Turning heads (and torsos) in Malmo

[imomus]

Newspaper Sydsvenskan has today published a little video report about Krets, the gallery in Malmo where I'll be performing a little action called Down With Fun! tonight. Click the picture to see the report, and if you're in Malmo come to the gallery to see the performance -- it's at Kristianstadsgatan 16 and starts at 7pm.



In the background of the report (which starts at 1min 30 and ends at 4mins 30) you can see drawings by Matt Furie, and tonight is really a finissage party for the end of his show at Krets. You can also hear the Swedish language (naturally) in the clip. It's currently spoken by nine million people worldwide, which makes it too small, apparently, to warrant a place in Google Translate.

You can tell Swedish is a minor language because absolutely everybody here speaks excellent English. Unlike in Germany, where English-language TV programmes are all dubbed into German, in Sweden they're subtitled, which allows Swedes to learn the kind of English spoken in bad comedy shows. (By the way, did you know that up to 90% of the 6000 languages that exist today will have died out by the end of this century?)

I must say this Swedish daily paper shows better taste in its choice of music than a British paper would -- the soundtrack to their report on Krets seems to be Maher Shalal Hash Baz covering "Georgie Girl". Okay, I'm off to see Calatrava's Turning Torso, out in the Malmo harbour.

Comments

Sweden and Gross National Cool

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

The Swedes do seem to be far ahead of the curve as far as cool goes. All the über-hip Swedish indie/electro bands that get played in trendy shops/bars/clubs in, say, London appear to be the most mainstream hand-me-downs, and far beneath the average Swedish hipster's concern.

Sometimes I have the suspicion that, sometime during the 1980s or so, Sweden embarked on a conscious and deliberate programme of massive investment in Gross National Cool. Hence, Swedes studied up on everything from krautrock to C86 to vintage American fashion, founded indie labels, clubs and institutions like Musikbyrån, embarking on a campaign of exposing their population to music with a lot of underground cachet (hence Maher Shalal Hash Baz in daily papers) and basically sent their best, brightest and hippest to study and take off the coolest trends (and underground proto-trends) from around the world, not too unlike the way in which the Japanese started off by making knockoffs of American products after WW2 before surpassing the originals. We still see evidence of the imitation phase (take, for example, in the Sarah-esque twee pop sound of Labrador Records bands, Jens Lekman's retro-styled croon, The Knife's electro-styled Cyndi Lauperisms or the thrift-shop Americana for sale at H&M). That's just the things we see outside of Sweden; the things just hip enough to show up British haircut "indie" as the dated and tedious genre it is without exposing the entire crown jewels of Swedish cool.

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think there's something in that, but it's also a question of the kind of cool we're talking about. In the Anglo world we think cool has to be tied up with a certain aggression -- with what Inglehart calls "survival" values. That's evident in our admiration for Hobbsian hip hop or the NME's recent Cool List, topped by a tattooed guy who'd "invented punk rock... again!"

In that world, Hash Maher Shalal Baz isn't cool. But in Sweden or Japan it is. They have a different attitude, cool is gentler, kinder, softer, more twee. And it's interesting that if you look at Inglehart's map of cultural values (google it, I can't link right now), Japan and Sweden are very close to each other. They're both about the most secular-rational and the most self-expressive nations in the world, in other words the least traditional and survival-oriented nations. That's what makes me, personally, feel very much at home here. In a sense, these nations are secure, liberal, secular. Our conceptions of "cool" overlap.

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.com/statistics/some_findings.html

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[(Anonymous)]

Highly flawed

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[(Anonymous)]

According to Richard Florida's creativity index, Sweden is the world’s most creative country and receives the highest marks for tolerance...

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[(Anonymous)]

Richard Florida's a dink. Sweden's the most tolerant country, except when it comes to Muslims ... blacks ... freedom of expression, etc. etc. etc. Basically, anyone who isn't Swedish or at least non-Muslim European and has views that aren't suspect by the national culture or government.

I think Europe's been basking in the lack of critical eye for far too long; now that they're a competitive political and economic body, I think it's time to stop the "Europe is Awesome and Everything Right / America is Awful" non-dialogue going on for the past decade or two.

Re: Sweden and Gross National Cool

[(Anonymous)]

The 'Sweden and Japan' thing could be cut the 'right wing' way, as well as the 'left wing' way.

Left wing cut says: Sweden and Japan are more relaxed because of a mix of fresh air, simplicity of style, closeness to nature, something quasi-religious but we're not too sure.

Right wing cut says: Stay aloof or insular, nation-as-extended-family, and the citizens never feel "Oh no, there isn't enough to go round." Even if there isn't, it's all between 'us' anyway.