One of the most beautiful church façades in Florence is Santo Spirito.
It sits on the Oltrarno side of the river, in what is now a slightly paradoxical mix of Renaissance calm and contemporary hipster life — natural wine bars, small ateliers, people who look as if they have carefully not tried too hard.
And then, in Museo Novecento, I unexpectedly encountered it again.
Not as architecture, but as memory.
Ottone Rosai’s Santo Spirito (bozzetto) from 1954 is almost dissolving. The façade is still recognisable — the calm geometry, the round window, the quiet authority of the structure — but it appears as if seen through time rather than space. As if the building is less an object than an impression left behind.
Standing later in front of the actual church, the comparison becomes unavoidable.
The real façade is precise, almost austere. The painted one is hesitant, softened, already slipping away.
Perhaps that is what painting does best: not documenting what is there, but what remains.
And perhaps cities work the same way.
We return to the same places — Santo Spirito, Teatro della Pergola — and think we are revisiting something stable.
But what we are really encountering is a layered accumulation of versions of ourselves.
04/21/2026 11:07:02
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- One of the most beautiful church façades in Florence is Santo Spirito.
It sits on the Oltrarno side of the river, in what is now a slightly paradoxical mix of Renaissance calm and contemporary hipster life — natural wine bars, small ateliers, people who look as if they have carefully not tried too hard.
And then, in Museo Novecento, I unexpectedly encountered it again.
Not as architecture, but as memory.
Ottone Rosai’s Santo Spirito (bozzetto) from 1954 is almost dissolving. The façade is still recognisable — the calm geometry, the round window, the quiet authority of the structure — but it appears as if seen through time rather than space. As if the building is less an object than an impression left behind.
Standing later in front of the actual church, the comparison becomes unavoidable.
The real façade is precise, almost austere. The painted one is hesitant, softened, already slipping away.
Perhaps that is what painting does best: not documenting what is there, but what remains.
And perhaps cities work the same way.
We return to the same places — Santo Spirito, Teatro della Pergola — and think we are revisiting something stable.
But what we are really encountering is a layered accumulation of versions of ourselves. (04/21/2026 11:07:02)
- More than 30 years ago, when I was studying at the European University Institute in Florence, I used to come often to concerts at Teatro della Pergola. Mostly because tickets were made available to EUI students — but also because the place itself seemed to insist that you stayed a little longer in the world of music than you perhaps intended.
The other day I returned.
This time with Jeanne and Vilhelm, and with a programme that felt almost too carefully composed to be accidental: Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina, Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie, Mozart’s Sonata K.404, another Pärt piece (Mozart-Adagio), Gija Kancheli’s Middelheim, and, after the break, Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio.
Performed by Gidon Kremer (violin), Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė (cello), and Georgijs Osokins (piano).
It is a strange experience to return to a place where your younger self once sat, convinced that you were “taking it in,” only to realise how much of it you probably didn’t understand.
I know this may be close to sacrilege — and forgive me, I plead my own lack of musicality — but I couldn’t help feeling that Gidon Kremer sounded a little… worn. Not in a dismissive sense, but almost as if the music had passed through him so many times that something had shifted. Less precision, perhaps. Or something else entirely.
And yet, maybe that is the point.
Because the evening was not really about technical perfection. It was about continuity. About sitting in the same theatre, decades apart, listening to the same repertoire, and realising that what changes is not the music, but the listener.
Or perhaps both. (04/21/2026 10:52:15)
- Standing in one of the monks' corridors at Museo San Marco in Florence last week, looking at Fra Angelico's fresco of Christ's descent into Limbo — the quiet gesture of a hand extended toward the waiting souls, the broken gate of Hell at his feet, the demon lurking at the edge — I couldn't stop thinking about Joakim Skovgaard's Kristus i de dødes rige at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
The two works are separated by four and a half centuries, yet the iconographic conversation between them felt almost too deliberate to be coincidence. The same subject: Christ descending to the dead, the crowd of souls reaching upward, the vanquished serpents underfoot, the strange suspended light breaking into a dark space. Skovgaard's version is more turbulent, more Symbolist, more Nordic — but the compositional DNA is unmistakably there.
I found myself wondering: did Skovgaard visit San Marco? He traveled to Italy in the 1880s and 1890s — the timing would fit. And if he stood in this very corridor, looking at this very fresco, what did he see that he later carried home to Copenhagen?
