Dear 395 readers of this newsletter 📈!
It is March and we are marching into spring, and into the future, as always to
the beat of our own XP drum🥁 (we actually have a drum kit in
the studio right now waiting for a jam session to happen... but that's a topic
for another newsletter). In this e-mail, we want to catch you up on some
current XP affairs. Prepare for business energy,
financial transparency, communal goals and a
strong desire for CONCRETE ACTION. We’ll take you along on the
journey that lead us here, maybe it will inspire you to march towards something
as well. This newsletter is brought to you by Emma and Jack: in part 1 Emma
recaps the second XP business day and the ideas that emerged from workshops,
which Jack explores further in part 2 where he discusses individualism in art,
medieval guilds, and salary pooling... A long one but this feels urgent to us
right now, so we hope you enjoy the read.
📊 XP Away Day / Business Trip Attempt nr. 2
Let’s rewind to about 7,5 weeks ago. It was a Friday, January 17th, when we
scheduled part two of our XP Away Day, which came out of a desire to be more
intentional about our future together: we felt like we wanted to decide on what
direction we want to move or grow in, and how. If you read the newsletter about
part one (Grown Up Business
Trip 🛝) you may know that we didn’t get much
future planning done on those first Away Days, but mostly ran around in the
forest… the workshops did bring us new, playful ideas that definitely felt
meaningful but never turned into anything concrete. And despite loving the
unorganized poetic chaos of it all, we still felt the necessity of ‘maturing’
as XP – finding ways to make the poetic chaos sustainable! That’s why we
planned another business day, no overnight stays this time but a strict
schedule and sharp goal of getting some actual clarity. Ben and Emma formed the
planning committee and organised a program, two locations in Tilburg, and dress
code ‘business’
|
on the train to Tilburg in business
mode
During the October business trip we had only had time for 3 out of 6 mini
workshops, so the first half of the day was reserved for the remaining 3 ’XP
FUTURE’ sessions.
䷱ Mini Workshop 4: I-Ching with Kirsten
Kirsten guided an I-ching reading, where you throw coins to create a hexagram
that refers to an ancient Chinese divination text for spiritual guidance. We
formulated a question together (which was a good start of the day, defining
WHAT we were actually trying to find out), throw the coins, and then interpret
the resulting hexagram to shape the conversation around that question and maybe
unlock some subconscious truths.
We tried to summarize prevailing questions like What does ‘success’ mean to
XP? What is XP without the physical space? How to balance personal practice and
Extra Practice? How can we keep XP alive? into one grand superquestion:
How can the
spirit and activities of Extra Practice evolve,
taking into account our individual journeys?
Ben consulting the
coins ——––––––––– Kirsten drawing the
hexagram
Our collectively thrown coins lead us to nr. 50 of the I-ching:䷱The Cauldron. There
are many interpretations online but the one we used said:
The cauldron symbolizes nourishment,
rejuvenation, and transformation. It suggests that doing good, spreading joy,
and pursuing dreams eventually bring rewards. Rejuvenation is a return to one's
natural desires and a recharge for progress. Similarly, the cooking pot
represents essential sustenance that meets our deepest needs when society is in
balance. When people pursuing their dreams are nourished and valued,
revitalizing old habits can lead to breakthrough
achievements.
Which resonated pretty hard. Kirsten prompted us to do little drawings of our
interpretations, which sparked some interesting ideas and conversations. If we
see XP as a cauldron, then what is the wood, the fire, the pot, and the
contents of it? Who keeps the fire going and why, where does the wood come
from, what are we actually trying to fill this cauldron with, who is it
feeding? Could the logs from our individual practices keep the fire burning,
instead of us having to sacrifice or invest time to get wood elsewhere?
our different drawings of the cauldron
meaning
⇠❑❍⇢Mini-workshop 5: Polarities with Gijs
Gijs brought some business energy to the table with his workshop: he first set
up a series of scales and made us all mark where we thought XP was on the
scales and where it wants to be;
For example: one extreme on the scale of ⇠MONEY⇢ said
that XP is completely member-funded⇠ (we members pay
for everything that happens in and around XP with our self earned euros from
external work) and the other extreme would be XP is ⇢profitable
(not only can we pay the rent and expenses with revenue of the XP
company, we somehow make a profit)
On the scale of ⇠PURPOSE⇢: one end says
studio-only⇠ (XP is mainly here to serve its 6 members and
their needs), the other end says ⇢society (XP is here to serve
The Whole World)
⇠TEMPORALITY⇢: XP is a career
springboard⇠ (we all leave it once we don’t need it anymore) vs XP is
a sort of ⇢professional family (a bond for
life)
Etc; see below where we placed ourselves on various scales (❑ = XP now, ❍ =
want to be)
It was interesting to define these together (and sweet to see we wanted to grow
closer to becoming eachother’s professional family 💙). We then continued with
an exercise where worked out two speculative scenarios: XP without a space, and
XP as a larger institution. Ben and Emma proposed that XP without a space would
become both a nomadic event-hosting-body that organizes and promotes events at
other studios, and an online publishing platform and online community;
everything would revolve around ‘Alternative Models for Making/Working/Living
Together’. Jack and Kirsten presented the hypothetical XP institute as a huge
place with a library, and a café, a workshop, and desk spaces, with
member-funded hubs all over the world. From this crazy scenario came the idea
of Extra Practice as a sort of record label, representing different artists and
disciplines but maintaining a ‘general XP vibe’....
