🧊✨The Nexialist #0161

indigenous histories | pachakuti | várveš | prediction consensus ‘24 | did the future already happen? | sora | laborer, craftsman, artist | too much too little | weird world | generator

Feb 22, 2024

welcome to another weekly fresh batch of curated content, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this e-mail finds you on a good day (or at least not the most hideous one). as i write this i’m getting ready to go to argentina and meet juan and i haven’t packed yet. so without further ado i’ll let you skip to the filling of this edition, which is full of brainsparks. a big hug 🫂✨

—Rodrigo Turra

1 year ago » 🎭✨The Nexialist #0109 : jumping carnaval | salvador | pitanga aka surinam cherry | house of carnaval | thriving in paradox

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

🪶indigenous histories

last weekend i had the privilege of going with my mother to masp, museum of art of são paulo, and visit their much necessary exhibition called indigenous histories. yes, in plural, because it represents artists from australia, brazil, canada, mexico, new zealand, scandinavia, and peru. it is so rich to see how these perspectives cross, compliment and differ from each other, to see work from 2bc to contemporary art. i was in awe to learn new vocabulary and see themes like time, change, and genocide, from their perspective. i brought a couple of new words and texts from the exhibition so you get some brainsparks with me. i hope to see more of this, not only in the museums, but also in the media, politics and other arts.

We are living in a historic moment, in which there is an energetic movement in contemporary art towards enormous visibility for Indigenous arts and creators- the fruit of the labor throughout history of the struggles that have been paving the way for the next generations. This ebullient period is now taking place in several countries, with artists and curators from many different peoples and cultures.
Genocide and structural racism generate losses but do not kill Indigenous dreams, which breathe and come to life in native art from many different ethnic groups and their differing narratives. Indigenous artists have been articulating and producing unique and powerful creations, which will not go unnoticed by the world. The proposed change Is to think of a less Westernized world, in favor of more comprehensive art histories with other leading actors a world where many other subjects fit and that is less white, less European, and less patriarchal. A world that honors its origins.
(…)
It is necessary to think beyond the vocabulary and logic of Western institutions. Art is also an enchantment to keep the bed of preserved dreams" alive in a commitment to the next generations, as the Indigenous Brazilian writer Ailton Krenak puts It. The people to come will continue to weave their identities, the inheritance of their ancestors, and the keys to their worlds, philosophies, and cosmologies that will live forever.

brainsparks: lo-tek: a new mythology of technology (tn#43), amazonize the world, indigenous thinking for troubled times (tn#32)

🌀pachakuti

masp

A post shared by @masp

PACHAKUTI - THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN
Telling a story requires a narrator. For a long time, we have heard the stories of native peoples through non-indigenous voices. The story narrated here is that of the representation of individuals who went from being conquered objects to objects of study, who have transformed and reformulated themselves to be heard and felt, in a meandering process of increases and decreases, like the flow of a river. Understanding individuals who cannot be understood outside of their community and the space they inhabit has been elusive to the non-indigenous society since it is based precisely on the construction of individuals that are either exempt of or conquering their environment.
Pachakuti is a Quechua and Aymara concept that refers to a radical change in the order of space and time. This radical change is what has transformed the world of many civilizations upon coexistence with the Europeans. For their voices to begin to be heard, it is necessary that the non-indigenous also succumb to a transformation that allows them to understand these differences from a complementary, and not a confrontative, standpoint.
José Marla Arguedas, a Peruvian writer and thinker, describes it this way: "One is always spoken of as the interpreter of the indigenous, and that seems very partial to me since you cannot know an indigenous if you do not know the other people who make this indigenous what he is. Only those who also know, with the same depth, the peoples or social sectors that have determined the indigenous to be as he is now, and as he changes and transforms, can know the indigenous well.
Pachakuti: The World Upside Down is curated by Sandra Gamarra, Guest Curator, Lima, Peru.

the exhibition on the underground part of the museum starts with this text, and the brainsparks became goosebumps. it’s about the radical change europeans brought to indigenous civilizations (against their will) and a proposal to let them be changed through indigenous influence.

brainsparks: maría lionza, syncretism (tn#44)

🔮várveš

Sápmi is the name of the territory in Northern Europe where the Indigenous Sámi live. Sápmi includes large areas in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola peninsula in Russia. We share a strong and intimate relationship with nature and with our lands, which is often manifested in duodji. The term encompasses the Sámi worldview, spirituality, knowledge, conceptions of nature, creativity, and the creation of objects reflecting life. Sámi artists, duojdrs (makers of duodji), and curators have been part of the International art world for decades and now work in all kinds of media.
Várveš is an old Northern Sámi word, designating a state of mind or ability to sense something before others, to see and hear more than those around you. It can also mean the ability to predict things happening in the future, or simply to know when to keep quiet and hide your knowledge when it is threatened. [In English várves could be translated as prescience or foresight). Várves can also be linked to Sámi animistic religion. It is a divine gift when it comes to survival and being a part of nature, but it can also be deeply disturbing since it confers a responsibility to tell and warn, as artists often do.
In a time of an increasingly severe climate crisis caused by ever-expanding capitalism, often with fatal consequences for Indigenous peoples, too many ignore the warning signs in nature. Indigenous artists have kept the connection to their land and their spiritual world, trusting their várvel abilities, and are now raising the alarm in the hope that the world will listen and act, and take responsibility for the environment and our continued existence.

