We Are Museums of Fear 1

I arrived there around 09:20. The smell of freshly made coffee and sweet bread bait me to come in with
no fear. Or is it the poster in the corner of the wall that reads “Leave all fear behind. To Live not Exist. To
Dream, Not Sleep. To Smarten Up rather than Dumb Down. Fly” I feel like my brain is playing feeling
roulette again: but this time, each section reads “feeling special ``''slaying ``''winner of all trades”. This is
not nausea - this is excitement. Most of all I know I am smart and uncompromising. I am unironically —
bringing all my ideas to the table and believing the hype.
I look at the chalk written menu on the board looking for the cheapest drink.

—What kind of milk would you like with your cappuccino?

—I want to say almond but I hesitate. I just read yesterday that the cool girls in Manhattan are starting to
order dairy again. Vegan ice cream brands are reintroducing dairy types. I don’t want to betray myself as
the lagger that I possibly am: some basic person who only adopts a trend long after the cool people moved
to something else. That after enduring ridicule by the cruel, base mainstream. I feel cognitively startled
like a fly close to a fly trap. Almond I say mechanically.

While the cheerful barista is preparing my cappuccino I read on the wall “The La Cabras coffee plantation
is part of a 9 hectare farm, situated in the town of Mairena do Alva, in Brazil. The coffee is traded
exclusively with the shop, and during this process we ensure a transparent and fair exchange for everyone
involved”. It makes me smile that cosmopolitan communitarianism is taking off - the results of brilliant
and expensively educated trend forecasters and marketeers just like me. FAIR. Such a great word,
uncomplicated and unburdened by problematic baggage. Feeling roulette again: the feeling that you,
yourself, the deep, special, caring person that you are restores the balance of the universe with your
coffee.

I repeat to myself what I just read the other day while preparing frantically for this interview. Every shop,
every brand has to have a philosophy. And that philosophy has to include strong signals like words or
iconography. But this philosophy aided by multiple flickering signifiers and folk wisdom must not be
consumed entirely intellectually. After all, my job is that of a feeling rearranger, a light curator, an umami
grader. I am a palette refiner for mini and macro consumer trends. This is where feeling roulette comes in.
My job consists in emulating the light-anxiety and micro-triumph you feel while playing Candy crush.
What is more to life anyways than this mild alternation of dopamine and fear?
I remember I read somewhere that in the 90s artists were reclaiming disused space just like now all
designers are incorporating used materials. We are not changing the world, we reproduce it daily from its
own debris which is second best right? It is realistic anyway. We are constructing a new gravitas, a new
horniness for ideas, people, travel places, objects. It’s what old people called ‘sexxy’.
I am a future hype beast. I can leap like a tiger into a thrift store and end up a magnificently dressed
feline. I do not shy away from popular things also: I know how to bring them to another context: play
with them while making sure I am not being played by them. I live in the anxious space of the future

1
Charles Bukowski
tense. I rewild the cultural landscape. I can switch in an instant from feigned, unemotional apathetic
coolness to an earnest and sincere “That’s so cuuute” in no time.

I am the dancer on a rope across the abyss of culture, the undying youth culture. Uh that is deep - please
write down this deep thought in the notebook - it’s for your future novel. You explained to a friend
yesterday in a fatigued way (cuz she does not get all of your references and you need to overexaplin) that
you want to write something akin to Patty Smith, Joan Didion. These phenomenal women, these supreme
idols danced and glieded upon the thin threshold of popularity and counterculture like you will too one
day. I become emotional at my own thought: I cannot help generating these punchlines- probably that’s
why they called me in for an interview. My fingers clumsily grab the notebook. I end up messing up the
lines and write this down in the most un-aesthetic handwriting I ever produced. My god! This was not a
cheap one.

I recognize the aesthetic of the place instantly and I feel secure in this recognition - there is nothing new
and unexpected to intimidate me. I came in prepared. Oh wonderful: an abundance of jungle and desert
plants - I have the same kinds at home: Chattanooga, Tennessee wild hair, succulents, moss, cacti. All
these plants do not complain: unlike humans they need very little nourishment to succeed in their journey
of becoming fully grown specimens. They are perhaps the best vegetal decorum for hype-beasts like us.
Then the whole disused old barn aesthetic feels like home too. That chimeric beast of interior design, hard
to capture in words but for sure in great instagram filters. An atmosphere in between an art school, a cafe,
communitarian space and an adult education center. The lobby is divided up into a bar, a lounge pierced
by a couple of work tables and an off street terrace. The space is open. The conceptual approach to
interior design was a holy trinity of balanced attributes: light, transparency, simplicity. Effort was put into
striking a balance between aesthetic value and environmental impact. Everything and everyone is keen to
make an impact.