🐝 Mini-workshop 6: XP as farmland with Emma
For my XP-future-workshop I combined my mapping-workshop-experience with my
newfound interest in agroecosystems;) The idea was to think about XP as a farm,
with a certain context (location, soil type, resources, skills, community)
where we, the farmers, decide what we want to grow there (what thrives
naturally, what’s needed, what takes time vs. quick yield?). To get there,we
first wrote down answers to big questions like What are your values?;
What are XP’s values?; What do you bring to the XP table?;
What do you need to grow? and What do you want to grow (more) at
XP?/in your practice? on separate colored notes. We began building with
those blocks, starting with defining our different areas/fields. Roughly three
themes (fields) became clear on the paper:
🌱 CREATION (making) 🌱
COMMUNITY (coming together) 🌱 EDUCATION
(learning/teaching)
We placed crops (projects), tools (resources), and needs within these fields.
It was interesting to see how almost everything we want to do fits under or
between those three pillars – felt like we have organically grown into this
ecosystem that is actually quite stable even if we didn’t think about the
structure while ‘building’ it, like bees and their hive.
finding order in a chaos of
the strenghts, needs, skills, values, desires and resources within
XP
Of course this took ages and we never got around to actual map-drawing, but we
concluded the workshop later on by looking at XP’s core needs—work-life
balance, meaningful creation, financial stability—and brainstorming
extremely concrete ideas that XP could start developing NOW to move closer to
those needs: an education package for art school students on how to start &
sustain your own support structure after graduating? a summer school? a paid
subscription to a printed newsletter? a consultancy service? (‘tea with
Jack’--> book now!) This movement from vague ideas to concrete plans feels
very good to practice. TBC!
🤝 Coaching with Koen the consultant
The rest didn’t know we had booked a private consultant that you might remember
from that October newsletter: mr. Koen Verhoeven from Volta Executive
Consultants.
We arrived at the Volta office in our suits and sat down in a large meeting
room at a big square table. The office manager brought cappuccinos and cookies.
We had no idea what to expect from this. Koen has been reading our newsletter
from the beginning, so he is probably the most XP-aware businessman out there,
but still it was quite a challenge explaining to him what we do exactly, and
what we had been doing that morning. He did not seem to see the point in
throwing coins and drawing cauldrons, lol.
Jack explaining what Extra Practice is to
Koen the puzzled consultant
Koen asked us some confronting questions. Do we actually want to be a
team? Why? How much commitment is there? What binds us? What stands in the way
of moving forward?
We talked for what felt like hours. The office manager brought beers and
crisps. Interesting ideas came up, but it seemed like we kept circling back to
the same issue: XP has grown into what it is in a very organic way, with extra
time and energy we had outside of our personal work and there is a lot of
things we would like to create and do (more) in the future, but those things
take extra time to develop further, and we don’t have much extra time, because
we need money to survive and pay rent, so most of our time goes into work that
makes us that money. And so we kept coming back to the question: what if XP
somehow helped us in getting that money? If XP is a support structure, could it
somehow offer a form of financial support as well?
Champagne Socialism meetup at
XP
Something sprouted then and there that we have been thinking about since. Jack
and Gijs even organised a 'Champagne Socialism' meetup with varia and
post-office where we
shared and discussed these first ideas, and got a feel of how others approach
finances within collectivity. Jack has been diving deeper into all of this
lately, which I am very thankful for because he is giving words and structure
and grounding to this scary, abstract thing, and that is step 1 in facing it
together.
Passing the mic to Jack now
🫴🎤
A Solid Crew?
It was the end of our away day
and we all stood, beer in hand in Koen's office space, donning our best
business attire. After a lot of discussion and a bit of confusion from Koen
(and us) as to what it was we actually did and what we wanted to change he
suggested that perhaps we needed some “skin in the game”; some money that we
were investing into XP as some form of commitment. This soon led to a different
idea, one that felt more inline with the cauldrons we had been exploring that
day. What if we pooled our incomes into a central pot and then paid ourselves a
salary? In my head this was the beginning of a mini socialist society, a way to
conspire and subvert the system we find ourselves in…for Koen this was not so
radical, for lawyers and medical professionals this is a pretty common
practice. Which begs the question, what are we afraid of? Just commitment? Or
are we so far down this romantic pursuit of the lone wolf artist/designer that
we can’t imagine a structure where we share financial gains and losses? Not
even as a crew?
|
So Solid crew (30 strong)
were able to perform all over the UK at the same time by using different
configurations of members.
