Work work

Some dance while others work...

Ke' det går i?

We went to an exhibition at Askøy last thursday and as we where enjoying the beautifull little harbour of Strusshamn we were approched by a journalist from the local newspaper Askøyværingen and asked if we wanted to be in their page 2 column "Ke' det går i?" ("Whassup?"). According to locals we are now 1/3 of the way to super-celeb status at Askøy ;)

Buying chocolate scorpions and Bastet statues

We are almost in production. Atm I am buying chocolate covered scorpions, a statue of Bastet, the egyptian cat godess and just recieved a package of chocolate linguine in the mail last week... Fun times :)

In addition I am making an overview of the media we need and of the work we need to do...

Major areas to take time to think about: The middle division, the screens shielding the exhibition, light fittings, how to send in the eating pictures... :)

Sad old man

I find it sad that a man like Steinar Lem who has spent his life working for important issues like the enviroment and against poverty, now spends his last breath on the propaganda of fear. He claims Norwegian culture is being destroyed by muslims. In Dagbladet today he says that we will get a society built on scriptures from year 600. As opposed to now? When was it they wrote the Bible again?

Fortunately the kids are still sensible. In the same paper they respond that they cannot take over a country that is already theirs, and wonders what Norwegian culture really is and what it is Lem thinks will be destroyed.

- Dette er det dummeste jeg har hørt. Hvordan kan vi ta over vårt eget land? Vi er også født og oppvokst her, sier Somaya Choukri (16).

- Jeg er født her og oppvokst her, men det betyr ikke at den norske kulturen vil bli utryddet, sier Boulahloud, som også er muslimsk.

Vanessa Shaqiri (14) lurer på hva norsk kultur egentlig er og hva Steinar Lem mener blir ødelagt.

Kulturnytt

A nice presentation of Fiskeboller i karri on NRK Kulturnytt this morning! I talked to a very nice young lady, Rebecca Strand, just before easter and it was aired this morning. To hear it, try to access the incredibly difficult NRK nettradio, make a search for 'kulturnytt' and choose the date 15.04 2009. I can't promise the nettradio works, but it's worth a try.

Getting there

Office...?!

Believe it or not; i have my own office!

Si ;D - we are all immigrants!

Nice text in Aftenposten's page for young people's opinion 'Si ;D', last saturday. Written by Johanna B, 15 years old.

Kill your dahlings...

I just re-read an old blog-post with advice from Havlandet. it said:

Kill your darlings, before they kill you.

It fits with todays decision of ditching one of the first exhibition ideas that came up. I think that the original idea of "This is your connection to the world" - is good, but as it had been worked into deal with everyday food instead, it didn't quite sit anymore. And it certainly didn't justify the amount of money we were going to have to spend on it. That is now freed up to spend on other things that would be nice, like projections of footsteps walking around the exhibition space and shadows moving across the walls. Perhaps.

Frode ftw

Frode Ljøkjell (link in Norwegian only, sorry) has started working with us as a 3D designer to work out details and volumes. We have had several meetings and it seems to me that this will work out well. Here is one of his first sketches.Frode's responsibilities will be to shape and construct the various parts of the physical structures.

Pensive need

I am in a pensive mood, tired of colours and forms, and especially tired of creating someting that so many will have an opinion of, so publicly. I have dedicated the day to start preparing for my application for final appraisal and sort through the stuff I'm going to write when autumn sets in.

MGP

I was watching MGP last weekend(?). MGP? The Eurovision Songcontest (Norwegian part)! They said the show was the best in 10-15 years. I certainly enjoyed it :) and I haven't watched for... maybe that long, maybe longer :)

In the beginning of the show one of the presenters said;

...og dokker trur sikkert at det bli litt sånn kniving når en reise rundt med MGP, men sånn e det ikke! Vi e verdens beste venna!"

("You probably think there is rivalry (between the artists) while travelling around with this kind of show. That's not how it is! We are the worlds best friends!") Then all the artists had to say something nice about the artist that was about to sing. Maybe that atmosphere of friendship is part of what made the show so good? Research has now shown that schools that work against harassment (mobbing) have better academic results. Ofc for a lot of us this is not news. Others need research to prove it. :)

Entrance III

Some sketches for the entrance alternating dark and light.

