Category: Culture

Skansen Open-Air Museum

I needed more than a day to see the world’s oldest open-air museum.

I like open-air museums. I like being able to poke around in the houses and imagine how people used to live. I’d been to a couple already in Sweden, but knew the best was to come.

turf roofed house, Skansen

Skansen was the world’s first open-air museum. It opened in 1891 and has been growing ever since. The buildings cover five centuries of Swedish history and have been collected from the far ends of the country as well as all the bits in between.

house and gardens, SkansenI first heard of it when I read Selma Lagerlöf’s book ‘The Wonderful Adventure of Nils’. The 1906 novel tells of a naughty boy who is shrunk by a elf and finds himself swept away on the back of a goose. He travels with the flock to the far north of the country and back again, having many adventures along the way. One of the places he finds himself is Skansen.

turf roofed house, Skansen milk churns and crate, Skansen Skansen gardenI knew Skansen was going to be big so I made sure I was there early. As well as the buildings, there is also a zoo and an aquarium. I stayed the whole day – I was able to continue wandering round after it had officially closed, so don’t know at what time they actually throw people out – but still didn’t get time to visit the aquarium. And although I felt like I got a good look at everything else, I would’ve have liked to have been able to take it more slowly. I guess I’ll just have to go back sometime.

trains, SkansenIMG_8295 Skansen houseSome of the buildings have people dressed in periodic costume and demonstrating the skills and trades of the time. I was most interested in the ones involving food, like the bakery below, which was selling the finished product.

Skansen bakery Skansen grocer's bikeThe lady here was making traditional bread. It was only made a couple of times a year and would be a great social occasion as the women would come together to spend the whole day making it. The bread was dried so it would last for months.

Making bread, Skansen Baking bread, SkansenThe zoo had native animals like wolves, wolverines, reindeer and bears. Most of the animals were either hiding in the bushes from the strong sun or running around so fast I couldn’t get a clear photo. But I did catch this sleepy reindeer and bear.

Reindeer, Skansen Sleeping bear, SkansenThere was also a monkey house, but I somehow think these aren’t native.

monkey, Skansen

Nobel Museum, Stockholm

I sat on a Nobel Prize winner’s chair and ate his chocolate.

The founder of the Nobel Peace Prize was also the inventor of dynamite. I didn’t know this and found it ironic that the money for rewarding and promoting peace originates from something that blows things up.

This was just one of the interesting nuggets of information I picked up at the Nobel Museum.

Alfred Nobel lived from 1833 to 1896 and was a successful chemist, inventor, entrepeneur and businessman. Throughout his life he was able to amass quite a fortune. As he was also a pacifist, he left a lot of that fortune as a legacy to fund the prizes which are named after him.

The first prize was awarded in 1901 and since then almost 600 prizes have been awarded to honour outstanding achievements in the sciences, literature and the pursuit of peace.

Nobel medal
A Nobel Prize medal

All except the Peace Prize are awarded in Sweden (the Peace Prize is awarded in Norway) and so it is fitting that Stockholm has a museum dedicated to the life of Alfred Nobel and the winners of the Nobel Prize.

Nobel museumA monorail hangs from the ceiling and loops round the building. A constantly moving stream of cards each depicts a Nobel Prize winner. It seemed a really effective way to show just how many Nobel winners there have been.

Nobel prize winners info cards Nobel winners info cardsInteractive terminals allow visitors to access information about the prize from each decade.

interactive terminals

Side rooms contain displays about the prize and the inventions that have led to it being won.

Winners attend a banquet and as well as a nice dinner receive a medal and a million pounds (10,000,000SEK). I’d like to be at that dinner party!

