WORM and the city of Rotterdam

Foundation

WORM has its roots in the underground organisation, Dodorama.

Dodorama was founded in 1994 as a new venue for contemporary music, and was located at the squatted Rochussenstraat 169 in Rotterdam. The opening took place on 13 February 1994. In 2000, after a couple of years of discussion, WORM officially came into existence thanks to a merger between Dodorama, film workshop Studio Een and Popifilm, which programmed film evenings.

“The wandering years”

WORM left Rochussenstraat in November 2003 and was homeless for a while, booking events in various venues all over Rotterdam, including some iconic and now wholly restored or demolished locations. These were: the Calypso cinema, Nighttown, Poortgebouw, WaterFront, and the Las Palmas building. WORM’s shop was situated on the Mathenesserweg and in the later 2000s on the ground floor of the squatted Slaakhuys building. WORM finally had its own building at the former VOC warehouse at Achterhaven in Delfshaven. It stayed there from 2005 until the end of 2010.

 

A colour photograph of two wooden doors - one a double door - in an old brick wall in the interior of a monumental building. Wooden beams can be seen at the top of the image. A photograph of the VOC pakhuis in Delftshaven, where WORM moved in 2004-5.
Staat van het monumentale VOC pakhuis toen we erin trokken; half verbrand, verteerd, stoffig en met harig hout.

Current location

From late 2011, WORM has occupied the former building for the NDU, Nederlands Dagblad Unie on the Boomgaardsstraat (number 63 to be precise), on the Witte de Withstraat in the centre of Rotterdam. The building was used by various Rotterdam cultural institutes, including the Nederlands Foto Instituut, which left the building in 2007. It currently houses the photography school, the NRC café, V2_ institute for unstable media, Scapino Ballet and several workplaces. WORM has its own entrance at Boomgaardstraat, number 71. From the summer of 2016, WORM opened two spaces further up the Boomgaardstraat, one the former garage at Boomgaardsstraat 69 became WORM’s “not-so-very-white cube”, or “performance space *slash* gallery”. The other space, UBIK, was used by the Scapino ballet as a rehearsal space.