Momus in Sweden

[imomus]

This week sees me in Sweden, presenting three events in two cities:

Wednesday November 21st
Momus presentation "She's Been Done!" at Pecha Kucha GBG vol #5
Gothenburg, Sweden



For his first pecha kucha presentation, "She's Been Done!", Momus presents 20 post-climactic images from Japanese soft porn sequences. On sites like S-Cute, the genre is very formulaic: in around 40 pictures, an erotic encounter in a love hotel is documented, and almost always ends with an image of the girl, her clothes in disarray and sperm on her body, lying alone on the bed. The theme-and-variations typology of these disordered "done" pictures interested Momus, reminding him of an article in IDEA by one of his heroes, the Japanese design writer and artist Kyoichi Tsuzuki, who travelled to Korea to document a 94 year-old "active scrapper" who collects girlie pictures. So is Momus Tsuzuki, finding this an appropriate subject for a series of thoughts about design, or his old man, happily scrapping? And what message might these messy pictures have for designers -- people who often prefer "finished" to "done"?

At 8pm host/founder Jesper Larsson will present the Pecha Kucha book. The presentations start at 8.20pm:

1. Råvara/kvarnen
2. Lovisa Ringborg
3. Henrik Wallgren
4. Tomas Ferm / Spotcity.se
5. Christine Gustafsson
6. Karl Palmås
7. Robert Lindberg
8. Staffan Bengtsson
9. Anna Byvald
10. Momus

Pecha Kucha GBG vol #5
Nefertiti
Hvidfeltsplatsen 6
Gothenburg , 411 20
+46 31 711 1533

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/gothenburg/
http://www.pecha-kucha.se/

Friday November 23rd
Momus presentation "Down With Fun!" at Krets Gallery, Malmo, Sweden.



We live in a world where certain values are axiomatic and unquestionable. In France, for instance, just about anything can be justified as long as it's done with "passion". In England and America, curiously, even the most respectable people want to couch their enthusiasms in terms of drug addiction: this man is "hooked on stamp collecting", that one needs his multivariable calculus "fix".

And just about everywhere, "fun" reigns supreme. Not beauty, not ethics, fun! It's a value you're never called on to defend. Japanese designzine Pingmag recently ran a headline "No fun, no design!" So when did design stop being about making things work and start being about making things fun? How long before we invade Iran "for fun"? Before murderers justify their crimes with the line "You've got to have a bit of fun once in a while, haven't you?"

Tonight -- for one night only, and just for fun! -- we're going to think the unthinkable. That there might be better values than fun. That fun, in a world where it's compulsory, might not even be fun any more! Sure, we're down with fun. But tonight, for fun and against it, we're going to be trying out the idea: Down With Fun!

Krets Malmo
Kristianstadsgatan 16
214 23 Malmö
SWEDEN

http://www.myspace.com/kretskrets
http://www.krets.info

Saturday November 24th
40 minute Momus concert performance at Cheesy Not Cheesy club event
Uppåt Framåt, Gothenburg, Sweden

CHEESY NOT CHEESY
@ Club: "Uppåt Framåt"
Address: Magasinsgatan 3, Göteborg, Sweden

22.00-02.00 (Momus performance at 23.00)
Entrance: 40 sek (incl. wardrobe)
http://www.uppatframat.se
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20505602432

Comments

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I thought we were doing things for the lolz now, not fun?

And I can tell you what that would make the world- LIKE /b/!!!
If that´s not shocking I don´t know what is.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I am very much regreting that I didn't try and get myself down to Gothenburg so I could see you at Uppåt Framåt. But with no job it is better to save the money for emergencies. Good luck in both Malmo and Gothenburg and be sure to check out the Nasirmosque (http://www2.alislam.org/gallery/mosques/abd) of Göteborg, and Malmö's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malm%C3%B6_Mosque) too if you got the time.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tips, shame I won't get to meet you this time, but I'm sure I'll be back soon.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

It is a shame I won't meet you... But, well, we will meet somewhere, sometime, someday in the future.

bleh

[(Anonymous)]

I bloody *hate* fun. Never understood the concept. All these idiots go on and on about fun this and fun that...


