SICKHOUSE TURNED 6

Sickhouse celebrated its sixth anniversary and it was so fun!

Without a physical space to gather, Sickhouse is looking for different ways to be present, support its community and share playfulness. This is why we are publishing the second issue of our magazine: to reconnect with you, share some thoughts and introduce the theme we will be working on throughout 2024.

The first three months of 2024 has passed, and Sickhouse does not have a space to present and host its program. Finding a new location is a challenge we have been working on since a few years but the last months have shown us how difficult the path towards a fitting space is. And we are not alone in this struggle, revealing a great fragility within the cultural field of Enschede.

One might wonder why Sickhouse needs a space, when it could be a nomadic entity. We could present our programs at other existing institutions, rent a desk in co-working spaces in the city, mingle with entrepreneurs, get rid of the burden of maintaining a physical space, and just focus on budget and content.

But this position fails to see that the core of Sickhouse is its community. Our programs are about encounters, about get together. Designing and crafting its physical space allows Sickhouse’s visitors to have a safe space,  encourages experiment and supports diversified gatherings. As a playful art space, Sickhouse does not only support the makers of games and interactive art, it actively uses play as a means to engage in the difficult discussions we urgently need to have in times of polarization.

Perhaps one could argue that, since Sickhouse specializes in video games and virtual spaces, we could gather online, without the need of a physical space. And that is something that we have definitely explored, specially in those months around the pandemic and also when hosting hybrid events. It has been fun, but challenging, and it needs time, courage and a solid base in order to succeed.

We continue to work on such online spaces, trying to find the right balance between gathering and playing, for our international community. Our ambition is to support the construction of bridges between virtual and physical spaces, since none of those can live alone. The ways to inhabit the world are neither online nor offline anymore but in hybrid and layered realities. As an experimental space, Sickhouse is actively reflecting, supporting and creating new navigation systems.

What physical space can alternative organizations, artists based communities or experimental programs get, when the real estate market is in the hands of private owners, multinationals companies and rich developers? Confronted with this reality, Sickhouse is wondering what impact can we have? When we want to create room from the glitches, what is stability?

Without forgetting that the struggles inherent to alternative, critical, queer, underground spaces are political choices, we are creating our path of resistance. When our societies are dealing with one crisis after another: symptoms of hurtful politics and an economy based on inequality, Sickhouse creates critical and caring programs supporting deeper transformations.

At the time of writing this editorial, Sickhouse is working on its next temporary situation. We will be fine. We will open soon. In 2024 the city is implementing the new culture nota, we believe that culture needs more fundamental support, and these steps (that many of us worked on with the Gemeente) are hopeful and promising. Finishing this editorial on a positive note is not a way to ignore the situation the world is in, it is an invitation to consider resilience, hope, care, patience as significant tools in a movement that demands a lot of endurance.