alexi gunner
@idlegaze
cultural strategist
writes idle gaze; a newsletter exploring the undercurrents of the modern zeitgeist.
cultural futurist @ RADAR
alexi gunner
idlegaze.substack.com
You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.
from The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
- Stark reminder of the parlous state of afterdark subculture in so many cities around the world. In the UK, for instance, 75% of nightclubs have shut since 2005 (75%!) - and, truth be told, so much of what survives is very corporate and highly contrived.
They say nothing good happens after 2am (or is it midnight?), but in the case of creativity, that... See morefrom Feed Updates
- n Hannah Black’s essay for Artforum, “Go Outside,” she describes the possibilities illuminated by 2020’s riots, emphasizing a return to social life and public space. A riot, she writes, is “just something that can happen when a lot of people are outside in the same place.” She continues: “By providing new uses for public space—by uprooting street f... See more
from There Are Trees in the Future, Or, a Case for Staying by Protean Magazine
Why do American cities feel less "alive" than their European counterparts? It's because of something called the "missing middle". A century ago, American cities looked completely different... (thread) 🧵 https://t.co/zwNWejfx4L
from Just a moment...
from Just a moment...
- The story of humanity is an urban one, a slow 20,000 year drift towards a largely urban condition. A city does the same thing to individualism that a natural ecosystem does to a tree — thriving there is about living well with people who are not like you. Just as a tree revels in those multifarious interdependencies, so we do with cities.
from 11: Post-traumatic urbanism and radical indigenism by Medium
It's not only UK dance music of the Nineties that is associated with cities; the whole history of popular music is about urban scenes. It's no accident that Motown started in Detroit, house in Chicago, hip-hop in New York… Cities are pressure cookers which can synthesise influences
quickly and in a way that is both collective and idiosyncratic. Scen
... See morefrom þÿK-punk by þÿMark Fisher,Darren Ambrose
- Amartya Sen used to say about London that "cultures cross like ships in the nights". I think this argument is even more true with social networks; what seems to fade is actually very much alive somewhere, but not in your feed.
from Laurent François on Substack