alice smith

I don’t think the tools themselves are the problem; it’s how the entirety of human culture has been digested and regurgitated by them.

Brands are just tools for consumers to describe their personality. If your personality is flat, then you wear obvious things.

Curators slow down the unending scroll and provide their followers with a way of savoring culture, rather than just inhaling it, developing a sense of appreciation.

You must choose your way forward. The data shouldn’t tell you how to live—you train the AI to paint a more beautiful future - SSENSE

Because brands are only as old as the people who direct them. That’s why you’re now seeing a deterioration of people following brands, as opposed to designers and stylists.

So it’s going to be about celebrity?

It’s going to be about visionaries.

Despite all the crises we face – the cost of living, climate change, AI – any of which should surely be enough material to inspire real and meaningful art, the overwhelm of information paired with exhausting post-capitalist forces has created an atmosphere that is nihilistic and excruciatingly mid.

When reading about the motivation for launching these various curation initiatives, it’s clear that it’s not only about rebellion, but also about the critical act of archiving.

I’m curious about the way it’s impacting our inner monologues. The constant self-analysis, the picking-apart, the internal work . In collusion with capitalism and social media and the digital panopticon, seeing ourselves through a therapized lens means regarding the self as the ultimate project. It’s easy to forget there are other ways to live.

For thousands of years, Earth’s resources have been extracted by bodies, most of whom were not free. But now it’s our bodies and ourselves being extracted.

- Hans Ulrich Olbrist