🪀✨The Nexialist #0067
STORM | PLAYSCAPE | Isamu Noguchi | Independence x Autonomy | Inner Development Goals | Awesome Anthropocene Goals | Technowashing | Persepolis Reimagined | Indigenous + ETs | The Bulge We Live In
Welcome that nonsense moment of week that a bunch of weird links slips into your e-mail, The Nexialist
You know when you learn a new word and you keep seeing it everywhere after that? A friend of mine mentioned that it’s like you downloaded a new expansion pack, and I can’t find a better way of explaining it. I feel like every week after I send The Nexiliast, this keeps happening: a new word is mentioned somewhere, and an artist I like releases something related to that topic. So, welcome to this week’s expansion pack:
🌀STORM
Before we start… Next Monday (25/04) LeineRoebana’s STORM will play at the International Theather Amsterdam. Needless to say, I’m so proud to see my boyfriend Andrea Pisano performing with his group in such an important theater in the city. If you’re in Amsterdam, this is an opportunity to experience something beautiful.
STORM is a quest by Calliope Tsoupaki, Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana and their dancers, clarinettist David Kweksilber and lute player and vocalist David Mackor, which begins with the purity of the sound and the sincerity of the movement and broadens into a veritable storm of experiences.
Check it out: more dates/places here.
🪀PLAYSCAPE
After talking about fun and the importance of play last week, this video appeared. Directed by FKA twigs, who you know I love, and choreographed by a Brazilian artist, Juliano Nunes, I could not leave this out of here. I loved the playfulness, the (un)synchronized moments, the soundtrack, the cast… It just felt so nice to watch.
“The International Woolmark Prize is the oldest and most prestigious fashion award in the world. The award celebrates the modernity of Merino wool in the hands of the world’s most promising designers.”
Welcome to PLAYSCAPE - a short film celebrating the art of play and this year’s International Woolmark Prize finalists. Directed by FKA twigs and creative directed by Zak Group with choreography by Juliano Nunes, here we present the final IWP2022 collection looks from Ahluwalia, EGONLAB, Jordan Dalah, MMUSOMAXWELL, Peter Do, RUI and Saul Nash. PLAYSCAPE was inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s vision of play as a creative catalyst and merges influence from fashion, art, dance, and music.
🪑Isamu Noguchi
I don’t think I knew about Isamu’s work. Now I learned he was an American sculptor and landscape architect and he has a museum on Long Island, which he opened while he was still alive. This guy is another time traveler.
Instead of individual sculptures ending up in the basements of other museums, the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, as he named it, would become an oasis in time and space, expressing his vision for a different way of being in the world.
Isamu Noguchi: “Sometimes I think I’m part of this world of today, sometimes I feel that maybe I belong in history, or prehistory, or that there’s no such thing as time. But if you’re caught in time, the immediate present time, then your choice is very limited. You can only do certain things, really, correctly, belonging to that time, you see. But if you want to escape from that time constraint, then the whole world you see, I mean not just the most industrialized world, but the whole world is someplace where you belong.”
🔥Independence x Autonomy
I chose this video because 1) I love Boy Harsher, 2) Did they really mix country-western dancing with their music style(?), 3) I love the name of the song.
Autonomy is a concept that I hadn’t really paid attention to until working on a project focused on kids a few years ago. Parents might cringe when you ask if they want their 5-year-old to be independent “What do you mean? They will need me forever!” While doing the research for that project, we found there is a difference between independence and autonomy, and that stayed with me moving forward.
Autonomy isn’t the same as independence. The two are quite different. In the theory of self-determination, autonomy means that you have free will and that you can stand behind your actions and their values. In other words, no one is forcing you to do something you disagree with. Independence means you don’t need or accept help, resources, or care from others. You function without others. Spot the difference? Autonomy doesn’t even require independence. You can absolutely be autonomous AND dependent on others for help and support. You can act in accordance to your beliefs, with free will, and still exchange support and care.
We might be isolating ourselves in the process of looking for the shiny independence we hear so much about it. Autonomy comes with free will, accountability, and still working with and relating to those around us, which is so necessary.
Read: The Difference Between Autonomy and Independence | Nobl Academy
🫀Inner Development Goals
Talking about autonomy… You know I love a good framework. The “Inner Development Goals (IDGs) is a blueprint of the capabilities, qualities and skills we need in order to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. It is an ongoing project co-created by experts, scientists, practitioners and organizations and more than 1K survey participants. There are 23 transformational skills and qualities divided into 5 Categories.
