🪦✨The Nexialist #0090
third places | heterotopia | plaskrul | legacy of gifs | wuthering heights | la emperatriz | grapefruit | la isla de lesbos | brazil elects two trans women
welcome to another edition of your weekly links from the algorithmic randomity of the internet, The Nexialist
hello, beautiful people! i hope this e-mail finds you well. and if not, i hope by the end of this e-mail you feel at least one bit better, one brain-spark at a time. i’ve been quite busy these days, but also very grateful that i’m able to manage all of this, and still keep my weekly nexialist commitment. thank you for sticking around! enjoy! 🫀
1 year ago » 😏✨The Nexialist #0041 : Some Updates | Atheist | A Second to Midnight | Full of Yourself | Soledad | Debilidad | Exaggerated | Cool
🔺third places
this video went viral on twitter a few weeks back, and it stayed with me. nathan brings ray oldenburg’s concept of third places, which are an important pillar of creating social interactions, meeting new people, and people who might think differently than you. he connects this to the loneliness pandemic in the USA, and it really hit home. working from home, it reminded me my places are mostly digitalized, squished in my screens. yikes, i need to find my third places!
The term, which was coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s, essentially refers to a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where conversation is the primary activity. The historical examples that Oldenburg cites in his book The Great Good Place include French cafés, German American beer gardens, and English pubs, all of which appeal to people from various walks of life.
Read: The Forgotten Joy of Hanging Out in ‘Third Places’ - The Atlantic
🪦heterotopia
thank you, gustavo, for sending this to me. when i first read it, i thought it had to do with a place for straight people (as the world is today), but it means something else.
Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Muslim baths and many more.
read: heterotopia (space) on wikipedia
plaskrul
i thought it was funny that the public male toilets of Amsterdam are used to illustrate the concept as “an example of a heterotopia of ritual or purification.” i think they are quite charming (even if they do stink), and i just learned they are called pee curls (or plaskrul). they are also a reminder how cities are made for men:
The man-focused design came to the spotlights in 2017 because a woman in Amsterdam was ticketed for public urinating. The offender did not use the pee curl because of the possibility of cleavage while crouching. She refused to pay the fine because of discrimination against woman. According to the judge, the pee curls are suitable for women and she was forced to pay the fine. This led to the national urinalpeeaction Zeikwijf that got international attention. Amsterdam knew in 2017 besides the urinals in total three public toilets that are suited for woman. This is lower than in comparable cities. In 2017 Berlin had 177 public toilets and Paris 150 public toilets
read: pee curl on wikipedia
👾legacy of gifs
if you follow me for long enough, you know how much i love a good gif, so i was very happy to find this article. did you know that gifs could not be used for many years because they were patented?
When the web started to become mainstream around 1993, the Gif really took off. In 1994, CompuServe and Unisys (the company which licensed the technology Gifs relied upon) patented the Gif format and essentially said that, if anyone wanted to use Gifs, they would need to pay a licensing fee – a notion defiantly at odds with the democratic, open source ethos of the internet. “The web was still the web, and there was a rebellion,” Lisa recalls. “It was a massive scandal. Literally overnight, people stopped using Gifs.”
i loved the mention of erma fiend, a multimedia artist who makes beautiful gifs and talks about this ever-changing format. super inspiring!
Erma also notes that Gifs’ short, isolated format, and being able to make one full piece in a day, is “a powerful medium for self-expression” which has allowed the artist to explore many more themes and concepts than would’ve otherwise been possible. This has been of personal importance to Erma, who admits “my own journey as a trans person has shifted largely because I started doing Gif art, and had an outlet for making these self portraits. You’re watching this depiction of a human form that’s morphing and changing shape and coming apart and coming back together, but it feels like there’s a wholeness, a static nature to it, in an unchanging way.”
read: The creative legacy of Gifs: Past, present and future - It’s Nice That
🌹wuthering heights
recently this video from a singing competition appeared on my feed. i was so impressed! i got so many chills while listening. anna maz is a Brazilian singer and this was her final number for the ‘canta comigo’ show. she won the season after such a stunning performance. just press play and enjoy!
👑la emperatriz
we love some rigoberta bandini here, with her quirky and powerful sound. lovely to see her in the gallery, especially the part where the choir is there with her. cozy.
🍊grapefruit
tove lo has been releasing one hit after the other, and this one is no exception. so powerful and necessary to see this theme about fighting body dysmorphia and anorexia.
⚢la isla de lesbos
javiera mena appears here sometimes. i have been addicted to her new album nocturna, since it came out. i discovered her years ago while doing a desk research about chile, and i’ve been listening ever since. i also appreciate her openness about her sexuality and how consistent she is with her music.
🏳️⚧️brazil elects two trans women
this month brazil is going through general elections, and this is one of the biggest reasons to celebrate. Erika Hilton and Duda Salabert are now the first openly trans women to be part of congress. historical!
“We are going to get off the street corners, we are going to get out of jails, we are going to get off crack corners and prostitution and start to think about public policies and legislation,” Hilton, a Black trans woman, said after the outcome was announced. “Our mandate in Brasília will be more organised, more committed and closer to people.
See you next week, my dears!
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