Crossing Bridges

The bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden is called Øresundbroen. This bridge is not only connecting two contries but also creating a whole new region called Øresundsregionen where people from Denmark and Sweden are supposed to intermingle with eachother. As it is now about 20.000 people cross the bridge every day to go to work, meetings, shopping etc. on 'the other side¨' but still there are many borders to be crossed, both mentally and culturally, before the distances between the two places are no longer felt.
Our new project is called Crossing Bridges and has its focus on this concrete connection, the train that crosses the bridge 3 times per hour every day. We want to create a space for networking and communication on the train itself, because it is a neutral place that contains people from both sides of the Sound. A lot of the people using the train every day assumably have a lot of interesting backgrounds, stories and positions that could be useful for others. By making the train a place for networking it would create a better integration of cultures across the bridge if people found some work-related interests in others. Espacially for students like ourselves this could be a good way of realising new possibilities and maybe kick-start a career in some way.
We are very well aware of the fact that people travelling by train everyday (and this includes myself) are not interested in direct communication with strangers. Therefore this should be practiced in a written non-verbal form so it will be possible for people to still have relaxation time on board the train.
We are inspired by the so called 'My friends books' from the early youth where the people you are interested in, fill out a profile about themselves that you can show to others. In this way the producer and the consumer of our product could end up being the same...
The idea is still very young and undefined, and we will not find a solution to this problem that is both socially and economicly possible in the short time framework we have in front of us.

Airplay's Winter party

The pictures that you see here are from a big party, I arranged with 6 other people for a gallery called Airplay on the 24th of November. It is an outdoor art gallery at Nørrebro in Copenhagen and this party was made to raise money for the gallery. The people invited were mostly people with connections to Airplay but a lot of our wonderful friends also showed up:-)
Before the party we had spend a lot of time on preparing the decoration for the room, the bar, the 3-course dinner etc. I tell you, it takes a lot of work to arrange a party if you want it to look just a little bit proffesional! Even though it seemed a little bit silly to spend so much time on such a thing as a party, it all suddenly made sense when it all went so well and everybody were happy with the work we had done. And all though this was just something we did for fun, I think we have also learned a lot from the process of planning and making it all work out successfully. The best experience for me that evening was when Elisabeth and I were dj'ing. For two great hours we had the full controll of the stereo and the dancefloor - and it was FANTASTIC! People were dancing and having fun, and so were we:-) This was my first time as an 'official' dj but hopefully not the last! (Oh how I love music and the effect it can have on people !!)

Inferno films: "Skuggan av det forflytna"

Since I last wrote on my blog a lot of things have happened at the school - or at least one big thing: We have made a still picture film. It took three whole weeks with a lot of hard work to do it but the result is also really satisfying, I think. These pictures you see here are from the film, but in a very unfinished form. The end result was made in a black/white tinted, scratchy style, inspired from 1920ies silent film, expressionist film, surreal film and commedia del arte. The soundtrack for the 'film' is Tom Waits' song "Misery is the river of the world" because it is modern but has a mysterious and crooked sound that gives the pictures a more lively and special look. I hope to get back soon with an example of the finished pictures from the film...till then.

Non-gender conversation game

Friday all groups ended their projects. We had to present some sort of a product or outcome of the last two weeks to the others. We had made something we called a non-gender conversation game. This game was build on discussions based on some questions we had made. It was for instance "How is your dream-lover?" or "What would you wear on a night out and why?". These questions had to be discussed by the participants - there was just one important rule they had to follow: You were not allowed to use any words indicating sex or gender (such as wan, woman, girl, boy, homosexual, sister, brother a.s.o.) if you did that, you had to leave the table.
In the beginning it was really hard to get people to say anything of interest, because they were so concerned about not saying any wrong words, but once they were "warmed up" the conversations got quite good and it was really fun - when people started talking for real they very soon forgot the non-gender part:-)
I think this game is a good idea in the way it makes people aware of the way society is build up by very strong gender stereotypes. Maybe things would be more equal for everybody if we could see eachother more as mere human beings instead of gender stereotypes - if that is possible at all?

Copenhagen from the sea side

More colorful Christiania....

Lemons in the trees - decoration to celebrate the 35th birthday of Christiania

Christiania - no hard drugs

Christiania - some sort of a micro nation

Friday we had a meeting with an opponent group to have critique and give them some as well. Our idea about making our own country was not welcomed by Kami and the other group because we didn't really have a clear idea about why and how, and no clear statements. I understand the critique from them and agreed because our idea was way to big and it also made us a bit frustrated. Therefore we had to think and change our plans a bit. At the end of the day we came up with the idea of making a non-gender country or space. A place where you don't have to think about the discourse of power between the male and female sex. This made us have a lot of interesting discussions and a lot of questions came up - questions that we wrote down and will continue discussing next week.
On Monday (today) our plan was from the start (before we changed the concept of our project) to visit the Free town of Christiania in Copenhagen, and so we did! The reason for that is that Christiania is very famous for its political independence from the rest of society and in that way we thought we might learn something in the process of making our own country.
The weather was perfect today - 27 degrees - and everything was so beautiful. We had booked a guided tour and a woman named Nina, who had lived in the free town for 28 years, guided us around for 1 1/2 hours. Very interesting! Maybe not so relevant to our specific project anymore, but still, we had a great day. In the afternoon we did a guided tour through the canals of the city. Since I work as a guide myself and really love the sea side of Copenhagen I thought it would be a nice thing to do in the sun and all- and so it was!
I think I still have problems uploading my pictures on this blog, which is a shame since I took a lot of nice pictures (if I must say so myself).

How to make your own country

Today the discussions about how to make our own ideological country began for real. It is actually not as easy as it seems and there are so many different things to consider and discuss. If you could make exactly the utopian fantasy place that you dream of it would not be so difficult, but if it also has to be just a little bit realistic it is quite more complicated. Since we are 5 different people with very different backgrounds (and we are really different! all though it doesn't seem to be a problem so far) it can be very difficult to agree upon things such as political issues, law/ punishment system and tax systems. I just think it is very healthy to discuss these things through - this is the part of the process that can make you learn something new about the actual conditions in our countries, people around you, but mostly about yourself, at least I think.
One thing we agreed upon today was the name of it: Eesagon - because it sounds pretty and exotic and because it also has some sort of abstract meaning that I don't remember now;-)
As it looks now I think our country will be quite open-minded and democratic with some communist tendencies - we are young and we are allowed to be idealistic because in our position as students we can do it"for free".
On my way home to Copenhagen I met a guy in the train. He was originally from India but studied in Copenhagen (I think) and worked as a journalist. He was very concerned about worldwide political issues, human rights and things like that and writes comments in the news papers about these things. It was nice to talk with this stranger whoaactually had something interesting to say, and who was not afraid of having a conversation with someone he didn't know. The conversation we had was also very relevant to our project - fun how things sometimes fall out in a certain way and complement eachother.

The "big" project begins

Damn it! I just spent half an hour writing a very long text explaining what we have been doing the last couple of days but in the publishing process the whole thing just disappeared!! Sometimes I just hate computers!
Well but then I'll just try again, and this time not very detailed because I just lost my enthusiasm.
In this new project, that will last for two weeks, the task is very open so we can do almost everything we want. That made it quite difficult to decide what to do but after 3 days of brainstorming and inspirational walks we have come up with an idea that all five of us in the group like. We want to create our own country containing all the rules and ideologies that we like. This can be seen as a reaction to the recent election in Sweden, or just a reation to the world all together. We don't know all the details yet, but this will be fun I think!