The publication ‘Traces of Time, Grootlab’s transformation into a place for arts education’ is the first joined publication of DAS Graduate School.

DAS Graduate School has been set up by de Theaterschool as an umbrella organisation for all its master’s, doctorate and research programmes, bringing together under one roof DAS Theatre, DAS Choreography and DAS Research.

At the start of 2016, DAS Graduate School started operating from its home in Grootlab, Shell’s former laboratory in Amsterdam North. During the transformation of the building we asked photographer Thomas Lenden to be our eyes and to closely follow the process. He visited the place on a regular basis  to attentively trace the legacy of the shift we are undergoing; where are we now, what did we see along the way, and what has changed? That process is the subject of this publication ‘Trances of Time’, and it is the story told by Thomas Lenden’s photographs.

‘This relocation to an existing premises means its users will never be engaging with an ‘empty place’. Rather, they will enter into a dynamic between their own identity and the building’s history. This is no clean slate, no tabula rasa; this is a tabula scripta.’