Oeverlanden

The publication “Oeverlanden”, created in collaboration with Gabija Nedziskaite, consists of two texts offering observations and reflections on De Oeverlanden – park and recreational area that is also Amsterdam’s only officially recognised cruising site (*). My contribution is structured as a walk through the site, examining its historical development, spatial layout, and the question of maintenance and care in relation to the cruising ritual.

Robin Vandenbussche


Robin Vandenbussche

In the shadow of the highway, cruisers engage with a landscape shaped by sand extraction and soil deposition, repurposing its so-called “wasteland” qualities – a term explored here in relation to common use and queerness. This urban ritual continuously reshapes the environment, negotiating with other actors, such as a local citizens’ collective advocating for biodiversity. The text further considers how zoning and regulations both preserve space for cruising and impose limits upon it, reflecting on the delicate balance between freedom and control within this unique site.

Robin Vandenbussche


Robin Vandenbussche

Snapshots of the area are transformed into an installation featuring several fabrics arranged in an enfilade. These observations were transformed into an installation that looks into cruising sites and their spatial features in relation to intimacies in public space. Cruisers read the potential of the landscape, making use of its thresholds and vantage points. Located down a back alley, behind grandstands, the installation overturns them to introduce a new referent, the “back of the bleachers.” It fully occupies this space, as flaccid textile prints of a cruising landscape cling to the ribs of the tribunal, undergirding the structure in a soft yet firm manner, like the fading grandeur of an opera set left out in the elements.

The site reveals how a spatial ecology can emerge from the careful calibration of freedom and control, visibility and opacity, where care coexists with both maintenance and quiet desolation, demonstrating the generative potential of these tensions in shaping public intimacy.

Robin Vandenbussche


Robin Vandenbussche

(*) cruising site : een cruising site is een openbare locatie waar mensen, van oudsher homoseksuele mannen, naartoe gaan om via non-verbale signalen anonieme, losse seksuele partners te vinden.