Photo by @engelengele

Everyone in the XTANT team is an artist of some sort, whether that be as part of their own work or something they do in their free time. It’s never been a requirement, in fact the team was a spontaneous thing itself, but it's just how things turned out.

And like any artist in our current moment in time we’ve been looking on at the massive developments in auto-generated content, of ‘A.I’ Fashion, illustration, image generation, or whatever it is this week with equal parts morbid curiosity and trepidation.

What worth have the things we make with our hands when measured up to machines who can generate Frankenstein versions of them in seconds? And for what reason would anyone prefer us to the convenience of an automated process?

Art installation by @j.nikadimus, @kingafoldi @onlyandco

I’ve been listening through João Gilberto's albums throughout my workdays recently.

The gentle plucking of strings, then only recently possible because of the introduction of the microphone; the calming – sometimes forlorn, sometimes quiet – content tone of its muddy vocals. In its every second are heard a million decisions of real people i’ll never meet, much less understand, deliberating on how best to capture an emotion.

A piece of that moment in time is preserved here, not in formal descriptions of cold-war politics or production numbers, but in a short approximation of how someone, whether it was the artist or his listeners, had felt at that time.

Art is a form of communication. The lines we draw, the tempo we set are attempts to show fractions of how we see parts of our world.

Perhaps it’s naive, but if there is no emotion and intention behind its composition, no personal effort and story that tries to reach out from beneath the canvas, nothing other than a calculated desire to cut costs, then I can’t imagine it staying as João´s music still does.

Photo by @engelengele

The more I find these quiet moments away from stories about the grand ambitions of people and companies, the more I come to appreciate them. In ten or twenty years the overwhelming worry, the mountains of articles will all be consolidated into one or two blurbs looking back on the past. But our songs, our clothes, furniture, buildings, and our art will remain. Even if their full backstory fades with time.

Art and artisan textiles place the face of their makers in front of you, make you see them even if you preferred not to, and have you reconcile the physical object with the tireless years of training, the labour and the vision behind every facet of its being.

It is that attempt at communication, that human intention in its weave as you’d find in the composition of a song, that makes your work whether it is amateurish or the product of total mastery: art, rather than content.

So pick up a craft! It doesn't matter if you’re bad at it at first, or if you don’t publish your work, through making you will understand the effort behind everything that surrounds you, and through your fun alone you’ll make the world a more beautiful form of itself.

Photo by @engelengele

As always: Our work is only possible thanks to our lovely patrons who show up each year. If you’re interested to see the event this coming May, make sure to book your tickets early! Flights and Hotels in Mallorca get more and more expensive the closer the date is. See you there!