The table setting for the banquet follows a set layout.

place setting for Nobel banquet Info on the Nobel banquetDinner is followed by chocolates wrapped in gold foil and embossed to look like the medals.

chocolate Nobel medalsTraditionally winners sign the underneath of their dining chair. Some of the chairs are displayed in the museum. Others are used as seating in the cafe. As I’m not likely to get an invite to the banquet any time soon, I had a coffee in the cafe instead.

chair signed by Nobel winnerSo at least I got to sit on a chair signed by a Nobel Prize winner. I didn’t know who it was, but the coffee was good.

And I bought some of the after dinner chocolates to take home.

Firearms and Fingertips

Corpses, video games, shoot-outs, manic harbingers of death, desperate surgery and blood and gore galore are the mainstay of the action-packed 70 minutes that is Firearms and Fingertips.

Corpses, video games, shoot-outs, manic harbingers of death, desperate surgery and blood and gore galore are the mainstay of the action-packed 70 minutes that is Firearms and Fingertips. 

A DJ plays in the corner, a corpse with a bloodied torso lies still on a hospital bed. After several minutes we realise that the corpse isn’t quite dead yet and frantic doctors and nurses try to revive him. He’s in pain, screaming, gurgling, swearing and asking for his mum. She’s outside. He’s been shot and she found him by the bins when she arrived home with their takeaway. He’s a good boy; no reason for anyone to shoot him. 

Cue the harbingers of death, they love a good death but it really isn’t the same these days. They lament for the good old days of plague with all the puss, and the times when people died of syphilis. The ’80s were good too; that was the time of AIDS you know.

They are presenting a show: ‘This is Your Death’. They wake almost dead Spencer up to tell him the good news. He doesn’t take it too well. With plenty of macabre pomp and fanfare they introduce a series of guests: Spencer’s mum, his girlfriend, shooter Jordan, and Jordan’s mum. As they are hot-seated in turn we learn more about the background of the incident as well as being introduced to the five stages of grief.

A mock-up of ‘The X-Factor’ (‘The Death Factor’), a killing spree computer game and a re-enactment of a war-zone in which the actors race around the place shooting each other and using members of the audience for cover. Bit by bit the reasons for the shooting are uncovered. Was it bad parenting? Was it a disloyal girlfriend? Or was Spencer not the good boy his mother believed him to be?

The dark themes of teenagers and guns, death and bereavement are dealt with in a way that is chilling and humorous. And loud. And freaky.

In the end Spencer dies. It couldn’t end any other way. We return to the hospital scene with the doctors and nurses realising they can’t save him and his mum coming to his bedside and hugging his bloodied body as she says her final goodbye.

 

Wicked – the musical

There’s a lot more to ‘Wicked’ than I’d given it credit for.

Last night I accompanied a group of students to the theatre to see Wicked. I didn’t know anything about it beforehand, but hey, it’s a free theatre ticket, I’m not going to say no. I knew it was a musical and so expected singing, dancing and superficialness. Yes, there was the singing and dancing but I was surprised by some of the challenging themes it addressed. 

The show is basically the backstory to The Wizard of Oz and begins with the Good Witch Glinda announcing the death of Wicked Witch of the West to the people of Oz. They are hesitant to believe the good news at first but once convinced celebrate gladly. One asks Glinda ‘But weren’t you friends with her once?’ Shocked silence. Glinda at first deflects the question, then decides to answer honestly. The show switches to flashback mode and we get the story of the Wicked Witch’s life from her birth to her death.

Born green, her father, the governor, had no time for her and more or less abandoned her. When her wheelchair-bound sister was born she was given the role of looking after her. As teenagers they went off to boarding school together, though Alphaba had been allowed to go only because her sister needed her. She is shunned because of the colour of her skin. Her sister isn’t treated much better due to her disability despite them both being in a supposed position of influence being that they are the governor’s daughters after all. The theme of racism and prejudice continues and develops into a paradigm of how a society, particularly one in hard times, creates its own scapegoats and how easily people buy into the idea. 

