February 24, 2006
Cybersquabbles in Sweden
Many things about Sweden remain a mystery to me. Here's one example. Earlier in the week a freelance journalist named Mustafa Can revealed the existence of a “secret” listserv that included journalists, psychologists, business leaders, politicians and literary celebs among its members. Can wrote the article with all the subtlety of the prose found in the latest bodice-ripper. The story in Dagens Nyheter was titled "Uber bullying on the net" and began like this (my translation): “Do you think hate is a fantastic feeling? Do you want to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else?”
You can tell that the article was written outside of the United States, because the answer to the second question would be self evident: Why yes, I would like to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else. The United States is a hotbed of private little cliques, it’s blanketed with country clubs and other private organizations that are all about feeling superior whatever more noble objective their rules and regulations proclaim.
But such is not the Swedish way. Swedes may discriminate against people born in other countries or who bear foreign-sounding names but they do not, and cannot, think of themselves as any better than anyone else. At least, not publicly. That all Swedes are equal, or are supposed to be, is deeply embedded in this culture. That's fine by me. That's one of the many things I like about this country. But I can't be shocked, or scandalized, or even especially horrified by the discovery that a composer and writer named Alexander Bard has maintained a private listserv called the Elite list for the past 15 years that supposedly devotes itself to sex-and-drugs gossip and welcomes new members with an e-mail that claims “the lowest common denominator for the members of the Elite list is their physical and mental perfection, … self-confidence, and interest in leading electronic discussions with other beautiful and interesting people with a large and healthy self-confidence.”
(Are we surprised that the guy who launched a list celebrating beautiful people is bald? Maybe Elite was meant to be a confidence-booster.)
Can wonders how well-known journalists can participate in an e-mail list with people they may cover as part of their work, a perfectly reasonable question. Since this story was published on Wednesday, one journalist has lost a job over her membership and Can got a nasty, nasty anonymous SMS threatening to make his life hell forever (I'm thinking that Bard guy and/or his minions must have no sense of humor whatsoever.) Meanwhile, most of the actual Swedish cultural and business elite--the bosses anyway--have yawned collectively and claimed a private e-mail list is not exactly a threat to democracy.
No, the electronic threat to democracy is not the Elite list. According to some, that dubious honor belongs to the anonymous mud-slinging e-mails trashing the head of Sweden's Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt. It doesn't really matter what the messages claim, except that they claim he's doing something illegal and were sent to journalists, among others.
Reinfeldt has told reporters the e-mail campaign is an attempt to influence national elections. Turns out he's right. The party in power, the Social Democrats, ‘fessed up that an unnamed official is behind the campaign, which is against party rules, and a really bad thing, yadda yadda yadda. The Local website is dubbing it "Sweden's Watergate." According to Dagens Nyheter, this is the first time electronic mud-slinging has surfaced in a Swedish political campaign.
Bet it won’t be the last. So-called whisper campaigns have become a well-entrenched, if disturbing, part of political campaigns the world over. Today's lesson: You can run but you can't hide. The least endearing aspects of human nature will find you wherever you go.
(Yup, I'm on an extended cliché tear. Holler if I 've missed any.)
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
Stylish Seating
There were supposedly 60-plus colleges represented at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week. The gorgeous seating below is the handiwork of first-year students at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Starting with the stool and moving clockwise, the designers are Mari Tosmin, Aap Piho, Ville Lausmäe, and Mari Rass.
I spoke to Kerli Valk, a third-year student, and demanded to know how the hell first-year students could crank out this kind of stuff in their first year. Valk seemed a bit bemused by my question and explained that the students spent their first semester working on a single project and the result was on display.
She also mentioned that there were 15 applicants for every opening in the four-year design program, which has a total of 40 students. So I'm guessing the people accepted into the program were pretty darn talented and experienced even before they set foot on school property.
The chair on the left is by Ketsia Suurväli, the chair on the right is by Irene Roos, and the circular wooden stool or sculpture (or toy--it was very popular with kids, Valk said) in the foreground is by Kertu Kaldaru.