FROM HERE ON OPTIONAL READING, IF YOU LIKE. YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART FOR FEEDBACK
ALSO. I REALLY WANTED TO END THIS STORY, AS I GATHERED SO MUCH MATERIAL.

The exposed brickwork, the pipes on the rooftop all in full display. We hide nothing - everything is
transparent, inviting, open - open to everyone and everything, democratic, non-elitist. We don’t judge
here, we don’t discriminate, we have no ulterior motives other than making everyone’s lives more
purposeful. Everything is a warehouse now. Our hearts: an array of cables and pipes, our beautiful inner
connectors no longer hidden but exposed in earnestness all over social media. Your life feels like constant
work. That way you never tire - you always work on yourself. Like right now, I am centered, I am about
to enter the workforce, I am listening to this larger than life pop artists unironically. I will max out on my
credit card again but will be an investment in my maximized sense of self.

I hear my name and descend into a staircase that enters a loft-like room. Young people there - you can still
feel the ceremonious enthusiasm and post graduation clenched jaw - grinding, hustling to the top. Some
people in the lobby wear cool eyeglasses the likes I’ve never seen before. I become anxious, there is not
enough air in this room. One guy has an unusual white t-shirt: institutional, clinical hue. Creativity means
rebirth, synergy; embracing decadence and earnestness. Feeling afraid must be repressed at all costs. I
cringe at this out of nowhere memory of how, in highschool, my bestie and I felt so special - reading
XXth century classics and listening to Lana del Rey felt like a forever vibe. The earth did not feel like
shifting under our feet - we kept it still with our youthful magnificence. Back then we could not
out-predict ourselves: life was going to stay mapped and mood boarded into this vintage aesthetic forever,
in the Cupcakes Craze Era of the Earth. The Rainbow Bagel and Youtube block color videos.
Sure, there was this boring side of life: technological surveillance, recession, war, student debt, pensions,
FOMO. It is not cool to worry about that for now. By the time you reach maturity, things would have
changed for the better. Then there was the cool site of life: social media, art openings, youth. The magic
circle of edginess. We all work with dregs of popular culture to produce new looks, new codes,
amorphous atmospheres. Trash and the excluded sucked in and rinsed out.

I think of my neighbors who, though much older than me, do not manage to get their lives together. I
remember when I first moved in, I respected their countercultural allure. In my warehouse they were
introduced to me like this 21st century heroin addicted proletariat. But when I saw how they walked their
dog while high and listened to that impossibly loud punk music I became so embarrassed. Regardless of
my fashion strategist talent, that genre will never be conjured back to cultural existence Like ever. If only
they would be more cooperative, more likable - more willing to open themselves to smart marketing -
they could get their life together like me and all my friends and never receive threatening notifications of
eviction. I remembered Nieta walking with only one sandal on, high as a kite, her cute pitbull dog near
her, unleashed - rehearsing a Disney choreography. I remember thinking how messed up that is. These
people are criticizing the system while doing nothing to improve their circumstances. We, on the other
hand, the post ironic counterculture picked out our lives from the debris - we had courage to infiltrate, to
get our hands dirty and enter the belly of the machine. Surely we are not getting played - we can outsmart
anyone if we like. We paid a lot of money for our wordy, immaterial weapons.

I tapped into my inner reservoir of detached coolness and thought about my peers in the room. It seemed
like we are all some sort of edgy neuromancers: we call out the dead. Y2K, normcore, cherry emoji,
bimbo chic, indie sleaze. We call out the aesthetics of the past, the dead sign, the expired celebrity. The
infinite well of possibility that results from marrying market and individual freedom. We are so free.

I thought about the year 2020 which will be in 2017: what could really happen that would disrupt these
imperceptible waves? What kind of Lars von Trier Esque cataclysm can visit us? I thought - nah - the
forces we conjure are stronger than anything- they are ferocious and implacable just like the elements. We
created a monster - I remember Paris Hilton saying that first about selfie culture and social media
celebrity.

I am greeted by this simple dressed young man - all basic expensive cotton - probably my rent for two
months. After a pleasant chit chat about holidays, bands and festivals he gets straight to the point. He
looks at me with a tunnel vision eye - like a Marvel hero. His voice, poised and confident like that of
Youtube content creators.

