A long time ago, when i was young, I used to ride my bicycle to school every day.. It was a ten mile trip and just before we headed into the town of Malden we neared something that still smells foul to me and will always do so. A minx farm.

We drove passed and the smell was so bad we used to worry about it my friend and I, though he never said much about it and I did. I wondered, how was life to a minx there? How horrible their existence for something so unnecessary and redundant as a minx coat?

Years pass and I am defending my home in Ruigoord… A sprawling natural place that once was owned by shell and raised from lower lying farm land to higher up to accommodate a harbor. The wind was cold.. the people didn’t know me.. I was there almost entirely on my own most off the time. Then, one day, an activist joins and we go out into the field and steal a tarp. Soon after several young activist groups center on the town and the outlying natural spaces to defend it. We demonstrate etc.. And what for?

Well Shell, after the oil crisis, couldn’t use the land to build a harbor so a artist colony sprang up.. One that included my mentor Nicky, and friends Hans and Gerben. Who still support me and like me and my work. Years after, Shell is doing alright and well the money is there. So a plan is redrawn and they move on Ruigoord to claim it. For what? A harbour that just shuttles people from Amsterdam to Ruigoord and doesn’t even create new jobs. A political party seizes the moment to hold a get together. I join and after they leave I hear one of them ask, why is this impossible? Another, an older man, says money. I lost my faith in them then. The harbour get’s built of course and we all lament.. And what do I remember?

The smell off minxes.