The Work of Being Present

Body of Work, Vol. 1, A Post-Event Reflection

On a winter evening in Amsterdam, seventy-five people gathered inside the Amstelkerk and agreed, almost instinctively, to put their phones away. Not silenced or turned face down, but sealed and set aside. The gesture was small, yet it shifted the room immediately. Attention, once reclaimed, has a way of changing everything that follows.

Body of Work, Vol. 1 did not present itself as a launch in any familiar sense. There were no panels, no keynotes, no moments engineered for extraction or exchange. Instead, the evening unfolded at its own pace, shaped by presence rather than agenda.

One guest later described it as presence over performance. Another said they had not checked the time once.

The room itself was carefully composed. Founders and investors sat alongside artists, scientists, cultural leaders, technologists, and builders whose paths rarely intersect so deliberately. The curation was precise. Not everyone knew one another, but everyone belonged. The aim was not harmony, but proximity. Different ways of thinking placed close enough to be felt.

Art set the tempo.

Spoken word opened the evening, reintroducing language as something that can still carry weight when it is spoken with intention. Music and movement followed, not as accompaniment but as conversation. Sound and body responded to one another in real time, without explanation, without hierarchy.

“It wasn’t designed to be captured,” one attendee reflected later. “It was designed to be experienced.”

Food, too, was part of the composition. Cheese, wine, and gelato were offered not as refreshment but as invitation. Aging, fermentation, texture, and taste asked for patience. One guest remarked that the cheese platter resembled a Dutch master painting. Another said it felt like being asked to pay attention with all the senses at once.

At the center of the evening was a format called Founder Confessionals.

One question. No preparation.

Audience members were invited to ask founders something they genuinely wanted to know. The questions avoided ambition and outcome. Instead, they circled around cost. The emotional weight of building. The uncertainty. The pressure. The parts of leadership that rarely survive translation into pitch decks or public narratives.

“The questions weren’t about what I’m building,” one founder said afterward. “They were about what it costs to build it.”

What became apparent was the reciprocity of the exchange. Vulnerability did not belong to one side alone. To ask was to expose oneself as much as to answer. The room listened closely. Silence was not filled. It was allowed to do its work.

“For the first time,” another participant wrote later, “I saw the founder as an artist. And the company as something closer to a body of work than a business.”

As the evening progressed, the usual tempo of professional gatherings loosened. Conversations slowed. Utility gave way to curiosity. One guest described the space as one where the nervous system could soften. Another called it a reminder of what becomes possible when distraction is removed.

The coherence of the evening lay in its care. Every element had been considered. Every person invited for a reason. Nothing was incidental. Nothing was added to impress. Everything served to move something within, to provoke reflection, to invite growth without instruction.

“In a world obsessed with scale and speed,” one attendee observed, “this felt like a different frequency altogether.”

Body of Work, Vol. 1 did not offer answers or frameworks. It offered conditions. Conditions for attention. For honesty. For witnessing real bodies of work, artistic and human, as they unfold in front of one another.

What remained afterward was not excitement, but recognition. A shared sense that something essential had been touched. That gathering, when treated with care, can still do quiet and consequential work.

Body of Work, Vol. 1 was a beginning, not a conclusion. A practice, taking shape.