VALUES FOR SURVIVAL TUNING TO RHYTHM: CAHIER 3 Edited by Caroline Nevejan and Huda AbiFarès
17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia Parallel Research Program of The Netherlands' Contribution
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Values for Survial: Cahier 1 (00–05). Published in July 2020. Values for Survial: Cahier 2 (06–20). Published in December 2020. Values for Survial: Cahier 3 (21–34). Published in May 2021.
Chapter title pages: paintings by Simon Gawronski.
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VALUES FOR SURVIVAL TUNING TO RHYTHM: CAHIER 3 21 CONNECTING SPHERES 06 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
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EVERYTHING & NOTHING NATURE’S RHYTHMS TUNING TOGETHER RHYTHM IN FIGHTS MAGIC WEAVING NETWORKS RHYTHM & ALGORITHM CIRCLES IN FIVE SURFING THE WAVES WHIRLING LITTLE GIRL BEING IN SYNC TO TUNE OR NOT TO TUNE PAINTINGS INDEX & BIOGRAPHIES
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CONNECTING 21 SPHERES
STORY BY CAROLINE NEVEJAN IMAGES BY HELEN VREEDEVELD
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How do you think up the right question at the right time? Some questions travel around the world for ages and seem to end up in the minds of different people right at the same time, even though they don’t know each other and they live far apart.
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The question I’m going to ask is just such a question. It has been traveling around the world for maybe centuries. It has already been solved in many ways without people giving words to it. Today, my question is urgent
because we are forgetting to think about it. It connects to how we live together and how we live together with all other forms of life too. We tune ourselves to friends and family, to cats and dogs, to plants, trees, mice and mosquitos all the time, and we don’t even know how we’re doing it.
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When two dogs run together, they quickly start jumping at the same time. When two people walk together, their legs easily move up and down as one. We tune in to the rhythm of day and night, to the seasons that give sun and rain and cold, we tune in to when the strawberries are ripe and to when the corn is ready. We tune to each other and celebrate when we can.
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This new question is about tuning in to the rhythm of others. Rhythm is a series of movements, a series of sounds, spaces and shapes that vary one by one, but all together make up patterns. Rhythms make moments and the moments in between moments, rhythms
create earth and space, and energy and help us to synchronise, to act together as one. Most of all we love to tune ourselves to music. The rhythm in music makes us dance, it makes our hearts feel free and lets us enter new worlds we didn’t know before. Rhythm seduces us and rhythm helps us to find our way, wherever we’re going.
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In an ideal world, good governments tune themselves to the rhythm of animals and plants and make sure that human communities integrate and respect the needs of all beings. This sounds easy, but it’s not.
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Nature can be dangerous, hard to understand and unpredictable. You do not have to deal with such uncertainty in cities. Most people now live in cities where traffic lights allow them to move safely, and the opening hours of schools and workplaces, grids for lighting, heating, and air conditioning allow people to live independently of the weather, seasons and climate.
There are many shops which sell just about everything, including a rich variety of foods and goods. The rich people in cities at the beginning of the 21st century live like the gods in ancient times, and nature’s force and violence seem far away.
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At the same time, millions of children in the world have no shelter, no clean water, they have no food, they are exposed to drought, floods and hurricanes and sometimes have to flee their homes. Climate change is taking place faster and faster. It is changing our local environments in the whole world forever.
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The strange thing is that rich people in the cities don’t feel this change, nor do they feel the suffering of others elsewhere. And unfortunately, the people who decide what governments do, mostly live in these cities. If only we could feel the whole planet again, we are so out of tune with each other. How can we retune to the rhythm of life? Tuning to life is about tuning in to others, other human beings
and other animals and plants. It is also about tuning to creatures we cannot see and do not know. Because most other beings are still unknown to us. If we do not recognize the rhythm of others, this rhythm can be like a concrete wall that prevents us from engaging. Sometimes, such a wall of ignorance even generates hate. How can we tune to, and interact with, something that we don’t even know?
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Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out – air filling our lungs in a steady rhythm for as long as we live. With breath, we move, without breath we stop. When you are close to your friend, you both soon start breathing at the same time.
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The rhythm of breath connects. Nature is full of rhythm and these rhythms connect. Nobody directs the beat. All beings tune themselves to the rhythm of others. In only one square meter of soil, there is so much life.
Worms, ants, fungus, moulds, roots, spiders and microbes move together and are part of the rhythm of the world. And we lie in the grass and breathe with, and through, all of the rhythms around us. We feel we are rhythm in rhythm in rhythm in rhythm in rhythm …
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Most people today live in cities that have become communities of systems and people. Electricity and transport, for example, are as much part of the city as the buildings and the people are. The internet and the algorithms that make it work influence what people do every day.
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This offers a window to the world, and allows people to stay in touch. Search engines and social networks tune themselves to you while you tune to them, and so a hall of mirrors is created as a spectacle of fact and fiction, in which tuning in to the rhythm of others is no longer straightforward.
How can you feel what’s happening beyond words when you only meet on a screen, and only see what has been specifically prepared for you? The online world offers great opportunities to stay informed, and yet it manipulates you at the same time.
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You have to take a risk, take a first step and surrender to what will happen next. Maybe you will be hurt, maybe not. Maybe you will be surprised and happy to find a new friend. When you decide to trust, listen to your body, it knows. Make sure you take care, stay fit and dance and sing to balance your soul.
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Your body is the ultimate instrument that can help you to decide to trust or not. The body is sensitive and uses all of its senses to make good decisions and survive. Without you even noticing it, the body tunes in to the rhythms of
others. Expose yourself to the varieties of rhythms in different communities of people and explore the variety of nature around you. Learning helps you to make good decisions. Once you know how to swim, you can dive deep into the ocean. Let your body learn, don’t be afraid, this is our way to survive.
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When we lose our connection with each other and the world around us, we need to find new ways to help us tune in. Can we tune to the rhythm of the stars, the rhythm of the clouds and the wind in the cities that we inhabit?
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And how do we tune in to the rhythm of our body and the rhythm of our soul? How do I tune in to the rhythm of you? Things take the time they take. The moon can’t move faster, the waves need to break in their own time, breath needs to let go and the soul must take the time it needs to heal.
It’s during ‘this-time-it-takes’ that rhythm emerges. This is why I asked my friends, and the friends of my friends, to tell us stories and send us images to better understand this one question: How can we tune in to the rhythm of others?
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EVERYTHING 22 & NOTHING
STORY BY JUAN CARLOS GOLIO IMAGES BY FRANCIS SLING
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Once upon a time, there was a place called Everything & Nothing. You know, kind of like Trinidad & Tobago, but different. It was a divine island, where everything was made out of a vast nothing. And I mean everything!
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All the things were living in different types of thinghoods and thingforests, all connected on the Thingternet. Every single thing felt like a thingdividual. And this thingdividualisation of Everything & Nothing sometimes resulted in things getting a bit hairy or even out of hand. Sometimes things fell apart. This story about Tera and Simia took place in these times.
Tera’s thingdividuality is kind of like the soil and that of Simia kind of like a seed. The story of Tera and Simia is from back in the days when it was still of help to wish for something. It was passed down via many things, huge and tiny, over many generations to reach these pages. Here goes nothing...
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“I need some water,” Simia asks. Tera seems distracted.
everything and there is nothing that can pull its attention to Simia.
“The temperature has to be just right. It’s all a matter of tick tock tick tocks,” Tera says. Tera seems to be busy with
Simia can't take it anymore and charges down on Tera. “What are you doing?” Tera asks and moves away.
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“I’ve been asking for some water for some time now and you just don't listen!” Simia charges at Tera again, this time everything starts to tremble. Nothing stood still.
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Tera tries to dodge Simia again, but fails. Bagadam! Simia tries to stay calm, but fails. Everything starts spinning. Even nothing. Tera is a bit shaken up by all this and tries to find thingself.
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“I will not ask you again. Things can go very South from here. Where is the water, Tera!?”
“I told you already. Everything takes its tick tock tick tocks!” Simia prepares for another charge.
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“Wait!...stop...Maybe you’ll understand me, if I show you where I keep all the things that came before.” “Before what?” “Here and now!” “What kind of things, Tera!? I’m getting tired of your games.”
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“Similar things to us. Here and now is like a rhythm, where things go tick tock, boom bep, click clack.” “Well,... I want me some woosh swoosh, gulp gulp and some aaaah!” “Yes, that’s it! Then that’s the rhythm that will lead us to water.”
Simia only hears one thing... water. Tera continues rambling. “Look around you. So many things in so many moments, dancing their own moves to the cosmic beats of an intergalactic carnival. So lively! Your rhythm has to be in here somewhere.”
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“You lost me at intergalactic carnival... actually, all the things that came before. All I want is water. I don’t know which language I should speak to you for you to understand.” “There is really nothing to it! I heard you, did you hear me? Tune in and we can find water together.”
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Simia starts listening. First, they hear a lalala resembling the Dutch carnavalskraker, then a choro like a Portuguese Fado, then Simia briefly notices a nanana similar to the Brazilian Samba, then Tera cannot ignore the
jump and wave of the Soca, but they are caught by something having the signs of the heeesooo of Curaçaoan Tumba. All of a sudden woosh swoosh, gulp gulp and some aaaah!
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Tera wonders why Simia drinks everything. “Everything is nothing, right?” Simia answers. “Will everything need water,” Tera continues. “I believe you know the answer to that question yourself, Tera.”
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“We finally have some water. How can that be a waste of tick tock tick tocks?” “How so?” “Aren’t you everything?” “This is nothing like I expected it to be, I am wasting my tick tock tick tocks.”
“This feels like such a jumbled up mess, Simia...” “Yess, a hell of a mess! But since nothing is everything it’s also a heaven of a mess. I’m enjoying this muddy mess!”
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“Would you stop messing around, Simia?” “Why? I finally understand you. There is so much to learn in these muddy waters. The days of feeling dried out, dazed and confused are a thing of the past!”
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While Tera and Simia keep exchanging thoughts, something comes to life, with its own vibe, all bundled up and tight. It pushes aside both Tera and Simia. It emerges like everything and nothing so often do. It roots itself in all the things that came before and like both Tera and Simia it became a thing in itself. The End.
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... Actually, the story doesn't end here. Actually, the story never ends. Even if the thing in itself is eaten by a goat. It is said that the contact between Simia and Tera is forever imprinted in the groove of everything and nothing we nowadays consider the cosmos. Some call this groove the natural order of things. Some call it God.
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Some call it the universe and all that is the case in the current moment. Or is it the currents which are guiding the moments. I am never sure. Nevertheless, the only direction keeping the cosmic beats of everything and nothing in the intergalactic carnival is joy.
Joy knows no origin, no maker. Joy is Tera and Simia. Joy is everything and nothing continuously in contact. Why...? I guess, a thing of beauty is a joy forever!
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NATURE’S 23 RHYTHMS
STORY BY SIRISHKUMAR MANJI IMAGES BY MAX KISMAN
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The country of India is wrapped in music and rhythm in all the spaces one can dream of. My ancestry comes from the state of Gujarat, where my grandparents migrated to Mombasa, Kenya, on steamships. My father was born in Mombasa, but he found himself back in Gujarat, where he married my mother. They moved back to Tanzania and shortly thereafter, I was born in the city of Tabora.
