Looking back on 4 years of Sexyland Society

If you approach the NDSM by ferry, you will already see the unpretentious building beckon. A wooden cabin tempts us with a light sculpture on the roof. The disco letters write “SEXYLAND”; sometimes glorious in rainbow colors, sometimes flickering or with a broken “e”, but the lights are never completely off. Sexyland is always on. Zippora Elders, curator and Amsterdammer, speaks to founders Aukje Dekker and Arthur van Beek about the NDSM pearl that everyone wants to fulfill everyone's dreams.

It started in 2012. Aukje Dekker and Arthur van Beek, artists and co-founders of the Open Coop and the Eddie the Eagle Museum, were eating somewhere and the service was rude. Not an unknown phenomenon in the capital. At the time, they thought: if there was a different owner every day, the service would always be nice. With the Open Coop, they developed a plan for an artists' club in the old Sexyland video store, but that building went to the Ton Ton Club. Four years later, when they were approached by the NDSM-werf Foundation about the empty association building, they immediately knew: this must be the new Sexyland. Sexyland will open its doors on January 13, 2017.

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The concept is as simple as it is brilliant: a different owner every day. Goal: Connect 365 owners. Sexyland as a club, club, cafe, living room. A new member gets a gold-colored Sexyland key pendant. The wooden shop, which still looks most like a scouting building, is transformed every day into a fellow human being's dream night. Noise concerts, wrestling competitions, vogue performances, school parties, skate tracks, poetry nights, bird shows, book launches: everything comes by.

As early as 2018, Sexyland had a branch at Lowlands: the wooden cabin rebuilt with light sculpture and all, a rotating stage and a different owner every hour. It is the hit of the festival, the tent with the longest row. “Very strange things happen in Sexyland,” headlines de Volkskrant on August 19 that year. In the same article, the editor continues: “You have to love that. But to be honest: once you get used to the crazy stuff about Sexyland, it's hard to leave the tent again. ' But Sexy's aim goes beyond that of a “crazy new entertainment concept”. It's an ode to the free port, to quirky Amsterdam and the old NDSM, to everything we can't think of ourselves. Freedom and inclusiveness, that's what the Sexies are ultimately about.

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Aukje:”The Best of Sexyland early 2018 was the highlight. After a year, everything came together. Day by day, different colors, ages and categories had usurped Sexyland, but this evening, they stood side by side, mixed together. The bike mechanic around the corner, the rappers and punks, girls with moustaches and old grandpas, an opera serenade, jazz and karaoke, nature lectures and speed chess competitions.”

Arthur: “That's when we understood what the next step should be: not programming side by side but bringing it together immediately, which the best of-always let the evening happen.” Sexyland does not want to be an instrumentalized breeding ground that has to color within the lines. Anything can happen in the wooden cabin. The team is crucial for that. And that team was born organically. The people behind the bar came by.

Some of them also took a breath of fresh air. For example, we now also know bar head Victor, with his bright blue eyes, from the BNN-VARA program First Dates. Producers Renske, Sara Liz, Floor are still there day and night. Aukje: “Important aspects include trust, enthusiasm, openness and judgement. People have to be good at being themselves.” Sexyland is not only a platform for organizers and members, but also for work experience. Murditio, who was hired because he told the bar that he was broke, is now hosting the Colorful parties in the heart of Amsterdam. Sound boy Zeger went to practice on the Sexyland equipment during the day and is now a Thrillboy DJ. The equality and fluidity meant a great deal to him. He even got a Sexyland tattoo. And that was allowed, of course.

‍Listen to the episode of NDSM X where we talk to Aukje Dekker and the business director of the new Sexyland World, Samira Ben Messaoud.

But is it really possible, 'everything'? Aukje: “We think proper! For our new plans, we are also choosing an altruistic system in which involved parties live just like trees in a forest: interconnected and, when one is weak, it is fed by others.” This quest for inclusiveness is a current theme. Sexyland gives it an idiosyncratic approach. Does the cisgender, the 'white' neighbor, the hobby painter also feel safe here? “Of course, it sometimes happens that adolescents don't feel at home on Popie Jopie's night. We also really like the sanding surface between comfortable and uncomfortable. Breaking free from fixed form or group: that's where creation and inspiration come from.” What is really possible will also have to tell time. Sexyland has been robbed several times, including two times with unprecedented schade.Dat broke hearts. And maybe that's the risk you're running by offering space. “If you are hospitable and open your 'home', and a bottle of vodka is stolen or something is broken, that stings. You don't want to change, but that's only possible if people realize how vulnerable you are. When our horizontal starting point appears to work from trust and is shortly damaged by theft and destruction, it is very sad.”

There seems to be little room for vulnerability in Amsterdam. The process of gentrification is almost saturated. Amsterdam-Noord is being overtaken by the privileged start-ups; hotels fill the center. For decades, the shipyard was a place where you got space: views over the IJ, cold sea breeze, barren industry. Squatters and artists were able to go about their business unseen. But here, too, developers rolled out their plans. Arthur: “They've given away almost all property, especially safe and stable things. They did not dare to take risks. But there is still land! And the will is also there. At the moment, the NDSM is still the only free port in Amsterdam.”

It happened quickly. In the 80s, Amsterdam was full of squatters, in the 90s it was for ravers. In the nineties, the artists. Aorta, W139, Roxy, Odin, Paradiso, Rietveld, Sandberg, the African Countries, Service Garage, Krux. There was space, literally and figuratively. Arthur: “Everything has been taken over, has become too expensive, capitalized. Only wealthy people are facilitated. This is not only the municipality's policy, but survival of the fittest in the most neoliberal interpretation.”

“Everything has been seized, overpriced, capitalized. Only wealthy people are facilitated. That is not just the municipality's policy, but survival of the fittest in the most neoliberal interpretation.”

Will that free port be all right? Aukje: “Oh, we're so hard at work on the future. We are designing a kind of huge container where there should be room for everyone, including the organizations that are expressed North. The one place that is still open for weirded shirt, for frayed edges. We hope that we become the core of that whole damn vision. That we become the drain where people are sucked up very nicely.” The latest plan is a Sexyland XL that should become a community center for a wide range of groups and types, side by side and at the same time. There, no expectations are confirmed, no homes are upgraded, no “failures” are punished. Averse to a capitalist, competitive structure, everyone sustains each other in that dream container.

Sparkling disco letters laugh at us.

We dream along.

This article previously appeared in the magazine NDSM x mister Motley. A physical copy can be ordered via reserveren@ndsm.nl.