Thursday 25 November 2010

snow blizzard outside, can't sleep. so I think a bit.

can not sleep even if tired.

am thinking about that power point presentation I have been joking about.

perhaps I should make one. it makes sense. it might explain things even to myself. not just to my father and other people who might see it.

like the fact why I left this super job as a photographer.

how things lead to other things and events. how & why one moves, finds herself in new places surrounded by new people and still feeling at home.

as I do.

also thinking about the new work I have done, the great lake.
One friend seemed to appreciate it. as if he recognized something in it. he even laughed a bit at some point.

Another friend said she had watched it several times and that she still felt uncomfortable watching it. that it is so personal. so intimate.
beginning with being pretentious. yes, I agree. that's the meaning somehow.

is it?

where does it exactly become personal?

I mean Im not naked in the footage. And Im not being super sensitive or so.
I am just being quite natural but still aware of the camera at times.

Is it the fact that Im slagging of myself in the voiceover. Saying those things about, ego artist etc. Is that where it becomes personal, even uncomfortable?

well, hell, then its brilliant…

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Generation 2:0...

or

Generation 1:0...

which one do I belong to?

I have just read the article "Generation Why?" by Zadie Smith in The New York Review of Books. I feel a bit bad.
She is hitting a sore spot.

Am I living my life on internet? Is my life formed and shaped to fit in? Do I want to create an image of myself for the WWW...
Is it degrading to myself?

Don't I sometimes after meeting a new person go and have a look what I seem like on the internet? my pictures on Facebook, my profile? My web page. Wondering what they might think of me. Wonder if he is ever going to call me...

How fucked up is that?

In the olden days I would have just sat by the telephone...

Thursday 18 November 2010

Women are their own worst enemies

Girls can be mean to other girls, but it is adult women who wish to destroy each other, according to a new book hitting the headlines in America.

Kelly Valen's The Twisted Sisterhood, soon to be published in the UK, reveals that almost 90% of the 3,000-plus women who took part in her survey frequently felt "currents of meanness and negativity emanating from other females".



hmmm....girls. Can this really be the case?

and the most distressing part comes here:


"These secret, social battles are waged, in many cases, by the very same women singing the praises of girl power, feminism, and female friendship in their lives."



Isn't that the ultimate hypocracy? The worst betrayal ever? Or is this also just another way of stopping us from being truly free human beings? As in the Julian Assange case?

Always some ugly capitalist evil powers breathing in our neck?

Anyone?



read article on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/18/women-own-worst-enemies-study

Tuesday 9 November 2010




THE GREAT LAKE video 7.14min 2010

Synopsis: we are walking down a path towards a lake in northern Finland. It's midnight. We hear a voice mumbling something in the background. A voiceover describes the situation, over and over again - because she has difficulties doing it correctly. We hear about a persons effort to connect to this place. Later on the camera turns to the slightly drunk protagonist and the voiceover criticizes the action. In the end the subtitles tells us that "she now knows it is not such a big deal". That "she" has learnt to fly.



In The Great Lake I use a private video footage to scrutinize my effort and wish to sense a feeling of belonging.
By creating new voice overs and adding text I re-tell the situation of walking to a familiar lake. I sort of create another narrative of the original material. And as usual I never really come to a logic point where I would have an answer to my hypothesis.
Instead the work changes into a floating state - I give it a poetic ending - which also functions as a political one.
She has learnt to fly. It's a subtle but poetic ending. What do we mean with that? A person who learns to fly is a person who is free. In this case free of boundaries? Free of a past? Or just free of mind?



in my work I draw conclusions. I see connections. I oppose ideas.
I offer more or less strange references.
I explain phenomena. At least I try.
I hand out own theories. Sometimes they are quite naive and banal.
I create visuals, mostly video footage.
I start looking into my mind and the surrounding world that spins around me. I look for clues and create something resembling a script.
I mix up things, I confuse, I recreate my own actions and words.

Sometimes I use games and play as a method. And I try to be funny.
It's often frustrating. But I keep on trying and let the effort become my work. As I see it the outcome is more of a happy ending - it's the process that counts.

At some point the work is done and I look at it and don't know if it's good or bad.

Thursday 4 November 2010

push the button

this idea about thoughts moving as rapidly as the ubahn passing by.

Imagine placing sensors on your head and being able to record the thoughts that way. ¨¨

YOU NEED TO WRITE DOWN ALL SORTS OF EXAMPLES OF THESE THOUGHTS. JUST TRY IT.

also the thing about criticism (w.benjamin about the cannibal). or the thing about that nobody calls themselves intellectuals anymore.

and that criticism always needs a personal starting point.

that you can learn to criticize anything these days, but if its not personal its no good.


more thoughts:

after last nights seminar I came to think that I really wish to have a critical debate.
I.e about this film that I saw recently. Its a film by a good friend. The thing is I did not really like it to be honest. I saw some potential - and I know this person is smart & brilliant . But it was just like a bad tv-show.

Perhaps it was the actors. They were lame sort of TV theater characters. It could have been more weird, more arty somehow.
The scenes were nicely shot. sound was good…but still no.
And the story, sorry it did not feel realistic. And I guess that was not the point but then it was not clear. If it was not supposed to have a realistic feeling it should have been more weird in its visuals and acting performance.

Well, I guess its a first film - and it can only get better. I wish it will!

And so yes, my point was, I wish to talk more. Not just with myself.
(well I do that anyway)

yes, clone me - I could enjoy my own company fully. perhaps even re-produce me without worries, stress and addictions.

just some idea nibbles

in my work I draw conclusions. I see connections. I oppose ideas.
I offer more or less strange references.
I explain phenomena. At least I try.
I hand out own theories. Sometimes they are quite naive and banal.
I create visuals, mostly video footage.
I start looking into my mind and the surrounding world that spins around me. I look for clues and create something resembling a script.
I mix up things, I confuse, I recreate my own actions and words.

At some point the work is done and I look at it and don't know if it's good or bad.

And mostly I think everything is just pointless.


But as W.Allen said in an interview: if you start thinking to much about the meaning of life you wont get anywhere. Or wont have anything done. So instead of thinking I do these things I call artwork. tssss


*Chemical brothers on full volume.

Tuesday 2 November 2010

script; today, tomorrow it might change. Again.


i tried to reach Dirk but he did not reply to my question.

Instead I discussed the issue with some other random people. And did my Google research.

I came to the conclusion that in order to even start thinking about roots and belonging one has to migrate. Leave the safe bosom of family.



I am not sure.

Was my effort to connect just another meaningless conservative construction?

(But still; why did I feel the need to connect to this lake in the first place?)
Did I believe I was born from the dark water of the lake or what?

Was it important at all?




Rushdie on Roots, Rootlessness, Migration, on Being Between


"I, too, know something of this immigrant business. I am an emigrant from one country (India) and a newcomer in two (England, where I live, and Pakistan, to which my family moved against my will). And I have a theory that the resentments we mohajirs engender have something to do with our conquest of the force of gravity. We have performed the act of which all men anciently dream, the thing for which they envy the birds; that is to say, we have flown.
"I am comparing gravity with belonging. Both phenomena observably exist: my feet stay on the ground, and I have never been angrier than on the day my father told me he had sold my childhood home in Bombay. But neither is understood. We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths spouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.
"When individuals come unstuck from their native land, they are called migrants. When nations do the same (Bangladesh), the act is called secession. What is the best thing about migrant peoples are seceded nations? I think it is their hopefulness. . . . And what's the worst thing? It is the emptiness of one's luggage. I'm speaking of invisible suitcases, not the physical, perhaps cardboard, variety containing a few meaning-drained mementoes: we have come unstuck from more than land. We have floated upwards from history from memory, from Time."