🃏✨The Nexialist #0031
Scenius aka Communal Genius | Tropicália | Brazilian Jester | Fantastic Fungi | Getting Smarter | Europe in 1444 | WWII Dataviz | MTV Premiere | Mistress Violet and more...
Welcome to my weekly digital patchwork, come cuddle:
Guess who got their second dose of the vaccine and is having a hard time even thinking? I’ll leave you with this week’s Nexialist which I’m excited about and hopefully next week I have more brainpower. Grab a cup of tea/coffee and enjoy the brain cuddles.
💭Scenius a.k.a Communal Genius
Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”
Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you.
The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:
• Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
• Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
• Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.
Scenius can erupt almost anywhere, and at different scales: in a corner of a company, in a neighborhood, or in an entire region.
Thank you, Douwe for sending me this, and thank you David Matin from the New World Same Humans for introducing me to this term and bringing inspiring examples: “Ancient Greece was a philosophy scenius. New Orleans was a jazz scenius. Silicon Valley is a tech scenius.” There’s even an interactive scenius map about Abstract Art movement from MoMA, and it makes me want to see more of these.
Last week I witnessed something quite powerful and it’s very much connected to scenius. We had a three-evening playshop (workshops but more playful) with the Dancing Fox for a group of environmental NGOs. We used Miro, Zoom and were (beautifully) guided through a set of creative exercises, producing great results as everyone felt in their element: environmentalists, activists, artists, storytellers. As we could simultaneously build on each other’s ideas, it felt like the creative rhythm was accelerate and escalated. Also, we were spread across continents, which was quite powerful. It really felt like we were part of a creative hive mind and could see a force of change emerging from that dynamic.
🇧🇷Tropicália
I could not stop thinking about scenius movements and Tropicália immediately came to mind. Google Arts&Culture has a great editorial piece about which I recommend taking a look: “What is the Tropicália movement? Discover the artistic and musical revolution that unleashed a generation of rebels”
The most iconic line from the Manifesto, which appeared written in English, is: “Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question”. It is both a celebration of the Tupi, who practiced certain forms of ritual cannibalism, and a metaphorical instance of cannibalism in that it “eats” Shakespeare.
🃏Brazilian Jester
Rita Lee is also part of the Tropicália movement. Yes, I have been obsessed with her in case you haven’t noticed. I have been listening to her remixes (vol I, vol II and vol III) quite often. Then a four-episode podcast series, Identidade Musical (in Portuguese), was released telling the story of the “one and multiple” Rita Lee, interviewing her and so many other Brazilian artists, only to confirm how influential she was and still is. (Thank you, Dimas Henkes for the tip).
I loved to know that she does not quite accept the title of Queen of Rock as she feels more like the Jester. When I heard that, it was so obvious, it is exactly her energy, always with humor, even in the sexier songs. Looking back, I even realized I got a Mad Hatter vibe from her.
About this video: thank you to whoever uploaded this iconic TV concert to Youtube, from 1980. The looks, the performance, the band, Rita playing the flute… I had a blast watching this.
🍄Fantastic Fungi
My partner recommended this to me a couple of weeks ago and it is absolutely fascinating. I also connected this to scenius, since the largest living organism is a fungus, interconnected below and sometimes above the surface of the Blue Mountains in Oregon.
There is so much about fungi that we don’t know yet, but I definitely left this documentary knowing more and feeling more hopeful than when I went in. We have a lot to learn from them, as they are finding therapeutic uses for our brains and immunity and bioremediative properties for the planet.
🧠Getting Smarter
I had a mix of FOMO and excitement as I explored this infographic on this 12 Ways to Get Smarter, filled with mental models:
This infographic comes from best-selling author and entrepreneur Michael Simmons, who has collected over 650 mental models through his work. The infographic, in a similar style to one we previously published on cognitive biases, synthesizes these models down to the most useful and universal mental models that people should learn to master first.
🇪🇺Europe in 1444
“Maps Freeze Time: Historical maps are fascinating because they provide a snapshot of the world as it once was (but no longer is).” This map from Europe in 1444 caught my attention, with how fragmented Western Europe was at the time. I recommend going to the Visual Capitalist website to navigate and better understand the context.
The map shows a moment when Holy Roman Empire was run by the feudal system (hence the fragmentation) and Lithuania was at the height of its power. Something new I learned is that “Portugal looks nearly identical to its present-day form. This is because the country’s border with Spain–one of the world’s oldest–has barely shifted at all since the 13th century.”
🇺🇸WWII Dataviz
“An animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second World War and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts.”
This interactive documentary from 2015 by Neil Halloran is a great example of Data Visualization, helping us understand that period of time with real data.
🏰Gaspard Augé
Gaspard Augé (half of Justice) released an album recently, Escapades, and it needs more attention. The music is great, but I need to talk about where they filmed it: a ghost estate of abandoned castles in Turkey.
The French musician’s giddily maximalist solo debut maintains the spirit of his group Justice’s debut album; though inspired by ’70s prog and disco, it inhabits a singular universe of its own invention.
Read: Gaspard Auge, Escapades - Review @ Pitchfork
📺MTV Premiere
This appeared on my feed on August 1st, the exact 40th birthday of MTV. It felt like finding a time capsule. I will just leave here some first impressions. Save it for later so you leave it playing on the TV, I promise it’s an experience.
The presenters were still a bit awkward and stiff, in my days of MTV (late 90s, 2000s) there were already the MTV mannerisms and more dynamic cuts, though it still played music. It reminded me to the first vloggers on Youtube and how today people developed different ways of speaking, looking at the camera, using filters, etc.
It felt like MTV was starting a medium war against radio. Or it was a campaign to spread cable TV, using the stereo sound as a claim. It kept repeating how the sound was better than FM, and guess what was the first video ever? Video Killed the Radio Star. A very clear message I would say…
It seemed like the guitar was obligatory, it was there in almost every video;
It was male and white-dominated, but quite androgynous; Most of the male singers had higher-pitched voices, which is fun.
The highlight for me was Stevie Nicks singing Stop Dragging my Heart Around.
😎Mistress Violet
I was going to write about how much I love this, but Reanna Cruz did that for me at NPR:
In the gimmicky, excessive world of drag queen music, it's always interesting when a queen scales back and delivers something unexpected. Enter Violet Chachki, season 7 winner of Rupaul's Drag Race, and underground pop princess Allie X, who team up for the new single "Mistress Violet."
The song, whose title refers to Chachki's latex-donning alter ego, rides a pulsing, dark synthwave that sounds right out of the 1980s goth scene. Chachki's aesthetic, both as a drag queen and as an artist, has always leaned toward the subversive underground, drawing heavily on burlesque and BDSM. The accompanying video is straight dominatrix pastiche, shot on analog film with outfits by Schiaparelli. It's both transfixing and provocative, delivering enough slithering hooks and snap-worthy quotables to leave listeners gagged beyond belief.
Read: #NowPlaying: Violet Chachki And Allie X, 'Mistress Violet' - NPR Music
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