In my cave

Sitting in my cave, a-squat and at peace, I think of Daniel Ellsberg's advice to Henry Kissinger in the documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America:

"Henry, you're about to get a lot of clearances higher than top secret that you did not know existed. That's gonna have a sequence of effects on you.

First a great exhilaration for getting all this amazing information that you didn't know even existed. And the next phase is you'll feel like a fool for not having known of any of this.

But that won't last long.

Very soon you'll come to think that everyone else is foolish.
What would this expert be telling me if he knew what I knew?

So in the end you stop listening to them."

Great advice.
With information comes responsibility and power - or/and corruption and lies. Just take a pick.

On SVT Play until the 30th of June.

Informant

This morning I long for blunt, graphic, black and white patterns, I want repetition and nonsense. I content myself with this handsome graph from Information is Beautiful - good name - and look toward the future, for right now my vision is impaired by a tiny throbbing thunderbolt by my temple.

Stop it, you!

(The image links to its original location.)

More war in art

M.I.A. - Born Free.
This lady isn't afraid to go for the jugular. Crash boom bang.


The Second World War - yours truly
A slightly different approach to war.






WWII in a three room flat in the suburb of Rinkeby, Stockholm, 2007.

A gang of multi coloured Nazis practicing with their weapons on the access balcony didn't raise any neighbor's eyebrows. In this neighborhood you can wave your red flag from your balcony or build weapons sitting by the highway all you like without anyone looking impressed.

Pictures of a war

For all ye Swedes and Swedish speakers out there I want to recommend this April issue of SVT:s Kobra, on Belfast and the political war that took, and still takes, place on the walls of the city; political murals made by both sides and on how the propaganda continues and changes with time. The program can be watched at SVT play until June 15th.

Me, I'm all buttered up from Indian cuisine and refurnishings.
I'll spend the night in bed by my lover boy, watching movies.
That's where old ladies belong, in bed.

This weekend...

...we attended the childrens' architecture show Building Blocks
(sweet but much too dark for my camera's eye).



...we played with suncats and sunkisses.

...we spied upon the secret world of children and their beloved.


...I saw that hard surfaces might look as smooth and soft as silk.

...a hairy monster invaded my desk....

...and another tried to swallow the sky.

I was never afraid.

How do you make a Monday like this sweet?

I'm thinking a lovely dinner.
And music.

Tonight I'll go listen to a debate arranged by the Swedish Film Board and the Arts Counsil on artistic freedom, ethics and responsibility, censorship, freedom of expression, media and politics.

Let's hope there will be food for thought.

PS. If you thought my header was too sombre you'd tell me, right?
I think it looks clumsy and heavy, I might have to do something about that.

Last weekend: Three women

After Lee Miller we attended Shirin Neshat's Women without men and Hyun-Jin Kwak's Girls in Uniform, both of them at Kulturhuset.

Of Kwak's work I especially liked Agonist, that would be very scary pretty at home, well in the next much bigger home, where there are walls and walls in abundance.

For me, Lee Miller was the strongest experience of the day though, the ease and topic choice and the exquisiteness of the quality of the photos and the slight sepia tint in the black and white:dness.

I didn't like that they had written that the reason she was able to cope with the horrors of war was because she'd been sexually abused as a child. I don't think they'd justify a male war correspondent's capability in any such fashion. Do you?

Today my laptop is firmly placed on my other Perstorp kitchen table that resides in a suburb of Sthlm. The hallway floor is being polished and I'm not welcome home 'til tonight.

Pirjo ja Veijo

This is a pic I put together for the Nordic tango documentary I'm making. It's hard to translate moving pictures into stills, and since tango is all about movement I thought I'd make a one pic twirl.

Pirjo makes all of her own dresses, and this is actually what she wore the first time we saw them glide over the dance-floor, through crowds of stout bobbing Finns, like a pair of slender slightly surreal swans.

There is something about the meticulousness of this couple that thrills and inspires our tiny three person crew. They always try their best in every situation, no matter how hard or uninspiring the conditions might be. If they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, that rock would be mighty tidy and their do's a shiny perfect, Finnistyle.

PS. Have you watched the documentary The world's most important 6-sec drum loop? This is indeed good stuff. Thank you Glenn.

A yesterday walk

Pics from a walk through my beloved drizzly city.

I'm still a bit weary from confusion and lack of results. I think it also has to do with working from home. It doesn't add to your energy, this mix of home and work. Sometimes it would be kinda nice to escape the fact that it's all up to you.

I'm still in a good mood though.
Tomorrow it's time for Flexi III at El Mundo!
You're very welcome to visit our prickly nest of thorny 80's synth:
Colouroïd, El Mundo, Erstagatan 21, 21 - 01.

PS. How nerdishly hardcore were the three brothers Bethke?

Ingo, Holger and Egbert Bethke grew up in an East Berlin suburb.

Ingo had the idea of trying to flee to the West when he was sixteen. After a year and a half of planning, he threaded his way through the fences and minefields and floated across the Elbe river clinging to an air mattress.

Years later, his brother Holger used a bow and arrow to shoot a wire from a rooftop across the Berlin Wall, where Ingo stood waiting. They ran a steel cable over the Death Strip, Ingo fastened it to his car, and Holger rolled down it on wheels.

Later, the two flew back in two ultra-light aircrafts to pick up the third brother Egbert. They painted the aircrafts with Soviet markings and dressed in military uniforms with microphones. One brother landed in Treptower Park in East Berlin to grab their brother hiding in bushes, while the other brother circled above watching for danger. They even attached cameras to the planes and taped the rescue!

It's hard to find much in English about the Bethke brothers, this is from here and here.

Autumn glow

Today is as grey as cinders. Autumn glow, please return!

Today is Glenn's first day at his new job, and my first alone day in four months. I realize this might sound extreme, especially since we've shared a total space of 30m2, but it's been nothing but pleasurable.
I hope I will make good use of these lonely hours since I work from home most days. It's not ideal, but cheap. When I lived alone the perk was that I could work whatever hours I chose whether it be day or night. Now, that doesn't seem as tempting.

I had a great pilates experience yesterday, like a very physical meditation in movement. Dimmed lights and a fiery gotlänsk coach.
The weird thing is only women seem to frequent these sessions.

PS1. Massive.

PS2. Lithuania's "Law on the Protection of Minors Against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information".
A country that seems so close to and so far away from where I live.

From QX magazine's article:
Lithuanian Parliament overrides veto of 'no promo homo' law:
"An explanatory note attached to it (the law) says:
'The propagation of a nontraditional sexual orientation and exposure to information containing positive coverage of homosexual relations may cause negative consequences for the physical, mental and, first and foremost, moral development of minors.' "

Appalling.