Studio Linda Liukas
Letter

No. 92 — 🧭 Year in Review 2024

resisting, outwitting, skipping, or subverting

Time is repetition, a circle. This is obvious. Day and night, the seasons, tell us this. Even so, we don’t believe it.

—Joy Williams

This year was about repetition. Mondays with the same rice bowls, trips between Helsinki and Paris, the rhythms of parenting and work. I read somewhere that middle age is when firsts happen rarely. This, but also a time when lasts happen more often, they just slip by quietly, and only later do you realize they’ve passed.

Maybe I slept through the night again. Maybe I read again like it was 2021. Maybe there was more fall days, where I felt like an old version of myself. Or maybe I just stopped using battle metaphors, and resisted, outwitted, skipped and subverted

The years too repeat. This is the eleventh time writing this. Here are 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

And here is 2024:

January

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February

  • A young girl reading Dumas in the metro. He has “les yeux sages” remarks an old lady in the metro. Brie in the creche. No as the beginning of the negotiation in France.

  • Had an in-person board meeting at Hive! It’s been now six years of building a new kind of school and the work feels as meaningful as ever. Did a lot of work on the look and feel of my narrative non-fiction book. Admired FT for the Microchip story.

  • A lovely, reassuring call with D. Started working with Irma. H. & M. in Paris. We had a lovely trip to Spain to spend some time with family G. Only theater of the year: Uuteen nousuun at Q-teatteri. 4 x 4 to the extreme.

  • Most of February I was sick, one flu after the other. I’ll forever remember the last week of February as utterly miserable: our kid had febrile seizures (again), which are so scary and I had a late first trimester miscarriage, which turned again the year upside down. On the other hand, ended up seeing lots of friends in Helsinki.

  • Wrote No. 69 — Ternary citrus ⫶ Warm-blooded plants ⫶ Ruby’s Exceptional Creatures and No. 70 — Edit/mode ⫶ Paper hole puncher ⫶ The Day I Met Björk

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March

  • A lot of spring weekends followed the pattern: pick an arrondisement, visit a museum, meander back. B. and S. started playing tennis and I would join them by the court. Easter was a mix of Paris, friends and family visiting. Organised my first egg hunt.

  • Celebrated E. Baby L. was born. Visited Winchester again. I wrote later a bit about the activities we did, and it was so nice to pilot new work with the educators. Lots of discussions on AI.

  • Had H, E and K. in town as well as T. - felt like a Railsberry rendez-vous after 12 years. Lots of other friends visited too - March is clearly a great month to visit Paris. Saw Max Richter at LV Fondation. And later Benjamin Millepied and Nico Muhly. J. took us to see Atelier Clot. Seeing those big litography machines made me want to experiment with printing presses. Etienne Jacob and Man Ray.

  • Watched Three Body Problem, but didn’t get the same thrills as before. All in all a mediocre year of TV for me. Overall favorites were Alice Rowheder for everything, Havumetsän lapset, the Martha Stewart documentary and yes, Nobody Wants This during a week when sleep was evading me.

  • Showed my book manuscript for the first person outside of family & editor. Thank you E! A daytrip to Stockholm, where the discussions also were very AI. Decided to avoid any hot takes on AI. Not everyone needs to have an opinion.

  • Wrote No. 71 — Why so capable ⫶ Fitzcarraldo blue ⫶ Loop, patch, library and No. 72 — A matrix of AIs ⫶ Retired playground animals ⫶ Hello Ruby - Cuộc Phiêu Lưu Vào Thế Giới Lập Trình

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April

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May

  • A wild computer landed in Ruoholahti!

  • A classic visit to Switzerland over the long weekend. Vitra museum (first of two Höller slides of the year!), Buckminster Fuller and Piet Oudolf. Another lovely lunch at Burgenstock. Briefly entertained the idea of applying to study landscape architecture.

  • Spent a week in Helsinki. It was unseasonally warm and felt like we experienced one summer already. Finnish playgrounds turned 110. Went swimming with M. and kids. Had a long lunch with M. Saw a dear friend for the last time. Re-read Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That (PDF) and was reminded that it’s always easiest to see beginnings. A favorite discussions of the year: This conversation made me a sharper editor.

