A series about practical anarchism in the minuscule details

Part 1: A BTS for young makers: guided by Anarchist Thought, Hotel Mokum, and Inner Work 

Disclaimer about the purpose of this series: Throughout working on art independently, I continuously yearned for a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look from other makers. Authentic, real, practical advice and sharing of thoughts would alleviate my anxiety about taking a step against all the social conditioning that has kept me in a state of mediocrity and in-between worlds so far. Reddit didn’t prove to be able to answer all my questions. Instead, I am seeking out makers loosely connected to anarchist thought that inspires me, and hope for an authentic and honest conversation about practicalities, struggles, controversialities and vulnerable emotional processes. All this, in the hopes that those who don’t find that the artistic life comes naturally enjoy it.
Additionally, I feel like writing something once in a while that is not so up-tight, something entertaining and light. Let’s get started and don’t forget: Yannesh’s new documentary Hotel Mokum, which inspired this conversation, is out! Go watch it. 

Since we got the news of the eviction of our community, the ZZW, a few friends and I have been busy working on a DIY documentary. It’s about our house, our community, and our island, a great immortalisation of our micro-universe. The news of the eviction, funnily enough, ended up being the push we needed to self-emancipate creatively from a debilitating creative rut. A happy occurrence, but one that is not exempt from pressure to do things right. We are not just colleagues, but friends, and our documentary is not just the next hot story, but a total passion project. On top of that, we also started clueless. We had no idea what we were doing, no expertise and little know-how. But screw it – this is how all makers start, right? I had a conversation with Yannesh Meijman about his process as a filmmaker with experience in DIY and professional filmmaking, embodied politics and ideological rigidity. 

Anarchist thought has served me as a practical moral compass that guides me through my daily life instead of a dry political theory about how the masses should function. Self-organization, our natural ability to take responsibility, the collective good, the inherent value of a life independent from what they contribute to the production chain, as well as meaning through community are principles that guide me through structural and emotional questions alike. What I always imagined, was to embody these ideals in my creative practice. I imagined making every decision together, for role divisions to stay fluid, and of course – let it remain completely DIY. 

I was surprised to quickly find myself overwhelmed with the task of embodying these principles. Questions about intellectual ownership started to arise. I realized that my possessive nature over my ideas does not fit into the story I want to tell. I was wondering how I should navigate feelings about money, profit, unpaid labour and exhaustion. We are telling a story about community efforts, about ideas of collective existence. How can we work in a way that doesn’t turn a passion project into navel-gaze-land?

The idea of a fluid role division quickly turned out to be impractical and confusing, yet I was anxious about deciding which of us should be the director. After all, we co-created the idea for the film, and in my head, I felt like making a role division would quickly create a hierarchy. How do you talk business with friends, without coming off as a total jerk? Whilst I am floating in a cloud full of vague ideological questions, Yannesh cuts to the chase. 

Instead of looking at the role divisions as a hierarchy, he chose to be inspired by the structure of a football team

He tells me a bit about his beginnings with Radio Voorwaarts, a DIY short film created by his friend group about an alternative community’s final night of existence. Instead of looking at the role divisions as a hierarchy, he chose to be inspired by the structure of a football team (if you watch the collective documentary, Hotel Mokum, you’ll notice the Easter egg). Use people’s strengths as orientation, and see the different roles as part of the bigger picture. This later also proved useful in direct action: “By filmmaking, we learned how to self-organize,” he shares. Some people are good at picking locks. Some people know how to fix a toilet. Others have a passion for writing public statements. Everyone is good at something, and if you work as a team, you can complement each other with your strengths. 

Later, the conversation I was worried about having was solved in a pretty wholesome way. To be honest, I had nightmarish visions of a huge egomaniac battle where everyone stepped over each other to score the director role. Don’t get me wrong, my friends are lovely: you might call this a projection. 

Instead, we all shared what we thought the strengths of the person next to us were. The roles we were meant to take on revealed themselves to us quite naturally. 
I am sharing this because it is a pretty sweet example, but also because it shows that your practical interpretation of a value set is bound to change. I took the value of non-hierarchical pretty literally, but practically this took away a big chunk of the chance to bring our project to fruition. We still try to make decisions with the consensus principle, but also trust in each other’s unique inherent talents. 