The Stockholm Furniture Fair was the first time design students from the Estonian Academy of Arts has exhibited work outside of their country. I don't imagine it will be the last. I'll be honest--until now, I've never had the slightest desire to visit Estonia. But the work of these students makes me want to dash over immediately and see what else I've missed all these years.
I promised you a pic of the Save Our Souls design duo I blogged about recently. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson are standing against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. My apologies, SOS, for not making this pic smaller but I really wanted to show off your design. After all, who could resist this deceptively demure pattern of pink revolvers?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2006
Stockholm Furniture Fair: Bliss on a Stick
I went to my first Stockholm Furniture Fair yesterday. I don't know if all designers are nice or only the ones I've met, but I had a swell time and Apartment Therapy fans would cream their jeans over the nifty items on display.
There are too many cool things to mention in a single posting so today I will limit myself to reporting on a cheeky design duo called Save Our Souls. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson, the two young designers behind this spanking new company, found inspiration in last year's global disasters, including Hurricane Katrina.
Yes, it is as weird as it sounds. As the company describes it, “Save Our Souls makes harsh, beautiful furniture with bitter-sweet aesthetic. The pleasant combined with the threatening and dark.” That’s an apt description. Later I’ll post a photo of the two designers against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. It’s a subversively traditional, almost old-fashioned looking wallpaper with a repeating pattern in pink against a background of deep maroon. It takes a while to realize that the repeating image is a revolver. A revolver. I nearly burst out laughing when I got it.
The company showed four products: the wallpaper, a gorgeous black glass table (modeled on an oil spill), heavy, hanging black glass lamps (modeled on—you guessed it-oil drops), and a black bookcase I really love called "Fuckin Far From Ok" that has that phrase built into the shelves. If that's not modern life summed up neatly, what is?
To quote from the company’s statement (which I’ve cleaned up a tiny bit), “The greenhouse-effect is getting more severe every day with storms and hurricanes sweeping our world. The glaciers are melting. We produce. Consume. We buy more stuff than ever before and materialism is a way of life. We believe that almost every cultural worker has a dream of, if not saving the world, at least make it better or more beautiful. It's problematic to want to make new products. In fact very little new stuff is needed.
“What to do? Fold one's hands and pray, like sending out a SOS-signal, hoping for someone to rush out and intervene. Save Our Souls became the working name and we made a series of furniture that comments the world around us. This is not a moralizing sermon, we are just like anyone else, in fact we live happy lives in the industrial world. What we want to do is to use that silence between the catastrophes and remind ourselves. Instead of trying to forget, we put the light on the problems and make a visual experience of it."
Save Our Souls presented its new products in the Greenhouse, a special area of the Stockholm Furniture Fair devoted to new and young designers and design programs from colleges as far away as Tokyo. Few of the products displayed at the Greenhouse are in production, and many of them will remain prototypes. That's the nature of the business. But there was tons worth seeing, and I'll add more examples next week.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2006
Danish Newspaper Sparks Culture Clash
Good morning, class. Today's lesson is a thought experiment in the responsible exercise of free expression.
Let's pretend that the New York Times magazine wants to publish an article about the reluctance of some Catholic families to allow their sons to be alter boys in the wake of allegations that several priests in a particular parish sexually abused many children.
Next, let's pretend that NYT magazine's art director really liked to push the envelope, so he or she asks Andres Serrano to illustrate the feature article. The resulting photo, "Lube Priest," shows a half-empty jar of Vaseline, a full set of Rosary beads sullied by drops of some unknown liquid, a pair of size-6 Superman briefs, a crumpled black shirt with a clerical collar and a small photo of the Pope in an ornate gold frame.