Food presentation - entrance

Food is nearly always presented on a white background. I guess it looks clean and delicate. Letting the colours of the food come out clearly. But the question is; do we follow the norm or counter it? A dark background can also be quite alluring and might be more exciting, giving the food more of a... seductive quality?

Entrance 2

Still pondering the entrance... It has two parts, should be something you walk through, should partly obstruct your view to the rest of the exhibition and should look fabulous! "With windows, you just have a few seconds to get someone's attention" said Paul Smith about window displays. It is the same with the entrance, a few seconds to dazzle and draw. So... How to dazzle and draw? Ppl are drawn to lights, to colours, movement and to visual humor. One thing ppl find amusing is objects that are out of scale, either super large or miniatures. There's the recipe! Simple. ^^

The entrance

I usually base my design ideas on images surfacing in my mind as I consider a topic. It is very intuitive. In my experience ideas that don't come as finished images often lack pizass. Atm I am labouring hard with the entrance. No immediate images present themselves. However, several ideas are peering out reluctantly, maybe this is the time when I will find the solution through hard work rather than through my inspirational muse...

Medvandrere

In Aftenposten saturday I read a about Safia Y. Abdi. She came to Norway from Somalia in 1992 with her three daughters. She is an amazing resource and she reminds us that we are a globe of migrators and says we should call each other co-migrators. She says that she herself has finished migrating and is as such no longer an immigrant.

Look here for a clip from norwegian NRK.

Kids talk

Yesterday we spent an hour with a group of kids at a school in Bergen.

They were self confident and outspoken, not afraid to ask questions and give their opinions. A lively, positive bunch.

So, what exactly did we learn?

We learnt that we are on the right level with the stories that we are telling. Both the kind of stories and the way we are telling them. They easily grasped the concept that "norwegian" is a relative concept, and enjoyed the background information we provided.

They had very different opinions on the visuals we presented, which was also interesting. Hiphop style is not everybody's cup of tea (even if I like Banksy... *sigh*)

We also learnt that we have to be very concrete when talking to a target group, discussing exhibition ideas did not work as well as discussing the actual visuals.

westwards brave soldiers!

ready to go home after another day at the office. my faithful furry fury dragon is also ready after a fitful sleep, so we mosey westwards in the cold dusk. life aint too bad...

o_O

Friday afternoon I spent a couple of hours feeling like the proverbial deer.

I then spent the weekend curled up in a safe place (licking my wounds?)

Now emerging, still chafed, always stronger, making the world mine again.

Supernordmenn!

Finn-Erik Vinje, mighty language fighter, always on the barricades for correct use of language has criticized the Norwegian Princess Märtha Louise and her husband for the names they have chosen to give their children. Be that as it may.

What interested me in the article was the new definition this paramount of correct language has introduced into the debate. He defines the semi-royal family as "supernordmenn"! As if we didnt have enough with "norsk" "første generasjons nordmann", "andre generasjons innvandrer", "etnisk norsk" and when to become so.

Can we start making a list?

1. First generation immigrant
2. Second generation immigrant
3. First generation nordmann
4. Second generation nordmann
5. Nordmann
6. Supernordmann?

Oh wait! This reminds me of a list I saw in a museum in Mexico last year. It's a list of the casts in Mexican society after the Spanish. Sorry for the poor quality of the picture.

Another day another Cortado...

With the laptop surviving the last caffein shock I take my chances, order another and finish a short presentation for Hordaland Fylkeskommune. May they believe in the project and give us Nkr 100 000,-.

Pouring coffee in the laptop

...yet another reason to drink cortado instead of latte... -_-

The white sheet

I am preparing a presentation for both my supervisors. Not only a presentation but also an overview of what we have, both consept and visuals. The coming week I will be discussing the project with several colleagues of different professions. First out is Linda Kragseth, marked communicator who was intensly part of the project last year, and who still is lurking at the edges. Tomorrow I am meeting with Anne Mette Prestegård, who is also an exhibition designer and who I have worked with on Havlandet. Then later in the week I hope to have some time with Hilde Hauan Johnsen who is a professor of textiles at KhiB, she has worked on several exhibitions at Tromsø Museum.

So I am working on the presentation... and have so much of the project inside. It feels like I am on the verge of bursting, but I am struggeling with finding the right format for the output.

Hence the white sheet. The fear. And now I will get to work filling it.