This weblog accompanied a Geuzen workshop at Konstfack, Stockholm dedicated to making A Monument To The Now.
In the workshop we explored how the individual situates her or himself in the moment and researched notions of immediacy, memory, public/private space and archiving. Participants worked from a variety of starting points.
hej hej!
also for all who still goes there,
I could finish the website I always wanted to do!
Have a look on ...
Best wishes,
Bernadette
Hi everyone!
Some pictures from my survey at the opening including the final diagram.
Many thanks to all of you for participating by filling out the form. Thank you!
With my film for the monument of the now course, I wanted to try to raise the value
of something insignificant. I´m interested in the times when you would say you "didn´t do anything",
moments between the important stuff. A question about what´s really important. To drop a pencil sharpener can also be something to remember.
_hi everybody!
The website I want to do related to my project is still under construction,...
I want to say that I am pleased with the result of my project.
As I could notice at the end of the week, some visitors liked the flipbooks too, there are not many left... ;).
I will continue working on the website finishing the second part of my project.
I feel like this project hasn’t quite found its spot. It’s not completed. Yet I like the atmosphere it creates, sort of floating. It’s waiting, holding its breath. But the question is: could I develop it more and still preserve this feeling? Because there’s a fine line between floating and falling. Something is missing, but I haven’t figured out what. I wonder what I can do to convince people that these drawings are, without question, meant to be here? 
Why (I chosed this topic)
-The government have decide year 2006 to a “multi-cultural year”
-The extreme right party advanced in the general election two month ago.
-Integration, or the bad integration is always discussed in some ways or onother.
-The last, and maybe, the most importent: I have an old fascination for veil and burkas, art and stories from the Middle East.
What (I wantied to do when I started)
-I started up with an old project about women in burkas, but I soon realised that I hadn’t had as much theory in as I thought then.
-I realised that I had to do some research to make this project, so: I start reading, mainly about integration from a Swedish point of view. But when I had hard to limit my self and analyse what I wanted with the project I found all the time new interesting lines of approach and persons to look up and.
-Even if I didn’t see it then it resulted in a vast research that wasn’t very deep in anything. I had at least four parallel lines of approach:
a) The veil is often defined as THE PROBLEM, and not an expression for structures. An example is the British minister Jack Straw who asked all women to take their veils of because they prevent the integration or the Swedish minister for integration who wants to forbid veils for girls younger than 15 – would it really make the oppression on the girls forced to wear it less?
b) We tend to project our own ideas and prejudices on these women; that they are under oppression of their husband, family and religion. It’s rare that they are met in an equal discussion. (Problems with this point later)
c) Patriarchal structures: The same hierarchy with different expression. The Iranian artist Shirin Neshat said in an interview (Oei nr18-21 2004) that in Europe the female is seen as weaker and in need for protection, in Irak instead the woman is a power that have to be tamed and be hold back.
e) My own fascination and feeling that a burka would work as a protection - for me. I know that it is quit naive but sometimes it would be nice to have a big tent of cloth to get in to. (More about this in the end of this text)
What I finely did:
I did some attempt with using a form of a warrug to make a picture over integration in Sweden, but when I didn’t took my time to specify what I was doing it didn’t work out. In the end I did an animation some where between a and b. My intention was to talk about our stereotype way of looking at veil, with a stereotype context and suggest that this may say more about us than them?
But:
-As you (de Geuzen) said at the critique Friday morning, I didn’t defined who I was talking about and to who I was talking to. I didn’t define them and we. And I still can’t, probably because that it all is vaguely and not well thought out.
-And worse: I did exactly what I wanted to criticize. I wanted to say that these women are as everybody else, and if we are true in our intention to help them we have to see them as equal persons with a free will. But instead I did them to a tragic object. Why: I wanted to tell so many stories at the same time. I couldn’t chose because everyone was just as interesting as the other. I was so emotional in my approach that I had hard to analyse what I got.
-Trying to describe other cultures you always risk, if its possible at all, confirming prejuctices.
What I want do now:
-For the moment the integration theme is too vast for me. I get lost in all different aspect and my one political opinion. I have to learn more to see clearer. I feel that I need a little bit of distance to make something out of it. I know that I will return to it, but for the moment I can’t see how I can work it out – with out continuing to be interested in the question.
-I want to take it down to a personal level and examine my own fascination (exotism?) I think I have to get through with that question before I can deal with the other. These questions have
all the time been in the bottom of everything else, disturbing.
An outline for a new project (after my experiences from my last):
I go for the d-point: a protection cover.
-Why: I have sometimes a need for a cover, but I thing it is a quite common feeling. Young peoples in Sweden feel more insecure and exposed to day then for twenty years ago. The labour market is more sever, reduction of the welfare system and a hard economic situation. This in combination with a never-ending exposure of our private life – everything can be better: your look, your body, your home, your sex life… Everything can be improved and you can’t be really happy with anything.
-How: How would this cover look like? Which criteria would it full fill? My spontaneous solution is a burka-like tent, but would it really be a solution, when it’s the reason why other is exposed?
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