The photo shows these objects in artful disarray on the floor as though they've been tossed there in a hurry. The foot of a bed, with a lump of twisted sheets, towers over this twisted still life in the background of the photo. Although we see only a fragment of the bed, it seems enormous and ominous and it overpowers the other objects. After publication of the article and illustration, some art critics hail "Lube Priest" as a masterpiece, others dimiss it as drivel and ACLU types defend the photo and newspaper by invoking the Constitution.
Since this is a thought experiment, your assignment is to imagine how Christians, Catholic and otherwise, might respond. Would they:
1. Salute the New York Times for fully exercising the rights of a free press by commissioning this illustration?
2. Personally regret the actions of the New York Times but support it publicly because of American respect and veneration for an independent press and press freedom?
3. Castigate the New York Times editors as atheist lunkheads and inundate them with sharply worded criticism, anonymous bomb threats, cancelled subscriptions, mass prayer protests on the sidewalk outside its building and other expressions of extreme outrage?
I suspect many people would choose number 3. I'm guessing a commissioned illustration with sticky Rosary beads, the Pope, a priest's collar and little boy's underpants would create a massive, immediate uproar. People would call for the illustration to be removed from the newspaper's web site, for the original to be destroyed, for the newspaper to apologize for its deeply offensive act and for the art director to be fired.
I would hope no Catholics expressed their anger violently. But some deeply religious anti-abortionists have killed doctors and bombed clinics, so I suppose it's both possible and indefensible.
In any case, I suspect Christians might explain why their anger is justified by saying something like this:
"In calling for an end to the display of this blasphemy ... people were not asking that their fragile sense of identity or boundaries be left undisturbed, but that their God be respected. ..."
Or they might say, if critics insisted on defending Serrano's art and its publication, something like this:
"To think a religious object can be extracted from its context and ‘purified,' ‘restored' or ‘improved' by doing to it something unthinkable among adherents of that tradition, is condescension. ..."
In fact, that's exactly what some people did say in response to Serrano's real-life "Piss Christ." And I'm thinking that outsiders, including non-Catholics and agnostics, understand why "Piss Christ" was deeply offensive to Catholics. And they would understand why Christians would be livid if the New York Times had specifically commissioned "Piss Christ."
Everybody with me so far? Good. Now, deliberately commissioning an illustration that a large number of people are guaranteed to find blasphemous and, thus, deeply offensive rarely occurs to editors but apparently it happens. An editor at Jyllands-Posten in Denmark heard about the difficulty a Danish author had in finding an illustrator for a children's book about Muhammad. Artists were afraid to illustrate the book for fear that they might be threatened. That's because images of Muhammad are considered blasphemous by most Muslims.
But Denmark isn't Iraq or Iran, so why the hell should Danish illustrators be too cowed to whip out a few editorial cartoons featuring Mohammad? I suspect the editor's thinking might have run alone that line and contributed to the newspaper's decision last September to publish an article about the issue, along with 12 caricatures of Mohammad it commissioned as illustrations.
This was not an especially wise move. Some of the illustrators now have guards. A boycott of Arla products has cost the Danish-Swedish dairy company millions. The newspaper has received bomb threats, Scandinavian citizens have been asked to leave certain areas, and it's possible that someone will die because of these stupid, stereotypical, offensive (one Mohammad has a bomb in his turban) and, yes, blasphemous images.
Several European newspapers have republished the images in support of the Danish newspaper, which issued on of those lame, Harry Shearer-ish type of non-apology apologies a few days back. Several other newspapers are under pressure to run the illustrations but have wisely refused. One British newspaper reader whined that the papers kowtowing to a misguided sense of political correctness. Hmm. Not everybody in the U.K. supports the monarchy but the mainstream papers don't run Photoshopped pictures of a nude Queen having sex with a servant. Is that political correctness? I don't think so.
There's an enormous cultural clash here. Westerners don't get it. Illustrations are no big deal to us. I've seen comments that Muslims should just "get over it." But that's like asking Britains to think it's okay if the London Times uses the Queen in some horrifying way or asking Catholics to be cool about a naked Pope and a poodle shown in Time magazine. Would we take such images in stride? I don't think so.