“Yeah so hey, your cv looked impressive. We wanted to meet you in person. Your biography is just what
we needed: someone who is an ice skater, a glider on the surface of many things, a polymath.”
I make an effort to not seem impressed at him describing my own life. Smiling or showing you know he is
right will be read as a sign of weakness or worse of lameness. You need to feign modesty but not too
much of it. In my feeling control room, I switch to detach apathy tempered by a cheerful, well meaning
tone.

“Oh yes, thank you. I can never settle for one thing - I am too curious, too adventurous. Everything
interests me.” I say this while thinking about the pink wings of low cost flights I took on my adventures
and how that pink has become the color of the year. My life though, is not available to ordinary people.

A couple minutes in he is joined by a colleague. They seem like friends. Then he starts asking the real
questions:

“Can you make some future forecasts right now?” Like can you help our clients understand consumer
expectations by the year 2020?

Ohh no he will read through me and see I am a fraud? Just until now he spoke to me like I am the only
person on Earth. The devil does that too: makes one feel so special. God does not discriminate - he is base
and democratic. He speaks to everyone. Even the laggers.

I wonder how thick will the arterial walls of the cultural body become? All this accumulation of trends,
dopamine, and cortisol will aggregate into something as big as the Fatberg clogging London’s Victorian
underground last year. I am a great DJ of empty intensity.

“What’s our job really? I end up responding. To be edge lords. We are the puppet masters of hyperstition.
We work with the strong force of the sign. But consumers will eventually become fatigued and learn our
tricks. That’s when we need to switch on to merging populism with well-being discourse. We will have to
take care of our clients, nurse them like their mothers. Become counselors of the Cultural sphere. We will
spare brands of the pain and suffering of being canceled. We will become trusted mediators. Although
these realizations are minor, I feel the need to share these slightly sick but wonderful dystopias with you. I
love honesty.

“GREEEAT”

Then I go on rambling about how some Russian avant garde artists were not disdainful of advertising.
They saw in it an occasion to propagate grand social designs. They were deleted or self deleted
themselves when Stalin rose to power but we could be the chosen ones to continue on their ideals. While
abiding to corporate protocols and the good workings of the machine.

The other guy opens his mouth for the first time. He invites me to his workshop - I still need to pay but he
likes my ideas and I feel honored to be invited by him.
“I am starting to build a great team. I am organizing this workshop in Alsace. The main idea is to try to
find ways to generate new currents of political subjectivity, and counterbalance the hegemonic discourse
that is omnipresent in this culture and society. The concept of cultural specificity and mythological
references from local roots is a recurrent idea in this project and it will also be part of your task. Your
research - especially since you are so good at anthropology and folklore would be to guide our consumers
towards the light of our client’s products.

“Whaaaat?” Me and the other guy brush over this - we do not smile and try our best not to seem shook.
There is a mutual understanding in there: “I get the same manic thoughts after my Adderall”. We try our
best to participate but this guy has become the meta hype beast. He out-predicted himself. Transformed
into Pokemon final form.

I finish after one hour.

Boyfriend texts:

“Hey cuteness, how was the interview?”

“Nailed it. It seems like a sincere, caring, non-toxic work environment. Looking forward to their feedback
no matter the outcome. I just had a great conversation with two people there. How is Viena with mum?

“Vienna is cute, we’re taking a long walk. The hotel is a bit of a yuppie hellscape with lots of positive,
value driven marketing and fake plants and scandinavian hardwood everywhere but at least the food/
coffee is good.”

He sends in a picture as proof. It reads: “Welcome to Zoku. A place you can call a second home. Even on
your first visit it is so much more than a long stay hotel. IT IS A NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE THE
NEIGHBORS BORROW MORE THAN A CUP OF SUGAR. THEY SHARE IDEAS AND
AMBITIONS. THEY MIX THE LOCAL LOWDOWN WITH THE GLOBAL HIGHLIGHTS.”

I could be the one writing these texts in no time. I am not a cynical person like he is.

When was the last time my neighbor borrowed each other a cup of sugar I thought to myself? My
neighbors are irrecuperable ….

I think me and my boyfriend = we are in the same place. Trapped in an aesthetic capsule, one among
millions, each as special as the next. We are cosmopolitan communitarians: polished individual diamonds.
We are sent into space to keep company to the stars.