This quote from Michel Foucault is worth considering while you rest in the hammock:
Interpretation can never be brought to an end, simply because there is nothing to interpret. There is nothing absolutely primary to be interpreted, since fundamentally, everything is already interpretation; every sign is, in itself, not the thing susceptible to interpretation but the interpretation of other signs.
Overheard.
Two women are talking about the new stamps, the one with bananas. “It’s impossible for me to use those stamps”, one of them says and finds the stamps in her bag to show the other. “How can I send these to my friend who’s sick?”. The other woman looks at her and shrugs her shoulders. The first continues: “Look at it, have you ever seen anything so ridiculous, bananas walking, bananas dancing… hmpfrr”. They are quiet for some minutes then the other says: “It was better before, with the king and landscapes…”.
The talk about the stamps can feel like an ancient talk for some of us…
The eating in Barcelona takes place everywhere. There are several “food holes” in the city. It doesn’t seem to bother people to eat in strange food surroundings, with the traffic near by. The food experience, the scent, the taste, overcomes most things!
At the party, the food is eaten and the kids are occupied with something… scroll…
Today Richard Gatarski will make a talk at TEDxStocksholm. He has made an interesting experiment at his blog, asking people to contribute:
If this works out I am open for your creativity. Please comment or e-mail me your ideas or material. It might be a video, slides, a manuscript. Whatever that I will be able to present during 55 seconds. Consider the limitations I hinted upon above, and I’ll make a concluding slide listing all contributors. I reserve the right of what to include, and if I at all should fulfill this idea at TEDxStockholm (depending on if I get anything from you). Remember, the theme is “inspiration” and my focus is “best start in life for our children”.
Inculture made a small comment about finding inspiration by looking at how kids behave.
The book about Stockholm Exhibition is here. It describes what the exhibition is all about: “A full scale laboratory for the global urban future. A temporary utopia that will produce real change and transform a segregated suburbia in Stockholm, Järva, into a model for global urban future.” The vision is to step from the modern world to the global world of today. A lot of well-known persons will work with this project and make it happen. Inculture will help with content input. The future of the city will also be discussed at Stockholm Futurama, with for example Alexander Bard, Jan Åman and Inculture.
Two current events have made us revisit the theme of street corner culture. One of them is the never-ending fireriots in Rosengård, the other is a recent gathering held with some of our younger informants. It’s very obvious that street corner culture amongst the younger is a symptom of a social exclusion that is two folded. Firstly, and probably foremost, it deals with the socioeconomic situation which encompass neighborhoods suffering from different forms of deprivation which lead to a notion of powerlessness. Secondly, there is an enormous lack of “things to do” and “places to go” when you are in the in-between age of 15-17 years old. This culture of “att tugga” (that is standing doing nothing and talking about whatever) is not all bad though; it’s far from everyone that is up to mischievous acts. And when listening conversations, subjects and the way things are said, it´s not surprising that hip hop and rap is born in these corners. The danger whit this sort of leisure career though is when the depravation gets idealized to the point where you just don’t care anymore. Or as Anna, 18 years old said: “A lot of the young kids hanging in street corners seem to lack the ability of seeing the connection between cause and effect. Or maybe they just don’t care.”
Rosengård on fire. Photo by Simeon Ogén. Scanpix. Taken from tv4.
One thing Inculture wants to study deeper with ethnographic method is what we usually refer to as generation noll koll. Our expression refer to the notion that we have a younger generation that doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s used as an allusion to how younger people define media, namely “to know what’s going on”, or in Swedish “att ha koll”.
This phenomenon is getting increasingly attention and the phrase is gradually being adapted by journalists and bloggers. See for example an interesting article in Sydsvenskan about youth’s use of internet and how schools are not catching up with them. According to a survey youth spend 14 hours in front of the computer and only 1 of those hours occurs in school! The schools in Sweden are in general sadly behind the digital evolution. Together with Dr Richard Gatarski we will dwell deep into this question and probably something very interesting will come out of it!
Driving around in Mauritius, suddenly, in the green wild, a shopping mall. It was a somehow unreal feeling walking around in the mall. It was silent, empty and out of it’s cultural context. I went back several times to see if the emptiness only was a coincidence with my first visit, but no. The lines of cashier just sitting with almost nothing to do, the overfilled shelves, the lonely woman walking around.
The local market a few miles away was overfilled, with people and goods. I ask one woman why she was speding time at the local market instead of the mall, she answered: “Because the fresh and cold feeling at the mall, the cleaness and the perfection makes me so unhappy. All the joy with food is gone. The smell and texture is not there. It’s not food.”
A growing number of small businesses are now delivering food at your door. But it’s not just food. It’s an environmental friendly produced bag of raw food that constitutes a dinner week for a whole family. Well suited for timed crunched parents who just don’t have time to prepare, plan or shop. In Sweden we have more and more following the trend of subscribing to this kind of services (Middagsfrid, Familyfood, Framtidens mat, Årstiderna). It’s all about simplifying your life. This is an interesting development and when hearing from people that use it, it seems to be cost-effective as well since: “When I buy food myself I tend to get so much unnecessary stuff that I have to throw away.” This might be great but it’s also sort of sad and it says a lot about our stressed out society. But hats off- this is a good business idea.