Várveš, Hidden from the Day is curated by Irene Snarby, Guest Curator, Tromso, Norway.

i was very happy to see a whole section dedicated to this word, várveš, as a sort of foresight or prescience, but with such rich nuances that we devalue in western society, like intuition.

brainsparks: time for indigenous futurism (tn#65), polyfuturism (tn#158), ancestral future (tn#112), art predicts (tn#1), foresight as activism (tn#143)

🔭prediction consensus ‘24

talking about foresight, this appeared on my e-mail recently, and i love the format. while i miss more social/cultural predictions, it has good insights from economy, tech, markets and geopolitcs. on the visual capitalist page you can read more about some of the items.

brainsparks: meta trending trends ‘24

🧊did the future already happen?

thank you, gust, my time traveler friend, for sharing this, as it connects perfectly to today’s nexialist. it’s always delightful to learn mind-bending things, especially about time.

Relativity is based on one powerful principle – cosmic democracy: the fact that the point of view of all observers in the universe is equally valid. All those “nows” have to be equally real. But if this is the case, your past, present and your future all have to exist at the same time, right now!

brainsparks: decolonizing our time (tn#10)

🎬sora

How does Sora work? Sora creates videos by first compressing raw video into a lower-dimensional latent space and then decomposing it into spacetime patches, similar to how large language models use text tokens. It uses a diffusion transformer approach to predict "clean" patches from noisy input, allowing it to generate videos of various durations, aspect ratios, and resolutions.

Heather Cooper

made a nice post with everything you need to know about sora, openAI’s groundbreaking text-to-video tool. the video above is from two minute papers, also explaining how sora works. sora is not perfect, but less than a year ago we had those disturbing clips of will smith eating spaghetti. it is just insane to see the quick progress. i cannot wait to see the ai-generated music videos, and also scared for the fake news potential. also, loved this term:

temporal coherence. This means that the AI understands exactly how each image in the video should follow each other.

(important updated: new footage of will smith eating spaghetti resurfaced, and the internet can’t decide if it’s real of generated by sora. expect more of this…)

brainsparks: ai —engines for imagination? (tn#85), ai’s ethical compass (tn#114)

👨🏻‍🎨laborer, craftsman, artist

“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”
― Saint Francis of Assisi

how about those who work with AI? this question did spark in my head. i think the key here is to not outsource everything to AI, but to add another layer. GPT4’s completed it as:

He who works with AI, harmonizing the strength of hands, the intellect of the head, and the purity of the heart, pioneers the dawn of enlightened creation.

via gust

brainsparks: art predicts (tn#1), artisanal intelligence (tn#149), alternative intelligence (tn#150), self-outsourcing age (tn#17), centaur mindset (tn#106)

🤏🏼too much too little

There was a time
When all of us were running through the rocks and plants
Such a long time ago
Now we're trying to reach the middle

georgia’s new bop is about meeting in the middle. the opening line was a trip back in time and i just needed to add it here.

brainsparks: it’s euphoric (tn#114),

👤weird world

yes, every song dropping for allie x’s new album, girl with no face, i am bringing here because i am obsessed. weird world is a nihilistic and a bit heretic tune (hail satan, she chants). she even sings in german.

Das Lied, das mir den Weg zeigt / The song that shows me the way
Das Lied, das Lied der Zeitgeist / The song, the song of the Zeitgeist
Das Lied, das mir den Weg zeigt / The song that shows me the way
Das Lied / The song

brainsparks: mistress violet (tn#31), black eye (tn#144), umwelt (tn#86)

🦾generator

justice’s new video creeped me out with its horny, sexy, creepy robots… what am i watching? what am i even feeling?

brainsparks: homunculus (tn#43), sci-fi love (tn#69), twerking robot (tn#1)

see you next week, weirdos 🫀✨

🫀✨thank you for reading The Nexialist. This post is public, so feel free to share these brainsparks 🧠✨

🔎If you want to see what I’ve already posted, visit the archive and use the search engine. Even I do that a lot.

💌I want to know what you think/who you are! Your feedback is highly appreciated; you can e-mail me or fill in this short survey. Thank you! 🙏🏻

🔌Let’s Collab?

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.

I offer inspiration sessions called Brainsparks, creative desk research (Zeitgeist Boost), Plug’n’Play deals for workshops and sprints, and other bespoke formats. If you want to know more about this, send me an e-mail with your challenge(s) and we can figure something out together. Check out my website and some work I’ve done below:

thenexialist.xyz

The Nexialist