Not to say it's *wrong*, or *bad*... but doing anything for it's own sake is masturbation. And yeah it's a perfectly natural healthy good and ack! fun! thing to do. But come on!

ok ok sorry rant off.

"I came here to dance not to get laid."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I refuse to sign up to social networking sites that won't let me read them unless I sign up.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

speaking of which, I just deleted that comment and was rewriting it!

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

> if there's a difference between fun and pleasure it's completely socially
> constructed.

> facebook? i didn't know you read.

is what it said, for the social record.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

You can share photographs with your friends = Fun.

Someone else owns your photographs as soon as you start sharing them with your friends = Not fun.

Conclusion: They make the fun less fun by doing very unfunny stuff.

Facebook that is.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

So, I could post anything in my Momus group on Facebook, and you'll never see it? I have ideas brewing in my mind now... >:)

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

how is that different from flickr or other places online where you can share photos for free?

to be fair surely the face tagging feature is going to be used to build something very scary accurate one of these days.

like an automatic youtube video of every instance of your face for one frame each. FLICKRFLICKER!!!!

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

" Let's face it, nobody wants to hang out with somebody who's smarter than they are. This is not fun. Americans have always valued the idea of fun. We have a national craving for fun. We don't get very much of it anymore, so we do two things: first, we rummage around for anything that might be fun; then, since it wasn't really fun in the first place, we pretend to enjoy it, whatever it was."

--F. Zappa, "choose cheese" . more>.http://www.science.uva.nl/~robbert/zappa/interviews/cheese.html

[flying-squid.livejournal.com]

flickr, you still own your photos. they don't.

photobucket, they own them.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

no research done on my part, but sounds like something granting them the right to reproduce your work for their promotional use. which i'm whatever about.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't seen your Pecha Kucha presentation but I can already say unequivocally that it's a wasted opportunity. Even for a bright and usually-critical observer, the combination of Japanese porn and the design world clearly results in a multiplication of the same basic aversion to critique.

Marxy

eh..?

[(Anonymous)]

uh, aren't you a pechakucha hater? if memory serves me accurately, last time you brought it up was to lay a turd on it.

the first image

[(Anonymous)]

what show is that first image on top of the thread?

Your mentions on FUN are interesting... something to think about.

wholewheattoast

Re: the first image

[(Anonymous)]

err. sorry not the first image. the third... the art gallery pic.

Re: the first image

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's an installation view of the recent Shobo Shobo (http://www.shoboshobo.com) show at Gallery Krets in Malmo.

Re: eh..?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's like saying to Colbert or The Onion "Hey, I thought you guys loved Bush!"

[imomus.livejournal.com]

My argument is a highly critical one. I will be arguing that, as designers tend to be undereducated inaka boys obliged to perform humiliating services for "clients" to make money to pay off their debts, we shouldn't look at their work with normal criteria like "beauty" or "effectiveness" in mind. In fact, given their low-class origins in non-urban places, we shouldn't even think of them as people at all.

Fun.

[(Anonymous)]

This reminds me of a Chrissie Iles quote I quite like.

"One of the problems with Western culture right now is that we killed pleasure by thinking that fun and cool were better. Now we’re waking up with a bad hangover, frustrated and still thirsty, to realize that the party was a promotional event for a new, cheap, ambient fragrance."

From a Walker Art Center interview in 2006.

Vivian R.

Re: Fun.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, excellent! It must be her aversion to fun and cool that made her hire me for the Whitney that year!

scrapper

[avatorrotava.livejournal.com]

Sorry Momus, but what's an active scrapper?

[akabe.livejournal.com]

not sure i understand the concept but it's really nice you're not showing products at pechakucha