Severin Matusek

The canonical example of the 2010s was probably the trend-forecasting agency K-HOLE, which was formed by four art-school friends who, while grifting fashion-industry jobs in New York, became ‘interested in the total collapse that comes with being the thing itself’. As it turned out, they were exceptionally good at ‘the thing itself’ – publishing... See more

The Slowdown is also a collective of editors, writers, photographers, filmmakers, producers, creative directors, and strategists who work on special projects for major companies and brands, from a podcast series with soundproof booth company ROOM to a short documentary film for Van Cleef & Arpels and a book with Molteni (as featured in PIN–UP 37).

What the internet allows us to do is to see what we have in common. This resulted in a new experience of what it means to be a person. We have multiple lenses and identities ready to be activated at any given moment. They are meaningful. Digital avatars are just as meaningful to us as other identities.

Because brands are constrained by the number of people who come in contact with them, they are directly affected by the accessibility and velocity of information.

There was, however, an alternative theory. The internet was not primarily a channel for the transmission of information in the form of evidence. It was better described as a channel for the transmission of culture in the form of memes. Users didn’t field a lot of facts and then assemble them into a world view; they fielded a world view and used it... See more

As the rest of the internet gets overtaken by bots and AI-generated content and oligarch-owners livestreaming megalomaniacal presidential candidates, the self-contained publications controlled entirely by professional humans win out.