Nelles blog

Crossing Bridges

2006-12-11T23:19:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-29T14:14:00.001+01:00

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"

2006-11-21T22:59:00.001+01:00

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

2006-10-02T12:37:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-25T21:33:00.000+02:00

More colorful Christiania....

2006-09-25T21:23:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-25T21:16:00.000+02:00

Christiania - no hard drugs

2006-09-25T21:10:00.000+02:00

Christiania - some sort of a micro nation

2006-09-25T20:09:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-21T16:57:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-20T21:58:00.000+02:00

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!

Happy fools in the streets of Malmö.

2006-09-17T22:41:00.000+02:00

Friday was our last workshop day. All ten groups had planned a 10 minutes sequence of choreography where everybody were transported from one place in the city to another. It was quite fun to see what people had come up with - allthough I think a lot of it was rather similar.. we were for instance marching a lot! - something some of us didn't feel so comfortable about doing in the center og the city with the election and so on.
What was particularly funny about this project was that by 12 noon, all groups had to deliver an executable to be copied and handed out to all, which meant that during the exercises we were not allowed to give other instructions than what you could read on the paper - a challenge, but I think it went allright.
What I learned from this, other than just having a fun experience, was how big an effect a large group of people with deviant behaviour can have on the surroundings. All though we were the ones acting strangely, some people in the streets almost believed that they were the ones sticking out from the norm! I think this observation (and also with all that marching) gives me some scary reminders of historical catastrophes caused by human masses. But a mass can also effect in a positive way. The last group made us all smile, wave and say hello to everybody we passed in the streets - and that made them smile back and be happy:-)

Workshop 3 - Unsworn.org

2006-09-15T09:56:00.000+02:00

Thursday we started a new workshop with the interactive designer group called Unsworn.org. I thought they were better communicators than the other two groups because they showed a lot of different pictures and videos in their presentation.
The name of the project is "The city - the ballets" and we have to design a beautiful choreography by using fellow students as design material.
The warm up for this workshop was a common walk through a pedestrianized street in Malmø. The walk would normally take about 3 minutes but we had to do it 10 times as slow so it would take precisely 30 minutes. It was a fun experience to walk so slowly together in a crowd. A lot of the people passing by started asking questions of what was going on and some of them even got very provoked because they didn't understand our actions - and all we did was just walking! (See the picture to your left)

Other projects

2006-09-13T13:53:00.000+02:00

Presenting our project

2006-09-13T13:38:00.000+02:00

This is the final result of all the words in the park. Maybe the poem is not readable in this size, but then you can check this homepage instead where we have published the poem. www.parkdikten.tk

" Park poetry"

2006-09-12T16:24:00.000+02:00

"Park poetry"

2006-09-12T16:07:00.001+02:00

Today the project went as a succes I would say. The weather was nice so (almost) everybody passing by were in a good mood and wanted to contribute to our "park poetry". During the day some relaxing music was playing to inspire people and make them even more happy, and once they've written a word they even got a peace of candy. We had split up the day in two parts, so half the group were at the location from 10-13 and the other half from 13 -16. This means that so far I don't know how the rest of the day went on...hmm, but I wonder that everything is okay. Tomorrow we have to show our result to the rest of the participants on this course so by then we should have a finished poem and some reflections of the outcome of this day.

Workshop 2 - New Beginnings

2006-09-11T21:20:00.001+02:00

Last Friday we got a task from the artist group called New Beginnings. We were put in groups to solve it in community. We had to wander around the city for a whole day to find out which places in the city we liked or didn't like and to discuss their settings and the architecture. For the weekend we got a new task: to figure out something, such as a thing or an event, that should change or interfere with one of these chosen places.
Today, Monday, my group has found a nice spot for our project. We want to make poetry, but not in the normal way. Our poetry sholud interfere with the place and the people around us. Everybody that passes by our small "poetry workshop" tomorrow we will ask to write down one word on a paper and put it on a line that we have twirled around some trees, as some kind of a web, and at the end of the day this is thought to be turned in to a hybrid peace of poetry.
The weather report for tomorrow looks promising (about 20-25 degrees celcius) so I hope for a nice day with my nice group:-)
My computer is teasing me so I can't upload the picutes I took today..Grrr!

My Aqua cuff at its "finished" level.

2006-09-05T16:47:00.000+02:00

Todays task from UglyCute

2006-09-04T23:58:00.000+02:00

Todays task from the artist/architect/design group "UglyCute" was quite a challenge to me I must say. I am just used to reading books but I liked the fact that I had to try a new way of thinking. I don't know if it was a succes - my product is a funny thing - but I guess it's just part of a process where I have to change and be more creative in a new way.
The task:
Invent and design a low-tech product that doesn't look like anything else, has a function that no one knows about but will help you in your future profession.

A picture of me

2006-09-01T13:33:00.000+02:00

That's me. I don't know how to update this picture to my profile but I'm stubborn so I'm sure I will find out somehow.

practising how to add photos

2006-09-01T13:15:00.000+02:00

By the way -just in case you are wondering - this is a sculpture made by a Japanse artist which I made an assignment about last year. A funny image I think.

2006-09-01T11:21:00.000+02:00

My first day at Malmö Högskola and I've already learned how to make a blog - or at least I hope so. I am not the best at computers so I just try to do my best figuring this thing out.