The scapegoats in Oz are the animals. All animals can talk and hold down regular jobs such as teaching. One by one, species by species, the animals are silenced and in some cases caged. They are dismissed from their jobs and lose all ‘human’ rights. As people’s minds are poisoned against them, there are few to stand up for them and those that do are seen as subversive. That the scapegoats of choice are so readily turned from upstanding citizens into public enemy number one is reminiscent of 17th century witch hunts, 1930’s and 40’s Nazi Germany, the US’s Reds under the Beds anti-communist frenzy of the 1950s and the present day scaremongering and paranoia about ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bogus asylum seekers’ as propagated by the likes of the Daily Mail.

Despite the ill-treatment and disdain, Alphaba is good. Good and righteous she is one of the few to stand up for the animals. When she first arrives at the school she looses her cool and demonstrates her ability at magic. The headmistress, impressed by this ability, takes her under her wing and gives her special lessons in sorcery. Alphaba works hard at these lessons as she wants to attain a standard high enough to warrant an invitation to meet with the Wizard himself. Finally she is able to realise her dream of meeting the Wizard and we find out that her reason for wanting this so badly is because she wants to ask him to do something for the animals. To her dismay, she discovers that the Wizard is not all he seems and his power is due more to clever PR than any real talent for magic. To consolidate his position it is he who is behind the scapegoating of the animals.

Alphaba ends up on the run with her name blackened. She continues to fight for justice in Oz, but the Wizard’s media savvy PR is far more powerful and effective than her magic. 

Other characters from The Wizard of Oz, such as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow are woven into the story and we find out their backstories too. Glinda, the Good Witch, starts out as a spoilt and self-centred airhead whose only interests in life are her looks and getting her own way. For her and Alphaba it is a case of loathe at first sight. Thrown together as roommates they come first to tolerate each other and then to become friends. Through her friendship with Alphaba, Glinda becomes the good person she later becomes renowned for being. 

I really enjoyed the exploration of so many different issues reflective of contemporary life (there are more than I’ve touched on here), and also enjoyed the way the story was so cleverly linked to the original to become a ‘believable’ prequel. I can now understand why it is so popular and why so many people rave about it.

Groningen Museum

An exhibition on Nordic Art was a great way to start my visit to Groningen.

Arriving on the train from Amsterdam this morning I went straight to the Groningen Museum. This made sense as the museum is right in front of the station, lying on an island in the canal that runs in front of the station and circumambulates the old part of the city, effectively turning the whole of the old city into an island.

Groningen Train Station

It also made sense because I could leave my heavy bag in the cloakroom and so didn’t have to walk round with it for a few hours. I’m only in Groningen for 3 days and so only have my daypack but it’s still heavy to be lugging around with me all day. The hostel is on the far side of the town, only a 20 min walk from the station but still … and I couldn’t check in till after 3pm anyway.

It cost a hefty 13 euros to get into the museum and I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a museum year card at 49 euros but worked out I probably wouldn’t get my money’s worth. When I used to come to the Netherlands more often I always had a museum card and it was so much nicer not having to worry about the cost when going to museums.

I had no idea what to expect from the very modern multi-coloured building (a complete contrast to the old ornate train station opposite) so hoped I wasn’t to be disappointed. I wasn’t.

The current special exhibition is on Nordic Art and blew my mind. The colours! The light! The impact! I had never heard of any of the artists but now have a few new favourites.There were artists representing all five countries which are considered Nordic – Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland. I spent well over an hour walking from room to room trying to take it all in.

Yin Xiuzhen ‘Weapon’ 2003-2007

Another exhibition which caught my attention was the a display of weapons hanging from the ceiling of one of the rooms, all at different heights. Each ‘weapon’ had a kitchen knife tip but the hilt was made from old clothes; stretched jumpers and the like. It was all rather colourful and effective. Here’s the blurb:

Resembling darts that appear to be heading directly toward their target, these colourful objects look not only dangerous but also comical. On the one hand, the threat is reinforced by the knives that are attached to the spear-like objects, but the fact that these are primarily kitchen knives, in conjunction with the feature that they are made of second-hand clothes, emphasizes their domestic nature. The ‘weapons’ evoke the idea of TV masts, which have similar form and function all over the world. To Yin, they are the ultimate weapon. After all, they control the flow of information like gigantic filters.