  • Visited Stripe Press pop-up in Paris. Ate at Yamt’cha on a whim. Visited D. in Antony. Weaving a year.

  • A friend wisely said: in your profession it is fine to miss a few years of work because of raising small kids. But I was starting to miss work a lot! Kept thinking about this.

  • Related to everything else: “Optimization presumes a kind of certainty about the circumstances one is optimizing for, but that certainty is, more often than not, illusory…. Another way to look at this is that you cannot optimize for resilience. Resilience requires a kind of elasticity, an ability to stretch and reach but then to return, to spring back into a former shape—or perhaps to shapeshift into something new if the circumstances require it. Resilience is stretchy where optimization is brittle; resilience invites change where optimization demands continuity.” - Mandy Brown

  • Wrote No 76 — Playground construction ⫶ Worldbuilding ⫶ Jean Bartik and No. 77 — Taste ⫶ Books as an act of resistance ⫶ Embarrassingly parallel

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June

  • I look at French politics from the sideline, but echos of De Gaulle (“Moi ou le chaos”) were felt throughout the summer months. Worked a lot on the manuscript, maps and making things happen. Resonated: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

  • Lived for ludotheques and street parties and ex tempore jazz concerts in the neighbourhood. Fete de la musique. Magical afternoon at Maquis d’Emmerveille, My only festival of the summer was LV Family Festival. French children’s culture at it’s best. Book of toys

  • Berlin for a day, first time in five years. Walking around, feeling like one season of life had definitely ended. J. visited us. Helped H. start her company. Favorite discussion on AI.

  • Weekend trip to Hangar Y, recommended! Real world of technology

  • “Fiction is a backdoor into a communal vision. A novel – maybe every novel – is a prototype of the future. And if the ideas that the tech industry is pursuing feel stagnant, feel from the same old paratactic lists, maybe it points to a shortage of compelling fictions for what the world could be.”

  • K & A had a lovely wedding in Puglia, enjoyed the trip just the two grownups.

  • Wrote No. 78 - Umarell : Star Stuff : A tinkering bibliography

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July

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August

September

  • One of the things I love about the rentrée is how it offers energy for any new endeavour. For me it was not only the return of school, but also the return to apartment hunting, return to full-time working, return to reading.

  • Ordered Le Parisien as a paper copy. Had a lovely week in Helsinki around the new Architecture and Design Museum and playground opening. Wallpaper and Monocle wrote about the park. I made a reel! Had many great calls asking advice.

  • After many years of online shopping, found myself at Le Bon Marché several times. Celebrated M. and C. turned two. We had a party in the playground. Loved these RFCs by Oxide.

  • Henrik Berrgruen at Orangerie and Elmgreen and Dragset at Orsay were my favorite exhibitions of the year. Loved also the new family space at Orangerie and the fall break in Orsay. Finally made it to Musee Albert Kahn.

  • Wrote No. 84 — La Rentrée ⫶ NGEs ⫶ Aleatory AI art and No. 85 — Playing in the streets ⫶ Pop-up computing ⫶ Shelf space

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October

  • Official opening of the playground on 0110 day! It was a pleasure to meet in person a lot of the people who I had worked with for many years. Related: How to grow a shoreline.

  • Paris had started to seem like a permanent thing for us and after three years, I decided to properly relocate, including setting up a company, insurances, taxes, agreements - everything that goes into a permanent life. Learned - “C’est original” is not a compliment. Finnish Institute with B. and C. Kodawari Ramen with J. What is Life? made my head spin.

  • Art Basel was in town and so were A. and E. I especially liked Carsten Höller’s giant mushroom. Found a local restaurant, L’art du Quotidien. Grand Palais reopened and feels like we got a new destination to visit. Saw Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. Celebrated baby E. and not-so-baby J.

  • My favorite fall tradition is visiting South of France. This time we did also a trip to Aix-en-Provence. A lovely visit to LUMA Arles, a leisurely lunch at La Chassagnette and on the way home a stop at Château La Coste, then a storm like I haven’t seen in a long time.

  • I was stuck with work for the entire month.

  • Wrote No. 86 — A playground to outlast the feed and No. 87 — Playground process ⫶ The Anchor Song ⫶ Berlin next week

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November

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December

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