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My father, Pandit Bhagwanji Manji, was an accomplished classical singer, multiinstrumentalist, and teacher. He taught me how to play, beginning at the age of 6. He opened my eyes to the fact that rhythm is everywhere in nature, our cities, and in our daily lives.
An opportunity came along for my father to produce and perform on television in Uganda. I was less than a year into my study of rhythm and sounds of my tabla when I performed at the age of 7 for my father’s television audience. Since then, I have toured and worked with an incredible variety of musical talents, performers, and composers combining Indian classical influence with jazz, contemporary, classical, pop, and musical traditions from around the world.
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My father taught me that taal, which means rhythm in Sanskrit (India) is a traditional rhythmic pattern that is evident everywhere in classical Indian music. I will share a few anecdotes here, where you can hear the rhythm and notice how rhythm comes from the movement of animals or trains or anything else that moves.
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TIN TAAL We live in an amazing world where there is music all around us. Our planet has many examples that can teach us all about rhythm. Horses walk and run in a consistent way. You can also hear this same rhythm when you are listening
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to a train pull out of a station. As the train goes faster over the joints in the railroad tracks, the rhythm increases in the same uniform way. Musicians need to play their instruments in a uniform and consistent way that allows them to stay in the same rhythmic line, which is the essence of beautiful music.
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EK TAAL & CHAR TAAL Another animal that can teach us about rhythm is the elephant. Elephants are slow and deliberate in their movements. We can say that the first step is the strongest and loudest in every 4 they take. The Bada Khayals are sung to this Ek Taal because of their slow and deep rhythm (Bada describes the
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long gaps from beats 1 to 12, and Khayal is an ‘imagining’ in slow notes). Char Taal is the base rhythm that resembles the slow and deliberate walk of an elephant. As with horses, when elephants begin to run the taal changes. Similarly, when the ancient Hindustani classical
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music style (the Dhrupad Gayan) is sung, the tabla player starts to move away from the first slow movements of the Char Taal to play in the quicker Tin Taal. As he does so, the faster Tin Taal no longer resembles an elephant but rather a herd of deer racing across an open field, leaving a singer to follow the same movement of the deer by leaping from one note to the next.
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JHAP TAAL
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Once the camel is fully seated, this is considered the fourth beat. The camel’s movements from a standing position to sitting, and the other way around, signify the Jhap Taal.
ground. The second beat is the right leg bending forward to kneel towards the ground, followed by the left leg bending to complete the third beat.
The Jhap Taal has 10 beats that follow the movement of a camel from a standing to a sitting position. The first beat is the front legs bending to the
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KEHARWA TAAL The donkey has its own taal. Donkeys are ridden by children so they can learn how to ride horses and, in some cases, are also kept as calming companions for nervous horses. Since the donkey is a humble animal that can cross any kind
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of landscape, the taal is also used frequently in all kinds of folk songs. This is called the Taal Keharwa. It has beats that can be played in two, four and eight note sections that suit every type of dance and folk song. We can imagine, for example, a peacock
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dancing with movements of 4 steps to the right and then 4 to the left, bringing him back to his original position, in the same way we would dance to a song. That is why the Taal Keharwa is perfect for any kind of dance or folk song.
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DADRA TAAL The Taal Dadra is another example from nature that is depicted by a pigeon eating grains from the ground. In this taal, the movement consists of three beats. The
first beat consists of the pigeon picking up a grain and looking sideways. The second beat includes moving one or two steps forward. The third beat is the repetition of the first
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two movements. Because of the simple nature of this taal, it gives a song the essence of beauty that touches us deeply. If we visualize a group of pigeons, we can see this harmony played or rather danced within nature.
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Our family moved to England in 1972, where I continue to live and run a musical recording studio in London. Since I’ve lived in London, I have been exposed to different kinds of rhythms. I am reminded of how cities, nature and other sounds are different in each place that one lives.
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The rhythm in England, for example, is different from India, and Uganda. As we open ourselves to the magic of musical rhythms in nature, whether it is listening to the
Underground train move out of Victoria Station, or a train in Mumbai going to Delhi, we can see that the symphony of the universe is vast and infinite. That is how I see the world when my fingers are playing through each sound on my tabla.
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TUNING 24 TOGETHER
STORY BY DEBRA SOLOMON IMAGES BY GIJS FRIELING
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What a funny bunch we are here in Amsterdam Zuidoost. Some of us were born here, some of us come from faraway places with different cities and countryside, different farms and gardens. Here, tall apartment buildings are surrounded by lawns with tiny woods, roads, carparks,
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shopping malls, bike paths, a playground or two, and a metro station. Our neighbourhood is only 50 years old. It was first designed as a large park that would reach the nearby farmland. It was to be the greenest part of Amsterdam. We love it here. But, we would like our greenery to be even more enjoyable than when it was first
designed, especially now during the pandemic, and during the climate crisis. We would like greenery where we can harvest fruit, nuts and herbs. We want the animals and insects to feel safe here, living among more trees, flowers and fungi than they can count.
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We are going to grow a food forest from the lawns and tiny woods, and store rain in the trees and soils. It will cool our summers and warm our winters, protect us more than the greenery does now, preventing winds and drought. It will
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provide food for everyone here – humans, other animals, plants and fungi. If we design it well, when it grows it will almost take care of itself. Some plants will cover the soil, keeping weeds away or keeping the soil from drying out. And we’ll give space to the hardest workers of all – the insects and earthworms.
The soil will become rich, absorb more water and allow more plants to grow. We will work with the seasons as part of an enormous diversity, right in the middle of the city. What a funny bunch. And some of us are not even people!
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But how do we imagine more than-what-is already there? If we make a food forest starting with the greenery we already have, the tiny woods and lawns, how can we be sure of what we already have? If none of us can see all of it, or know all of it, how do we know what is really
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there? We all notice different things about this place because we are so different. Some of us notice trees, and others notice soil. Our group is filled with expert noticers – bird and insect noticers, and birds and insects that notice wildflowers! Some of us notice the neighbourhood as it’s been for 50 years, and some of us notice what’s happening
in the neighbourhood now. During long walks together, we notice the way everyone notices and this is becoming our language. And we are becoming a community. It’s fortunate that we are so different, so that we can notice more things together differently.
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We have started gathering on Wednesdays to cook and eat, to plan and draw together. Starting with our different ways of noticing, we design how to add more plants, and more-than-plants, to the food forest. With the city’s support we are planting winter flowers, tempting more bees to join us. But the city mowers like the
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lawns kept short, and one April while the bees are still eating, the mowers only notice the length of the grass. A bee’s song: “Just when the wildflowers bloom in spring, all the lawns are rhythmically mown. 22 times till the end of October, before
wildflower seeds are set and sown. Where nectar was once connector of all the city's greens, flowers’ futures were seeds sown through bird-butts and wind. When the mowing begins, bees' bellies go empty. Flower powers defeated by other powers that be. 22 times, rain or shine by design. Fragmented landscapes cause species decline.”
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The mowing continues and we approach the city to see how to stop it. The city loved the food forest idea, and knows that changes to the lawns and tiny woods, adding more-thanplants, means changes to the way these are cared for. But now, the noticing and the caring for the food forest is turning the entire city on its head. The food forest may make our
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neighbourhood more liveable, but it makes the city’s jobs more difficult, taking time away from how things are usually done. The city doesn’t plan by noticing seasons and rain, but plans through agreements and spreadsheets. Waiting for bees
to finish eating and waiting for the newly added plants doesn’t work, so the city dives back into their planning spreadsheets and tries to make it all fit. When our community suggests that ‘mowing’ is also ‘noticing when not to mow’, the city thinks we’ve gone too far.
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So, our community has approached the planners of the city’s green spaces – designers, managers, moneyfolk and cleaners. We talk about noticing, about adding to what is already there and give them reasons to care differently. This process takes months, and while the mowing continues our community loses a year of rainy planting seasons.
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But some of the planners notice our noticing. They are reminded by our community of the neighbourhood’s history, what its green design promises. Some planners notice some advantages to adding plants and community care. True, the food forest responds to the climate crisis by storing water, CO2, and creating biodiversity.
But the food forest also offers opportunities for old and young neighbours to work outside together. Maybe the food forest is an opportunity for the city to learn how to trust and support our neighbours. Maybe the food forest is an opportunity to invent new city planning.
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City planners are similar to our community. They work on the same issues with different ways of noticing. Some are more powerful, if you want to get something done in the city, you have to get many others to agree. This may take lots of time, but in this way decisions are reached together.
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Sometimes planners don’t know how to find all the people that need to agree on an issue. When this happens, creating agreement takes a lot more time. The food forest was a small part of one neighbourhood in our city, but many people are taking decisions about other parts of this area.
The city planners have disagreed about the food forest in many ways – whether the climate crisis was more important than building new apartment buildings, or if the bee community was as important as the mowers. Even if the deputy mayor supports our food forest, there is always someone who does not agree.
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This is hard to understand. How can the city support our food forest, but be unable to stop the mowing? If the greenery of the food forest has more and more uses, has more advantages, then more and more city planners need to find ways to agree. This frustrates many neighbours, many bees and plants. Some of them want to give up on the food forest.
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But then something special happens. A new city planner joins our group. This woman understands how communities notice and design, and how the city notices and designs.
She gathers her colleagues from different groups and instead of focussing on the food forest as a whole, she reaches agreement about how her colleagues can agree on its constituent parts. By connecting our community and our city colleagues we start practicing a new type of planning for our food forest.
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What a funny bunch we are here in Amsterdam Zuidoost. Some of us are city planners, some of us were born here and some of us came to live here from faraway places. Here, where tall apartment buildings are surrounded by green space, our community of noticers adds plants to the tiny woods and lawns.
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It is becoming a large park that will reach the nearby farmland. It was always Amsterdam’s greenest area, but now it has more uses. We have started harvesting more fruits and herbs, and the animals and insects have begun to feel safe living amongst more and more trees, flowers and fungi.
Our newly developed ways of planning allow fewer lawns to be mowed. More flowers are blooming and sowing their seeds, and more bees are staying for dinner. Spring has arrived, and the planner, her colleagues and our community have formed a new funny bunch.
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In the lawns and tiny woods of Amsterdam Zuidoost our community is slowly growing a connected food forest that stores rain in the trees and soils. It is a food forest here on the ground, but it also exists in the city planners’ way of working and noticing. Already there
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are spreadsheets to protect the bees’ food and to help our community to help the food forest to grow big enough to take care of itself. New plants already cover the soil, keeping weeds away and keeping it from drying out. And the hardest workers of all – the insects and earthworms – have entered into the city’s agreements.
More and more, we are working with the seasons as part of an enormous diversity: planners, neighbours young and old, together with bees and trees. In the middle of the city, we are a funny bunch working together. And some of us are not even people!
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RHYTHM 25 IN FIGHTS
STORY BY MARIE ROSENKRANTZ LINDEGAARD IMAGES BY CYPRIAN KOSCIELNIAK
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MARIE: When I was young, I used to be afraid of fights because they make you draw boundaries – say what you like and don’t like – and when you do that, you risk rejection.
