In the Slochter Vrijstaat: an alternative history of the natural gas region
The book In the Slochter Vrijstaat, in which author Auke Hulst under the pseudonym of Jutta Koolhof wonders what would have happened if the now-suffering earthquake region had seceded after the discovery of the gas bubble, will be published next September 29. It is an alternate history of the area around Slochteren, where the Slochter Vrijstaat was declared in 1964.
In the Slochter Vrijstaat is an account of Amsterdam travel journalist Jutta Koolhof’s 1984 visit to the young nation. Richly illustrated, playful and humorous, but at the same time from a serious starting point that indirectly comments on our own reality. It questions what would have happened if this special area east of Groningen had taken matters into its own hands, and fuels a more powerful picture of a region that has too often been dismissed as “periphery” and exploited for the welfare and prosperity of the rest of the Netherlands. Now that attention on the natural gas extraction issue has somewhat subsided after the fall of Rutte IV, In the Slochter Vrijstaat has good timing.
Auke Hulst: ‘Growing up in the hamlet of Denmark, in the former municipality of Slochteren, I couldn’t possibly around natural gas extraction: wherever you looked, gas was being extracted and flared. The locations had a magical, otherworldly earthly quality, but I also knew – thanks to complaints about it from my father, who died in 1983 – that we lived in a mining region. Power was being pumped out of the ground, but the region remained a backwater. That discrepancy fueled the fantasies of declaring an independent gas state, a Kuwait in Clay. Thanks to Renewed Energy, a project of Noorderlicht and BPD Culture Fund, I had the opportunity to bring that old fantasy to life in more than text alone. The result is this book, “published” in 1984 in an alternate universe where indeed a free state has been declared. A book written by a predecessor to my imagination, Jutta Koolhof. If only to show that the past was not inevitable, and that much is possible with imagination and power over one’s own destiny.
In the Slochter Vrijstaat is a publication of Noorderlicht in cooperation with BPD Cultuurfonds and Uitgeverij Palmslag. In the Slochter Vrijstaat is part of the multi-year program Renewed Energy, a collaboration between Noorderlicht and BPD Culture Fund. With this project they want to contribute to a respectful and just treatment of the soon-to-be former natural gas extraction area and its inhabitants.
