🪕✨The Nexialist #0167

cowboy carter | you and me | creatures in heaven | what memories are made of | dancing star | museum-worthy | naked by marina abramovic | p*nis positivity

Apr 04, 2024

welcome to another edition of your immaterial weekly zine, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you well. this week i got a bit all over the place (as if i don’t every week), with the easter holiday and living in between two eclipses (thank you, gustavo, for telling me). this edition i might have gotten a bit carried away by beyoncé’s new album: i even considered making the whole edition about it. but then i was brought back to reality with other brainsparking content: music, science and nudity. also, wish me luck (and fun) as this weekend i’ll be deejaying in club nyx in amsterdam, which i’m excited (and a bit nervous) about. now…enjoy your reading 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🪕cowboy carter

beyoncé did it again. i’m not even north american and her new album, cowboy carter, the act ii, made me cry, it gave me chills, it made me dance, and made me think so many times: her mind. i had never thought about it, but beyoncé is a nexialist. the way she connects ideas, making this collage of past, present, future, is just perfect.

this isn’t a country album, and we knew that, but we didn’t know what that meant. what she is doing with cowboy carter is retelling the history of north american music, and not only reclaiming country, but reinterpreting it, bringing together other rhythms, emerging and established black country artists, established country figures from past and present, iconic covers, samples and interpolations.

in the first song, ameriican requiem, she lays out her thesis and seems to be mourning that old idea of country music, inviting us on this journey.

Nothin' really ends
For things to stay the same, they have to change again
Hello, my old friend
You change your name, but not the ways you play pretend
American Requiem
Them big ideas (Yeah), are buried here (Yeah)
Amen

i also saw a wise analysis of dora guerra on tiktok. of course, there are these annoying fans hating online, comparing beyoncé and taylor swift, and how long the credits are for each song in beyoncé’s new album (as if this is a measure of who is better).

she says it makes no sense to compare, while taylor has built her image in her songwriting and more personal music, beyoncé has been building her career about the collective, hence all the references, samples, interpolations and credits. this is queen behavior.

this album, as much as it has country and americana has a lot in common with hip-hop. the idea of naming your roots, saying where you’re from, quoting your influences, sampling them. this doesn’t sound like a hip-hop record but it’s definitely in the culture.
with this album, cowboy carter, and renaissance, the previous one, beyoncé is going full on historian mode. this is just like, spectacles on, taking out the books, underlining the things, she’s in her professorial era. […] it’s like, taking me to to school with each one these albums. god, we could talk about these songs for hours, there’s so much thick reference and history. i love it. there’s this commentary on the history of american music as it’s also adding to that lineage through its own sonic experimentarion and innovation.
—switched on pop podcast, by musicologist nate sloan & songwriter charlie harding

(i cannot post this without mentioning the brazilian funk sample on the spaghettii track from o mandrake, precisely in the track where linda martell talks about the definition of genre. iconic!

brainsparks: amazonize beyonce (tn#76), beat diaspora (tn#125)

⚓️you and me

my favorite boyband, goldband, released a banger this week, with a beautiful video directed by casimir mulder. [spoiler alert] somehow i see a parallel with beyoncé’s vision in the video: an old couple in their boring routine, resistant to change, being challenged by the youth, and ultimately surrendering to their chaos.

brainsparks: mullets (tn#3), affordable romance (tn#33), stiekem (tn#94)

🪐creatures in heaven

such a cute trippy video got released while creating this week’s nexialist. glass animal’s last album gave me chills and made me cry so i cannot wait for what is coming next.

brainsparks: MRI scan (tn#53)

🧠what memories are made of

“memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it.” this headline made me click and read this article on nature.

When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows.

so, some sort of next-level-brainspark occurs (a nanothunder?), and the healing of this becomes a memory? like a memory factory? if that is the case, this is the coolest thing i saw this week. it also

brainsparks: nostalgia theory (tn#19), liveware (tn#56), wish-processing facility (tn#22), three elements of innovation (tn#75)

🩰dancing star

the pet shop boys’ new album is also coming soon. this track feels like a song found in a time capsule from the 80s.

Inspired by the life of Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet dancer who defected from the Soviet Union and became a global star, "Dancing star" is the second single taken from Pet Shop Boys' forthcoming new album, “Nonetheless.”

imagine how cool to have the pet shop boys doing this homage. meanwhile, in russia, the ballet about his life has been censored due to the ban lgbt propaganda.

brainsparks: loneliness (tn#159), domino dancing (tn#91)

😱museum-worthy

the new campaign to participate in the aicp awards made me giggle. what if van gogh and frida kahlo had to respond to clients like in advertising agencies?

It's Hard to make museum-worthy art. It's harder to make museum-worthy ads…
Winning work will join the film archive at MoMA.

brainsparks: state of culture 2024 (tn#164), art predicts (tn#1)

🍑naked by marina abramovic

marina abramović’s work is now at the stedelijk museum in amsterdam. in the video above, a dutch youtuber asks her about why nudity is important for her, and ends up getting naked in the front of the camera. i’m pleasantly surprised youtube hasn’t taken it down.

brainsparks: bff nude portraits (tn#79), naked education (tn#115), naked truth (tn#13), art not pornography (tn#114), kids at nudist beaches (tn#88), life in the buff (tn#98)

🫠p*nis positivity

talking about nudity, i would like to share another project of mine, flaccid zine (or paumolice, in portuguese). i think i mentioned it before, timidly, but more and more i’m allowing myself to experiment with a theme that is dear to me (nudity, the taboo of the penis and masculinities), and with other formats (hopefully soon we’ll have something printed). the latest post is about p*nis positivity and why we need to talk about it. check out the post in english and portuguese.

brainsparks: bigorexia, body shaming stories (tn#79), the dangers of big d*** energy (tn#104)

see you next week, cowboys🤠✨

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