🧠✨The Nexialist #0005

Queer the Future | Curation and Synthesis | Meta Trending Trends | Future of Fashion | Sevdaliza | RIP SOPHIE and Brega Funk

Hello, world! I hope you’re safe and healthy (mentally as well) yet another week. I’ll save my words for the rest of the newsletter (a bit of a creative block), and since I can’t find a way to get you hooked, I’ll use a gif (it works a lot of the times). I hope your brain is feeling like this:

🔮Curation and Synthesis

Things like this 👆 make my nexialist eyes shine. Matt Klein has been doing an annual Meta Trending Trends report for a few years, and it’s so satisfying to go through it. He finds overlapping trends from several relevant reports and groups them in one place. He wrote something in the introduction that stayed with me:

“Curation is not the new content. Synthesis is."

🦜Future of Fashion

Listen... I'm not much of a fashion-world enthusiast, but Iris van Herpen's body of work is always mesmerizing. Such a beautiful talent from the Netherlands. In my opinion, it’s the best way couture could be done in the present using technology and the only word that comes to my head is avant-garde. This is the latest collection, Roots of Rebirth, which “explores the rich, yet deeply fragile interconnectedness of an unfamiliar world, the enigmatic fungi empire and the life-bearing fine threads of mycelium.” Put it on fullscreen and pay attention to the details, the nails, the headpieces. Do you also get chills? (Also, when Sevdaliza appeared it was just such a happy feeling.)

🧬 Talking about her:

Since I mentioned her above, I thought I would sneak this in here. Sevdaliza is one of those artists that irradiates beauty in her work, escaping the obvious. She’s Iranian-Dutch and you can see how this influences her songs and videos. Also, she recorded a song in Portuguese, which always makes me feel warm inside.

🛸RIP SOPHIE

Last week we came across the sad news that the iconic singer, songwriter and music producer SOPHIE passed away in an accident. Her sound and persona fascinated many of us, and it's great to see how the weird things she did with music influences the pop music we hear today. From the microgenre of PC-Music to Hyperpop, she brought novelty in a time when most music felt too familiar. Even if this video was made two years ago, you can understand her relevance and contribution.

Now, her most listened song is Immaterial, which really got me thinking how poetic it is that she transcended into such unique soundwaves. Also, there's even a petition for NASA to rename TOI-1338 b, the first planet with two stars, in honor of SOPHIE.

🎧Brega Funk

I just have to take the opportunity to introduce you to Brega Funk. Musical sub-genre from Recife, which mixes Funk Carioca with Brega (and I would also argue PC Music.) You can hear deconstructed aggressiveness of digital/organic sounds, with (a lot) of Brazilian twists and hopefully, that makes you want to move. You can read more about it here or listen to this playlist.

Read: Brega Funk is the Music of Recife that's Taking over Brazil (MixMag, 2019)

🏳️‍🌈Queering the Future

I recently watched this presentation that Jason Tester gave about his project, Queer the Future: How LGBTQ Foresight Can Benefit All. I brought a “summary” of the video with some quotes and highlights of things that got my attention (still working on my synthesizing skills😬)

Jason begins by suggesting the transformation of the adjective queer into a verb, which I found to be a very powerful provocation:

He also puts in perspective how statistically our community is more vulnerable: from the lack of support from some families and communities, to the greater chances of us being feeling loneliness in old age.

In his exercise of imagining possible, probable and preferred futures, he asks a valid question:

What if queer culture … is itself a cultural evolutionary mutation ready to confer advantages of survival and resilience of humanity?

Then, Jason shares his study: five traits/skills that overlap between Queer Cultures and the mindsets and practices which will confer success in the future we’re likely headed towards.

i. Question Prevailing Systems: the existence of Queer fundamentally questions one of the biggest dominant systems of the human condition: heterosexual reproduction.

"Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now, and an instance in the potentiality or concrete possibility of another world." —José Esteban Muñoz, author of the book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009).

ii. Rejecting Binary Thinking: understanding that we don't fit in a binary thinking gives us an advantage for the fluid future that is approaching. We had to build our own paths in creative and adaptive ways: different families, different relationships and different existences.

“We support the trans community precisely because the trans community has taught us to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal. If it is possible to question the gender binary, then we can certainly effectively resist prisons and police. ” —Dr. Angela Davis

iii. Connect Intersectionally: He talks about intersectionality as an augmented empathy tool, the most important in his opinion. Here recognizes how white queerness is far from perfect to push this future, and rightly says:

"I firmly believe that the future of the future is being created by transgender women of color and gender non-binary people of color and that we should all trust their leadership.” —Jason Tester

iv. Embracing pleasure and joy: historically, the queer community prioritizes feelings of well-being, even before science even assumed that it is good for our health. In addition to health, this strengthens our creativity and in the process of ideation, the skills needed to solve problems and create futures.

“You’re not going to forget the suffering in the world just because you had a great orgasm. You’re going to have more resilience for turning and facing that suffering if you’re also in touch with the part of your life that feels amazing. And not just the total catastrophes that are happening.” —Adrienne Maree Brown, author of Pleasure Activism, The Politics of Feeling Good

v. Hustling between Worlds: for a long time, to find company and work when it was not available, queer people gave their way of finding new purposes for places and created their connections independent of formal structures. This gives us the advantage of knowing more experiences and learning new codes and values.

Here’s the video if you want to watch the whole thing:

I will leave a disclaimer here: I do not agree with everything Jason brings in his presentation, but I understand his place of speech and also how the exercise of thinking about the future involves imagination and complex thinking. I decided then to filter what I learned and share it here.

❤️If anything made your brain tingle, click like and don't hesitate to share it with the world. It helps The Nexialist to reach more curious minds. See you next week!🦦

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