The company hires people who cannot find work elsewhere. They are hired without control and unconditionally, there is only a waiting list. The company is completely based on trust and openness and wants to influence people's lives in a positive way, to give them a second chance in life. That's why they bake muffins. And it works: ex-prisoners find a new life there, teenage mothers rebuild their existence. With an ingenious inversion of a few rules of business, Glassman impressively shows us the possibility of another world.
What Bernie Glassman and his company do is what artists also do: show an alternative world, "look, it can be like that." Give a new perspective on existing things and in that way make the world a little more beautiful. This is what artists can and do, whether they make autonomous work or commissioned work, socially engaged or in a more abstract context: artists show the world an alternative reality.
Musing over the documentary, I thought about the many refugees who are looking for a second chance and are ready to make a positive impact in their lives. How wonderful would it be if all artist initiatives that have space left over made some of it available to, say, a refugee artist family? What would it be like - for everyone involved - to offer a refugee artist and his or her family a context in which they can move on with their lives, and their work, or at least have a chance to attempt to do so? An artist-in-residence, but different.
It is no more than an idea, and we know what is between dream and deed*. But it is a possibility and there are other possibilities. We live in a world where there is a need for the ability to hold a mirror up to the world, to turn things around and show other possibilities, to create meaning. Art and artists are indispensable in this regard.
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