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In the house where I grew up people always tried to avoid fights by locking themselves up in rooms, refusing to talk, and keeping quiet for days. When I grew older, fights still made me uncomfortable, but I also started
to realize that fights were unavoidable. I had to deal with them, and my way of dealing was to start looking at fights as something to study.
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As a grown up, I learned by studying fights that they are not as chaotic as they might seem. I found out that fights have rhythm. Now I study fights by watching others who are involved in them and by speaking to them about their experiences.
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I’ve spoken to people who had drawn the ultimate boundary by killing their opponents in fights. I became friends with gang members, who fought every day to impress others. I watched hundreds of fights in real life, and analyzed them from video recordings.
I compared human fights with those of non-human apes. I discovered how fights follow patterns. By looking at them in that way, you can learn how to deal with them and make them manageable. If you start looking more carefully at your own fights, what rhythm do you see?
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My daughter Sea is now 11. I explore with her what fighting is about. SEA: I never hit anyone at school. Sometimes I’ve felt like hitting. The situations that make me angry are when others push me into a role. When they see me as a stereotype and not a person. When people think I’m
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weak because I’m a girl, or think I can’t play soccer because I’m a girl, or don’t know suffering because I’m white, or don’t understand things because I’m young. MARIE: Fights are natural. We fight with friends about being left out, with parents
about rules, with brothers and sisters about privileges, with strangers about boundaries. Through fights, we get to know and understand the world better. We learn how to balance other people’s interests and our own. We learn why certain things feel important.
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SEA: When my friends fight, it feels like I can’t avoid getting involved. Their anger and frustration fill my body, and I want to float on their emotions with them. When I get into that headspace, I know I need a break. I try to keep my distance, look the other way, to make the distance between us bigger, or leave the room.
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MARIE: Fights are infectious. When we fight, we feel what others feel and try to match up with their emotions. This matching up, or tuning to the rhythm of others, makes us fight more, or look for close contact. If someone shouts
into your face up close, you feel their aggression, and often experience aggression yourself too, and then more shouting is likely to happen. If someone moves and scratches themselves nervously, you feel their distress, and often experience distress too. When people see someone who is distressed they are likely to respond by helping them.
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SEA: When I get angry, I point my index finger towards the other person, my opponent. If my opponent is older than I am, they sometimes laugh when I point my finger, as if I’m not serious. The laughing makes me angry. Then I switch from pointing to slapping their arm with the flat of my hand.
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MARIE: Fights are possible to spot. Fights follow certain patterns of behavior. You can see a fight coming from a long way away by the pointing of an index finger,
a widening body posture, and impatient movements back and forth in the same spot. Ending up on the ground during a fight is risky, as aggression often gets worse when one person is down on the ground.
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SEA: I witnessed a stabbing in our local supermarket. The offender left on foot at the same time as I left with my friend. Instead of walking on the quiet street that I would normally choose, I made a detour to walk along a busy road because then I could always ask someone for help if I met the offender.
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MARIE: Fights are something you can deal with. In most fights, there are witnesses present and they tend to take an active role in intervening and calming down the conflict. If you become
involved in a fight, you can rely on these people. And if you feel threatened in a public space, you can rely on other people too. So, if you can choose between going home on an empty or a busy street at night, go for the busy one because people will help you if something unsafe happens.
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MARIE: Fights are cultural. SEA: When I get angry, people often think I’m having a bad day or I didn’t sleep well. When my brother gets angry, they sooner see him as rude and aggressive.
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Culture plays a role in how we see fights and when we think we need to do something about them, or intervene. Our cultural ideas about men and women influence how we respond to
fights. People often consider conflicts between men and women as more private and less worth intervening in than conflicts between men. And women can use more severe violence than men can, before anyone intervenes.
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SEA: When I want to pick a fight, I move closer to my opponent. I speak louder, stare with wide eyes, make my body broader and use my arms to widen my posture. By making myself bigger, I feel stronger and dare to speak my mind. If I want to calm things down, I do the opposite.
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MARIE: Fights are about what the body does. We think that fights are about what we say but, in fact, they are about what we do with our bodies. When fights take off, people often move forward and make themselves bigger. When people try to calm down, they touch themselves and
others. Touching leads to less stress and shows connection. The feeling of connection makes people move together as one, or ‘synchronically’. If one person moves forward, the other follows. This ‘synchronic’ movement is common for lovers, but even in fights, people move synchronically in the phases where they feel connected.
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RHYTHM IN FIGHTS 25
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MAGIC 26
VIBRATIONS STORY & IMAGES BY INNAVISIONS RIDDLES STORY AND IMAGES BY REIN JANSMA
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6 60 6
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RECONNECTING SPHERES 21 MAGIC 26 21 RECONNECTING SPHERES
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62 6
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26 MAGIC 21 RECONNECTING SPHERES
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765
SPACE -
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TOGETHER The city close to others close with others sometimes separate Searching for connection searching for what divides us what connects us our eyes meet
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Obvious knowledge for one might be new for me, or another How can you become visible or intentionally anonymous
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Cut a strip of paper and, after turning one side over, use tape to connect the ends.
Then, cut along the dotted centre line all the way around.
Draw bicycles on one side of the road, until you have gone all the way around.
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AND AGAIN If you do something for the second time it is different than the first time so, actually, it is a kind of a first time
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To not do things twice
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Can you make a journey with a pencil and cross all the bridges 1 time, not 2 times?
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TO TOUCH For a chess board two colours are enough The colours are only touching points with the same colour
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For this map you already need three colours
Can you think of a map that needs 5 colours and draw it?
Mapmakers of the world map would like to know the minimum number of colours we need to colour any map
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DIZZY If you swing on a swing for a long time you might go askew perhaps because of the rotation of the city that is attached to the earth
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SUN On a sunny day chalk each hour where the shadow is of a lamppost, traffic sign or a tree on the pavement
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The sun makes the rhythm of day and night and winter and summer Why are the shadows shorter in the summer? And does that make the winters colder?
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27 VALUES FOR SURVIVAL: CAHIER 3 21
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CONNECTING SPHERES 21
WEAVING 27 NETWORKS
STORY BY LIPIKA BANSAL IMAGES BY HITANKSHU BHATT
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It’s small things that can have a big impact on a human life, that’s how I was brought up. I was born in the heart of Amsterdam, in a tiny house with a shop. I used to play in the shop, where my parents sold the most beautiful colourful and sparkling things, earrings with purple and diamond-like stones,
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colourful scarves, skirts, bright cushion covers with mirrors and even strange-looking wooden puppets. There was always something to discover in the shop and fantasize about. The customers used to come in and out, and I remember that I loved to help them select silver beads to make necklaces and bracelets. My parents are from Delhi, India. Before I was born,
they used to travel together and select the most beautiful objects from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Later, my father went by himself. There was a fixed rhythm: my father travelling to India to work with the Indian craftspeople and my mother running the business from here.
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Craftspeople in India often live in villages with nature all around them. They follow the rhythm of nature. During the rainy season between June and September it rains non-stop. It is called monsoon. Children dance and take showers in the rain and everything smells of mud. Many craftspeople can’t
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do much work during the heavy rains. Printing fabrics is not possible because of the humid weather and the fabrics can’t dry. So, if you think about it, these fabrics are directly linked to the weather patterns and the seasons of the year. Even the colours of the prints depend on the weather. Colours become lighter with humid air, and the colours printed in the dry
season between October and March become more intense. The colours are made by mixing plants, roots and leaves, and letting the raw textiles bathe in alkaline water for a while. These colours are so intense, like the indigo from the Indigofera plant, that you need to wear long gloves to prevent you from getting blue hands and arms.
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From an early age, my parents took me and my sister to India. We visited family, but we also visited many different places. It always feels a bit like a magical circus with people wearing the most colourful clothes. There are animals everywhere, cows, pigs, dogs, monkeys, goats, birds, elephants, camels. There are always many, many people walking, cycling, driving on
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rickshaws, by bus, on top of the bus, by train, on top of the train, in trucks, on top of the trucks. The cities make hundreds of sounds and produce all sorts of smells, because everything happens on the street, bathing, cooking, eating, learning, teaching, working, peeing,
sleeping, living. You can even see people make the most beautiful fabrics on the streets by colouring, washing, drying and stitching them. Despite the overwhelming hustle and bustle, everything appears to fit seamlessly into the rhythm of the city. Everything is possible, everything can be made, and everything can be repaired.
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If you are born into a family of craftspeople in India, you go to school, but you also learn to make fabrics like your parents. If you are a boy you learn from your father and if you are a girl you learn from your mother. Like in many places all over the world, there was a lockdown. Also, the children of
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the craftspeople could not go to school. But they also don’t have a laptop to study from. So, the parents and grandparents told their children stories about their history. “Can you imagine that this knowledge is so old, that these beautiful textiles used to be made for kings and queens of India living hundreds of years ago. We can still make these fabrics, and even you can learn to make them.” The children
were so excited to learn to make the beautiful textiles: “How. Teach us, we want to learn!” You learn by using your senses; you have to carefully listen to the rhythm of the loom; you have to feel your body move to the rhythm of the chisel and you have to closely watch the rhythm of the pattern being printed.
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When I grew older, I visited the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and saw a brightly coloured children’s jacket and a baby cap. I learnt that these clothes were made in India more than 400 years ago. I became so curious that I just had to know more about it. I went to the library to read books, look at images and ask different people many
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questions about the textiles, our history and the trade between India and the Netherlands. I discovered that there was a lively trade route between India and the Netherlands in those days. It was a time when Europe was discovering the world outside. Traveling
by ship for months at a time, the Europeans found amazing products far away from home. They took textile ideas, designs, drawings and patterns from the Netherlands to India and would return with the products made of cotton and silk, beautiful coloured textiles made with indigo and madder.
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Both in India and in the Netherlands, this exchange changed the way people looked at the world. It wasn’t only about trading products, this communication also inspired new methods for making textiles, new patterns and images, new ways of learning and communicating, and even
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new habits. The Indian textiles became extremely popular in the Netherlands. They were a real fashion hit and people wore them to show off and say that they had bought the most beautiful textiles from faraway countries. They were unique in design with big mysterious looking flowers and beautiful exotic birds and creatures
painted with bamboo pen in the brightest colours. The most exciting news was that the colours in the fabrics did not fade even wash after wash. The Indian craftspeople caused a real innovation in Europe at the time.
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Where before, the craftspeople were proud and independent and respected for their skills, four hundred years later the landscape is very different. Most textiles are now made in factories, where people have to work many hours a day for little money. In some countries,
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even children work in the textile companies and don’t go to school. These factories are also known for how they bring pollution to the regions where they are located. Paint and artificial textiles are chemical products that create bad waste that pollute air, water and soil. Today’s fashion industry wants to earn a lot of money and
so it creates a rhythm of new collections all year through. In Amsterdam, we are happy when we can buy nice clothes for little money. We do not realize how these clothes are made at the expense of children, people, and the planet as a whole.
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Whether you are in Beijing, Amsterdam, Delhi or Mexico City, people look very similar and follow the same fashion, wearing jeans and similar coloured shirts. In these same clothes, which all people seem to like, you can find traces of the patterns and the colours of the textile crafts. For example,
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the colour of jeans is like the indigo from the old days. After a year or so, in all these cities, we throw our clothes away, and big mountains of thrown-away clothes rise to the horizon and pollute the environment again. Please remember that there are good ways to make clothes and bad ways. You and I, and all of
us, can choose more carefully what we buy and where we buy it. You can decide to buy unique clothes from the craftspeople who make beautiful fabrics with their hands. Maybe you can even become one of the craftspeople and help to make a good future for our world.
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RHYTHM & 28 ALGORITHM
STORY BY ALESSANDRO BOZZON IMAGES BY RICHARD VIJGEN, BASED ON REAL TRAFFIC DATA FROM THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM
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“How hard it is to wake up! I stayed up too late to finish that amazing comic book,” thinks Elsa, turning over in her bed. “Elsa, come and have breakfast, or you'll be late,” screams her mother from the kitchen.
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“I'd better get up,” thinks Elsa. “I need to meet Timo before school today.” In the kitchen, breakfast is on the table. But Elsa immediately picks up the phone... “What’s happening on TikTok?” she thinks. Time goes by, and Elsa still hasn’t finished her breakfast.
“You're still not ready!” yells an astonished mom. “It's almost 8 o'clock, and you're still in your pyjamas! Put down that phone and get ready!” “I'm on my way!” Elsa yells while leaving her unfinished breakfast on the table.
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The streets of Amsterdam are already very crowded. So many movements, so many rhythms. There are moms with children on their bicycles, cars waiting at the traffic lights, people jumping in and out of the tram. “I don't need my mom to take me to school anymore. I'm a big girl. I'm 10 years old,” Elsa thinks, as she begins to pedal. The line of bicycles is so long, and there are so many traffic
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lights on the streets. Luckily, they are all green for now. But at the end of the road, there is a big intersection. And there, that traffic light that always makes her late! Elsa takes out her phone to look at the time, but she gets distracted by a new TikTok message. While putting the phone back in her pocket, she does not realize that the traffic light has turned red! BEEEEEEEEEEP!!!! “Oh dear!”
She stops, petrified with fear. A large garbage truck has stopped twenty centimetres from her. Elsa does not know what to do and begins to cry. An old lady waiting at the traffic light takes Elsa by the arm and leads her off the street. The lady waves to the truck driver that everything is under control while she gently tries to calm Elsa down.
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“Heh heh, what a scare you had,” says the smiling lady. “But now everything is over, and you can cross the street now.” Elsa is still shocked and mumbles a simple “Okay.” The school is near, and Elsa can’t understand why the traffic light played such a nasty trick.
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“It was green, I'm sure. Then all of a sudden it turned red.” “That light hates me!” Still shaken up, Elsa arrives at school. “The traffic light played a trick on me,” Elsa tells her classmates why she is late. But everyone is angry at her. Even Timo looks really annoyed.
“You always have to look before you cross, don't you know that?” “Who knows what a scare the truck driver got? My dad says kids always cross through red lights, and then he's the one who gets in trouble,” says another classmate. “Maybe you were on your cell phone again…,” says Timo.
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Elsa feels it’s very unfair. “Why does everyone think it was my fault? That horrible traffic light always ruins everything.” On her way home after school, Elsa keeps thinking about that traffic light. “Every time, it makes me late! Yes, I could leave home a bit earlier, but the phone is so much fun! And why does it turn red all the time!?”
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It turns red AGAIN when Elsa arrives. “That's it, I knew it! Why? What did I do to you?” Across the street, Elsa sees the old lady who helped her a few hours earlier. “Good afternoon!” Elsa says shyly. “I wanted to apologize. I don't think I thanked you.”
The lady answers with a warm smile. “I hoped you’d be back! The traffic light told me you lost your phone this morning.” Elsa feels in her pocket. “Oh, no! My phone’s gone ! What do I tell my mom and dad? They’ll be so mad at me!”
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The lady hands Elsa the phone. “I told you, the traffic light told me where it was.” “But this really is my phone,” says Elsa surprised, “Thank you! But I’m sure I put it back in my pocket... and then everything happened...”
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“Come and sit here with me, my dear. I want to tell you a secret,” says the old lady. “See, I have special glasses. They allow me to see the hidden world of the city and to talk with the creatures that live there.”
“Traffic light 2.2.1 has been watching you for a while now. One of your hands is always busy with your cell phone. He and his team are always worried when you arrive at the big intersection.”
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Elsa bursts out laughing as she gets up from the bench. “That’s not true. I never do that!” says Elsa. “And I am 10 years old. Traffic lights do not talk! There is no hidden world in the city! I don’t believe in fairy tales!” Granny searches through her bag, takes out a pair of red
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glasses, and puts them on. “You know, the city is a very complex machine. It helps us to keep everything working in harmony. Take the traffic lights here. They have a very important job: they set a rhythm to all of us. The cameras and sensors in the ground are like eyes and skin, to see and feel people, cars, and bikes. Their brain is made of
algorithms that decide who can pass and who must stop.” “Algorithms?” asks Elsa. “Yes, instructions that are followed step by step, in the right order. Like in your mom’s recipe book when you bake cookies together.”
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The old lady waves her hand towards the nearest traffic light. “Hi 2.2.1, she’s back! She’s such a good little girl!” Elsa is now very curious: “Can I wear them? I’d like to talk with the traffic light too,” says Elsa giggling.
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“On one condition,” says the old lady, with a serious face. “You can’t tell anyone about these glasses. Only special people can talk with the creatures of the hidden world.”
Elsa nods. She’s so curious now. She puts the red glasses on and looks at the traffic light. After a few seconds, she takes them off. She looks at the lady and says, “You can see a little clearer, but I can't see anything special.”
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“Don’t hurry, little girl, try to get a good look and then wave at the light. Good manners are important!” says the lady. “Um...good afternoon 2.2.1...,” says Elsa towards the traffic light. Just then, traffic light 2.2.1 turns towards her for a second and
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“You know, I see you every day. My team and I know you well,” continues 2.2.1. “There you can see 2.2.3, 2.2.2.....and there’s 2.2.4, and over there 2.2.0.”
2.2.1. says, “I’m in charge of getting the bikes through safely, and when my team sees something weird, they tell me when to stop the bikes. We're a pretty good team, you know? Have you ever seen us at work? When there are a lot of cars waiting at a red light, we stop the cyclists for a few minutes to avoid congestion.”
Elsa's head almost spins. “You all talk with each other?” asks Elsa.
“What’s congestion?”, asks Elsa. “That’s when it’s really busy,” answers 2.2.1.
says, “Good afternoon to you, Elsa. I am glad you managed to find your phone.”
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“2.2.2 lets the cars pass right on the bike path. He was so scared when he saw you crossing through a red light. That big truck was going to run you over.”
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2.2.2 adds, “Yeah, luckily, I managed to warn the truck. Like every morning, there is a lot to do. You are always distracted, but I just didn't expect you not to look at the road.” Elsa realizes how much work the traffic lights do every day,
without her even noticing. And she understands the many mistakes she’s made so far. “So you guys are not mad at me? It always turns red when I bike here.”
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2.2.1 answers, “No, no! Our job is to regulate the traffic and to avoid congestion. We worry about you, but we are not angry at anyone.” “And we don't make any exceptions,” says 2.2.3 firmly.
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Elsa asks, “But why is it red for me every morning?” 2.2.1 explains, “Do you know that if you arrived 10 minutes earlier, the traffic light would be green all the time?”
“Really? Maybe the problem starts at home then...,” says Elsa, a bit embarrassed, realizing that all her problems are caused by her own habits.
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“Please forgive me for all the times I’ve blamed you for being late. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don't know if I’ll ever be able to see you in the future, but I will certainly pay more attention to your clear signals.”
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“You’re welcome,” answers 2.2.1. “You will always find us here. But remember to be careful and look all around.”
Elsa touches her face. Her glasses are gone. She turns, and the old lady is gone too. The traffic lights are also silent now. And everything has returned to normal.
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Elsa thinks that maybe it has all been a dream, but patting her face she realizes that she wasn't asleep, and a big smile covers her face. What had happened was really exciting.
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Elsa says another goodbye to the creatures of the enchanting world that she’d met just a few seconds before.
“See you tomorrow, guys.” “And tomorrow, I’ll see you 10 minutes earlier...”
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CIRCLES 29 IN FIVE
STORY BY ANGELO VERMEULEN IMAGES BY ARISE WAN & HEEYOUN KIM SEADS (SPACE ECOLOGIES ART & DESIGN)
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I was always fascinated by biology and the cosmos. When I was a kid, I would look at the world with both a microscope and a telescope. I would take drops of water from streams and ditches, and study the tiny creatures swirling in there. I would head out into the garden
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at night with my telescope, hoping that clouds would stay away and let me watch the stars. There is so much out there to discover. Actually, it’s very difficult to find a place where there is nothing at all – like a real vacuum. Even the enormous stretches of space between the stars contain small amounts of tiny particles. It’s never truly empty in space.
There are always little bits of molecules and atoms waiting for something to happen – interstellar dust. It might take a very long time, but eventually these lonely dust particles will get hit by something else in space. And if they do, different things can happen.
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Just like marbles hitting each other, they might get propelled to some new part of space. But if particles crash into each other at really high speeds, they get smashed into smaller pieces that all follow their own path. In a more gentle way, dust particles can also clump together because of gravitational forces and begin the formation of stars and planets. It is inside these stars
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that every atom gets made. But, there’s more than dust in interstellar space. There’s also cosmic radiation: atomic bits and pieces, like shrapnel, that travel throughout the entire cosmos at the speed of light. Nobody truly knows where they come from, but there are many theories. Humans must protect themselves from cosmic
radiation when traveling in space. Not an easy job, because these particles get inside almost anything. There is a constant dance of particles in space, moving away from each other, coming together again, clashing, breaking, fusing.
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Cyanobacteria (or microscopic organisms) are the beginning of the world as we know it. They are also called blue-green algae, and they make their own food, just like regular plants do. They soak up sunlight and CO2 from our atmosphere and use it to stay alive and create more cyanobacteria; all the while making fresh oxygen for
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us. But things used to be very different. On early Earth noone breathed in or breathed out. For the entire first half of our planet’s history, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. If you travelled back in time, you would have to take your
oxygen breathing apparatus with you. But cyanobacteria living in ponds and oceans used the Sun’s energy and started pumping oxygen into the world. Some cyanobacteria nestled themselves comfortably into other single-cell organisms, and together they evolved. They became algae and plants that produced even more oxygen.
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Slowly, the atmosphere as we now know it was created. Today, about half of the oxygen in the world is created in the oceans, the rest by plants and trees on land. Together, all these organisms, from the
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smallest cyanobacteria to the tallest trees, make up the living lungs of the Earth. As soon as the sun rises and the first rays of light hit them, they start absorbing CO2 and breathing out oxygen, replacing what we are consuming all the time. We can’t afford to lose them and
need to carefully take care of our oceans and forests. We all need each other, every single second, breathing in and breathing out, giving and taking.
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I love space and science fiction. And sometimes I build my own science fiction. Biomodd is an art installation project that I started with a group of friends. In this project, bacteria, algae, plants and fish all intimately live together with computers.
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The heat that is generated by the computer electronics helps boost their growth. Single-cell algae are pumped around the installation through tubes and cool down hot computer processors. The processors keep heating up because people play a multiplayer game that runs on the computers. Because the algae culture cools them down,
the computers don’t crash, but keep working. At the same time, the algae grow better because they get a little warmer. Even though the computer, the players and all the organisms use completely different rhythms, they all come together in one intricate exchange.
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I can imagine future spaceships where biology and technology are completely entangled and live together, helping each other and communicating with each other, just like in Biomodd. Seeker is another art project that I started with that same group of
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friends I talked about before. We really love building things. For the Seeker project we construct large spaceship prototypes using waste materials. We build structures sometimes 20 meters long, with wood and cardboard and all kinds of things from the thrift store. They do not really fly, but they help us to learn about our future life in space.
And just like in Biomodd, we build biological communities, or ‘ecosystems’, in these spaceships because we believe that the astronauts of the future will have to grow their own food.
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There are millions of asteroids in our solar system, swarming around the sun in different orbits. There are especially many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter; this is the so-called asteroid belt. In fact, asteroids are the leftovers from the start of the solar system, like rubble left after construction work. But they have their own special beauty:
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some asteroids are made of valuable metals; others have ice and organic materials in them. So, they might be very useful for building large interstellar spaceships that bring humans to nearby stars. Robots could mine the asteroid and the mined materials could then be used
to 3D print new parts of the spaceship. New rooms could be built inside the part of the asteroid that had been dug out, and when that space gets filled up, the other rooms could be added as a long tail sticking out of the asteroid surface.
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For this to work, the spaceship architecture must consist of different types of rooms, with different robots helping with all the work: rooms for people to work, eat and sleep; rooms for all the plants, animals and bacteria that keep people alive; 3D printing and assembly robots; and mining machines. Of course, almost nothing would
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ever be thrown out because if you are traveling deep in space, there are no extra supplies, no additional resources. The asteroid is all you have, and you’d better be very smart in how you use it. Every single molecule is valuable, and you want to keep on recycling all your waste as long as you can.
It will not be easy to build life out there in space because it’s difficult to work in space. And it’s very deadly too. There’s no pressure, nothing to breathe, it’s freezing cold, and there’s nonstop radiation. Creating a cycle of life with self-replenishing supplies of oxygen, food and fresh water is almost like magic under these challenging conditions.
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We are living by the rhythm of the Sun. The Earth spins on its axis in 24 hours, which creates night and day. It also revolves around the sun in one year, which contributes to seasonal changes. But these experiences will not always remain the same for all of us. Humanity will spread throughout the solar system and will start living on
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the surface of other planets and moons. And here, day and night might have completely different lengths. Did you know that even on our own moon, a day and a night each last two weeks? Humans will also start living
far away from planets, inside remote space stations where the Sun can hardly be seen. No more sunset or sunrise then, no more day and night. And later, humans will visit other stars where they will live by the alien rhythms of their new home worlds.
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At the same time, those cosmic particles from the beginning of this story will keep racing through all our bodies, no matter where we are in the universe. Those small atomic bits and pieces will keep reminding us we are all made from the same stardust. The billions and billions of atoms of our own body were once made
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inside some star – every single atom. It is only inside stellar cores that all the different atoms of the universe can be made because of unimaginable heat and pressure. And when the biggest stars die, they go out with a colossal bang and spread all those atoms through space where they end up in billions of planets. Here on Earth those atoms make up the sky, water, algae, plants, people, artworks,
spaceships… and books like this one. We, as humans, are part of all the simultaneous rhythms inside and outside our bodies, tucked into each other like nesting dolls. From electrons racing around their atomic cores and molecules being broken down and rebuilt inside our bodies, to ecosystem cycles on Earth, the movement of the Sun, and the swirling of the Galaxy.
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SURFING 30 THE WAVES
STORY BY IVO LIMA CARMO IMAGES BY BARRACK RIMA
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“To make a problem more beautiful is a noble task for philosophy.” Gonçalo M. Tavares
1. BODY AND SOUL (Excerpt from a surfer’s diary) “Due to the waves rumbling far away, I didn’t sleep a wink. The swell had arrived and I was too excited, looking forward to dawn when the wind would be still and the tide low. Early in the morning, I drove to the coast to see the magnificent swell coming.
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The ocean was striped in spaced blue lines, crossing the water at a constant speed. It was a northwest swell, a beautiful icy swell. Nobody was at the beach, but me. Perhaps because the forecast hadn’t been accurate in the last week, and nowadays
surfers are reluctant to leave home without checking it first. But this time the swell arrived earlier, and to witness it approaching the coast was a solemn event. It was like having a holy guest arrive without announcement. For the next few days, the agenda was cancelled, the waves were calling and I had to be ready.”
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2. A LONG STORY Before I became a surf instructor, I was a surfer. But, many years of experience as a surfer didn’t help me to explain how to catch a wave. As an instructor, I can give and
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explain plenty of information, but turning that information into useful know-how is a great challenge. It’s a journey that changes you, and you learn not only to stand up on a board and
slide over the waves, but to read the waves, understand them, discover wavescapes, where they come from and where they go. It’s all about rhythms, the rhythm of your body and your mind, the rhythm of the oceans and the skies. It’s a long story!
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3. THE BLUE STRINGS Fierce winds in Greenland can generate waves that travel a long way to Portugal. But not all the waves start in Greenland. Some swells are created by local winds. But, they look messy and choppy because they are
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too close to the winds that caused them. They are called short-period waves. Some swells are created by hurricanes that cause wild waves. The winds inside a hurricane move in a circular path, and create waves with frightful shapes. A swell that is generated far away, in a place like Greenland, is called a ground swell. It starts in a storm
system a long way away, at least 2000 miles from the coast, then travels from west to east, swinging towards the Equator. Swells are like threads that weave different wavescapes in the loom of the seas.
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4. WAVESCAPES OR THE VOICE OF A WAVE A swell is made of groups of waves travelling over the seas. If winds blow constantly over a distance of water, called the fetch, it will generate waves that travel until they find the shore of an island or continent. They
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can travel both short or long distances, creating different wavescapes. Each wavescape has its own unique rhythm. Different frequencies (the number of waves) and periods (the time between two wave crests) create the swell, but the local wind and the bottom of the ocean also shape the waves. Offshore winds lift up the crest, and onshore winds topple the
waves over again. When I catch sight of a horizon of waves in parallel lines, all spaced out, it tells me they come from a long way away. They look like a giant serpent snaking beneath the sea, roaming from Greenland. Dreadful storms in Greenland roaring loudly in the crest of the stunning waves in Portugal.
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5. TUNING WITH DATA Modern technology and its data have added something new to surfing: forecasts. They are like a crystal ball, telling us the wind speed and direction, and everything about the quantity and quality of the swell and the
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waves. It’s possible to foresee a wavescape coming weeks ahead, at any time, and at any place on the planet.To read a wave forecast is a bit harder than a weather forecast. You need to combine all the data and interpret it for that one location and its features. Is there
a reef or a sand bank? Is the bay of the beach facing west, southwest or south? This data is sent by satellites. But, tuning to satellites isn’t the same as tuning to waves. At the end of the day, even satellites follow the same universal law that rules tides, the moon and waves.
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6. I WANT TO BE LIKE THE SILVER SURFER! If you want to learn how to surf, you need to learn about wavescapes. To tune to the rhythm of the wave, you might need a board and some surf lessons. Let’s do it. Spend some time on dry land first. Warm up. Study the water. Use a big
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surfboard. Always use a leash. Don’t be afraid, but don´t be a hero. Take it easy. Start small. Master lying down first. Practice your pop-up on dry land. Enter the water. Lie on the board. Find your balance. Float. Be calm. Wait for a wave. Paddle, paddle, paddle. Learn how to avoid
nose-diving. Don’t swallow water. Close your mouth. Get used to falling off. Don’t copy others. Learn how to fall properly. Don’t bend your back. Stay up at a right angle to the water. Listen to your body. Try again and again and again.
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7. THE FEELING AND THE TIMING You’ve tried again and again. But, something isn’t working and instead of catching the timing of the wave, you end up in a terrible whirlpool. The board flies away, your legs and arms
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are twisted and stretched like spaghetti. You are under water and don’t know which way is up or down. The beautiful calm waves you saw on the horizon have crashed on your head. “What am I doing wrong?” you think. To tune in to the wave,
you need to realise that you’re joining in a motion that started some time ago. The wave is travelling at a certain speed and you need to join it right at the moment that the wave is passing you. It’s like jumping into a moving train. It’s all about the impulse and the timing or – in other words – it’s a matter of feeling.
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8. GOING FOR IT AND SURRENDER Paddling is very important in surfing, because it’s what lines you up with the speed of the wave; otherwise, the wave will run over you. When the wave gets closer, you need to start paddling, but paddling is pointless if you don’t have the feeling – an impulse – with the
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right timing. And still, feeling isn’t enough if you don’t go for it. In this very important moment, the crest of the wave rises and you get lifted up, just before it wipes you out. At this point, you might feel frightened and you pull the board back. And it’s ok to feel frightened, but you won’t catch a wave if you
don’t go for it, because catching a wave is not something that just happens by accident. To catch a wave demands strength and paddling, the feeling of the right moment and going for it. Everything happens in a few seconds and in one single action. You are surrounded by so many forces coming at you, starting with your own mind. You will only be ready when you surrender.
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9. HE‘E NALU, THE ANCIENT ART OF SURF It’s a strange idea that there was once a society with codes of conduct based on surfing. Then when Western colonists arrived in Hawaii they banned it. Surfing was not a hobby, but a way of life, which you still hear in the Haiwaiian term he’e nalu – ‘wave sliding’. Boards were used
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in rituals, free-time activities, training Hawaiian chiefs, and as a way of settling arguments. Surfing meant more than just being personally happy. It was part of the social, political and religious code, known as kapu. Surfing isn’t banned in Hawaii now, but that ancient society
no longer exists. But, some treasures are still hidden in the Hawaiian language. They still greet each other with aloha, which has many meanings, such as love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy. People say this word is related to a force that holds all existence together.
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10. TUNING ISN'T TAMING “It's all about where your minds are at.” Kelly Slater (legendary surfer) The surfboard has developed since it was created in ancient Hawaii. It was first made from the wood of local trees, such as the koa (but now from foam
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covered with fiberglass cloth, polyester or epoxy resin). The surfboard reflects the culture it came from. In ancient Hawaii, boards combined nature, handicraft, culture and policy. To tune in to the waves, Hawaiians must also tune in to all these other things. Making
a surfboard was a spiritual process. Many surfers imagine ancient Hawaii as a golden age when body and soul, nature and community were one. Nowadays, things are different, but nothing stops you or me embracing surfing. Anything that looks like a narrow board and can float will work: a plank, a boat, a fridge door, a table or a guitar case.
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11. ALBERT EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH In the town where I live there is an astronomer. I used to find him watching the waves in the same place where I often go surfing. The astronomer told me that waves aren’t water moving, but energy moving through
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water. He also told me that if he knew the exact weight of the surfer, he could calculate his exact speed in the wave, using the equation he gave me on the piece of paper below. Humans and dolphins have their own special ways of understanding waves. To surf the waves, I need to become more like a dolphin.
(original paper from the Astronomer Manuel Rosa Martins)
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WHIRLING 31 LITTLE GIRL
STORY BY KAOUTHAR DARMONI IMAGES BY WISSAM SHAWKAT
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Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a country called Ifriqia, in North Africa. She felt very lonely because she was forbidden to do many simple things, such as playing in the streets, climbing trees, dancing in the sea, just because she was a girl. She found it so unfair. The thing she suffered from the most was the violence. There was a lot of violence from men
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against women, boys against girls, just because they were women, just because they were girls. The little girl, we’ll call her Coco/ Kaouthar, felt that was so unfair. She suffered so much from the violence of one of these men, her Babbo, her dad, against her mom, and her sisters.
She couldn’t help it but stand up in front of her father to protect her mom. She would try to cover her mom’s body with her tiny body and take whatever punches she could to protect her mom. With every punch she would remember what her grandmother said to her, “A man can hurt your body but make sure he never hurts your soul. You must protect your soul, no matter what.”
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To protect her soul, Coco/ Kaouthar danced. Every day. She had invented a whole ritual of dance movements to protect her soul from the violence of her Babbo and the men of her tribe. She had two favorite places to dance: the toilet and the sea. The toilet dance had the ‘Caca’ (poo) repertoire. All the shit that she had to get out of her body. She began with shimmies, shaking movements, to cleanse herself of the shit of fear. The fear of her father’s violence, which paralyzed her.
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She started with a small shimmy in the knees. Little by little, these small shimmies became bigger and bigger, turned into fire, which rose towards the top of her body, from the knees, towards the legs, the pelvis, the lower abdomen, upper stomach, chest…
Her whole body was dancing with fiery shimmies, and the fire became a volcano and dissolved all those knots of fear that were stuck in her body… And here, she was like a Phoenix burning to ashes… Once the body warms up, the volcanic fire turns into lava, into a glowing liquid flowing through her body. Then her body starts to undulate slowly, in a mesmerizing way, like a snake, in a big wave starting from the hips, to the belly, to the chest…
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Dancing the big wave from down to up, rising with the lava energy from her vagina, to her belly, to her heart. While her body undulates, she opens her arms and starts dancing with snake arms, spreading out and flying, to the highest altitudes.
monster. The phoenix arising from the ashes. Then she flushes the toilet, flushes the fear of the monster, and goes back to face her destiny, like a phoenix.
There in this dark little toilet, she felt reborn again, full of hope and courage, fierce like a warrior, ready to face any
Sometimes the toilet dances were not enough, she needed more space, to spread out. She would go to the ocean.
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She liked to dance the story of Moses crossing the Red Sea, as told by sister Marie-Thérèse at the Catholic nun’s school she attended in the winter, and by ‘Hadj Ali’ the teacher at the Koranic school she attended in the summer. She preferred the Muslim version, as it was more adventurous and fun. And scary.
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Little Coco/Kaouthar would stand in front of the ocean, focusing on the horizon. She would slowly wade into the ocean while making figure-eight movements with her hips, just like the letter ‘H’ in Arabic, one circle to the right, one circle to the left, pushing the water out to the sides with her hips.
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She would imagine her hips ‘opening’ a dry pathway through the sea. She would spread her hips as wide as possible to push the water out to the sides, so that the dry pathway grew wider and wider, transforming into a long, wide highway that would take her to the other side of the water, to Europe.
Like Moses, she must escape the pharaoh-Babbo, go faraway, out of reach of the violence of the men of her land. She would not look back, so as not to be frightened by the sight of her father and the angry men (and women) of her tribe pursuing her, like the Egyptian army pursued the Israelites led by
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Moses into the red sea. And with the power of her hips, she would part the ‘White Sea’ (the Mediterranean) to allow her to cross to the other side. Once she felt out of reach, she’d look back to enjoy the sight of the sea water returning to normal and engulfing those angry men led by the Pharaoh-Babbo.
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And when it was full moon, she would celebrate her victory, by whirling on the beach, feeling the caress of the hot white sand under her feet and the silver reflection of the moon on the ocean.
She would spin, spin and spin, like her Sufi ancestors, the Dervishes wandering from Turkey, passing by Ifriqia to Andalusia, whirling with their dances of ecstasy. And she would dance in endless circles and spins until she fell on the hot sand, exhausted in a trance…
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She would lie there on the sand for a while, and then crawl, rolling like a seal, to enter the sea and let herself be carried by the waves to the abyss of the ocean, focusing on the moon and imagining she’s gently carried by the sensual waves to the land of Syracuse, conquered long ago by her ancestor Hannibal of Carthage.
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And once there, she’d dance like a Queen, like a Goddess “On Top Of The World,” her hips swinging fiercely and sensually up and down, her small breasts pointing proudly and tracing circles, her arm raising to the sky, carrying the flame of victory to enlighten the world with her feminine power.
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BEING 32 IN SYNC
STORY BY SATINDER GILL IMAGES BY NAJI EL MIR
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In our normal everyday lives, before the COVID lockdowns, we used to meet our friends and family and hug and play together. Not being able to has been difficult and sometimes made us feel low. Seeing and hearing our friends and family moving on a screen helps us feel better. There is a good
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evolutionary reason why, and it has something to do with music and dance! It begins in our mother’s womb. Even before we are born, we can hear the rhythms, pitches and melodies of our mother’s voice. Have you seen how adults talk to babies,
making funny noises and funny faces? Well, when you were a baby, those exaggerated voices and faces helped you to imitate what the adults were doing. By moving with adults, we learn the social rhythms of connection, which are so important to survive. Amazingly, we perform this tuning in micro-seconds!
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Our baby cries and murmurings and our mother’s whispers and melodic voice are the first music we make in life. You could write a musical score for it. Music and dance are everywhere in human cultures. They help us to care and they help us to thrive.
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They help us to connect and hold each other; tuning to the rhythm of the sound, we move together as one, or in sync, and turn and slide and jump and back again. Music and dance socially bond us. We are actually hardwired to move to music and rhythmic sounds, so even if we sit still while listening to music, the motor neurons in our brains
are still firing! Being hardwired includes moving our bodies to each other’s voices, or falling into step with the sounds of someone else’s loud footfalls, or breathing with the sounds of nature when walking in the fields. We can’t not tune to the world around us.
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Can we still be with others when we are not in the same space? Well, when we communicate with a friend online, we create a new space together, a new sphere, where we can send each other sounds, share a cup of tea and smiles, and in this way, we can tune to each other.
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Sometimes though, while we are doing this, we might not be aware of what’s happening in our physical world, so we might burn the food while skyping a friend, or not notice what our parents are saying to us at the dinner table. But tuning works both ways. And science has shown us that we actually
tune together in milliseconds! This two-way tuning is also essential for learning, and your virtual schooling during COVID lockdown has been a mixture of virtual tuning with your school friends and teachers, and tuning with your parents helping you with your school work.
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How do we tune, actually? We improvise! We improvise every day of our lives in how we walk, how we move, and how we talk. Conversations are improvisations. Improvisation is about acting when we’re uncertain and taking a chance on someone. As we improvise, we imagine the other person,
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have expectations of their next move, what they might say, what sounds they might make, but we have no certainty. When we are online, there might sometimes be a delay because the technology needs time to send our signal. And then we have to wait for the
signal to arrive, so we have to change the rhythm of how we communicate. When we take a risk with someone, we do so with trust. Why? Remember that tuning works both ways, and working both ways involves trust. Perhaps one day we will improvise with the risks of time delays and make great music in networked transmission!
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So what is trust? Who do you trust? Can we tune with someone we don’t trust, and do we mistrust someone because we can’t tune with them? Well, it depends on the situation. Imagine the moments when you have felt down, do you remember how somehow you felt out of sync with those
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around you, even your family? This may also be because you are out of sync with yourself. To be in sync with the world, to connect, we need to be in sync with ourselves. When we are communicating online,
do we recognise if a friend is feeling down, or do our friends recognise if we are feeling down? It’s hard when you can’t hug and comfort your friend through the screen. And sometimes, the more our bodies become separated the less we are seen, and the more detached we can become.
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We can be pulled in sync by others, even online. We know we are in sync when we play, and surprisingly, even in large groups it only takes one of us to make this happen! Imagine a girl is skipping around a playground: as she skips from one group of kids to another,
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she pulls them to her skipping beats until she has pulled them all together, and you can hear the rhythm of the sound of the playground. In music, we call this pulling effect ‘entrainment’! The girl with the skipping rope is also affected by the rhythms of each of the groups of kids she passes, so this pulling effect, or
entrainment, involves a two-way adaptation to the other. When we enjoy chatting with a friend so much that we lose all sense of time, that’s ‘entrainment’ too, as is singing, dancing, and walking together. It’s about tuning ourself with others.
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Our pull on each other is so strong that any artificial beat will not keep our attention. In an experiment, pairs of musicians were asked to tap together in time to a metronome for two minutes – they began in time with the metronome but then began tapping to each other, came back to the metronome
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and then tapped in time to each other again, repeating this cycle. They had no idea that they were tapping in time to each other! We also pull towards the natural world, towards our pets, plants, trees, and the soil we walk on. Remember how you feel when you first come
to a forest and start walking, and your body relaxes and your walking becomes evenly paced and your breathing improves. This is because our bodies and ourselves move in tune with nature. The Japanese call walking in the woods, Forest Bathing or ‘shinrin yoku’, and it is good for your well-being.
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Can we also pull together with each other in online networked transmission? Well, let’s think about this. Imagine you are in your virtual classroom but can’t see your teacher or your friends or hear their voices; all you see on the screen are icons to show someone is raising
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their hand to ask a question, or your names, or how many of you are present. The following scene is a real example from the 1990s. A teacher was teaching three groups of students who had never met, and after one year she decided to mix them up. She thought that because they hadn’t met physically they couldn’t ‘know’ each other.
The students were upset. They had formed trust and somehow tuned to each other with hardly any interaction. So perhaps tuning is more than about millisecond timing? It seems we could tune to the presence of life even with very little information, but is this also ‘entrainment’?
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Or should we be asking, is this entrainment and being ‘in sync’ actually limited to microsecond timing? Let’s think about this. Wherever we go in the world, we learn to adapt to others, and they also adapt to us, which is why culture evolves. Even within a country, different villages, towns and cities evolve their
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own social rhythms influenced by the cultures that live in them. So perhaps this pulling effect and being in sync happens at many levels. At the larger level of culture, every region has its celebrations and daily rituals for living together. At the local level, at home, we use different
gestures when talking with our grandparents or with our friends. Even in the online world, we adapt to each other and invent ways of being together. When you talk with your friends and family in different countries, you find ways to talk and move with them.
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We are amazing at tuning, even with our differences. Just take the example of greetings. When we kiss on cheeks, hug, shake hands or bow, we time it so we don’t crash into each other’s noses or miss each other’s hands. We recognise a greeting when we come
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across a culture for the first time. Why? Perhaps because it’s a ritual of simultaneously coming together, or‘rhythmic synchrony’, and is so important because it buys us time to get to know about each other. In fact, without it we would never ‘meet’. It is a moment of empathy, meaning you become close, become one, just for a
moment. In my work, I study how people ‘meet’. I find these meetings last no more than a few seconds, in which you understand who the other person is, you can work out your conflicts, hear each other even if you disagree, experience love, and feel compassion! All in just a few seconds.
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TO TUNE OR 33 NOT TO TUNE
STORY BY CAROLINE NEVEJAN IMAGES BY HUDA ABIFARÈS
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RECONNECTING SPHERES 21
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SPACE -
VIBRATIONS OF_
SHARING THE ONE With the first beat, the big bang, the universe came into being and the rhythm of life emerged. To this very day, astronomers have looked for rhythm on far away planets to find life. Rhythm is everything and nothing, without it you die and with rhythm, life can be a joy. Rhythm
NS OF_
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is in the movement of animals and trains, in anything that moves really. When different rhythms resonate with each other, this can be a beautiful experience. At sunrise, for example, the last hollow shriek of the night owl breaks the cold air and announces the intense humming of insects in the
rising dawn. Then the first birds start squawking and shrieking, which builds to a crescendo of whistles, cries and calls. When the city wakes, trams start riding and wheelbarrows announce that the market is opening soon. Children start to go to school. Sunrise is the first beat that all living beings tune to, and so do I.
SPACE
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People who live in communities in the sun have different rhythms to people who live in communities in the snow. Church bells, temple drums and the mosque calls of the muezzin weave a variety of rhythms of praying, fasting and festive
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days. Most grandparents come from other places with different rhythms, and today’s families bring a variety of elements into new family cultures, in which rhythms of their own emerge. When people live together, when rhythms meet, they start to share a first beat. As humans, we are very different and very
similar at the same time. Walls of poverty, pride and prejudice spread hate and exclusion, yet once we start to share the first beat, the one, new openings for encounters and joy emerge.
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ENTRANCE There are many ways to tune in to the rhythm of others and many ways to notice this. We often tune in without realizing it, and when we start to notice, new entrances suddenly appear. When you enter into a new space, the rhythm is already playing. Rhythms have many
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dimensions. Like in space, where the smallest element in a molecule resonates with the largest element we know in the stars, and rhythms too resonate at different scales. The moon was waxing and waning in a similar rhythm thousands of years ago, just as it is today, enticing the tides of the sea, which allows the fishermen to
sail, which makes their loves want to wave farewell, which allows the cat to leave the house, which makes the bird fly up into the tree… We are born and act in the midst of all these rhythms of life. Rhythms don’t wait for us, but they offer entrances every step of the way.
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You can’t think up an entrance, you have to sense it. Once you tune in, you can take part. As with surfing, when you start to engage with the wave, you have to commit. Offering an entrance to strangers is a risk. Sometimes people fight, but even in a fight we tune
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to each other. Fear and pain change the way we enter and allow others to join. Too much tuning makes it impossible to act, too little tuning makes it impossible to enter. Listening to your own rhythm within the rhythm of others, like when you sing together, makes us feel good and strong. In every rhythm there is an entrance,
as musicians know. Even when we work together, or teach and learn new skills, we offer entrances to each other that allow us to tune and take part. As people, we need to synchronize, to pause and stretch, to allow us to enter into the flow of beats from around the world.
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RIFFS, RAGAS, OSTINATOS AND PHRASES Every living being has its own rhythm, its own series of movements and sounds, to which others tune. When you are comfortable in your own rhythm, it’s easier to improvise and tune with others. Musicians have words for these rhythmic patterns. In jazz and
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R&B, musicians speak of riffs, classical European musicians speak of ostinatos, internet performers speak of phrases and Indian musicians play ragas. Improvising together on the basis of these rhythmic figures allows musicians to play their own music, while tuning and syncing and using each other’s
beats and entrances at the same time. You can see the city as one huge improvisation of riffs, ragas, phrases and ostinatos between human and morethan-human life. In the city, every being locally coordinates its movements, creating the performance and feeling of the city as a whole. This is what scientists call ‘a complex system’.
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Cities are complex systems in which rhythm creates connections and makes many networks come to life. Even fights follow rhythmic patterns. The bully at the schoolyard changes how others move, till someone breaks his beat. Only then will he be able to listen again, as happens easily to people who have lots of power.
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It’s amazing that we all come from stardust from asteroids and stars far away. By exploding, softly merging, waiting and moving under tremendous heat and pressure, new atoms come into being. When riffs and ragas, phrases and ostinatos meet, a new listening beyond understanding emerges.
Now we have new algorithms that try to tune and, like the rhythm of the elephant, accelerate and turn into something else. Not a herd of deer, but something we don’t yet know. Because of technology, and the different speed and scale at which algorithms function, the next stage of nature is emerging, and will require new skills in noticing and tuning.
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TUNING HARMONIES There is a lot of uncertainty in the world, and we still don’t know nor understand most things. The experience of the amazing beauty of going from colour to pattern to space and finding a mystery where a piece of paper only has one side is beyond explanation, as is the hard knowledge that sometimes
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things are not possible or can’t be undone. Life is very beautiful and very hard at the same time. When times aren’t easy in your life, dancing or any other movement you like can help you regain strength. By tuning to your own riff or raga, the energy of life refuels your spirit and supports the courage you
need to go on. When times are good, tuning to your movement offers ways to express your happiness and share it with others. Being well-tuned to yourself makes tuning to others and participating in whatever happens next, more easy and it helps to protect you as well. Even in the online world we are capable of tuning to one another as long as we develop a rhythm for how we interact.
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Our body is an instrument that can hear the slightest changes in sound and feel the tiny vibrations in the change of tone. Our senses, our environment and our experience inform us how we can trust what is happening and how we can act to deal with it. Being present in the world, being alive, is a constant tuning to what is happening now and what will
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happen next. Our perception, and the values we share, help us to steer towards well-being and survival. That is why the funny bunch in the food forest in Amsterdam Zuidoost, or any funny bunch anywhere else really, is so important. They remind us to notice the world around us and notice it together,
and include all human and more-than-human living beings that we can perceive. In the midst of the variety of rhythms and movements, in the diversity of voices and perspectives, our hearts tick. Tuning to rhythm is how we live together. Tuning to rhythm is the first value for survival that we need to share. We are rhythm and so is the world.
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PAINTINGS INDEX & BIOGRAPHIES 34
B1 (Beginning 1, Left Hand, Southern Europe). Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Seeds Sunshine. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Music of the World. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Il Campo, Siena. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Il Gioccatore Felice. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Magic. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Beautiful White Nature. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
WWW. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Space in Space. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Surfing the Sea. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
Dance to Save. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
P-18. Where Am I?. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
SIMON GAWRONSKI (29) lives and works at a farm for people with special needs, Ons Verlangen, in Amsterdam. When he was young, he lived in NY and went to pre-school there. He loves sports, soccer, horseback riding, scuba diving, painting, music, work, TV, and traveling. He has 18p-syndrome, which affects his endocrinological system. He takes hormones that he doesn’t produce himself. Sometimes he has epileptic seizures. Painting and playing piano give him peace.
“I paint at the Atelier Noord in Ilpendam. Before we start, we drink tea. Caroline tells a story, Helen prepares the paint and canvas, and I put on painting clothes. Then I choose my base colours, we choose music, then I start the first layer of underground with a paint roller. Then we dry it with a blow drier, next we mix colours. I paint with different brushes, sometimes I use aerosol, sometimes reed, ink, sponges, palette knife, and once I used my hands. At the end, I write my name left or middle. Then we send it to Huda.”
E1 (End 1, Right Hand, Eastern Europe). Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm.
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156 BIOGRAPHIES CONNECTING SPHERES Caroline Nevejan is Chief Science Officer (City of Amsterdam), researcher and designer who has been involved with the emerging network society and digital culture since the 1980s. Nevejan is a regular presenter at national and international fora. She is also an advisor to national and European policy makers. Since 20 March 2017, Caroline Nevejan has been Chief Science Officer of the City of Amsterdam. She is also professor by special appointment at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam (2018- 2023). Nevejan is the curator of the parallel research programme of the Dutch contribution to the 17th Architecture Biennale of Venice 2020/2021. Helen Vreedeveld (1962) is an artist and art teacher in the Netherlands. She has a master’s degree in Communication Science and International Relations. She gives art workshops, painting courses and teaches people with special needs at her studio, Atelier de Noord, in Ilpendam Noord Holland. She has developed various educational ideas and tools that help people to find their own personal way of expression. Helen Vreedeveld has also been a teacher at the Hermitage for Children Amsterdam since 2009. As an artist, her focus is mainly on drawing and painting, exploring the mind and the invisible. www.kunstinzicht.nl
NOTHING & EVERYTHING Djee Si is an anthropologist, writer and storyteller who searches for new ways to connect art, society and technology. He sees information as a biologist sees the mycology of fungi: as a living organism, but one that offers us portals to our collective inner world. This perspective reveals how everything is still in development, while modern societies generally consider organisms to be managed and fixed. Alongside his artistic fascination for information, he works for the Amsterdam municipality as an information specialist, researching the role information plays in how government understands society. He is currently working on the circular economy, to understand both its grassroots potential and how it may lead to economic exploitation. Francis Victor Sling (Curaçao, 1979) had a multi-year plan in middle school to search for truth and give his life to God. His multiyear plan for high school was to get tired and go bald. He moved to Holland in 2000. Got diploma in graphic design (2004). Got
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VALUES FOR SURVIVAL: CAHIER 3 34 married and had 2 kids. One of his children passed away and he got divorced. He lived in cold Holland for 18 years. Then came back to his island in 2018. He continued to search for truth. His concept of God became bigger. He still believes he’s a missionary of God. Did art on the side. Now eats from his art. Every time a tourist visits his gallery, they leave happy. The fact that he can attract people from everywhere and leave them with a smile in such a troubled world…is pure gold for him.
