Zendik – Art Community or Labor Camp?

I’ve had these folks try to sell me their magazines on more than one occasion at various music festivals. I’ve never bought one, but I probably will next time I get the chance. I just didn’t have any money the other times.

It really seems to me that these people are getting people who want to be socially or politically active and they get them to believe that Zendik is making a difference and promoting art when in actuality they have very little time to devote to their passion because they are almost always working. Read the article and you’ll see what I mean.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2005/cover1104.html

Some excerpts:

Urban legends swirl around the city about this commune and its hippiefied ambassadors. Some say it’s a sex cult. Others assume the sales reps are part of an anarchist or fringe left-wing group. Others simply have no idea what these dreadlocked hawkers are doing—or why.

To find out, I spent a few days on their commune—then tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina—just before their move to West Virginia. Slowly, the farmers’ world opened up to me as they became more comfortable with my presence, though never entirely so. I painted houses and sheds and dug a latrine alongside the men, prepared meals with the women—the commune missed most of the women’s-lib movement, tucked away as it is—and interviewed past and present members. What became clear is that “Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution” seems to be more of a slogan than a mantra: The Zendiks do decidedly more bitching than revolting.

Arol Zendik, the lone survivor of the founding couple, accomplished that by imparting some “wisdom,” which later several of the farmers specifically referred to as just that: “What did you think of Arol’s wisdom?”

Arol is quite clearly the leader of the commune. In a string of mostly anti-Zendik posts from former members at hipforum.com, one disgruntled ex-farmer writes: “If you do go there, ask to see the quarters where Arol lives; and then ask to see where YOU would be living if you decided to move there. Be smart.” The Zendik Web site is just as clear: “Arol, 65, is the heart and soul of the Zendik movement.…Arol is a leader in the best possible sense of the word…Arol’s overview is tremendous, and includes every aspect of our work and lives.…[S]he pushes herself and everyone around her for more.”

Amy Welsh, a Milwaukee-based poet, unpacked her bags in Zendik’s Carolina guesthouse a few days after I arrived. (All new arrivals are quarantined for 10 days in the guesthouse. The new home in Marlinton still has no guesthouse, so visiting is heavily restricted.) I had some inside info on Welsh, having been around several Zendik men while they talked about her impending arrival. She had come a month earlier on a rare night that the farmers were partying. They advertise on their Web site that they make their own beer, but from what I saw they stopped short of drinking it, or much of any alcohol for that matter. But apparently on that night each farmer had had his or her fill, and a great time was had by all, including Welsh and her long-term girlfriend.

The gentlemen on the farm, when her arrival was discussed, tended to focus on her sexuality. They doubted that she was a “real” lesbian and were convinced they could overcome what they saw as a minor barrier.

She told me how excited she was to be in a place where she could focus on her art. I had been there long enough by then to know that she was in for a rude awakening. Very few of the members do any actual art—there’s no time; everyone’s working—unless you count work as art. The Zendik philosophy, as articulated on its Web site, refers to “Life Artistry,” which “takes the rigors of Art—the workmanship, the daring, the objectivity and intensity of focus—and applies them directly to the problems of Life itself, providing a framework of critique and self-awareness that is woefully absent from our common day-to-day reality.…In this way, Life itself becomes the Art, an object of endless fascination, where there are no limits on the potential of imagination and creativity.”

Three months after my first visit to the farm, I got a call from Welsh in Milwaukee. “They kept telling me that I was only a lesbian because of the influence of the Death Culture, and now that I was in a loving family I should embrace my hetero side,” she said. The line didn’t work.

Though she was disturbed by the incessant advances, she said, the real reason she left had more to do with the lack of revolutionary zeal on the farm. “They advertise themselves as revolutionaries, but they’re nothing but a bunch of dropouts…who couldn’t hack it in the real world. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, and I wish them the best, but they shouldn’t try to recruit people who are actually interested in making the world a better place.” And though they relentlessly bitch about politics and politicians in their publications, Welsh said, they don’t vote. More than just that, Welsh was shocked by the workload. “They work all day long,” she said. “There is no time for art, even if anyone there was actually interested in it.” The final straw, she said, was when they tried to stop her from leaving for a day for a gay-pride parade. She shouldn’t miss work, they told her.

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