Triangles & References

A story about time and language. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard.

"Ideas aren't worth a single penny." These are the words of wisdom that a colleague at my previous job gave me a couple of years back. He was the type of creative director that I only expected to find in fiction: almost always late to work, usually hungover, wore a Dumbledore style beard, and always ready to mutter out the most unexpected and astonishing ideas. When brainstorming, he would always kick-start the session with the most hilarious, intoxicating fantasy concept. He was known in the industry as the ultimate idea man.

That was why his advice struck me as a surprise. He told me that he would willingly give away any of his ideas for free, because that’s not what we’re being paid for as professionals—it’s the execution of the idea.

I look back to this whenever I find myself too attached to an idea, or when the team is stuck in a rabbit hole of conceptual debates, picking ideas apart one by one. Anyone can come up with the same idea sooner or later; our job is to not just come up with the idea, but to bring it to life, and that is what we should be proud of. That is where true impact lies.

Hindi Zahra, when asked about her opinion on boycotting countries such as Turkey and Israel in the Oslo World festival, 2019:

“As an artist, I’m an architect. I will build bridges and not walls. When I go sing in these countries, I’m there to connect to my people and represent them. If we all boycott these countries, then these people will be even more isolated. And if I’m to boycott somewhere, then I won’t be able to play anywhere”

“How old are you?  58. And you? 33. Don’t worry. It does get better. You promise?I promise. I’ve been longing to say this out loud, so…Women are born with pain built in.It’s our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves, throughout our lives. Men don’t. They have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things all so they feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. Then they create wars, so they can feel things and touch each other. Then when there aren’t any wars, they can play rugby. And we have it all going in here, inside.

“Marielle Franco (27 July 1979 – 14 March 2018) was a Brazilian politician, bisexual, feminist, sociologist and human rights activist. She served as a member of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro, for the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) from January 2017 to March 2018.She was raised in Maré, a slum in Rio de Janeiro, where she also resided. In the 2016 municipal elections, she received 46,500 votes.She had been an outspoken critic of the police in Rio de Janeiro. On 14 March 2018, Franco and her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, were fatally shot in an apparent assassination in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Her death inspired coordinated protests in at least 10 Brazilian cities.“

Illustration by Karen Hofstetter

The Nakagin Capsule Tower (中銀カプセルタワー Nakagin Kapuseru Tawā)

“Metabolism (新陳代謝 shinchintaisha) was a post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth. (...)  Ideas of nuclear physics and biological growth were linked with Buddhist concepts of regeneration.” 

An open letter to the brand that created a "Women's Tea"

"As a ritual, I´ve started collecting what I called "edible objects" that called my attention because of their softness and fragility. They were screaming to be destroyed. I used my anger to rise against our society´s fear of the power of anger and against its obsession with perfection. Anger is usually silenced and avoided as an ostracised and negative feeling, but it is probably the strongest feeling we have and the one that make us change things. Destroying this gentle objects is a ceremony where I funnel my inner outrage and dissatisfaction against the elements that create them in the first place." - Mar Cuervo

Copenhagen's Nyhavn