The New York Times piece on the controversy gives short shrift to the seriousness of the issue. "An international dispute over European newspaper cartoons deemed blasphemous by some [my emphasis] Muslims gained momentum on Thursday when gunmen threatened the European Union offices in Gaza and more European papers pointedly published the drawings as an affirmation of freedom of speech."
The New York Times reporter notes that he conflict "is the latest manifestation of growing tensions between Europe and the Muslim world as the Continent struggles to absorb a fast-expanding Muslim population whose customs and values are often at odds with Europe's secular societies." But not so fast. The Muslim population in Denmark is a lousy 4 percent. Maybe the Times could have mentioned that fact, but no.
The AP's Richard N. Ostling does a much better job of setting the controversy in context: "The spreading Muslim protests against newspapers that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad stem from the deepest religious roots. Islam forbids visual depictions of the prophet, and regards violations by Muslims as highly sinful and by non-Muslims as the ultimate insult. The prohibition is in part an application of the Koran's strict opposition to idolatry. ...
"The Koran does not specifically address artwork of Muhammad, and through history a few Muslims have painted him. But the ban has been virtually universal in all branches of the faith from its earliest days. ... Zahik Bukhari, director of Georgetown University's American Muslim Studies Program, says the cartoons, first published in Denmark, constitute a triple offense for Muslims: first by depicting Muhammad at all; second by treating him disrespectfully; and third because 'in the present circumstance it is a symbol of the clash of civilizations that they want to insult the prophet and the whole of Islam.' "
Last I checked, the practioners of a faith get to decide what's blasphemous and what's not blasphemous. That is not up to outsiders to determine, no matter how much we want to.
The Danish paper ought to issue a real apology, not a pretend apology. According to one of the illustrators who works in the paper's art department, the newspaper's editor is a jerk who was itching to be provocative. Well, the editor was provocative all right. Not smart, not thoughtful, not educational. Just provocative. And now Norway, Sweden, Denmark and their citizens get to pay the price. Thanks a fucking pantload, as Denise Caruso might say.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
Virtual Sex vs. Hickeys and Hugs
"Nowadays, erotic behaviour in cyberspace is customary. Online dating is a million dollar industry. Within the everyday politics of erotic-romantic relationships, however, males and females still blush in each other's presence, caress tenderly and trade hickeys. Mainstream social science researches cyber-behaviour voluminously, but totally ignores commonplace fleshy phenomena. Our study probes this discrepancy. What does it mean that virtual sex is winning the current war between desire and technology? Why is the 'flesh' becoming increasingly marginalized?" asks the authors of "Flirting on the internet and the hickey: a hermeneutic" in Cyberpsychology & Behavior. (Those wachy Norweigians--who knew they were hickey-obsessed?)
Is there are war between desire and technology? I'm not so sure. But I do know this: hugging your gal is good for her blood pressure, and it's not something you can do in cyberspace.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
September 29, 2005
Scandinavians: Biz Wimps No More
Sez Reuters:
Nordic countries, with Finland in the lead, have some of the world's most competitive economies, despite high taxes and extensive social security systems, according to a study issued on Wednesday.
The study, from the World Economic Forum, claimed that
the north European nations "are challenging the conventional wisdom that high taxes and large safety nets undermine competitiveness."
This year's lineup of the top five: 1. Finland, 2. USA, 3. Sweden, 4. Denmark, 5. Taiwan. Of course, this is just the opinion of the folks who bring us Davos. That and 3 bucks won't even get you a latte in Stockholm. But the report is a bracing rebuttal, however small, to the myopic American assumption that a national health program, for example, is somehow incompatible with a competitive business climate.
Which is not to say Swedish business folks are thrilled with the Swedish system, they're not. And several of my friends moan about the complexities and pain of starting small companies here. Despite those obstacles, both IKEA and H&M seem to be doing very nicely. Some years ago I met a Swedish marketer whose job was to convince regular citizens that businesses paid too much in taxes and needed a break. It was an impossible job, he told me. Swedes don't like taxes, he said, but accept them as unpleasant but necessary to keep the system running.