As you might have noticed, working with a group of friends is something that we both have in common. It is perhaps the first lesson that I heard about the big and scary world of professional work: don’t mix business and pleasure. Maybe my carefully arranged Mikado construction of friendships ends up collapsing, but so far, I feel like this is some pretty bad advice. By pure luck, I stumbled across communities who have embraced the principles of the collective in their private and professional lives and chose not to follow this advice, in my opinion with great success. To be completely transparent, Radio Voorwaarts was one of the first groups that evoked a real sense of jealousy in me. I remember watching their first film and hearing through the grapevine that it was made by a bunch of students like myself, and that they were all friends. How did they make this movie? How did they finance it, and how did they organize themselves? 

For Yannesh, friendships were one of the most fundamental factors in committing to an independent project with no real security and in bringing his first project to completion. In the end, it takes bravery to commit to a project for a full year, and it’s easier when you have friends around that cultivate a sense of courage to do so. 

Whilst it might sometimes lead to more emotional confrontation and messiness, it has also enriched my friendships in the long term. It’s nice to birth an idea together, it gives your connections some substance, the creation of micro universes. And it makes the workplace a more conscious place when you apply principles of community to it: care and reflection. 

In terms of inner work, taking yourself seriously as an artist can be a pretty big one. It’s the leading red thread for many struggles of an independent project: whether that is writing funds or fighting for the pay that you deserve. 

Yannesh is sure: “People underestimate themselves.”
This resonates with me. Many of these tasks, such as writing funding for example, simply don’t happen because people are hit with a particularly nasty truckload of imposter syndrome, Yannesh confirms, when reflecting on his first project. He is happy that he initially pushed the group to just go for it and see what happens – especially because they were successful in securing funding. In his opinion, this proved to be essential in terms of professionalizing, and also being able to pay people for their work. 

Let’s get to the more difficult subject of embodied politics… moving within the boundaries of a commercial system. Yannesh tells me that the subject of money is a big point of tension, in his career and activism. In general, he believes that political rigidity prevents activists from taking up space in an effective manner. For him, it is clear that taking up space, in spaces that do not align with the politics you represent, is perhaps even more important than “preaching to the choir.” This mindset is inherently intertwined with your attitude towards money. Yannesh doesn’t want his work to only be screened in squats; he celebrates the fact that a professional production company that also does commercial work, took on his project, and welcomed media outlets during direct actions. This attitude stands in stark contrast, with a lot of anarchist culture that we are positioning ourselves in. There can be a culture of distrust relating to anything that concerns money and to a certain extent its potential to corrupt the purity of our intentions. For me as well, even applying for funding is something that I am hesitant about. But I realize continuously that there is no way around the topic of money, and whilst it can corrupt, it can also liberate.

The red thread in all of Yannesh’s conclusions about the ‘collaboration’ with commercial spaces is the fact that he sees it as a chance to reappropriate the narrative – narratives that, without our input, will be spun regardless. It’s not without criticism that Yannesh and others have worked in this manner. Indeed, the “Mokum Kraakt phenomenon” was to mobilize via TikTok and Instagram, an absolute no-go before they came into being – indeed the use of mass surveillance technology for political gain can be a paradox in anarchist spaces.

It’s a question about which means serve the end, and as most are aware, opinions differ greatly. What purpose should our morals serve? Is effectivity more important than rigidity? It is an ever-evolving question. I don’t have the answers, but I do ask: why do we make a question about existential factors such a taboo, served with a hefty dose of judgment? We both agree though: things can get murky quickly, and the appreciation for political groups that are rigid and ideal-bound is present. And what are the values taken over by the “masses” when anarchist practices become popular? But so are groups that are more flexible in their practice, and bring the ideas that we all value, to the masses. 

The lesson I draw from this is that too much division and nitpicking are happening within an already fractured and injured community, and a culture of distrust within the community itself contributes towards that, sadly. 

You need to make up your mind, on how to embody your politics, but surely, no way is perfect. And surely, whatever way you choose to do is better than staying inactive. 

Are you an artist who would like to have a nice discussion regarding these evolving questions? Do you perhaps identify yourself as a politically rigid artist? Let’s have a conversation and put it out there for others to learn from.