substitution for genuine human contact and interaction, it is all the more important for these girls ...... those strong enough ..... or weak enough  ( depending on your own warped preconceived notions )  to be able to carry on representing one of , if not the oldest professions any of our ramshackle cultures have been able to maintain for millenia

The things that continue to bring foreign tourists to foreign cities was never the guarantee that they could get their usual Starbucks coffee or MacDonald happy meal at the destination that they could get from tye point of origin !

This is the great mistake of the contemporary consumerist culture.

Its fine being able to visit Armani or Luis Vuitton in any city ...... but it wont be a reason to go there, so lets not forget this as the speculators lay waste to the last interesting spaces , and as the elected authorities attempt to ' clean up ' the Red light District in an attempt to turn it into another hellish clone of Kalverstraat ..... or SoHo ....... or rodeo drive ......... or Saint marks square ...... with no new legacies of excellence being forged, just the regurgitation of easily identifiable brands controlled by the perpetual greed of the shareholders that come to look at and take photos of the cities that used to exist around their investments!

Real Art News: Watch this Space ...... V's Place ( Vey's Plaat ) ...

Real Art News: Watch this Space ...... V's Place ( Vey's Plaat ) ...: I had to take a few minutes just to throw a graphic together cos its getting closer and closer ......WTS

Holy Shit .... UPDATE 2018 !! 

weesperzijde has been destroyed by the Gemeente !!! WTF 

a pertinent end !!!

but not to worry.... still kicking around the city, in some of the more interesting and still independent spaces left here , check out ADM/ Ruighoord/ OT301... and of course NDSM Werf  one of my newest temporary bases of 'operations ' ....



all things are temporary, or so it seems in this perpetually transient existence of having to fix up other peoples properties every couple of years or so .... cest la vie I guess ,maybe I should just go and sell some sufficiently heated , wholesale cheap meat products to a braying public instead

I am sure I would make a million ;) 

Happy Easter with love from Amsterdam x

As festival season approaches ...... ' Rotating the Herd '

text update august 2017

The festival fest of uber festivities Remember when Glastonbury and woodstock and the isle of white pop festival were benchmark occasions .... in some instances they were actually callings and/or happenings to the extent that people who didn't even have a ticket came along fast forward a couple of decades and the 90's sort of took place and reading festival and a few others started popping up for those who felt that their genre of music or branding weren't being represented in the mainstream festival festivities Fast forward another decade or two and I really don't think you culd throw a stick without it landing in the overlapping perimeters of some half baked poorly headlined gathering or another where the happenings of the past were about inclusion about community and a new generation casting off the societal expectations of their predecessors and attempting to forge a new way , now we have mtv crashing places fucking advertisement saturated coca cola sipping MTV ...... Jeremy bloody Corbyn appearing on the pyramid stage .... and even bloody lu lu supposedly headlining the most local of the local festivals in my parish this summer ( and correct me if I am wrong .... but no one really wanted to see lu lu even when she was on the radio in a contemporary fashion in her own era ) but hey who doesn't still want an excuse to be charged hundreds of pounds to attend a space that has free access the whole rest of the year ?? who doesn't want to get all covered in glitter or battery operated devil horns / rainbow flags ..... and what used to be referred to as vintage clothing , while paying through the nose for some hearty ' vegan ' nutrition from the back of some burnouts van ( but only because that burn out paid all the applicable fees and insurances ) well me actually ...... I have no interest these days in listening to some millennial lost soul in a mankini spouting some guff rumi quote about how its all going to be fine and dandy if we just love each other a bit more !!! ( and hey I am all for the love ) just not the semi diluted with a solution of mandi / ketamine and coke spoused by some halfwit with more student debt than acumen, whose parents probably brought the festival ticket for by selling insurance or as acting as some ghost in one of our failing administrations ..... no .....nope ..... sorry but no dice Aldous Huxley's book a brave new world is brought up as a common reference to todays ' culture ' ahem ....... and I think with good reason , although most would site the Orwellian matrix of the artistically represented society as being the main noteworthy topic .... personally I think its in the lesser mentioned connotation of the book ..... the hippy reservations that our main character comes from ..... that is what for me at least holds the darkest and starkest example of what is really at stake from all of this revenue driving ( and collecting ) revelry ...... you can be as free as you want , just so long as you have brought the ticket ........oh dear x

Jeeezz not this again x

you know I have spent a great deal of my life doing up property for someone else ....

secure the revenue , find the premises, commence trade ...over and over again  

101 Reasons to Choose a Vocation in the Creative Industries

Valerio's 'In - Steadman' Cartoons illustrated book to be released later this year x

 

A little over a while ago I started to produce these little autobiographical cartoons in my sketchbooks as I was going about my day to day business to act as a kind of diary record, then some years later I held an Exhibition ' My Back Pages ' during which several of my sketchbooks went on public display and over all were very well received, the common and recurring interest was largely concerning the ' cartoons ' . I have subsequently re drawn and exhibited the original series of cartoons and time again the reception for these little footnotes has been excellent.

In Light of the independent success of the 'In- Steadman' Cartoons I am very pleased to announce the forthcoming Release of ' 101 reasons to choose a career in the creative industries -A series of autobiographical cartoons . In - Steadman ' by me Valerio hooray ! This coffee table masterpiece will feature as the title suggests over 100 cartoons from the ' In - Steadman ' series, along with background stories and anecdotes that might just change your understanding of the creative process.

At the moment it looks as thought we will have a launch date for the end of  2015 but we will keep you posted ! x

http://artsbyvalerio.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/6500587 follow the link to order your copy of the first  series of limited edition hand signed issues due for release begining of january 2016 with this special order ensure christmas delivery x only 100 in this 1st edition series so order now !

A Nursery Rhyme or a Nightmare x

The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea GREEN boat ,but neither had a bloody clue how to keep the thing afloat x  

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