Lizzo Traces Twerking’s Black History + How it Became a Spiritual Practice In her first TED Talk, three-time Grammy-winner Lizzo traces the history of twerking to a West African dance called mapouka, traditionally performed by women to celebrate joy, marriage or as religious worship. When it was transported to American by Black women during the transatlantic slave trade, its ties to Black culture were erased …
Artist Dasha Plesen (aka Daria Fedorova) is a Moscow-based artist with a love of microbiological mapping. Her work—comprised of petri dishes that house a number of molds, spores and bacteria in addition to household objects—captures a multitude of textures, colors and compositions. These striking microcosms play with the organic and inorganic, exposing a profusion of infinitesimal worlds, the decomposition process and the beauty that lies …
Through Slow Factory’s One x One science incubator program, Public School NY teamed up with Dr Theanne Schiros (of Columbia University and FIT) to make sneakers designed from leather grown in a natural fermentation process. The method (similar to how kombucha is made) results in a material that can be formed to any mold, without excess—drastically reducing the waste produced. “The idea of a bacterially …
