Sérgio Santos

Founder and developer at Bloco.
Technician at Rádio Baixa. Host of Posto.
Member of Coimbr'a Pedal.

I had my first experience organizing an art exhibition. I invited, together with Coimbr'a Pedal, the artist Xavier Almeida to exhibit on a bike repair shop in downtown Coimbra. It’s part of the convergent event of Coimbra’s Art Bienal.

The full description:

An exhibition focusing on one of the objects of study of the artist Xavier Almeida; the use of the bicycle as a socio-political enabler and transformer.

Not as a “romanticisation” of the bicycle, but as an exercise in implosive revolutionary symbolism in the organisation of cities, as well as its capacity for “decapitalisation” and anti-hygienisation of bodies and urban space.
The exhibition is spread across various media, such as comics, video, sound and installation.

Xavier Almeida (Ovar, Portugal, 1980) lives and works in Lisbon. Transdisciplinary artist, focusing on installation, painting, comics, publishing, sound, performance and social architecture.

Founder of the Estrela Decadente collective, with which he mainly produces fanzines, concerts and actions. Xavier Almeida’s work is linked to the underground and counter-culture side of cities, collaboration with spaces of resistance and an anti-form aesthetic as capitalist and classist dissolution.

Tags: coimbra, art, comics, bicycle

It begins with a simple, profound realisation — to quit capitalism, we have to liberate ourselves from its entrenched mindset, beyond economic reform; it demands a fundamental shift in how we perceive success, value community, and envision our role in the future of humanity.

How to quit capitalism by Joan Westenberg

Tags: anarchy, quote

These were my thoughts about how cities affect your lifestyle for today. They change you. It takes a while for the lifestyle changes to occur. It didn’t take Yerevan too long to do it and essentially kill a lot of good habits I had from my hometown. However, I’m happy to share that it seems the Netherlands is swiftly acting to undo the damage, reverse the course, and reintroduce the positive lifestyle aspects I once enjoyed, much like they did with the bikes.

Reclaiming Urban Spaces: The Critical Link Between City Design and Lifestyle by fperson

Tags: urbanism, quote

This messaging app I built for, and with, my family, it won’t change unless we want it to change. There will be no sudden redesign, no flood of ads, no pivot to chase a userbase inscrutable to us. It might go away at some point, but that will be our decision. What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty?
Is it simply … the feeling of being home?

An app can be a home-cooked meal by Robin Sloan

Tags: quote

Books read in 2023

All the books I read in 2023, with a ⭐️ next to my favourites. You can also check my lists for 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Fiction

Red Star - Alexander Bogdanov
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell ⭐️
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler ⭐️
Utopia - Thomas More & Ursula K. Le Guin
Make Room! Make Room! - Harry Harrison
The Terraformers - Annalee Newitz
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Radicalized - Cory Doctorow
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Non-fiction

Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies - Leslie Kern
Uses of Disorder - Richard Sennett
Radical Cities - Justin McGuirkn ⭐️
Moods of Future Joys - Alastair Humphreys
Microadventures - Alastair Humphreys
The Autonomous City - Alex Vasudevan ⭐️
Mindful Thoughts for Cyclists - Nick Moore
Mismatch - Kat Holmes
La anarquía explicada a los niños - José Antonio Emmanuel
Company of One - Paul Jarvis
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Anarchy - Simon Read
Something Should Be Done - Peter Good
Ur-Fascism - Umberto Eco ⭐️
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook - Mark Bray
Bicycle Diaries - David Byrne
Journey to Portugal - José Saramago
Art for UBI - Institute of Radical Imagination
La trinchera doméstica - Cristina Barrial
Anarchy Works - Peter Gelderloos
The Utopia of Rules - David Graeber
FIRE - Dama de Ouros
The Beach Machine - Kyklàda Machines
Will Make Better Choices Than Humans - Douglas Coupland
Off the Map - Alastair Bonnet
Pirate Enlightenment - David Graeber

Tags: books