Role: project planner, editor, illustrator.
Working at B&S since: Early 2016.
What is your current obsession? Ikabane: Japanese flower arrangements. Creating beauty and embracing the natural, decay.
Looks like you have many different roles at Bord&Stift.
‘That’s right. I started as a jack of all trades: filming, editing, planning projects. I recently started drawing too. As a horizontal organization, we do not want to lock people down in a specific position, but rather let them find their natural role. For that you have to keep an eye on what you are good at, get energy from, and can add something.
I like to think along about Bord&Stift as a whole. Is the group correct? That is why I am also at Team Solli, comparable to HR in other companies. With new people we not only look at what they can do, but especially whether they fit in with the group as a person. It is an ongoing process: how can new Bord&Stift employees find their place within our horizontal organization? Are they able to be sufficiently enterprising and assertive? No boss is holding their hand and they don’t have a tight function. There is a lot of freedom and there many possibilities, all based on trust, but someone can also experience that as chaotic. It has to suit you. For me it feels like a great luxury, to look together: where are you now, where do you want to grow?’
What is your specialty as Bord&Stift’er?
‘I am someone who works very intuitively. In conversations I always try to get to the core. A strong feeling can suddenly arise in my mind that we should actually talk about something else, that we should dig a little deeper. That there are assumptions, but in reality something else happens. For example, we have recently been busy with the question: in our horizontal organization everyone has the same theoretical input, but does everyone also take up that space in practice? That did not always appear to be the case. I also use my intuition for clients. I don’t just dive straight into the subject of the video, but focus first on building the relationship. I always want to keep a sense of: what kind of company is it, what are the dynamics, what is needed from us?’
What do you do besides Bord&Stift?
‘As an artist I make multidisciplinary installations. I try to bring a new reality to life with performances, video, sculpture, sound and smell. I want to get people out of their daily lives for a while, as a kind of ‘hole in time’, get to the core, so that they then look at the real world differently. To me, such a fictional world can feel much more real than the world outside. It is beyond delusion and routine, beyond automatisms.
In my installations I invite you to go into depth, to feel yourself in relation to the world around you, to be touched, to experience beauty. I like it when a performance is abstract, difficult to interpret directly, and when it takes time. It’s okay if it chafes a bit. Sometimes I play a certain note for a very long time, or let people look at one image. In the uncomfortable or the doubt, I want to get their attention, let them really be there, here and now.’
Also read:
Merel: ‘Everybody wants to be seen.’
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