eduard 🌹 muntean
presence
the hidden i
the internet's quiet protest against not feeling anything. we still believe kindness is more interesting than taste.
2026
about
there was a moment when i realized that almost everything around me had become content. and not just online. i mean everywhere. in the way people talked, created, shared, and even felt.
everything flattened into something to post or to measure. and somewhere in that process, without realizing it, the human at the center slowly disappeared.
i noticed it in myself first. i was creating but i wasn't feeling what i was making. i was consuming endlessly and mindlessly. i was surrounded by more voices than ever, and yet that essential something disappeared.
i think most people feel this low hum of disconnection, the suspicion that we've traded something real for something fast. we traded art for content.
i refuse to accept that.
the hidden i is the internet's quiet protest against not feeling anything. a space built on slowness and care, with the belief that kindness is more interesting than taste at its core.
the name carries two meanings. the i is the self: identity, consciousness, who you are when nobody's watching. the eye is the gaze you carry outward, the way you choose to look at the world instead of scrolling past it. the two are inseparable.
the hidden i is ever-evolving. but what it believes doesn't move. 🌹
essay
i don't know what we are making anymore 🌹
i don't know what we are making anymore. and i don't know who it's actually for. lately, i've been thinking about the way we talk about fast fashion, how wasteful it is, how quickly it's produced, and i keep feeling like content is starting to follow the same logic. there's a small japanese concept called shokunin kishitsu. it roughly translates to the craftsman's spirit. the fast fashion content model produces the exact opposite: work made for no one, by no one, about nothing, and optimized for a machine. 🌹
read on substack →essay
this is about the kids who never got in. 🌹
i remember how people were split into groups in high school. some people spent all their energy performing and adopting the right things to become part of a group, but none of them really got in. what i didn't understand back then is how, in that trying, they drifted so far from who they actually were. right now i feel like the same thing is happening, just at a much larger scale. following people turned into following topics. and there is a huge difference between the two. 🌹
read on substack →essay
what remains after the leaves fall 🌹
i think the hardest thing about making art right now is not the making itself but the fact that most of it will be seen for less than a second by someone who is already looking for the next thing. i don't curate because i think i have better taste than anyone else. i curate because it forces me to slow down and to give someone's work the time it deserves. this week i sat with three pieces that made me think about incompleteness and cycles and what it means to keep showing up. 🌹
read on substack →essay
what if the most personal thing about what you create is not the output, but the system behind it? 🌹
everything is starting to look the same and i think most people can feel it even if they can't name it yet. i've been thinking about why this is happening and what comes after it. i think the answer has been here for decades, just in a place most people haven't looked. there's also a reason a band t-shirt used to mean more than a logo, and i think something similar is about to happen again. 🌹
read on substack →essay
i almost scrolled past these 🌹
artists are among the few people who are still paying real attention and we are losing so much by not paying attention to them. they do the work most of us avoid and translate it into something we can feel. we gave art the same three seconds we give everything else and then wonder why nothing moves us anymore. so a question i keep asking myself is: are we still awake enough to find art, or just sleepy enough to see the content. 🌹
read on substack →