The first drawings consisted of white empty rooms with large windows that filled complete walls. Outside was nothing and the walls existed only because of the faint shadows they casted onto the floor and themselves. The rooms provided a place where I could hide from the question what I wanted with my work and where I could erase the emptiness of my imagination.
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'This land is a land and a land and a land' is a continuing project in which I invite people who moved to Sweden to take me to a landscape that reminds them of their country of origin. Together we photograph that Swedish landscape. The photo is juxtaposed to a text in which the contributors describe the landscape from their country of origin.
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In the context of SQUID, we found out in 2008 that urban and narrative were the most common search words, or themes, used in the SQUID archive. The varieties in approaching, investigating, or tip-toeing around these themes are as many as the number of contributions. Nevertheless, we thought it was an interesting thread we had stumbled upon and felt compelled to follow up and decided to do this under the theme of Urban Narrative.
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Reality is a reconstruction of our ideas of what reality is, as much as the social is a reenactment of what we think the social ought to be like.
This came to my mind yesterday when I saw the film Shattered Glass, which tells the true story of Stephen Glass, journalist and editor at The New Republic, who cooked up at least a dozen articles for the magazine.
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I'm convinced that you cannot describe nature, not philosophically, nor in a scientific manner and, not in the last place, not from an aesthetic point of view either. The moment you start describing it, studying or painting it, nature is undone and becomes something different altogether: a dissertation, a story, or an art work, anything that fits into a human framework of understanding. It's a Bermuda triangle of philosophy, science and culture in which nature disappears.
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Being the biggest exhibition in Norway, together with Momentum in Moss, it is rather strange that LIAF is located in Svolvaer, which accounts for only 4000 inhabitants. Why organize such a huge event in such a remote area? I'm not sure whether the 2004 edition managed to answer that question and hitherto, every second year discussions about the legitimacy of LIAF's being at Lofoten surfaces again.
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To stand in the middle of the arena and let the cheers and buzz of the crowd run through you; to feel the grass, control your breathing, know where your teammates are, blindly, at any time; to experience the game as if it were in slow motion, seeing every action before it happens. That's when you truly inhabit the game; that is Zinedine Zidane in his best days.
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A couple of months ago the City Art Museum in Amsterdam showed an overview of Andy Warhol's work. I was thrilled to see my favourite Warhol for the first time: Empire. It reminded me of a haunting story the Swedish artist Christian Andersson once told me.
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Yesterday evening I dusted off the video case of What's eating Gilbert Grape. In the opening sequence the protagonist, the young man Gilbert Grape, introduces the small town he is living in: "Describing Endora is like dancing without music". Despite the absence of music, the quote above could have a very positive reading: Endora as fine place to dance, slowly and silently.
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They are 'tres chique', over-stylish, over-designed, cosmopolitan and you can find the best ones in magazines like Vanity Fair and FRAME magazine; they generally serve good coffee, wonderful cakes and always sandwiches with mozzarella cheese...
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The public debate about the Dutch multicultural society – and in particular the integration of Muslims – has been infested by populism, false sentiments, anger and xenophobia. Last week, all usual suspects spoke out again in the media when the director of the City Art Museum in The Hague banned a controversial work.
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For years now, Dutch art institutes are struggling in an attempt to close the gap between the white dominant art scene and other cultures in the Netherlands. Cultural diversity however, seems to be like kryptonite for museums and besides the Stimulation Prize for cultural diversity by the Mondriaan Foundation nothing much has happened in the big art institutes.
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After the fantastic MSLM magazine a new joint Arab - Dutch project has been launched that aims at integration and emancipation of Muslims in the Netherlands. El HEMA - an Islamic version of the Ur Dutch retailer HEMA - is a witty and irresistibly charming exhibition. Nonetheless, despite the quality and efforts, the project leaves the most important questions unanswered.
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I’d like to be the devils’ advocate for a moment and partly defend the impopular opinion of the mayor of Stockholm regarding a stricter policy towards public art (see this earlier article by Po Hagström). It raises the question of how (or whether) public expressions need to be regulated and if freedom of speech has limits. We all agree that you cannot beat up someone if you don’t like their opinion, but what is graffiti in that regard? Illegal damage of property? Or freedom of expression?
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In the 90s a Finnish newspaper made an inquiry about the best place to live and statistically Nykarleby rolled out as happiest town in Finland. Pretty ironic, because with 2000 inhabitants Nykarleby would score pretty well on the ‘most boring town of Finland-list’ as well. Nonetheless, being small has its advantages and growing up in ‘NewKarlVille’ isn’t half bad at all.
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In 1854 British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace traveled to Indonesia to collect specimen and to study nature. He collected the accounts of his journey and published them in the book The Malay Archipel (furthermore, Russel is famous for ‘almost’ coining the evolution theory, instead he pointed out the key issues to his friend Charles Darwin; the rest is history…).
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