Alt-Social ~reconnecting social media with humanity~

Ground. Check in. Prebunk. Debunk. Don’t panic.

Amanda brings a British and Spanish background to her work as an educator. Growing up between languages and cultures eventually led her to study English and Spanish in higher education, while an early rebellious streak had already appeared in the form of fundraising and social causes.

That instinct gradually developed into teaching and, later, her role as Head of Programmes at Shout Out UK, where she works with young people on political and media literacy.

In this first Alt-Talk, Akky speaks with Amanda about how her personal experiences shaped her path into education, and how she now approaches social learning from different angles.

They also ask a bigger question: can simply switching social media off really protect younger users, or might it push them towards less visible and harder-to-regulate spaces?

What happens when we stop trying to silence difficult feelings and instead listen to them?

Ximena, a certified Deep Listening® tutor, and Akky continue their conversation, and it gently turns to grief.

They talk about Pauline Oliveros’s Horse Sings From Cloud, and Ximena shares her experience of performing the piece and reflects on how listening and sounding can give voice to difficult emotions, including sadness and anger.

🎧 Bonus: Ximena guides us through a brief Deep Listening practice, followed by a humming exercise based on a score by IONE.

🔗⁠Ximena's website ⁠

Ximena is a sound artist-researcher, a Deep Listening® certified tutor, and, in her own words, a “big dreamer.”

Growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, she was already observing her surroundings through sound, sensation, and imagination. Years later, she entered the world of Deep Listening, bringing plenty of questions on her vivid dreams to Pauline Oliveros, the pioneering American composer and accordionist who developed the practice.

That listening journey eventually grew into Sonic Migrations and INTIMAL, developed further during her postdoctoral research at the University of Oslo, exploring how bodies, memories, and people separated by distance can reconnect through sound and digital technology.

In this Alt-Talk, Akky speaks with Ximena about how people living far apart can use digital communication not only to exchange words but also to sense place and presence, share memories, and even feel each other’s bodily rhythms across distance.

🔗⁠⁠Ximena's website ⁠⁠

Did you know the earliest films by the Lumière brothers were often under a minute long, not so far from today’s "shorts"?

In this second session, Aleksey and Akky continue their slightly obsessive art-cinema conversations: from Tarkovsky to Leni Riefenstahl, and what shorts and social media could still be.

They also reflect on professionalism and amateurism: what makes an image truly pure and innocent in the presence of amateurism.

It started with a window.A train to Italy, a child watching the passing world.

Aleksey carries that image into his work: a desire to create cinema as new “windows” through which the audience can see, feel, and remember.

In this episode, Akky speaks with Aleksey, a друг from VGIK, the world’s oldest film school in Russia, where they met in 2013.

From their shared admiration for Andrei Tarkovsky to questions of social media today, they ask: Can cinema or even short-form videos, still shape how we see the world in deeper and more meaningful ways?

Love (a.k.a. Lavinia) returns from Basel.She reads a letter from her brother Jack, sincere words that echo uncannily with the world we live in today.
🎶 Soundtrack:

21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson.

Luana returns, a yoga teacher from Italy who treats walking not as a pastime, but as a method: a way to come back to yourself, and to the present.

In this session, we explore slowness as a practical skill in a world shaped by algorithms and metrics. Luana radically suggests that AI may need “slow time”, not just reactive to optimisation loops.

Bonus: a short guided breathing practice with Luana!

Meet Luana — an Italian yoga teacher who first felt her body’s need in the Mediterranean, bathing with her father as a child.

In this New Year Alt-Talk episode, Luana shares how yoga and Ayurveda helped her navigate moments of disconnection—from people, society, and herself.

Ban social media — the right move?

The Alt-talk host, Akky, doesn’t think so. 🔍

Instead of a ban, what if we looked for co-living of “stable-social” and “alt-social”, by learning two very different kinds of thinking: calculative thinking and meditativethinking as Heidegger says?

Put down our physical and metaphorical “Scouters”, the wearable devices and readouts that numerise our being, and try something else: attention, care, and deeply listen👂

🔗50 Seconds of Breath-taking
https://schoolofcommons.org/making-public/issues/2023/50-seconds-of-breath-taking

Akky's photoblog

⁠https://icaresque.tumblr.com⁠

Gelassenheit (Releasement): its role in Heidegger’s late thinking

https://www.europeancentreforheideggerstudies.org/

Eisenhower on Atomic Energy

https://www.history.com/speeches/eisenhower-on-atomic-energy

What if social media was beyond a scoreboard?

Akky, host of alt-talk and a digital media specialist moving between film, media studies, and communications, keeps returning to one question:

What if we paused the algorithm, silenced the index, and simply listened, to what truly resonates in the heart?

This podcast is Akky’s tentative response.

He is now studying at the Grief Care Institute, exploring 傾聴 (keichō, attentive listening), combining it with the methodology by American composer/accordionist Pauline Oliveros called deep listening👂

These are the links for what Akky touched upon during thetalk.

-50 Seconds of Breath-taking

https://schoolofcommons.org/making-public/issues/2023/50-seconds-of-breath-taking

-Aokage Project

https://linktr.ee/aokageproject