Reality Check
Since this Extra Practice
away-day I have had many conversations with friends, housemates and
collaborators. I get the feeling that we are reaching a breaking point, or at
the very least we are fed up. Sepp Eckenhaussen in his article “Is There an
Art of the Working Class?” gives a pretty matter of fact and dire
description of our financial situation:
“If one were to make a
list of precarian occupations, ‘artist’ would certainly feature on it. The
Netherlands, where I live and work, is usually known for its ‘attractive’
funding system and relatively good social provisions. But the average artist in
the Netherlands earned a gross income of just over 18 thousand euros in 2019
(compared to the average income of 32 thousand among the working population),
with 80% of people in the visual arts working as freelancers. This is, of
course, not new. In 2016, a government-commissioned independent review
concluded that art workers have poor bargaining positions, are often not
insured against occupational disability, have a low pension accrual, and have a
high risk of unemployment. Artists are, in other words, at the forefront of
flexibilization and precarization, alongside delivery riders, taxi drivers, and
other (mostly platform-mediated) gig workers. If art workers today can make any
claim of avant-gardism, it must be their membership of the flex-work
avant-garde.”
I doubted putting these sorts
of statistics in because everyone I have spoken to knows it’s not working for
them. We are exhausted from a loop of working below the national average, of
not being able to plan ahead or working ourselves into the ground to do so. But
also because I think, this idea didn’t come from a place of despondency, it
came from a desire for more; more joy in the work that we do, more money for
doing it, more time to think and plan and play together. These statistics are
useful perhaps if only to gain some perspective. It is easy to normalise this
way of working and it is even easier for apathy to creep in. Discussing a
potential action though has given me a glimpse of excitement, a sliver of hope.
I am afraid of losing this. It seems fragile right now, which is why I want to
write this newsletter but it is also why it has been such a struggle to do so
and why it is over two weeks late! (sorry).
For risk of this slipping into
pessimistic spiral I have left out all the 2025 budget stats for the
Netherlands, you can look them up here
but there is a shift happening, a realignment of priorities across Europe and
it doesn’t look good especially for a creative sector, which has spent the last
25 years steering the ship towards research and academia as its form of
financial and cultural validation.
A shared consciousness…for individualism
So what are we so afraid of? It
should not come as a surprise that we are fearful of losing our autonomy. The
education system trains us to become “...independent and self-aware artists and
designers…with a distinctive conceptual and visual ability” (from the KABK mission
statement), when you leave you set yourself up as a sole-trader,
an entrepreneur and then we go on to get work based on you as an individual
with a "distinctive conceptual and visual ability" and, let's be honest, often
because it’s cheaper than hiring a company that has pesky overheads such as
paying their employers pensions or sick leave or holiday. The recent design
Biennale held here in Rotterdam reinforced this; individual designers who have
a specific aesthetic or material are put on a pedestal, held up as the epitome
of design. This isn't to say it isn't necessary or even a desirable level of
creative freedom, perhaps it is, many disciplines have held up individuals as
the ultimate authors of the work, it is more to look it in the eye and
acknowledge the setup.
Much of the rhetoric around
collaboration, equality and equity in our circles seems to deny this reality in
favour of creating an alternative that sits outside of the system entirely, but
we are so entangled it is inescapable in the immediate future. Simone Robutti
puts it simply: “There is no
outside”. If we keep denying this entanglement it will keep tripping us up,
if we acknowledge it then we can use it to our advantage. There is a huge
network of us working in this way.
I think this is part of
the reason this idea got me fired up. Precisely because it seemed
simultaneously radical, a kind of subversion of the system and something quite
simple that could take root right now. It could address a large part of what we
were struggling with, while not ignoring the fact that we are working in this
atomised, competitive structure, it is how we were trained and it’s how we
function.
For a long time I thought
this prevalent individualist attitude was trickling down from the top, that we
were inheriting these ideas from big business, the ideas of free market
capitalism oozing down to us through the mechanisms of society, but just like
trickle down economics it turns out this is a fallacy. I recently went to a
talk by Grace Blakeley about her new book Vulture Capitalism, which kind of
flipped my thinking on this. Blakeley points out that we are no longer in a
competitive free market system, where the best product/service wins. Our
purchasing power no longer exists because if you are unhappy with a company and
you decide change the product, the likelihood is it is still owned by Unilever.
Or, if a company like Boeing fails, the government bail them out and they keep
operating unscathed. They do not fail, there is no survival of the fittest this
is a myth. In fact she continues, large corporations are the best collaborators
of all, much better than our ‘collaborative’ art and design practices
(ok...that was my addition). The yarn that has been spun then, while those
hoarding the wealth are collaborating is that the only way you will make it out
of this underpaid over worked cycle is by working harder and more
importantly alone.
 | |