NXS — pronounced "nexus" — was born at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, where three master's students from three different countries decided to keep working together after graduation. Monika Grūzīte, Juliette Lizotte, and Florian Mecklenburg launched the biannual publication in 2017 as a collaborative research project exploring the self in the age of digital technology. Later, curator Karolien Buurman joined the team, expanding the project into events, performances, and exhibitions.
The format is radical even by indie-magazine standards. Each issue begins with a single contribution, and every subsequent piece responds directly to the one before it — building a network of interconnected narratives rather than a conventional table of contents. The result is a publication that must be read sequentially, like a conversation rather than a collection. Issue themes have included Cyber Sensuality, Synthetic Selves, Viral Bodies, and Algorithmic Anxiety. Contributors have included Jack Self of Real Review, artist Bruno Zhu, writer Reba Maybury, and musician Gaika.
The physical object is unmistakable: tall, thin, with neon covers and glitch-aesthetic graphics that look like a breakdown of the human genome. magCulture named it Magazine of the Week upon its debut. Loose inserts, augmented-reality photoshoots, and deliberately chaotic layouts all serve the central premise: that a printed magazine can be the best possible space to think critically about the digital world, precisely because it is not part of it.
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