How deep and meaningful is that?

I sat in the theatre for an hour watching a Michael Palin film about Danish artist Hammersvoi. I’d never come across this programme before let alone the artist so learnt quite a lot.

The rest of the museum I wasn’t so interested in. The regular collection, which was actually quite good, couldn’t excite me after the Nordic Art exhibition. I also found a basement room full of crockery. China displays never really interest me at the best of times and this one didn’t either. What I did like about it was the way it had been displayed. The glass cabinets were all shrouded by a maze of net curtains. It really was like a maze and got quite disorientating walking around trying to see everything and never knowing what was going to be behind the next curtain. In one space the exhibits were actually in the floor with a layer of glass over them. I think it was meant to be representative of how some of these exhibits have been ‘discovered’ but as there was no information it was difficult to be sure.

Finally I saw an exhibition of Russian women artists which at another time I probably would have really enjoyed but by this time I was all museum-ed out and had achey legs and an empty stomach. I retired to the restaurant for an expensive panini and a cup of coffee before wandering round town and finding my hostel.

Here are some of the amazing Nordic Art paintings I saw:

Ozombie

Osama Bin Laden reborn as a zombie.

Imagine if as part of the war on terror the Americans decided to pollute water supplies in Afghanistan with a biological agent that messed with people’s DNA. Imagine if this went wrong and resulted in dead people coming back to life as zombies who feed on other people. It no longer takes polluted water to infect one, now all you need is a zombie bite and bingo! five minutes later you too are a zombie.

Amongst the undead is Osama Bin Laden.

This is the concept for the film ‘Ozombie’.

I hadn’t heard of this film until I spotted the DVD in the supermarket. It sounded pretty stupid but one of the things I like to do is assess how Islam and the Middle East (and the ‘stans) is portrayed in Western media and culture.

I watched it last night. Here’s a brief synopsis of what happens (I won’t give away the ending).

As the zombies multiply, the West, keen to keep the zombification of Afghanistan quiet, withdraw most of their troops, but leave a few crack units behind on zombie blasting duty. It seems that when zombies are shot in the head or have their head chopped off they become really dead. One of these units is tasked with finding a militia base where there is a suspected zombie breeding programme (prisoners are fed to the zombies, thus becoming zombies themselves) in operation. It is also suspected that this is where the undead Bin Laden is being kept.

Enter an American brother and sister duo who both hinder and help one of the special forces units. The brother, Derek Miller, was a firefighter in New York and was the only survivor of his unit on September 11th. He’s on a personal mission to find Bin Laden and ensure he is really dead. He’s manic, likes big guns and is determined to see his mission through. His sister, Dusty, has come to look for him and persuade him to go home. She had obviously been in a hurry to get started on her brother saving mission and hadn’t had time to research the terrain. If she had, she might have worn something more suitable than high-heeled, over the knee boots and bulky fingerless mittens that must surely make it difficult to hold a gun let alone pull the trigger on one.

Scene after scene involves fighting between the unit and the zombies or local militia units and the zombies. It’s all very bloody and surprise, surprise, there’s very little storyline. It did make me jump several times though, so I should give it credit for that. 

As for the impression it gives of Islam and Afghanistan? Well as there’s little more than blood and gore, it could be anywhere in the world and if it had been set in Russia, Vietnam, the Balkans, Nazi Germany or any other ‘us and them’ location, I doubt anyone would have noticed.

The First Cut

Wowed by an exhibition of cut-up bits of paper.

A magical forest of greens and autumnal colours slowly swayed; in the distance a black nebula, suspended in space, dwarfed the folk wandering below.

