De Facto Live #9

• 14 May 2024

Rain and thunder were roaring over Amsterdam, but we were happy to be back at De Roode Bioscoop for our ninth (!) edition of De Facto Live. From this lovely theater, we traveled all over the globe again, and through history.

Martijn Storms kicked off the evening with his favorite historical maps ‘du jour’. As a curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, he is in the enviable position to care for a huge collection of interesting maps. As every map holds politics, it was interesting to pear over cartographic claims, imaginary landscapes and historical maps. If you’d like, you can keep updated on Martijns favorite maps, because he posts a fresh one everyday on his instagram account. And if you’d really like to delve into it, you can check out the fabulous book ‘Maps That Made History. 1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps’ and/or the one Martijn wrote together with Kester Freriks, on border-exploration: ‘Grensverkenningen’.

If you’re interested in non-recognized countries, sooner or later you’ll stumble onto the Conifa World Championship of Football for non-recognized countries. Ten years ago, Conifa organized their first edition. Dutchies Kevin Kraan and Pieter Symon were present at the 2018 edition and made a documentary about it: Grassroots. With the audience, we watched some fragments and pondered over this curious and complex event. If you’d like to check out the whole documentary, you can do so here.

Captivated by geopolitical graphics on stamps, coins, flags and money, graphic designer Floor Koomen took us into many rabbit holes with her inspiring and amusing presentation, traveling from North-Korea to Abkhazia and back.

Artist Anika Franke was interviewed by Jorie Horsthuis. She took us back to her youth on the Dutch-German border, with her touching & funny graphic novel Ein Herz aus Senf. Countries that are separated by a barely visible border can be worlds apart, through the eyes of a child. You can have a look at the book here.

And, as always, there was a quiz by Suzanne Hendriks. The audience waved their flags at questions about state recognition and mermaids on flags. The price, Kashmir spices, went home with Philip Dröge, the author of the marvellous book about Moresnet.