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"What you focus on eXPands"🫛
+ The 4 Openings photo album ✂️
Hello from a fresh new open XP!
It’s summer here now, finally.* Time feels slower and the air is hot and our
view of the river makes me (Emma) want to jump in – which is not a good idea,
this part of the Rotte is pretty gross – but I will cycle up the river later
today for a swim with Jack and Elliott. The front garden is exploding with
wildflowers and peas, and life is pretty good.
*update few days later, it's grey and rainy again – this is still the
Netherlands 🌧️
A few days before The 4 Openings we got a postcard from Gijs’s parents, because
they could not be there in person for the event. On the front it said:
What you focus on, expands. The Saturday of the
openings, my friend Anouk came by the studio to gift us a plant. Attached to it
was a handwritten note that said What you pay attention to,
grows.
I loved reading this double confirmation of a belief I’ve personally felt for a
very long time about Extra Practice, and life in general. And we have
put in a lot of focus on this space and we did
expand! (m2 wise, member wise, newsletter-reader
wise, garden wise, ...)
Expanding in size has also meant paying more rent, painting more walls, getting
more furniture, doing more cleaning. But in return the space now offers so many
more possibilities for events, and can fit more people inside, and gives us
more space to work and play, and that makes it worth it.
The beautiful flowers and peas in the front garden are there because we sowed
them. But in hot weeks they need extra water, and the pea-plants need to be
supported with sticks, and every few days I need to tell the strawberry to get
back inside the garden because it’s trying to gain territory, or take out the
trash that got stuck between the plants on a windy day. But the garden brings
me sooo much joy every single morning I arrive, and that makes it worth it.
But… there is also a doubt, one that creeps in from time to time and sometimes
even causes frustrations among us. What are we doing all this unpaid labour
for? Why put so much time into something without having a clear (business) plan
for it? How to balance this communal thing with pursuing our individual careers
and dreams? What if some people can invest more time than others? How to keep
something light and fun and ‘vrijblijvend’ when it is slowly growing heavier
and needs more responsibility?
I think for now, trust is a keyword. To trust that whatever this space grows
into, we will make the right decisions together. And trusting that ultimately,
we all want the same thing: to thrive and grow, and to see each other thrive
and grow as well. That might look differently for all of us, and happen at
different rhythms, and we will all have different needs to thrive and grow –
just like the peas need support-sticks and the strawberry needs some
limitations sometimes, and the climbing plant needs something to climb on :)
Elliott also
needs something to climb on
We took our time to recover, clean up, come down, process, de-brief and
reorganise after The 4 Openings. For everyone that attended one or
more of them: Thank you so much for contributing to the fantastic atmosphere.
It was amazing seeing so many well known and brand new faces, mixing with
neighbours and parents and friends from in and far outside Rotterdam
(Amsterdam! Almere!! Arnhem!!! Amiens!!!!). We had sooo much fun and almost
couldn’t believe how almost all of our ambitious plans worked out.
Inspired by a nice review we got on
Google Maps, I asked every XP member to write a review about The
4 Openings. Here they are:
Jack
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Age-old silliness
and fun. Parody offers another possibility for what a place might
become..
Kirsten
🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹
What a day, what a
night. Loved dropping my designer/artist self after the first two openings and
stepping into the role of waiter Augustina (as christened by some of our
Italian guests) during Act III: the Pizzeria. Halfway through Act IV in between
serving drinks behind the bar, I found myself standing next to Maurik, who
looked at the dancing crowd and said: ‘wat hebben we toch een leuk leven.’
Inderdaad.
Ben
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
A huge wave of energy
and inspiration that I’m still surfing along today.
Gijs
🪞🪞🪞🪞🪞
I enjoyed the whole
thing so much it was a bit confusing. There were these moments - like putting
up shelves for artworks in overalls and being the host of the pizzeria in an
apron - that felt both like a theater act and at the same time very real (there
actually was art and pizza). That muddy in-between space was liberating.
Perhaps even more than showing the different spaces we want XP to be, I liked
how we created this performative playground. I remember telling some it came
closest to the experience of being a band. I think it makes sense. We were all
casted as our archetypes making something together in real time. But what’s
confusing is this: if I felt so at home while building and hosting and
performing together, should I really look for a PhD? Or could it perhaps help
the search for a fitting one? In conclusion, The 4 Openings scores pretty high
as an existential mirror.
Emma
🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
I'm not sure what my
exact purpose in life is, but during the Openings I felt very, very close to
it...
Elliott
🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️
Best theatre play I've
ever seen.
The 4 Openings
PHOTO ALBUM
For all of you who couldn’t be there (and for ourselves to look back later)
here is a little retelling of what happened on the 1st of June 2024 at Linker
Rottekade, accompanied by a selection of photos taken by Gijs.
(We were talking with
Vida the other day about how we kind of miss Facebook photo albums, so
I thought, why not make a photo album with some descriptions)
It all started two weeks prior to the event, when we begun our
'construction week'. Main tasks: tiling the kitchen floor, building a kitchen
unit, installing a light system and building desks and storage units. Jack and
Gijs dedicated so much of their time designing a system with the very
limited time, money and tools available, and getting all the materials, and
researching and planning the best ways to realize everything. We then all went
in full construction mode that week, while also designing graphics and planning
and promoting the event.
On June 1st in the morning, Maurik biked over his
cargo-bike-pizza-oven while Jack prepared the pizza dough and the rest of us
hurried to get the space ready.
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