A Day in a Life - Opening ITA's Bookshop (2024)
At the start of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary year, we set out to realize a dream: to open a small, intimate stage alongside our two main theater halls. Thanks to the generosity of over 500 donors, our crowdfunding campaign successfully raised €30,000, making it possible to bring this vision to life. With this support, we’ve acquired the essential stage lighting, sound equipment, and a mobile platform—laying the foundation for The Bookshop, a new space for experimentation and debate within our monumental theater.
Located in the former theater bookshop, just a glass door away from the bustling Leidseplein, The Bookshop transforms this historic site into a platform for performances, exhibitions, artist residencies, book discussions, debates, and talks. It is more than just a stage—it is a space where artistic expression, social engagement, and radical imagination intersect. As part of its curatorial signature, The Bookshop embraces Radical Space as a conceptual framework that challenges dominant narratives and opens up new ways of thinking, creating, and engaging with the world.
To mark its opening, I curated an inaugural ritual by the legendary composer Phantom Wizard, setting the tone for what’s to come. Using an array of instruments and field recordings from Leidseplein, he wove together the voices, echoes, and rhythms of the city into a soundscape that bridged the past, present, and future of this space. He called it A Day in a Life - A ritual of activation, a sonic invocation that is ushering in The Bookshop as a site of transformation.

The crowdfunding campaign has now been successfully completed, and we are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support and enthusiasm. We can’t wait to welcome you into The Bookshop—a space where conversation, creation, and resistance find a home.
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