Link About It: This Week’s Picks
Tomas Maier’s desk, posterior portraits and a museum for worthless but sentimental objects in this week’s look at the web
1. Tuchus Acceptance
Last week Vogue caught onto the (not exactly new) butt phenomenon and declared we are currently living in the “official era of the big booty.” Yet between all the Photoshopping, implants and photos of Kim Kardashian’s enviable tuchus, it’s easy to forget that they come in all shapes, colors and sizes. Refinery29 celebrated all butts from the “round booty to the pancake-ier shape” to the “cellulite, stretch marks and age spots” by photographing (with no Photoshop) 30 women’s derrieres and asking them how they feel about their behinds—a playful and still admirable move in the battle against body-shaming.
2. The Desk of Tomas Maier
Bottega Veneta’s celebrated Creative Director Tomas Maier keeps his primary office in NYC rather than Milan. The latest video in a NY Times fashion series documenting the creative spaces of designers narrows in on Maier’s two desks and everything you can find on them. The location is noticeably void of personal objects and clutter, but what happens to be there does define what the brand will be putting out next.
3. Edward Snowden as Citizen Four
Filmmaker Laura Poitras was already many years into making a film on life and national security in post-9/11 America when she was contacted by an anonymous whistleblower going by the name Citizen Four. This individual turned out to be none other than Edward Snowden. After repeat meetings with him in Hong Kong, and an international blow-up that would soon occur and sweep the media, Poitras created CITIZENFOUR, a film making its debut at this year’s New York Film Festival. While the highly anticipated documentary is guaranteed to be controversial, it will also certainly shed new light on Snowden and the system surrounding us all.
4. Alison Bechdel’s Genius Grant
In 1985, cartoonist Alison Bechdel created a film formula (now known as the Bechdel Test) in her comic “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Her three questions to each movie—Does it have two female characters? Who talk to each other? About something other than a man?—have altered the way films are viewed and made. Films that pass the test are said to be more successful than those that fail—just another way in which a concept originally known in feminist circles has made its way to the mass psyche. And now, 29 years later, she has been awarded a grant (known as the “genius” grant) by the MacArthur Foundation—an organization that “supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.”
5. Postcards for Ants
Cape Town-based artist Lorraine Loots started a year-long project, titled “365 Postcards for Ants,” for which she painted a miniature picture every day. Any subject is possible—from a vintage Yashica-D camera to a saxophone—and the beauty is in their immaculate details, while the wonder is in their teeny, tiny size.
6. MIT Media Lab Gets Fit
Cutting-edge research laboratory (and experimental playground) MIT Media Lab will be adding health and well-being to their areas of interest. With help from a $1 million grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, MIT Media Lab has launched a wellness initiative that will explore the relationship between technology, the workplace and health. Hopefully they’ll start by tackling bad posture and repetitive strain injury caused by time spent in front of computers and smartphones.
7. Museum of Important Shit
Packrat or not, each of us owns useless objects of immense sentimental value that would be devastating to lose. Whether it’s the ticket stub from your first concert or a postcard from a past relationship, these things matter. Artist Nick Cave agrees. His upcoming exhibition will include user-submitted photos of such items, alongside those selected by celebrity curators, all inside the Museum of Important Shit.
8. Rickshaw Bagworks Reflective Backpack
We’ve long been impressed by San Francisco’s Rickshaw Bagworks. And now, thanks to their reflective material-woven backpack, the fandom is growing stronger. The tweed textile is woven with rugged reflective yarn, making riders more visible on their bike. Safe-cycling couldn’t be easier.
Link About It is our filtered look at the web, shared daily on Twitter and published weekly every Saturday morning.
