How the Gatekeepers Maintain the Wealth Divide
Let Freedom Ring in the Wild World Yonder!
In my previous post, I told about how my application as a social enterprise was rejected by Fractured Atlas, the only Model A Fiscal sponsor for the Arts that I could find.
“A social enterprise is a cause-driven business improving social objectives” The Good Trade
Rejection as a social enterprise meant we were denied access to applying for non-profit funding. Andersen Design was rejected because I used the word, “production”, which the Fractured Atlas board defines as meaning “one is only in it for the money”.
Afterward, we lost our property that housed our production, ending a beautiful work process that had survived for almost seventy years and created an unusually large body of classic ceramic designs, including originally designed forms, glazes, and ceramic bodies, and survived by our company brand.
Simultaneous with my application, Fractured Atlas was starting a venture capitalist corporation Exponential Creativity Ventures.
One of the partners of Exponential Creativity Ventures is Amelia Manderscheid who was a Specialist and Global Head of eCommerce for the Post-War & Contemporary Art department at Christie’s. She was Head of Sale for Andy Warhol at Christie’s, overseeing Christie’s exclusive partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In 2019 she moved on to become the new senior Bonhams auction house director of its postwar and contemporary art department for the Americas.
Andy Warhol was considered revolutionary for using mass-production techniques to make his art, similar in concept to using ceramic-slip-casting to make art. Andersen Design preceded Andy Warhol but Andy Warhol targeted a wealthy urban clientele, while Andersen Design’s purpose was to “create a hand made product affordable to the middle class”.
Adam Huttler, the founder of Fractured Atlas, partnered with the former head of sales of the Andy Warhol Foundation in a venture capitalist fund, while Fractured Atlas, gatekeepers to the world of non-profit funding, road-blocked all access to Andersen Design unless we changed our purpose to something other than design and hand-crafted production. Suggested approved purposes for our company were a museum or a school, but Andersen Design would be forbidden to teach how to make our products, excepting our original proprietary glazes and recipes that are a signature of our line, which would go a long way in dissolving our brand identity.
Factoring in that Adam Huttler was starting yet another new tech venture capitalist firm, the message in supporting us if we start a museum (about our past?) or a school where we cannot teach how to make our product but can teach how to make our signature glazes, is that Fractured Atlas would support us if we dismantled our company and buried it in the past.
However as I listen to the people, the workers, and the content providers describing what they want life to be like, I feel that is how life was like being raised in a business in a home that uses production as an art form. People are saying that they want to work with their hands which makes sense because spending one’s life working at a computer screen is a life spent as a couch potato, perhaps a creative couch potato- but it’s sedentary. People need to move around. People want physical activity. They want to experience a world with all five of their senses.
The reason for disqualifying Andersen Design as a social enterprise is clearly bull. The question is why? I can only surmise that the board is invested in oppressing grassroots entrepreneurialism, just as we see in Boothbay with the targeting of Lester Spear. The message from the board of Fractured Atlas is simply that they do not want companies like Andersen Design to exist or to be a part of the social landscape. That, in a nutshell, is what is also currently going on in Boothbay, which I will save for another post.
Why? Look toward the psychology of a hierarchical culture:
In 2019, Mathew Stewart wrote a very long article for the Atlantic, published on Medium, about the escalating wealth divide and the proclivity of his own class, the 9.9 top percent, to intentionally stop the 90% from rising.
As a small business, without the desire or intent to become a mega-corporation, it seems quite incredulous that we should pose a threat to a larger industry but the pattern of repeated experiences indicates otherwise. Mr. Stewart’s article supports and informs that hypothesis, stating the opinion boldly, by one who is part of the 9.9%, that the 9.9 percent expresses an eagerness to obey the 0.1 %. and creates roadblocks for those behind them.
One of the hazards of life in the 9.9 percent is that our necks get stuck in the upward position. We gaze upon the 0.1 percent with a mixture of awe, envy, and eagerness to obey. As a consequence, we are missing the other big story of our time. We have left the 90 percent in the dust — and we’ve been quietly tossing down roadblocks behind us to make sure that they never catch up. The Atlantic The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy By Matthew Stewart
What goes around comes around. Those who feel eager to obey a perceived superior expect the same from those they perceive to be below them. They need to direct and order others such as in telling a smaller company to change its purpose of sixty-five years. These attitudes are embedded in the hierarchical culture of corporatism, which has become dominant and needs to be dispersed because the human environment it has created is not a healthy one.