This place isn't perfect, far from it. But it's not a Commie sinkhole verging on collapse, either. Contrary to the myth back home, there is more than one place in the world that has a functioning democracy, freedom of expression, and a healthy business climate. And thanks to global warming, Stockholm will have California's weather eventually. So if we survive, the weather will be terrific too.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:24 AM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2005
Craig's List in Stockholm + Apple and Intel = What?
A while back I whined less than attractively to someone at Craig's List. I wanted a Stockholm branch and I wanted it now. Time passed (months? years?) and yesterday I noticed: oh my gawd, we've got it! Only it's sooo disappointing because nobody knows that Stockholm has Craig's List yet. There were all of 13 jobs listed yesterday and most of them aren't even related to Stockholm. But dude, if you are in Stockholm and you can, like, shoot a digital camera and, like, ask questions, you can get $150 and all the hearing damage you want by covering the Sweden Rock Festival this weekend for an LA-based "motorcycles and entertainment lifestyles magazine." Cool or what? If you can't make the festival, no worries: just spread the word about the Stockholm Craig's List, okay?
In other news, several friends had fun speculating on what the spawn of the Apple-Intel partnership should be dubbed. Suggestions include Mactel (Tim Holmes), Apptel or Inpple (Peter Linde), Mintel (Joseph Holmes' son Julian) and Intellimac (Ulf Molin). But no, Steve says it's going to be MacIntel.
Pete Gontier was paying attention as the rumors flew across the web before the partnership news was confirmed. He wrote, at the time, "There is sooooo much misinformation. And by this I don't mean I know what's going to be announced and the press doesn't. I mean the press doesn't even have remotely decent sources to interview." What, you need an example? "The hapless Peter Glaskowsky is my favorite. He works as an analyst for The Envisioneering Group, in Seaford, N.Y. 'It's a bunch of bull,' he's quoted as saying in eWeek, then goes on to detail how uninformed he is before dropping this stinker: '...IBM has no other customers willing to buy large quantities [of the G5].' Yeah, as if Apple is subsidizing IBM! This guy must be somebody's nephew. Within a few hours, the president of Glaskowsky's firm, Richard Doherty, had silenced Glaskowsky and gotten the NYT to quote Doherty about a 'seismic shift' which is 'bound to rock the industry.' Thanks for the specifics, fearless leader!"
Pete's not the only one to blow the whistle on Glaskowsky. As Web Pro News put it: "A decision that was eleven years in the making became official during the opening of the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference. Paul Thurrott and the Wall Street Journal had it right. Peter Glaskowsky and Leander Kahney were dead wrong."
I suspect I have more sympathy for both analysts and journalists than Pete does. And since I know John Markoff I have a hard time believing that Doherty forced a quote into the story. Remember, newspapers run on deadlines and it's often hard to find truly knowledgeable sources on short notice. Still I understand that it's painful to read quotes from people who don't know what they're talking about. Luckily, this doesn't seem to be a problem for Stuffola's hardy audience of 84 readers. For that I'm grateful.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2005
Wacky Norwegians
At least he asked first. According to a Norwegian newspaper's English-language site, "a court in the southern Norwegian town of Kristiansand has sentenced a man to six years in protective custody after he expressed interest in eating a 13-year-old girl. The man, age 26, was charged with asking the 13-year-old whether he first could have sex with her and then kill her and eat her."
Our friendly neighbors to the West apparently have their hands full. When they're not chasing down wannabe cannibals, they're chasing down stolen weapons the country's defense department can't seem to protect. And don't get me started about the few troublemakers who travel to Sweden for cheap booze and the innocent swans that suffer as a result. Luckily Norwegians, like Canadians, usually make fine neighbors and excellent friends. Too bad a cup of coffee is so damn expensive there but hey, nobody's perfect.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack