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2000

Leaving Utrecht, teaching himself

Left Hoge School voor de Kunsten (Utrecht) before completing the program: the concept-based curriculum was a shock, and in practice felt like cover for the teachers not teaching technique. Began self-teaching HTML and CSS directly from the W3C specifications during the same period. Worked briefly as a junior art director at a web company before the dot-com bubble burst, then joined the Global Peace Walk 2000 partway through its east coast leg, walking with the group into New York and settling there afterward -- the period from which Transition and the first Art Collision works emerge. Leaving Europe was felt as a real loss at the time, not a simple redirection: having longed for and gained entry to the European art world, encountering its actual mechanics in practice -- subsidy-dependent shows staged and photographed as proof of funded compliance rather than made for a public audience -- felt like reaching the end of the road and finding the wizard behind the curtain. Art Collision's DIY, self-organized exhibition network (New York artists plus contacts at spaces in Holland) was a deliberate alternative built in response.