Agalia Tan

A performative reader treats books like accessories, lugging around canonical texts as a ploy to attract a romantic partner or as a way to revel in the pleasure of feeling superior to others. While everyone else is scrolling social media, the performative reader insists upon his intelligence with attention-seeking insincerity, begging to be noticed... See more

Blame your tools

Blame the clients. And blame the conditions.

But then, you’re on the hook to get better tools, find better clients and work in better conditions.

It’s not convenient, but it’s possible.

If it’s not worth the effort, we can simply accept what we’ve chosen and get back to work.

“I like it when people make clear artistic decisions,” he said. “In a time of so-called A.I., personality becomes even more important.” Using technology to randomize content and narrative, he added with a laugh, “becomes a little bit garbage.”

Furniture is solid. Furniture is dependable. Furniture is rarely changing. Furniture is the heavy things that hold down the corners of your life.

But when you live in another country, like me, and you’re never sure how long, exactly, you’ll be living in that country, like me, your relationship to heavy things changes. Maybe this is true if you’ve... See more

There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised.

Don’t Predict. Orient.

When the signal gets too loud and the data loops back on itself, strategy stops being about knowing. It becomes about noticing when the rules have changed.

We’ve exited the era of fixed playbooks. You can’t plan in a straight line through cultural volatility.

You need to know when to pull back from pattern and feel for the... See more

not only are we playing an ever-expanding cast of characters, but we’re expected to commercialize them for public use, before facing their contradictions head on in the panopticon of our digital ecosystems.