I was at Manchester Art Gallery for The First Cut exhibition. I’d heard good things about it, but even so, I was still completely blown away by the ideas, skill and paper transformations on show. On the stairs leading up to the gallery was a patchwork quilt made from squares of maps. It was only when up close I could see that it wasn’t actually made from patterned material. Through the door the forest of giant leaves could be seen. Large branches were suspended from ceiling, each with huge leaves, covered with woven strips of paper, attached. Walking amongst them created a slight draft and they all gently swayed.

Some of the works were huge, such as the floor to ceiling length nebula cut from black paper. Others were tiny such as a tree cut from, and sitting inside, a Burger King bag. Each of the works was delicately formed with painstaking detail.

Many of the works had philosophical and political ideas behing them, such as the world map in which each country had been created from its own bank notes. The detail was so exact even the tiniest specks of islands had been symbolised by their own currency. (The UK was represented by a £5 note).

A whole section was devoted to works made from books. Pages had been gouged and the paper from them made into train tracks, flowers, people. A man, suspended from above looked as though he was swimming through the air. Closer inspection revealed him to be a stack of books with the bindings intact along his spine, but the pages carved and sculpted to create his form.

A motorbike made from paper, a gun made from US dollars, a dress made from maps: all life-size. A garden made from books of wild flowers. Hundreds of the books were arranged on the floor with flowers carefully cut from their pages and stood on end, arranged to form a beautiful symmetrical garden with, for some reason, frogs jumping around in the middle.

Scattered throughout the rest of the art gallery were other works such as a swarm of butterflies pinned to a wall around the Victorian paintings, pinned in the way Victorian naturalists would have done with their specimens. Each butterfly was made from a map and had been cut with tiny detail. In one corner, a pile of 12,000 individually and delicately feathers cut from maps.

Description, and even photographs, can’t do this exhibition justice. I bought the book, but more as an aide memoire and for the information about the artists and their works, than as a pictorial representation of the works. I didn’t take any photographs myself as my camera batteries died but here’s a link to someone who did. And his pictures are much better than any I could have taken myself anyway. Below is a video of the artists talking about their work.

South of Sanity

A fascinating glimpse at life on an Antarctic base. Don’t think they get that many murders on a regular basis though.

14 souls were left to winter-over on Britain’s largest Antarctic Base.
Nearly six months into their winter, all contact was lost. When a party was sent in to investigate, no one was found alive …

Cut off from the outside world, the small community gradually become fractured and antagonistic. From out of this dark crucible of malcontent, a killer emerges. In the isolated and disparate group, members are picked off one by one, paranoia ensues and no one is safe.

So reads the blurb on the back of this DVD.

The film is entirely set in Antarctica and was written, filmed and produced by a group of over-wintering scientists and support staff at a British base. During the long winter months no-one can get in or out and the base staff are at a minimum. Some of the staff decided to take the concept of making their own entertainment a step further than usual and created an entire feature film.

The resulting horror is predictable and at times the acting is a little wooden. If this was a Hollywood blockbuster I wouldn’t rate it. However, bearing in mind it’s an amateur film, filmed in limiting circumstances (can’t just nip out to the shop to buy another bottle of ketchup when you run out of blood), I think it’s bloody brilliant. Very bloody in fact; the killings get more macabre and by the end I could understand why it is certificate 18.

I also liked the film because I got to see the inside of one of the Antarctic bases. Spending time in Antarctica is one of the things I would really love to do, but may be one of the challenges on my list that I end up doing half-heartedly (a quick visit rather than living there for a while). If I was younger and commitment free I’d be applying for jobs and focusing on making sure I got one. But my current circumstances prevent me from being able to do this and I don’t see it changing in the forseeable future. A film like this, that shows me glimpses of life on a base, keeps the dream ticking over. As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of murders in Antarctica and there are no records of there ever having been a serial killer, so I think I’d be safe on that score.

