2 min read

For travelers and connectors like me

I am in my favorite cafe in Amsterdam, while I write this update. They have the best chai latte and I've been coming here since they opened in the Negen Straatjes, or "nine streets", an area with local shops and independent brands at the heart of the rings and canals in the city center. I missed this spot when it stayed close for a while, way before, after moving from a different venue. They were updating their business to make sense in the present time. Dealing with change.

After a year of a bundle of changes in my life – some subtle and personal, and other huge and collective. I have a list of updates and learning that come with them. So I think is a good time to reopen doors and share with you what is on today's menu.

I'm Brazilian from the Amazon rainforest region, I've been living in Amsterdam since 2017, where I started to be a member of the Time Machine Organization, a coalition between European institutions cooperating in technology, science, and cultural heritage. Currently, I coordinate an innovation project at the University of Jena, Germany, part of this coalition. During some weeks of the month, I'm surrounded by Ph.D. that are working in a professorship of Digital Humanities and while they work coordinating projects like mine they also develop their own research. I am doing the same.

Either if you are a newcomer or know me for a while, allow me to reintroduce myself. I research temporalities. What is a temporality? It is a state of existence in time. A way of relationship with time. To be more specific, I collect narratives, social infrastructures, and belief systems related to time that has the potential to help us deal with change in our relationship with the world, others, and ourselves.

I founded Torus Company years ago to help other companies reevaluate their own narratives adding dimmensions of change. I already developed learning projects with big companies and leading vehicles in Latin America addressing topics such as the spirit of time, change, ancestry, the future, speculative design, and decoloniality. This allowed me to be in talks and courses with the coolest people I met. I keep doing similar projects around Temporal Literacy and more.

My current initiative is called the Temporality Lab. Literacy is at the same time necessary, but not enough. My goal is to invite people to experiment with other temporalities. To become Temporalists, like me.  I've been working with a transdisciplinary community around the world that seeks from a decolonial perspective to be in tune with the new temporalities of our planet. And, if you are reading me – here we are trend researchers, futurists, speculative designers, strategists, sci-fi writers, artists, makers, innovators, activists, social entrepreneurs, and startup founders –  I want to help you to become a Temporality Expert as well.

I'm using my experience with communities to create an experience that is not only informational but transformational. Focused on both open directions in the short term and provide the structures I found in my years of research to move in the long term. To work together in the process. I am really proud and I hope it will resonate with you. I will tell you everything when is out and if you want to be amongst the first to know, just email me on gust@temporalitylab.com or ask me to add you to the beta list by DM or any chat.

And thanks for waiting until now :)

Best,

Gust