An invitation to engage in the Social Enterprise dialogue from a different source
Recently, I was surprised to see a new request to review a paper by HSSC. So soon after the last one? The keywords resonate. They are ”corporate social responsibility, Bibliometric analysis, socio-economic issues, economic growth, sustainable development, financial issues”. The subject is sustainable finance. I agree to do the review. I will probably learn something, at least, such as “What is Sustainable Finance?” Surely this is significant to a social enterprise.
Sustainable Finance relates as well to the fifty-sixty million dollar school being conjured up by a local caucus without consideration of risks to Adams Pond and Knickerbocker Lake water supplies.
Sustainability risks are environmental, social or governance events or conditions, the occurrence of which could have an actual or potential material adverse effect on the value of the advised investment MoonFare Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation
By engaging in the review process I learned about a free database application that tracks what researchers write about and visualizes research networks. It is called VOSviewer. I am not disclosing anything about the paper by talking about VOSviewer as it is public knowledge in the research community, that I am only just discovering. Keywords can be used to locate researchers. It might explain how HSSC found me, an independent researcher, not associated with any institution, or major publication, which in terms of statistics, makes me an initial value that is overdispersed relative to each target distribution. In other words, as I interpret it, overdispersed data falls outside the norm.
I could not resist agreeing to review a research paper about a subject relating to social enterprises, despite the lack of monetary reward.
HSSC pays in gratefulness, not in money, which makes me a “casual creative” as coined by Adam Huttler, founder of Fractured Atlas, and made much about in his promotion of Exponential Creativity Ventures.
In this case, the casual content creators that Huttler is talking about are adult fans of LEGO. He calls them AFOL’s.
Like a DIY artist with a day job, a typical AFOL invests enormous amounts of time and money — to say nothing of psychic energy — in her creative practice. There are some critical differences, however. Few AFOLs self-identify as “artists” and (save for maybe at the Lego headquarters in Billund, Denmark) fewer still aspire to make a living from their art. The Rise of the Casual Creative (Part 1).
Adam Huttler, founder of Fractured Atlas, as he moves on to venture capitalism, glorifies the “casual creative'‘ as the casual creatives represent a highly profitable market sector for his venture capitalist corporation. Along the way, the VC can provide a few casual creators (content providers) with the opportunity to “do it for the money” by conducting contests.
Aside from their economic contribution to the Lego business, AFOLs had coalesced into an international community of brand apostles, ferociously dedicated to the classic Lego system as a unique creative medium. Over sixty fan-created websites like Brickshelf, Bricklink, and MOCpages provided a foundation for the AFOL network. In cyberspace, users would post photographs of their creations and give each other aesthetic and technical feedback. In meatspace, they traveled thousands of miles to assemble at events like BrickCon, Brickworld, and Brickfair. The Rise of the Casual Creative (Part 1).
This is where Andersen Design coincides with Huttler’s story. There is a large community of slip casters in the USA who slip-cast as a hobby and there is an industry that sells molds to the hobbyists to decorate in their own home studios, and Facebook groups where they meet and post pictures of their creations, and give each other aesthetic and technical feedback.
Slip-casting hobbyists are also casual creatives. Andersen Design can offer independent slip casters an opportunity to make a living doing what they like to do as a hobby by producing our line.
The Andersen Design Museum will be the fiscal sponsor that will fund grassroots designers and makers and open the gates for a new entrepreneurial class in a decentralized order. It will fund those who fall into overdispersed data that falls outside the norm, and create a new social reality by doing so.
Andersen Design also hopes to become a fiscally sponsored project of the museum, which is why we cannot be in leadership positions and must find others to take on that role. It would be a very interesting role. I need some creative visionaries with solid skills to step up to the future!
In Andersen Design Production, the creative process and production are complementary. The individual hand of the decorator makes each piece one of a kind. This is a very independent and work-oriented lifestyle, that many are seeking today. Hand-crafted production, by definition, cannot be replaced by automation. The value of the product lies in the organic quality of a hand-made object, which I believe will see increased demand as the world becomes more automated, even as there is massive capital behind marketing new tech products. The glamour of the new and latest thing gets old as does the sameness of automated production.
The advantage of a small production is that it does not require a mass-market to be successful.
