welcome to the niche way
where we do all things niche
One of my friends recently shared a post about our inner moral compass for accomplishing tasks. In that post, he said that creativity is the mastery of deviation and he used the phrase “do it the Czech way.” You might wonder, what does that mean? Basically, once you are done exploring all of a system’s options you start to bend the rules, tweak them and adjust them, simply doing it the Czech way.
We started thinking how do we get stuff done? For a long time, we used to follow the rules created for us and around us. It was the only way forward we knew. We thought it’s what’s required of us. But We never fully felt comfortable with the process or the decisions we made. It didn’t bring us joy and it didn't feel like us. Yes, maybe at the end, we got things done, but the end result was not us. It was someone else’s. It belonged to the system itself.
Then we started interviewing people and telling their niche stories — those that resonated with us because they weren’t created within the lines of the mainstream currency of likability. Jago co-created a brand called “Angry Pablo,” Eva’s language of visual communications makes your chin to drop and Wongsathon talks about the “virtual chef” as a real future of jobs option.
Through sharing these stories, we uncovered something inside us that was waiting to surface for a longtime: a fragile confidence and shaking hands just wanting to write and make decisions that are niche. Not to worry so much about the rules and the final result because that will most likely change along the way anyway. Instead, we finally started to trust our inner system of self, to “do things the niche way.”
Here, we are sharing our version of niche.
Enjoy,
Andrea
(1) niche story to share → “How much of life happens in a single spot?”
Xan Padron is a photographer who splits his time between New York City and Galicia, where he comes from. He is the man behind the Time-Lapse photo series, a project where he places his camera in an unnoticed place, and over the space of two to three hours, he photographs a sequence of moments.
“Sometimes, I let the works breathe for a period of time — sometimes even years — and then I revisit them later. It’s a unique process because every time you go back to the memory of the moment somehow you re-imagine it again.”
(2) niche art to enjoy → Jennifer Latour explores the interconnection between species.
Jennifer is a self-taught artist who has worked in special effects make-up for film and television. Her love for photography, sculpture and creating characters runs through all her work.
(3) niche museum that never closes → Museum of Looking Up: Our city became a canvas and story was painted
Gabriel and Magdalena are long-time friends with a shared passion for the art and mosaics displayed on the buildings of Vienna.
“Most tourists see Vienna as this imperial, turn of the century Disneyland, but that finished in 1918. Vienna kept evolving and the times that followed are also important parts of the urban fabric. Lots of art on the facades was created during the social housing era in the 1920s, but also later after the war. Our city became a canvas onto which its story was painted.”
(4) niche place to visit → Hotel Kai 36
Kai 36 is a hotel and cafe for art lovers cut into the rocks just under a castle in the center of the the Austrian town of Graz. Expect more than 150 works of art, including a mounted Formula-One racing car by the pool and the most comfortable bed.
