Text

"Hello, I am the Loam Man. I come and sit across from you and if you want to say anything to me, you can email me."

A letter with this text found residents of the new De Croissant housing complex in their mailbox when a little man appeared across the street in the summer of 2009. The little figure made of wood and loam was sitting on the dowel just above the water on the corner of the Pletterijkade and the Bierkade, pointing at their building. It turned out to be a work of art by the Loam Collective. At the time, artists Ruiter Janssen, Ringo Mollinger and Rein Specken regularly placed unsolicited works of art in The Hague's public and semi-public spaces. Guerilla art, in other words. On a special email address residents could post their reactions.

Loam Collective stood for more own initiative. "You can always put the ball in someone else's court, but you can also kick it yourself." That's what the collective did with their actions, which, by the way, were supposed to cause as little disruption as possible. They wanted to make a positive contribution to the city. With negativism, the trio had nothing. This can also be seen in their actions: flowers in the embankment at Hollands Spoor, in the city hall a glass wall with a pacman pattern.

Their Loam Man was soon adopted by the neighborhood. When after a few years the loam had washed away and tarnished the wooden carcass, the Loam Collective provided a new version. One in bright orange polyester. The Loam Man then received written permission from the municipality to sit where he was and even served as a logo in the leader of TV West. The statue became a symbol of the station neighborhood's intransigence.

In 2017, the artwork unexpectedly received a second function after the crash of flight MH17. Rein Specken and his girlfriend did not survive the disaster, and the Leemmann piece has also been a tribute to them ever since.