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 ;)

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

Mexican Pretzel

In the series of mixed food; I came across this Mexican Pretzel on the trainstation in Leicester...

.

Idées Vagues

Easter is over, extremely early this year. It has eaten quite a chunk of March so the month has been entirely occupied with applications for funding (to Hordaland Fylkeskommune, Prøvekluten and Stipendiatprogrammet) and presentations. The presentation at the Stipendiatsamling went well, although I messed up a bit in the end... I guess that is where my thoughts are the most fuddled too so it actually made that fact very clear to me.

When it comes to the funding bit; yesterday I was informed that we have received 200 000,- NOK from Stipendiatprogrammet! With the 75 000,- NOK from Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen it is starting to look like proper funding ;-D

I also got an e-mail from Amanda Steggel about the aroma installation and we have had an e-mail exchange about possibilities and restrictions. Very nice.

On the coming Monday I am doing the "key note" for museum educators in Hordaland. Trying both to say something in general about what exhibitions could be and present the project. It is a heavy job to do the writing, mostly because it seems there is so much I want to say! There are so many themes I would like to explore, but it is so boring to try to write out the whole argument. I must find a way to relax with the writing...

Norwegian Traditions

Kaffistova promotes Norwegian food traditions. Warm ricepudding with raisins, sugar and cinnamon. "Risengrynsgrøt" was dreaded by purists when it first started getting popular around 1800. They were afraid it would take over for the true Norwegian rømmegrøt (porridge of sourcream)...

What used to be

Thinking about origins of things and the paths they have travelled and are travelling. How did they protect their boats before there where exessive amounts of used car tyres?

Containers...

Back from an extended christmas holiday. Have been approved for "readmittance" to the fellowship programme!

However, after looking again at some of MMW's container projects, I got inspired to look into containers again for FiK... Apparently it is possible to buy used 20' containers for approx. 15 000,-. So I did some drawings and some thinking. Considering the problems of wheelchair access I started thinking about other types of disabilities. The combination of small and sound (and taste) makes the exhibition an interesting experience also for people with a visual impairment. And the combination of smell and images (and again taste) makes it interesting for people with an hearing impairment.

I would want it to be a seating area and thought about doing it with an organic shape and some soft surface, but that requires people to take off their shoes, and that again creates a whole set of problems relating to logistics, entrance threshold (mental ones :-)) etc. So maybe we just keep the organic shape, but make the seating of a hard, shoe friendly material.

Atm I am thinking of a sound, images, smell show that could take something like 10 - 15 minutes (or run continuosly when viewed in public) with visitor interaction deciding what section comes next. ("Is this the smell of Norway? Lean to your right if you say yes. Lean to your right if you say no. Why/not?") In this case the main development would be with the AV(S)-program and the interactive programming. As well as developing stable technical solutions.

Spread Sheets

Working on the revised project description these weeks! Had a very good meeting with headmaster at KHiB, Nina Malterud. She pointed out a series of subjects that I still need to explore and explain in the text that I will hand in by December 21. The session was short, but exellent! While she was pointing out what was lacking I was thinking "Yes! Ofc! There it is!" Her comments made several topics fall into place for me ^^.

Now I have chopped the text into pieces (as I was adviced to do by Prof. Bryan Lawson when attending one of his courses some years ago), shaken the mix and like a phoenix the improved project description will rise from the ashes of the old!

Friedman on sharing ideas

I was just sent this clip from a friend. It's a little story about Milton Friedman's thoughts on plagarizing, or actually on idea sharing. Let it be an inspiration for all of us!

The story starts at 00:50 and ends at approx. 01:30
Milton Friedman on Plagarizing Ideas

Great meeting @ SIFO

On wednesday morning we had a great meeting with Annechen Bahr Bugge and Runar Døving at SIFO! The meeting was most inspiring and the two of them had lots of ideas as to what themes would be relevant for us. Now ofc we need to sit down and sort out what is relevant to our project. On tuesday afternoon I suddenly had three/four ideas of how this can be visualised.
So stay tuned! We will be right back after this...

Museum of immigration opened in Paris...

"Fiskeboller i karri" places itself in the context of museums and exhibitions looking at immigration as positive influence in a society. Interkulturelt Museum in Oslo has just gotten a sister in Paris, Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration.

