A new look
Recently, a documentary was shown on television about the "meaning economy" - an economy that revolves around creating well-being - which included a short piece about Greyston, an American company in the town of Yonkers (bordering The Bronx in New York). The company was founded by Bernie Glassman with the goal of helping the city's many unemployed people build a new livelihood. As such, Greyston's motto is "We don't hire people to bake muffins, we bake muffins to hire people."
The company hires people who cannot find work elsewhere. They are hired without control and unconditionally, there is only a waiting list. The company is completely based on trust and openness and wants to influence people's lives in a positive way, to give them a second chance in life. That's why they bake muffins. And it works: ex-prisoners find a new life there, teenage mothers rebuild their existence. With an ingenious inversion of a few rules of business, Glassman impressively shows us the possibility of another world.
What Bernie Glassman and his company do is what artists also do: show an alternative world, "look, it can be like that." Give a new perspective on existing things and in that way make the world a little more beautiful. This is what artists can and do, whether they make autonomous work or commissioned work, socially engaged or in a more abstract context: artists show the world an alternative reality.
Musing over the documentary, I thought about the many refugees who are looking for a second chance and are ready to make a positive impact in their lives. How wonderful would it be if all artist initiatives that have space left over made some of it available to, say, a refugee artist family? What would it be like - for everyone involved - to offer a refugee artist and his or her family a context in which they can move on with their lives, and their work, or at least have a chance to attempt to do so? An artist-in-residence, but different.
It is no more than an idea, and we know what is between dream and deed*. But it is a possibility and there are other possibilities. We live in a world where there is a need for the ability to hold a mirror up to the world, to turn things around and show other possibilities, to create meaning. Art and artists are indispensable in this regard.
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