moving landscapes

as i have said earlier, i have started a new blog a couple of weeks ago, and now i feel finally ready to give you a link. moving landscapes is my blog where i will focus on film, litterature, theatre, opera and everything else withing the broad field of culture that finds my interest. since i intend moving landscapes to serve as a kind of portfolio in future jobapplications, i write foremost in swedish, but please feel free to use google translator if you don't understand the language!

i have also started to write for a brandnew, until now still unofficial, norwegian webmagazine called filmamasoner. it is an online filmmagazine with a focus on women, both as filmmakers and as an audience. my articles will be found both there and on moving landscapes.

of course i will continue to blog here as usual, with pictures form the apartment, the occasional outfit and stuff i bought and stuff i like.

today's words of wisdom

"We se(ns)e what we need to se(ns)e in a given context. We are not all confused, even if we are wrong."

"Our sensate bodies [...] do not operate in the transcendent realm of truth, but in the immanent kingdom of the real."

Peter Corrigan in "The Dressed Society"

in other words: i do not need to question every single word i wrote in my thesis, but must trust that my senses did not betray me.

vestoj

at the moment i'm not good for anything. i'm deep inside my master's thesis and even though i read my daily blogroll more or less regularly i can't really find the time to write anything myself.

however. there is something i found today. it all started when evis posted about a second, collective, blog she contributes to now. modearkivet. it's a swedish blog about fashion, and it's definitely not your usual fashionblog. it's about fashion in terms of research, in terms of fashion studies, in terms of reviews on books about fashion. since my thesis has a lot to do with exactly this, guess who got excited!


















anyways, modearkivet just offered a preview about this brandnew bi-annual fashion magazin. vestoj. and no, this is not your usual fashion magazine. this is serious stuff for us who are interested in fashion as an academic subject, not fashion as in shopping. it plans to be a bridge between academia and the fashion industries. it's not about the latest fashion shows in i-dont-know-where, but why are fashion shows important and how have they changed during time and what does that say about the fashion industry. (this is an example made up by me and has nothing to do with the exact contents of the magazine.) they have a manifesto and an article by elizabeth wilson, who is something like the bill gates of fashion studies.

and you can buy it on the net. here at papercutshop. klick on "tidningar" and then you'll see it already. they ship internationally for 25 swedish kronor. i already ordered it.

picture from here.

the knife + opera = exciting

i just read that the knife and the danish performance company "hotel pro forma" are producing an electro opera together on occasion of darwins 150th birthday. it is called "tomorrow, in a year. a darwin opera" and will have its world premiere on sep. 2nd in copenhagen. i think this does sound exciting and special, interesting and promising.



if it is anything like the stuff the knife have been doing until now, i sure would like to see it.

headless

these businessmen appeared sometime during my second working pass as a volunteer for by:larm at hotel royal christiania where we had our check-in desks. i don't know what they wanted there, but they sure lifted my spirits!

















































pictures from -across my universe

danceable danceable

saturday was my second night out on by:larm. the festival was spread out over at least 20 different locations mostly in central oslo and each show lasted for maybe 30minutes, some a little longer, some a little shorter. most of the venues are quite close to each other, so i got the possibility to experience some of oslo's most famous clubs and stages: rockefeller, sentrum scene, john dee and blå. i would have liked to go to stratos and mono as well, but couldn't find the time on either friday or saturday, but as there are free shows each sunday night at mono i hope i can induce a. to go there with me some sunday soon.

anyways, i enjoyed saturday night as much as friday. after a nice dinner at home i went to see a norwegian band called "bergtatt". their music is best described as "medieval folklore rock" which is something i like a lot and they were great to listen to.
afterwards i went to the congress center and saw two danish bands which were quite alright but i already forgot their names and am too lazy to look them up. then a young all-women band from norway, "norma sass" entered the stage and they were such a treat!

















they had those lovely pretty bouquets of artificial flowers on their instruments which was the dot on the i, and they displayed such an energy! you'd believe they had played together much longer than they actually have, and i guess things will go well for them...

after their show i went to catch a few minutes with titiyo, which was a bit disappointing. she seemed rather bored and there weren't too many people at the show... anyways, the evening closed as best as it could, as i met up with a friend to go and see "whitest boy alive", erlend øyes project after "kings of convenience". they were amazing and danceable and the club was packed with people to an extend that it was almost too much for me (i can get light panick-attacks in places with too many people), but luckily the room features some stairs and i was standing on top of them and had a great view.

















erlend øye was really sweet, he never seems to know what to do with his long arms and legs, and the music was enchanting.

looking back, even though the working was a bit exhausting at times, volunteering for by:larm was probably the best idea i've had in quite some time. free shows for two evenings and new friends, what more could one wish for?

detectives from karlstad

on tuesday, thursday and friday i worked with the check-in of delegates for the by:larm music festival here in oslo. i got to know some really nice people that way, which i am really thankful for. even though i was pretty tired after my 9 hour shift yesterday i met up with one of the other girls from the check-in team to go to a few of the concerts, and i am so happy i went and didn't give in for my tiredness.
i guess a lot of you like the music from the amélie movie, right? the first show i saw yesterday was "detektivbyrån" from karlstad in sweden, and they play the most amazing, amélie-inspired music:



i didn't actually see much of the show as there were a lot of really large people directly in front of me, but the little i saw was fantastic. i've never seen anybody play like the guy at the accordion!

