Shannon Mattern
director of creative research @ the metro ny library council; resigned full professor of media studies, art history + anthropology
architecture, archives, 🎨, cities, 🐕, infrastructure, libraries, 🗺️, sound++
nyc + upstate
wordsinspace.net
- This is a split-flap, and it’s a charismatic artifact of media history :) wordsinspace.net/2020/12/03/f... wordsinspace.net/fluttering-c...
- I realize we have to care about this stuff because our gullible, opportunistic, and/or fatalistic “leaders” have bought into it, and they’re damaging our institutions, environment, and democracy – but my god, is it all ever mind-numbingly stupid 😜
- “Anything—and it seems everything—can be ‘made great again’… I have been wondering if there is something we might call againism that is related to, but distinct from, nostalgia… It wants to repeat. Even when what againism seeks to repeat might be—and most often is—a fantasy.”
- “Againism, in this sense, is a structure of feeling. Those invited to participate in it are asked to detach from any sense of responsibility toward history and justice. Asked, in fact, to detach from knowing anything that might produce discomfort.”
- "In the 🇺🇸, artists who fight for [their] art might have better chances doing so cloaked as businesses. The artists in Andersen v. Stability AI went from making their case as persons w/ identities that had been stolen by businesses to becoming businesses w/ brands fighting against unfair competition"
- Our Misfits class is now working on our spring publication. A small grp is wrkg w/ me to learn about peer review + to design a collaborative review process that fits our ethos + vibe :) W/ their input, I created an agenda for our first wrkshp this wknd 📝🎉 crossreference.wordsinspace.net/fall2025/
- Today's @hammerandhope.bsky.social nwsltr (not archived online 🥺) is from their editorial art director, Alexandra Zsigmond, who describes the power + poetry of what an art director *does* — part of which is "supporting artists as political thinkers... Editorial art is a form of public art."
- Round One of the Insurance Fight: Andy’s insurance co informed us today that they’ve generously agreed to cover a full ⭐️$0 ⭐️ of the scans and treatments that detected and saved him from a massive tumor. Bring it on, bitches 🥊
- "I don’t know what school was like before all of these tools, but I don’t necessarily feel like any of them really help me learn... [I like to do 🎨 assgnmts by hand, yet] these analog methods are completely ignored in favor of modern, technological approaches... It almost feels 'over-engineered.'"
- Of course the Institute of Museum and Library Services' $14M Freedom Truck mobile exhibitions feature "unbelievable content" designed by PragerU and Hillsdale! Unbelievable indeed!