We want to educate, inspire and empower people to be a positive force for change in society and find a more purposeful way to look at our lives and the lives of the people around us. We are a global initiative that develops inner abilities, skills and other qualities for people and organizations involved in efforts to contribute to a more sustainable global society.
Of course, one might think: “here we go again, another list of things I need to get good at, I’m tired of this.” I understand, but I also see this being more of a compass, not a to-do list that you have to check off.
🌍Awesome Anthropocene Goals
My friend Gustavo (Temporality Lab) sent me this link from Daniel Hires and at first, I was a bit suspicious. What comes after we have reached the 2030 SDGs? Futerra created this beautiful report to help us imagine. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I’m loving the format, the structure and the transparency. Starting with: “Please, suspend your disbelief for a moment” and including a bias disclosure, in the beginning, disarmed me from my own bias toward such a utopic report (at least that’s how I started reading it).
The 2050 Awesome Anthropocene goals are a first attempt to say what’s next after the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are finally met. They are beautiful, rousing and hopeful by design. This is our first edition of these goals, published in March 2022. Following your feedback, we will edit, build and grow our thinking.
Download: Futerra’s The Awesome Anthropocene Goals
📺Technowashing
No, this is not a new type of electronic music. This is a new word for something that I have seen lately, and which we should all be wary of. Companies and governments that are using “spectacularization techniques of technology and science displayed as if they were the only solution to the environmental crisis.” The paper is by Sofia Ribeiro and Viriato Soromenho-Marques, from the University of Lisbon.
…Regardless, whatever the reason for the use of technowashing, there are some common characterising elements, which will be listed below. [I just put a short part of the text]
The Power of the Mentor: In many cases, technowashing is incited by a major individual or collective opinion leaders who aim to (i) deviate public attention from less sustainable business or personal practices, (ii) ensure the company’s livelihood in situations where its business may be at stake with the need to shift to sustainable technologies, (iii) ensure reputation and positioning with audiences or (iv) ensure further economic growth, fulfil financial ambitions and confirm a power position in the global or regional markets.
Simplified Science Means Manipulated Public Opinion: A common technowashing technique is the use and exploitation of science concepts, methods and research projects.
Science Fiction and Pioneering Spirit: The More Exuberant, the More Realistic It Seems.
From Immortality to Fear: The apparent pioneer spirit of investment in techno-scientific projects feeds the idea that many of the problems we experience on Earth today will disappear.
Read: The Techno-Optimists of Climate Change: Science Communication or Technowashing?
🐂Persepolis Reimagined
Maybe for videogame players, this is something familiar, but for me it was quite an amazing experience: visiting Persepolis and learning a little bit about history.
Persepolis Reimagined is the result of a collaboration between historians, creatives, and technologists, in the context of the Getty Villa Museum exhibition, Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World. This exhibition is part of an ongoing Getty series, The Classical World in Context, which explores the complex interrelationships between ancient Greece and Rome and other cultures and civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Objects on view in the exhibition are featured throughout this virtual experience.
🪐Indigenous + ETs
I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but this is my kind of clickbait: “Decolonizing the Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Scholars are calling for greater engagement with Indigenous communities in the search for life on other planets.” So many truths and questions that we need to look at.
Embedded within the colonialist mindset is the notion that everything is a resource to be exploited or extracted, said Margaret Huettl, a scholar of Native American history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This perspective, she said, has had devastating consequences for humans and for the planet. According to Huettl, many Indigenous groups are more closely attuned to the relationships between humans, animals, plants, rivers, and the land. SETI researchers could benefit from considering a pair of pressing questions: “How have we treated the planet on which we live now?” asks Huettl. “Will we behave the same way in a different, an extraterrestrial, place?” According to Shorter, if humanity only views other planets as potential resources, science could miss out on deeper levels of understanding, such as the recent discovery that forests on Earth think or communicate. SETI researchers might also miss the presence of intelligent alien species if they assume that such species would necessarily prioritize technological advancement, Shorter said .
Read: Decolonizing the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
🌊The Bulge We Live In
This mindblowing piece of information about tides explained by Neil deGrasse Tyson really stuck with me and I need to share it with you:
Tides are widely misunderstood… The tide doesn't actually come in and out. What happens is there is a bulge of water, two of them, on opposite sides of the Earth caused by the sun and the moon, and Earth turns inside that bulge. So, when we say the water rises and falls tidally, what's happening is we are rotating into the bulge and then out of the bulge. So, the bulge is already there… And all we do is pass through the bulge. Pass through and the water gets high and it gets low. So, we're stuck with language from our own perspective rather than language of what's actually happening.
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I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist.
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Technowashing - widely used a few years ago, a false packaging of ethics where none exists.