NATURE’S RHYTHMS Sirishkumar Manji is a multipercussionist and Indian classical tabla player. He was introduced to the tabla at the age of six by his late father and teacher Pandit Bhagwanji Manji who in turn learnt from renowned singer Pandit Omkarnath Thakur in India. As a world music performer, Sirishkumar experiments with rhythm as a way of life and has sought out collaborations with artists who share this spirit of new discovery and sonic experiences. Presently, he balances his time as a performer, producer, composer and teacher from his studio in London, England. www.sirishkumar.com Max Kisman graduated in graphic design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1974. In the 80s, he was a pioneer with computers for magazines and posters. He has received various awards for his television graphics for VPRO TV Networks. The core of his expression is founded in his love for drawing. Using the physicality of the curve and ‘presence of absence’ in his (digital) imaging became his signature style. He has lived, worked and taught in Amsterdam, Barcelona and San Francisco. His current practice focuses on metaphors in a graphic visual language in newspaper illustrations and graphic art. He now lives and works in Utrecht NL. www.kismanstudio.nl
TUNING TOGETHER Debra Solomon is an artist-researcher, developing multispecies urbanism as a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Solomon introduces multispecies urbanism to describe development framed by natural world concerns. Multispecies urbanism promotes policy innovation for natural world stewardship, recognising humans as participants within a more-than-human habitat. In 2010, Solomon founded artist–activist collective Urbaniahoeve, producing public space urban food forests
and stewardship training. For more than a decade, Urbaniahoeve’s expertise has comprised soil building, food and eco- system production, climate adaptation and food justice, biodiversity and habitat regeneration and community building. www.urbaniahoeve.nl Gijs Frieling (Amsterdam, 1966) was educated at the Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie, both in Amsterdam. He creates murals, and in his work he focusses on the relationship between painting and architecture, with a special interest in ornamentation and decoration. From 2006 to 2010, he was director of the artist initiative W139 in Amsterdam, and since 2010, he has been a visual arts advisor to the Government Architect. Since 2007, he has worked regularly with Job Wouters, with whom he also shares a studio. Gijs Frieling is married and has four children. Frieling lives and works in Nijmegen and Amsterdam. www.gijsfrieling.nl
RHYTHM IN FIGHTS Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard is an anthropologist and criminologist. She is a professor by special appointment of Dynamics of Crime and Violence in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the NSCR, which is a fundamental research institute for criminology. Her research focuses on public space behaviour, in particular rule breaking and rule compliance and how people deal with conflicts and violence. She draws on ethnography, video analysis, and Artificial Intelligence detection to find interactional and situational explanations for violence that will help to develop and improve prevention programs. Cyprian Koscielniak (1948, Poland) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1974). Illustrator, graphic designer. Posters, TV stage design, film leaders, book illustrations. Since 1987, he has lived and worked as an illustrator in the Netherlands. Newspaper illustrations, magazines, commercial work. Collaborations with the newspapers NRC Handelsblad, Financial Dagblad, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel, New York Times. In 2017 / 2018 a major overview exhibition in Poster Museum in Warsaw and at the Mickiewicz University in Kalisz (Poland). Works included in collections of the Poster Museum and National Museum in Warsaw, as well as private.
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157 MAGIC InnaVisions is a visual artist and DJ. His work explores the circular as a source of creativity. His passion for visual language is fuelled by legendary jazz musicians Sun Ra, Miles Davis, John and Alice Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Pharaoh Sanders, who gravitated towards a deeper meaning of space and time to connect with a higher creative force. InnaVisions began making graphic flyers for his own underground club nights and also co-founded Ultra de la Rue, a creative gallery space in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. Besides creating his own art, InnaVisions closely collaborates with Afaina de Jong on installation designs for museums like Framer Framed, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Textielmuseum Tilburg, TENT Rotterdam, the Storefront for Art and Architecture and Centraal Museum. Rein Jansma is co-founder of ZJA, together with Moshé Zwarts. He is an architect of the curious, investigative kind. He prefers to approach architectural challenges and questions with the attitude of an inventor. He finds his inspiration in technical innovation, conversations with as many different kinds of people as possible, and experimenting with materials. By giving lectures and joining seminars and symposia, he loves to share and test his ideas. zja.nl
WEAVING NETWORKS Lipika Bansal is a creative researcher and social designer. She works in the public domain. Lipika uses co-creation and artistic research methodologies, such as (digital) storytelling, and writing with a focus on design for empowerment and change. Lipika’s work is cross-disciplinary by nature, involving experts including artists, designers, craftspeople, makers, students, children, local experts, starters, amateurs, biologists, and scientists. Their expertise represents a way of looking at the world, which enriches the work, based on local knowledge, local materials and reciprocity. Lipika founded Textiel Factorij, an artistic exploration, in collaboration with a varied group of experts, on the history of textiles, trade routes and politics between India and the Netherlands. Hitankshu Bhatt is a photographer, graphic designer, nature lover, researcher, and Rumi lover. His abstract collages are created from his own photographs. Hitanshu’s work is primarily centred on Indian craft and folk-art practices and documenting these traditions. The seeds of arts are sown in the ground of his soul, which
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is blessed with these fruits. Through watering and nurturing, the fruits will soon sow new fruits, and the endless journey begins.
of the first NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars simulation in Hawai’i in 2013. https://seads.network https://www.instagram.com/ angelovermeulen.
RHYTHM & ALGORITHM Alessandro Bozzon is Professor of HumanCentred Artificial Intelligence at the Delft University of Technology. He is a Principal Investigator of Urban Data & Intelligence at the Amsterdam Advanced Metropolitan Solutions Institute. His research lies at the intersection of human computation, user modelling and web information retrieval. His goal is to improve well-being and foster inclusion through web-based, personalized social computing systems. Such systems combine the cognitive and reasoning abilities of individuals and crowds with the computational powers of machines, and the value of large amounts of heterogeneous data. https://www.alessandrobozzon.com/ Richard Vijgen (1982) is an artist and designer whose work focuses on artistic data visualization. He creates multi-sensorial data experiences that visualize the invisible technological dimensions of reality. His work provides poetical interpretations of data and proposes a dialogue between the human perspective and the disembodied world of digital networks, algorithms and wireless communication. Since 2009, Studio Richard Vijgen has evolved into an experimental practice that explores new technologies, interactions and aesthetics to visualize the invisible. Richard Vijgen’s work has been exhibited in and collected by museums and arts institutions across the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Barbican Gallery, ZKM, Ars Electronica, Vitra Design Museum and Manifesta 12. http://www.richardvijgen.nl
Arise Wan is an architect based in Germany. She is also an active SEADS member and a guest researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She is from Malaysia and has an early artistic background in manga art illustration. She finished her master’s degree in architecture at Dessau International Architecture, Germany. She is enthusiastic towards futuristic architecture, especially space infrastructure that could enhance our knowledge. Arise’s works have earned international recognition and awards. Her current notable projects/research is for Evolving Asteroid Starships (SEADS), Engines of Eternity (SEADS) and Off-Earth Manufacturing (TU Delft + ESA). She loves drawing and sci-fi movies such as Gattaca. https://www.instagram.com/arise.space/ https://seads.network/member/arise Heeyoun Kim is an architect based in Seoul/Amsterdam. He graduated from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He has accumulated experience in architectural offices in Korea and the Netherlands. He has worked on diverse projects, such as housing, social infrastructure, and mixed-use architecture. Kim is also an expert in architectural computation and technical works, and he can support a broad range of processes, from the design to the construction phase. He has an interest in how to implement architectural language and beauty, not only in the field of architecture but also in artistic projects.
SURFING THE WAVES CIRCLES IN FIVE Angelo Vermeulen is a space systems researcher, biologist, artist and futurist. He is a co-founder of SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design), a cross-cultural collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and activists. Its goal is to reshape the future through critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. In 2019 and 2020, SEADS sent its Engines of Eternity art project to the International Space Station. Vermeulen works on bio-inspired concepts for interstellar exploration at Delft University of Technology, with a specific focus on self-replicating architecture and biological life support. He has a deep interest in complex system science and is fascinated by principles of self-organisation and evolution. He was also crew commander
Ivo Lima Do Carmo (Lisbon, 1979) graduated in philosophy from the University of Lisbon, 2003, and lived in Berlin until 2017. Research fellow of Portugal’s Centro Nacional de Cultura 2008-2010, he has written for magazines, art publications and published works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, including ‘On Paradise: For a Theory of Salvation in the Era of Globalization’ (Portuguese Authors Association essay prize 2012). He has a post-graduate degree in “surf and performance” from University Lusófona, 2018, and he opened a surf school ‘Club Vagabond’ in 2018 in South Portugal, where he teaches. He’s also president of the local surf and environmental association. Barrack Rima (Tripoli, Lebanon, 1972) lives in Brussels. He is a comic artist, a
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158 filmmaker, and a member of the Beirutbased Samandal comics association. Some of his comics include: In the taxi (in French, Alifbata, 2020), Beirut, the trilogy (in French, Alifbata, 2017 / in Italian, Mesogea, 2019), Cairo storyteller (in French, La Cafetière, 1998); Sociologia (in Arabic, weekly in Al-Akhbar newspaper, 2014-2015), De Brusselmansen (in Dutch, weekly in Brussel Deze Week newspaper, 1998-2003). Some of his films include: Souvenir from Beirut (fiction, 12 min, 1999) ; The land of 48 (documentary, 57 min, 2003)… www.barrackrima.com
WHIRLING LITTLE GIRL Kaouthar Darmoni (Tunisia, 1968) graduated in gender studies from the Université Paris-Sorbonne and obtained her PhD from the Université Lumières Lyon II. She has lived and worked in the Netherlands for many years. She has several (academic) publications to her name, almost twenty years of experience with gender and media studies and is also an experienced entrepreneur, and speaker on female leadership and media personality. She is active in various international women’s movements. In recent years, she has also been active as a goddess dance coach, to empower women. Since 2019, she has been director of Atria, a knowledge institute for emancipation and women’s history. kaouthar.com Wissam Shawkat (Basra, 1974) is an award-winning Iraqi calligrapher. The form of four letters from the Arabic alphabet written across a school blackboard started his journey into Arabic calligraphy, where he finds peace and the patience for writing beautiful letter forms. Though he studied civil engineering, Shawkat dedicated his life and work to calligraphy and graphic design. He is known for a new calligraphic style that he invented and named al-Wissam. This style references a number of traditional scripts that he’s mastered, namely, the Sunbuli, Jali Diwani, Eastern Kufi, and Thuluth styles, bringing them together into a new contemporary script. www.wissamshawkat.com
VALUES FOR SURVIVAL: CAHIER 3 34 why the rhythm of our bodies and voices helps us to make sense of each other and be present, and how and why this changes when we use technology. She is managing editor of the journal AI & Society, editor of the book ‘Cognition, Communication, and Interaction’ (2007), Springer, and author of Tacit Engagement: Beyond Interaction (2015), Springer. https://cms.mus.cam. ac.uk/directory/satinder-gill Naji El Mir is a graphic designer based in Paris, where he leads Studio Nem., a multidisciplinary design studio that focuses on cross-cultural and multilingual projects. With over 15 years of experience in the different areas of graphic design and visual communication, Naji today considers himself a visualiser; he translates words and meaning into shapes and forms. He pursues originality and singularity, so that each project is a new adventure for him that requires a different approach, a distinct creative process and treatment. The visual outcome may vary in styles, ranging from abstract design and symbol design to typographic and illustrative designs. www.najielmir.com
TO TUNE OR NOT TO TUNE Caroline Nevejan (see above) Huda AbiFarès is the Founding Director of the Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers. She holds degrees in design and design history from Leiden University (PhD), Yale University School of Art (MFA), and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA). She is a member of AGI (Alliance Typographique Internationale). She specializes in multilingual typographic research and design, with focus on Arabic typography and design history. She has published several books on typography and design from the Arab World, and contributes essays regularly to professional and academic publications. She is a designer, writer, researcher, editor and design curator. www.khtt.net
BEING IN SYNC Satinder Gill conducts research with the Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge. Following her PhD at Cambridge (1995), she worked in Japan, Finland, the USA and UK, including NTT’s BRL lab (Japan), CKIR (Finland) and Stanford University (USA). She investigates
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