Calling on... ArknA/8sixA: A new collective in Amsterdam

During the lockdown, I stumbled across images of a group organizing in a basement. Fast-forward a few months, I visited the 8sixA collective’s revealed location and met the folks behind the ArknA art project.They are 9 friends: Gianluca - Solo is interested in music but also in graphic design and digital art. Pietro is the founder of the RRVRNT music booking agency, under which some of the collective’s members are also signed. Under the name Kallax, Davide is one of them. He is also into graphics, pictures and notably sigils. Others are: Paolo, using the name Iko and Luca - R/D/V, who is completing his music engineering studies. Simon is known as Bronx; he has a graphic design education, and is a graffiti and concept illustration artist. Giacomo works with acoustic panels and installations and is a music engineer, like Nicolò. As for Lorenzo, he is involved with graphic design and video mapping. We sat down and spoke about why they decided to get together and how they’re thinking of a new idea of community.

What is ArknA/8sixA?
Pietro: For some time, I didn’t feel the right vibe from most of the parties in Amsterdam: “Pay a ticket and then, say you went out.” I got nothing of visual art, of experiences with people. Amsterdam lacks places where you can pass by, listen to someone play records in an artistic environment and talk to people. If we had 10 places for 100 people instead of 1 place of 1000, you’d see art growing faster, in many different ways. If you put 1000 people in the same location, you’re making music, lights... for 1000 people: you’re always going in the same direction.
Gianluca: ArknA isn’t just art or music: it’s the all-collective artistic concept. 8sixA is our home base, where we are going to have all the events, workshops, services, and collaborations with other artists.

What does collaboration mean to you? How do you build a community nowadays?
Pietro: By showing that there can be a different way. You can get together without the psychosis of having to deal with a big platform. I see people in one building on ten different online communities, not knowing the guys next door are playing on the same machines, and spending twice the amount of money needed on tools and material.
Luca: We don’t want people to come in here and passively attend an event; they need to actively be part of the project. If I am not getting influenced by others, I don’t know how I’m working. People’s responses are fundamental. Now it’s difficult to have that, so we need to connect people. If anyone wants to use our spot for ADE, we’re happy to share it. If it’s going to be virtual, we can’t believe in it. We’d like to meet people in person.
Pietro: Developing your singularity, your understanding of who you are, what your limits are, and what you can do for the community – asking for help, introducing a project, sharing the good and the bad: you realize you are part of a group. Being in a community means developing strong singularities because you grow up together. You need to expand your own ways to develop a common way, otherwise all you have is fragments: your idea, his idea, her idea … one takes over the other. Our membership card is also a big part of creating the community: there will be 2-3 events a month, free for those who support us.

Being in a community means developing strong
singularities because you grow up together.

Why is being present, together at the same location, important to you?
Simon: This place helps me a lot – as a graffiti artist, I never had a place of my own. When you do art, it’s important to get inspiration, to feel that you’re in the middle of something.
Pietro: Not with words, just with art, with our staying here, with resisting, we are political. You need to understand what’s essential in your life. For us, it’s staying together, so we never stopped doing that.
Davide: It’s about not feeling alone. The best things in life come from knowing that people around you are, in one way or another, like you: in search of something bigger than ourselves; this feeling of working together.
Pietro: The world is turning virtual and so are parties which is actually quite impossible. What scares me is not that you had everything before and you have nothing now. It’s that you may not realize that you’re missing out on something. Our project only has a virtual presence so that people can find us in reality.

With Vrij Beton, AA is launching an initiative of collective ownership and new permanent free spaces, against gentrification and the dominant culture of entrepreneurship and profit. How does your collective deal with the latter?
Pietro: Here, there is a container with the throwaway wood from the NDSM. Every morning, we come and pick it up. As for the rest of the material and tools you see here, some of it used to belong to me and some to the other guys... We put it all together and we have everything we need.
We don’t have financial capital but a lot of social and human capital. We want other people to also use the place. We’ll have this for 5 years; the world will change a lot during this period. If the system allows people to reorganize, which rules will we need to follow? Will those rules only allow millionaires and big firms to have a voice? We are fighting against the mainstream taking over everything. The plan is to go to zero cost and invest the money back into our projects: a place where people can make use of something they don’t have in their homes. We are also preparing for ADE: we need something different from the current way of organizing, more locations around the city, free events, fair prices.

The plan is to go to zero cost and invest the money back into our projects

What can we expect to see in the next weeks/months?
Pietro: Art exhibitions with music. We will also launch a music label starting with an EP and release the digital files for free to all our members. The music will only be on sale for people who don’t know us. There will be activities that connect people, workshops, markets...
The EP will include a track by Janos a.k.a Naked Silence, a founding member of the collective, who passed away in December. “We want to fill the huge void he left with music, his music.”
All: Just wait and see!