Initiator of The Blue House (Het Blauwe Huis), Jeanne van Heeswijk sent a letter of invitation to ALMOSTREAL project officer Igor Dobricic to become an inhabitant of The Blue House, a house of cultural refuge in the Amsterdam suburb IJburg. Igor Dobricic is invited to stay in the Blue House for a period of up to 6 months as a departure point for developing the 4th stage of ALMOSTREAL together with the Blue House. The collaboration will posit ‘clandestine’ ideas and challenge existing ideals of hospitality and host-guest relations.
A section of the invitation reads: "As a member of the housing association for the mind you become part of The Blue House. Each member is entitled to a 6-month stay to take in parts as they want (over the period of the houses 4-year existence), but to be negotiated with the project manager up front. In return you collaborate on the project ‘Hospitality’ which will question the notion of communities, their organization, borders and migration and share your thinking with thecommunity of IJburg as well as the community of co-inhabitants and the larger world through writing, presentations, interventions and so on. The Blue House will closely collaborate with you on developing this project and facilitates the project’s needs by becoming a guest itself within different cultural structures in order to both question and finance its development. Members are also entitled to send a printed manifesto from the house to the 5.000 addresses (both national and international) in our database and to use The Blue House website to communicate their research."
The Blue House is a ‘guest’ house for local and international cultural figures to reside for short periods of time to develop possibilities for cultural/artistic interventions in the local everyday life of IJburg. The idea is for artists to look into the discrepancies between urban planning and intended functions and actual use and public engagement with the urban environment by inhabitants.