Sometimes the most interesting conversation in art history is the one that was never written down. (04/20/2026 21:15:26)
- Standing in front of this painting at @palazzostrozzi #rothkoinflorence I kept thinking about a line from #christopherrothko ’s Rothko: From the Inside Out:
“Without input from the screen, the twenty-first-century being faces a profound and existentially unbearable uncertainty.”
It’s striking how relevant that feels today—maybe even more than when it was written. We’ve become so used to constant input, constant direction, constant distraction. The screen tells us what to see, what to think, what to feel next.
But Rothko does the opposite.
He gives you almost nothing—and in doing so, everything. No narrative, no instruction, no escape. Just color, silence, and yourself. And maybe that’s exactly why it feels uncomfortable… and necessary.
Perhaps we should spend less time scrolling and more time standing still in front of paintings like this.
Yes, I’m aware of the irony of posting this here. (04/19/2026 16:32:58)
- During our trip to Nepal, we visited the ChangTang workshop in Kathmandu through Pia Dams, a Dane living there. The artisans weave carpets and clothes from the wool of Tibetan goats and yaks.
I was deeply fascinated to see the Jacquard loom in use — a direct ancestor of modern computing — and it immediately brought to mind Amalie Smith’s book Thread Ripper.
Thread Ripper is a multi-threaded story about weaving: about creating a digitally woven tapestry while simultaneously weaving through love and life. It recalls Ada Lovelace, who during the first industrial revolution foresaw the link between the loom and the computer.
Today, Smith writes from the edge of the fourth industrial revolution, where biology and software intertwine — nerve tissue, plant tissue, the fabric of screens, the webs of love, of ancestry, and of digital networks. And the small bugs that can creep into these digital textiles. (10/18/2025 15:56:28)
- Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of joining @morten.kjaersgaard for a podcast conversation about digital sovereignty — a topic close to my heart and also the theme of the upcoming book that @bovenielsen and I will soon publish.
Morten is producing a new podcast series on digital sovereignty as part of his platform digitalsuveraenitet.dk, and I was honoured to be the first guest in the series.
It was wonderful to revisit our shared history — from when Morten and I co-founded Open Source Leverandørforening back in the 2000s — and to reflect on how those early discussions about openness and technology have evolved into today’s debates about sovereignty, infrastructure, and control in the digital age.
I look forward to hearing the rest of the series and to continuing this important conversation! @michellehorstboell (10/18/2025 10:50:34)
- Jens and I went to the screening of Intimacy Class tonight at Husets Biograf 🎬 Such a beautifully produced short film by a very talented filmmaker – both moving and thought-provoking. Great to see this kind of cross-cultural collaboration happening here in Copenhagen. (09/30/2025 20:08:42)
- This evening Jens and I went to see #prometheus at @noerrebroteater. We were both truly impressed — partly because Jens just discussed Prometheus and the myth of the fire-bringing titan in his classics course at high school, and partly because I recently wrestled my way through #petersloterdijk Prometheus’ Anger. A rare moment when theatre, philosophy, and schoolwork all came together. (09/29/2025 23:41:22)
- Every so often, someone proudly declares that they’ve “quit algorithms.” They’ve left Facebook, stopped using Spotify, deleted Instagram and Twitter — and feel liberated from the invisible code that shapes our attention. I understand the impulse. Social media recommendation engines can be addictive, manipulative, and mentally draining.
But to say you’ve opted out of algorithms altogether is a comforting illusion.
Algorithms are not just the feeds on your phone. They are the quiet, unseen logic that keeps modern life running. The GPS that shows you the fastest way home runs on sophisticated graph algorithms. The payment systems that move money between your bank and a shop depend on cryptographic algorithms to stay secure. Hospitals schedule surgeries and analyze scans using algorithmic decision tools that save lives. Energy grids use optimization algorithms to balance wind and solar power so the lights don’t go out. Every time you take a photo, a bundle of algorithms sharpens, brightens, and stabilizes it.
Even the most analog-seeming experiences rely on them. Airline routes, package delivery, and train timetables are optimized by complex code. Climate models and weather forecasts — the ones we trust before a weekend trip — are massive algorithmic simulations. Noise-canceling headphones? Algorithms. Automatic braking in your car? Algorithms. Your phone’s spell-check? Algorithms.
Avoiding algorithmic feeds might be wise for mental health. But algorithms themselves aren’t optional. They’re infrastructure — as fundamental as electricity or roads. The real question isn’t whether to use them, but how to use them well, with transparency and restraint, instead of letting them quietly shape our lives without oversight.
You can log off Instagram. You can delete Spotify. But you can’t live outside algorithms. They’re woven into the modern world — often invisibly, often for your benefit. (09/28/2025 14:22:22)