Different camps

We have always been a bit baffled by the Dutch. When Pim Fortuyn was assassinated we were dumbfounded. The concentrated contradiction that makes up Dutch culture was exemplified by Fortuyn: Roman Catholic and gay, Marxist-turned-Right-wing maverick and, most contrary of all, an antiimmigrant campaigner who was the unmistakable product of a society that for centuries has prided itself on its liberal attitudes and open thinking.

The Dutch went multicultural centuries ago. And permissive. Naughty movies, gay marriages and Basuch Spinoza, the Jewish heretic. And therefore it was natural that they should tolerate Fortuyn, who wanted to draw a line under this history, asserting that henceforth not all permissions should be given equally.

For a more frivolous, but no less exemplary, demonstration of Dutch paradox we need look no further than NW3 , at present. Atelier van Lieshout, an artists' collective and self-proclaimed free state, has just opened an exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre. It features some of the architectural structures and systems that aspire to its urban utopia, most fully realised in AVL-Ville down by Rotterdam's harbour - right in the line of Fortuyn's campaign trail.

Thriving on a system that accommodates the dissenting voice, the collective is aiming for self-sufficiency (with a few Dutch government euros for encouragement), with a hybrid of social structure, housing, farming training and art-making (or is it all artmaking?). Its road show is being housed at some of the best museums in the world.

When you walk into the gallery you are confronted by something that looks more like a caravan site than a sculpture park. Objects that loosely resemble mobile homes share the space with scaffolding and wooden huts. Everything has a handmade feel.

Compostopia demonstrates how to convert toilet waste into compost. It's a 20ft scaffolding tower, with a wooden hut perched atop. You do the business, and nature does its. At the base of the tower there's a suitably enriched soil bed with a few stray weeds beginning to sprout. Form follows function. The thing looks as if it works, but I didn't wish to inspect too closely. It is presented in tandem with a sort of Flintstones multi-gym, with cast concrete weights and a rope pulley system.

There are a couple of mobile-home units formed out of glass fibre. The rather austere Mini Capsule Side Entrance (6 Units) resembles a Tokyo pod hotel without the trimmings. The double-decker sleeping units suggest an enclosed bunk-bed system, each with mattress, window, shelf and a ladder. Beside it stands Maxi Capsule Luxus: the upgrade, with its ruby velour upholstery, TV and sound system. This is more of a rockstar trailer, or how you might imagine the back of Hugh Hefner's runabout. The blurb sounds worthy - it's all about shelter, survival, freedom - but there's something that troubles me. This art commune is looking dangerously close to a hippie hang-out with a corporate twist. The image is less florid, but the confused ideology and double standards in the name of freedom ring familiar.

At AVL-Ville, flower power has yielded to home-made bombs. Not that they've ever used them, they're just there to show they are serious. Apparently. Founder Joep van Liesholt employs a language that mixes utopian ideology with smart business practice. He'll talk of it as a "small society", but one that's "run like a company". It even prints its own money.

The official AVL line reads: "The goal of the free state is to create an autonomous space where everything is possible within a country that is over-regulated to an increasingly oppressive degree." I might be doing a doubletake here, but doesn't that sound dangerously close to Fortuyn's rhetoric? Where does the art end and the politics begin?

We expect our artists to rail against the system. Art has a useful role to play as a countering voice to the mainstream of society. But what if that society itself is so open that it has found a way of embracing all of its rebellious voices? Well, down by the Rotterdam docks there may be a group of artists caught in an ideological loop that is so far ahead of the game that we can't begin to understand it.