Our brand started in the 1950s with a mission to create a handmade product affordable to the middle class but today the middle class is on the brink of extinction and so the purpose of our company is focused on creating opportunities to live an independent free-enterprise entrepreneur lifestyle, outside of the hierarchical grid with the makers owning their own means of production and to use our resources developed in an unusual way- slowly but surely-, to benefit a larger community of grassroots entrepreneurs.
Adam Huttler waxes poetically about the profits to be made from the casual creative culture:
This community-centered strategy was a driving force behind a thirteen-year run of eye-popping revenue growth. After bottoming out at 800 million Euros in 2004, the company enjoyed double-digit annual revenue growth throughout the Great Recession and alongside industry competitors growing at a paltry 1 to 3 percent per year. In 2016, Lego’s revenue topped 5 billion Euros, an increase of nearly 450 percent since its strategic shift. Even more impressively, it surpassed Mattel to become the largest toy company in the world — an extraordinary accomplishment when you consider that it only has one product line.
Most of what is written by Adam Huttler, applies to our company, excepting the exponential profits to be made, which are not out of the question, just not the goal. It’s up to the individual maker but I prefer the quality of life offered by the small studio environment centered on creative work.
Our company is not a startup, neither is Lego, the company that Huttler praises in The Rise of the Casual Creative (Part 1), and the source of Mr. Huttlers “casual creative” classification.
Lego was founded in Denmark in 1948 four years previous to the establishment of Andersen Design in 1952. It was the Age of Plastics and Lego created products in plastics, while Andersen Design was established with a mission “to create a hand made product affordable to the middle classes”, and we were often associated with Danish design though we identify as American.
Andersen Design was the better part of a century ahead of its times, as we now know at the dawning of the Age of Automation, but Adam Huttler is stuck in the past and can’t figure that out. The desire to work with one’s hand is gradually seeping into the public dialogue as workers reject the lifestyle of working for the corporate grid which is primarily embedded in new technology. As digital production thrives, hand-crafted production will increasingly represent a rarity. Can there still be such a thing as a hand-made product affordable to the middle classes in the digital age? That remains to be seen, but hand-made production can provide an independent lifestyle and a democratic means of production and ownership in the new era.
Let’s begin with a brief history of culture. by Adam Huttler
For 10,000 years or more, the professional artist didn’t exist. Cave paintings, fire dances, songs about heroes of old — we did these things not for passion, fame, or fortune but because they affirmed our humanity, reinforced communal bonds, and propagated tribal identity from one generation to the next. In this world, everyone was an artist and no one was an Artist.
Mr. Huttler’s distinction about being a professional isn’t relevant when comparing an era before the invention of money with an era after the invention of money. Cavemen had to work to live by hunting and gathering.
That is to say, the true value is in a lifestyle in which the act of creation is a daily routine.
As I read those words written by Adam Huttler, I interpret it as the act of creation is a daily routine. We were professionals because our income was derived from our creativity but the identification of being an “artiste” was absorbed by the brand and identified as “designer-craftsmen” a field in which the Andersen Design brand is highly regarded.
Designer-craftsmen are small producers. A cultural environment in which designer-craftsmen proliferate is one in which production is democratically distributed.
Early on my parents won awards in competitions but all of that fell by the wayside when they started the business. My Dad said that everybody is talented, they just need to have the opportunity to realize it. He created an opportunity environment through his talent for systems management. The system made it possible to live a very creative life but it was about doing whatever had to be done, which included many types of work activities and they all came together to create the whole. it was normal to be creative as it was normal to sweep the floor and to carry fifty-pound bags of raw materials into the basement where the ceramic casting slip was made.
Mr. Huttler describing his own organization:
Not too long ago, around the time of the Renaissance, all of that began to change. With Michelangelo and the Medicis came a paradigm shift in society’s relationship to culture, as artistic endeavor became steadily more stratified and commercialized. The era of Institutional Culture was born.
…. Nonprofit arts institutions lorded over high culture. Both realms were ruled by gatekeepers: media executives, agents, newspaper critics, artistic directors, curators, foundations, and other ostensible experts. Using the power of the purse and control over distribution channels, the gatekeepers decided what voices could be heard.
And the gatekeepers decided which voices will be funded through the wealth distribution industrial complex. Everything outside of the hierarchy is underground- or the overdispersed. That’s where all the fun happens.
