The threshold city
A functioning city feels like a miracle, or a dream. It is! Pinpointing what makes a city “functioning” is not really the point here, and any candidate requires a tailored analysis. There is still some statement to be made about the living, experienced combination of **a) **things being kept close to each other (you being close to things) + **b) **flow being maintained (of people, goods, and ideas).
This structured combination resonates with all corners of the world and continuously attracts people. But keeping this dream alive requires upkeep through the unspoken contract—that people will continue to try to make room for some vague sense of commonality.
U have to actually feed the dream.
Open Studio at 47 Thames
Where can I go? Where can I be? Doesn't everything feel a little... flat? Last week's open studio/co-working experiment was an exercise in creating new public space. A collective desire offered tangibly, with the hope of inspiring positive questions: why not step inside? Can I let curiosity glow here? Did you really bring your dog in a stroller?
Time spent in 47 Thames, ideally, is a reminder of what’s possible now, and we hope spurs some thought for those who stopped by: to be more public-minded and activate spaces for the commons in whatever analogous ways they are inspired to.
An assumption of perpetual motion / When cooperation flatlines
Ppl rly think the world fuels itself... but cooperation is a miracle, and we have to keep performing tiny miracles to not lose it. These can be as simple as waiting for those exiting the train before you step on, and extend to small-scale ordinances like bus stop maintenance and filling potholes.
Malignance and non-violence come together in a tense union within the threshold city, the city on the brink. Non-violence (as action) isn’t a retreat or a turning away, it’s an intervention. Ya… better believe it.
The appearance of any road, the stacked bricks that house billions, the semblance of organization, is difficult to picture, let alone predict. A city is not built to last, but comes with living instructions to maintain that we shape and share with each other.
Abstract money, real ass people
Insurance and debt - record - insatiable archive - football fields and islands of data servers - who are you trying to be today - where did you get that from - what can I worry about - where is everybody - ———
As economy becomes increasingly de-materialized, we see an inverse intensifying of how much local materiality matters. Here, "mattering more” doesn’t just refer to the 𝓹𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓫𝓮 caring about your activity and whereabouts (the constrictive forms of physical control enacted top-down like hyper-surveillance, corporeal policing, etc.), but also the new yearnings for connection beyond digital mediation that we see being expressed at a p2p level. This is a door re-opened.