Here’s a link to the trailer on youtube.

Sketches of Hong Kong

I found some wonderful sketches of Hong Kong in a magazine I subscribe to.

Saudi Aramco World is a free bimonthly magazine distributed by the oil company ‘to increase cross-cultural understanding [and] to broaden knowledge of the cultures, history and geography of the Arab and Muslim worlds and their connections with the West.’

I’ve been on the mailing list for this publication for some time now and I always enjoy the variety of articles it includes. The recent copy really surprised me however, with the cover awash with a water-coloured sketch of Hong Kong. The corresponding article spreads over ten pages and consists of more of these sketches each annotated with relevant text in a hand-written style font.

The focus, of course, is of Muslim life in Hong Kong, but includes anecdotes of a more general nature. One in particular that struck me highlights how the passage of time, particularly where politics is concerned, is thought of differently by the British and the Chinese. A cartoon about the ceding of the whole area of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997, rather than just the New Territories as stated in the original 99 year agreement, shows both Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping thinking they are victorious because they have ‘persuaded’ the other to agree to a fifty year period of compromise: the thought bubble above Thatcher reads 50 years is LONG time – 200 quarterly statements! – will he notice?; whilst Xiaoping’s thought bubble reads 50 years is just around the corner. Does she realize this?

The article is titled Hong Kong Day and Night and is written and illustrated by Norman MacDonald. I hadn’t heard of him before, but assumed he must be a long-time resident as he has been able to get his teeth into the underbelly of Hong Kong rather than merely regurgitating the superficial top layer of skin, which is all most ‘stop-over’ tourists ever get to experience. I googled him and found from his website that he’s actually resident in Amsterdam, which, along with Hong Kong, is another city I like and have spent lots of time in. I can feel an affinity developing here – maybe this is why I was so drawn to his work. I don’t think he holds exhibitions but he has had work published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines so I’ll have to keep my eye out for more of his work.

Olympic Torch

A golden torch on a rainy day.

The Olympic Torch Relay was in Manchester yesterday and just down the road from me in Ashton today. It seemed like the sort of ‘on your doorstep’ opportunity I shouldn’t miss out on and so I took myself down to the route at about 9 o’clock this morning. I wasn’t sure how crowded it would be or how long it would take me to park. As it happened there were only a few people about and I got parked in a side street just off the route.

The view through my windscreen

I sat in my van for about an hour reading, dodging the rain, and watching more people arrive. Just after 10am the torch was due to begin its journey from Ashton so I got out and joined the mixed bunch of people at the roadside (a man with a pint and a small child, a woman with a chihuahua tucked down the top of her coat, a lady who had just arrived back from holiday to find her street lined with a welcoming committee).

The crowd increases
These guys had a good view from
their truck

We had a few false alarms when convoys of police cars and bikes trailed down the road, but no torch. Then a few buses and trucks came decorated with marketing slogans for Coca-Cola and Lloyd’s TSB, dancing troops on board, and loud music.

Finally the torch bearer appeared at the end of the road surrounded by official cars and trucks. It was quite difficult to see and even more difficult to get a photo. I’d expected to have a clear view of the torch bearer as he walked down the road towards me and as he carried on past me, but in reality it was only a couple of seconds as he was level with me that I could get a clear view.

For some reason the police hadn’t closed the road and only stopped the traffic when the torch bearer actually reached the road. The cars in one lane were all stopped where they were and in the lane in which the torch bearing convoy was travelling the cars were only briefly stopped, to give a clear passage to the offical convoy.

And finally …

Once the torch had gone past it was all over and people quickly moved on. I think it could have been done a lot better but I’m glad I’ve seen it and for the time the torch was passing the rain held off. Although this is the first time I’ve seen the torch relay, I have seen the Olympic Flame once before, twenty years ago at the Barcelona Olympics.  Maybe I’ll get to see it again in another twenty years?