afterwards we continued to another place to see swedish singer frida hyvönen, who impressed me just as much as detektivbyrån:



her music seems almost twisted to me, the words especially, and i love her attitude.

festival festival

next week i'll finally be off to oslo once again, and, to my great pleasure, i recieved notice that i will have the opportunity to work as a volunteer at norway's biggest music festival for (new and young) nordic bands and artists, by:larm.

i'll help at the check-in which i hope will be a lot of fun and seeing lots and lots of faces. i also hope to be able to cope with the norwegian language, which i at times understand quite well and at times not at all. when i'm not working i'll have the possibility to take part in dozens of seminars (i saw that there'll be one on file-sharing and copyright for example) and, the most important thing of all, see concerts.

most of the artists i actually haven't heard of before except titiyo, whom i do hope i will be able to see. i still remember one evening during my last scool years when i was babysitting and watching mtv and saw her video for "come along":



i still think it is amazing with it's mixture of cyberpunk and western.
i also remember her cooperation with kleerup which is so fantastically danceable, "longing for lullabies":

i want to see this movie

america the beautiful - here is the trailer.



i really do hope that this movie will start in european cinemas. soon.

on purchasing music

this weekend, i had the chance to see glimpses of a reportage on the swedish television svt about the music-industry, its ongoing problems with pirating and possible solutions. i'm not very much into this discussion, as the music business is definitely not where i am aiming after i'm done studying. but as someone who loves listening to music (at least, every now and then) i still have some interest.

basically, most of the time it was the same arguments and the same points that everybody has heard a thousand times, up and down again. "the music-industry has failed to jump on the internet-wave in time, selling cds is not the main way of distribution anymore, and so on and so on." anyway, there were two points that i found interesting and important, for me as a normal girl who wants to be able to listen to music legally on which ever medium i chose.

the first one is, that if i pay a certain amount of money, i want to own the piece of music and be able to copy it to as many different places as i want. this means, that things like copy-protection don't make me want to buy a cd, or that copy-limitation does not make me want to download music legally. if i, for example, download a certain song on the itunes-store, then i can only copy it to three different media. my mobile phone, my ipod and my computer. if my computer breaks down or my mobile phone gets stolen, i have to buy the song again, as i cannot copy it one more time because of copy-limitations. so, no option.

another example: a few years ago, before mp3-players became something everybody has, i bought some cds in sweden and norway which have a special copy-protection. this copy-protection disables my computer from importing the songs to itunes, as my cd-burner/player just cannot read them. what am i supposed to do now? buy the songs from itunes and pay for the cd a second time? for me as a not-earning-so-very-much-money-student not an option. basically, the only way to get a free version of the cd i have purchased would be to download it illegally. which i do not want to do.

so, what would be important for the music-industry is to find ways that enable people to easily purchase the music they want for whichever media they chose to use for listening.

the second point had to do with the amount of money people spend on music. it's actually a fairly easy mathematics: the more money i spend, the more value i want to get for it. people like to spend money on concerts, as they get an unforgettable evening and the artist in person, something special, for their money. if i buy a cd, i get a plastic box, a nice cover, the songtexts, some information about the artist, someting i can hold in my hands. real value. if i download, i get data and can listen to the music, but nothing more. no cover-art, nothing in my hands. not so much value. so, if i have to pay the same amount of money (or almost the same) for downloading an album as for buying it on cd, i feal cheated. especially if i get copy-limitation with it.

in brasil, there is this movement that sees cds as a merchandise for the concerts. apart from the rest of what they were doing (basically only sampling the newest hits from the us, without paying for the right to use it - me, i don't like that), this is a very good point. they record the concerts directly, and in the end of the evening, people can come and buy a cd with the concert they had just heard for a small amount of money. no really good quality, but a reminder of the good time you had there, and therefore also a reminder to go to the next concert.

basically, this means one thing: if you want people to buy your cd, give them value. something extra. it also means, if you want people to download your stuff, make it cheap and easy.
there was one, well, not solution, but still a suggestion that someone had on the reportage: pay around 10 euro per month for a listen-online-program. this means that you can chose to listen online (no download) as much as you like, and you can listen to what you like. make your own radioprogram. you don't own the pice of music, but you get all you can eat for a fair price. me like. very much.

art and its market

i learned 2 things in class today:

a) if you, as a private person, want to sell a piece of art, you don't need to worry about taxes (in germany). you don't have to pay taxes for making money with arts, as long as you are a private person, meaning as long as you don't work within the arts-market or as long as you are not the painter of the picture you want to sell. good to know!!

b) if you want to sell a stolen picture, make sure it's not one of those overly well-known pieces of art (before you steal it, of course), because then, you won't even need a black market to sell it. if the picture is not famous, nobody will write about the theft in the press (or, even if, will remember after half a year), and so, most of the gallerists won't even notice if you sell them a stolen picture. nice, eh? good to know...

i guess i should see that nice movie again, the one with audrey hepburn and that guy.. "how to steal a million"...

oh, and about black markets, in case you need one: don't search north of bavaria. the more sun the more black market... the third thing i learned in class today =)