The opening has been low key, mirroring the problematic topic in french society. From 60° 24' N 5° 19' E we salute the project and all other projects aimed at making our world a friendlier one!

"Le Monde yesterday praised the museum and beseeched France to acknowledge the role of immigration in its history. "This museum bears witness that 'French identity' exists, but it has always been mixed," the paper said.

Hélène Lafont-Couturier, the museum's director, told the Guardian she hoped the museum would allow the nation to face "an important part of its history which it has preferred to hide from"." (posted at WorldHum.com by Eva Holland)

About the museum of immigration in NY Times.

moodboards

I made some moodboards a couple of weeks ago. The first one i have become quite attached to. I like the layers, the patterns, the feeling of transparency and the play of the light through the material. Jo Anne will now build on these and continue the development of a visual language for Fiskeboller.

This is the reason...

This is the reason why "Fiskeboller" deals with an important subject; immediately after the first person with a background from somewhere further away than Scandinavia has been appointed Minister of equality, questions are asked about her loyalty to The Country. Her citizenship went through only two weeks before her appointment... and bright heads are questioning wether she wants to become Norwegian or to become minister...

She has lived and worked in Norway for 16 years.

When are you Norwegian enough?

All cultures are dirty!

A-magasinet, the weekend magazine of one of the biggest newspapers in Norway, last Friday had a very good article about people from Somalia, apparently many have a hard time becoming integrated in Norwegian society. I will not discuss that topic as it is a bit too large a morsel to chew atm. It was the end of the article that made me think. It said "I remembered what a 19-year old I met outside the Somali mosque in Trondheimsveien had said. He was complaining in an aggressiv tone about how the media judges all Somali, before he said: -Kurds are rapists. But not Somali."

I think we have to be very clear in the exhibition about the fact that all cultures are mixes, are dirty so to speak (as opposed to the idea of national culture as something pure and uninfluenced), not only the Norwegian one. Otherwise we could get a situation where people could say; "Haha! You don't really have a culture, it is all a mix, nothing is Norwegian! It is not clean like our culture!"

All cultures are dirty, are mixes, are moving and growing. I like the description in "Blanke løgner, skitne sannheter" by Stian Bromark and Dag Herbjørnsrud. Loosely translated they write: "In the large perspective we are all immigrants. Nations and land areas are like circular tube lines: an eternal stream of people embarking and disembarking throughout history through thousands of years."

"Review" Freedom of Speech exhibition

In Klassekampen yesterday Dagfinn Nordbø writes about the new freedom of speech exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. As it only opened last week I have not been able to see it yet, but will see it when I go to Oslo in two weeks. Nordbø is a text writer, mostly writing humorous texts for newspapers and radio. He has not set out to review the exhibition, but through his humorous comments he has made one of the better exibition reviews I have read in a Norwegian newspaper. ^^

Jeg har vel alltid vært en potensiell gamer, helt siden: hva het det nå igjen…? på Kreftregistrets DOS maskiner.

Fredag kveld spilte jeg Myst på prosjektor og satt med hjertet i halsen ved et par anledninger ( jeg er lett påvirkelig; Jurassic Park satt i kroppen i ukesvis…) I mørket og godt plassert stereo lyd var definitivt mer spennende og overveldende enn lørdag formiddag i et solfyllt soverom med musikk rett fra laptop’en. Bildene, eller scenene, i spillet er så magiske og vakkert utført at de fortjener stort format, og musikken er ubehagelig på en fin måte og gjør seg med en god bass!

Vi bør vurdere å lage en utstillingsversjon av Maretoppen… det er de færreste som har anledning til å lage seg en spill situasjon som det jeg har gjort og det gir definitivt spillopplevelsen et stort løft.

… og der er det min kompetanse kan komme inn, hittil i prosjektet føler jeg meg litt som en gratis passasjer. veldig takknemlig for å få være med, men jeg skjønner ikke helt hva jeg kan bidra med. annet enn generell entusiasme, men selv der har jeg jo ikke noe å bidra med… klarer ikke helt å henge med i utviklingen. kanskje er det bare min innebygde følelse av å måtte prestere og prestere bra. kanskje jeg skal la meg selv få lov til å være gratis-passasjer for en stund. jeg kan jo tenke litt på hvordan den fysiske interfacen skal være. og komme med innspill på det om en stund…