Category: White bear diary
-
A White Bear on the Free Market – A Videodiary
In 1776 – the scottish moral philosopher and free thinker Adam Smith, proposed the theory of the free market. The idea was, that the free market should be able to make even the beastliest of bears within humans, work for the common good and for the wealth of the nation. Since then crises’ of the…
-
Diary installation: Toves Galleri – Contemporary Workoutspace 19.05 – 26.05 – 2012
A year after the safe return from the free market, the economies of the world are still wobbly – and the white bear is still in doubt what to make of it. In May 2012 nevertheless it presented it’s confusion, in a video-diary from it’s journey, and in an artgallery in the shopping arcade…
-
Pee, purification, and other filthy ideas – A white bear at Roskilde Festival
catharsis |kəˈθärsis| noun, the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions, Medicine purgation, from Greek katharsis, from kathairein ‘cleanse,’ from katharos ‘pure.’ The notion of “release” through drama, derives from Aristotle’s Poetics. Inspired by Roskilde festival that I attended this summer, this is an entry cleanliness, written by a…
-
Warmer weather
Comes April, comes milder weather, birds that are back from their southern havens and the ever recurring discussion that inaugurates the season of legs shaved silky smooth: ‘Tis a strange discussion; the discussion of whether or not the hair on the legs, in an irreversible process, starts growing longer and stronger once one has begun…
-
Blllrrrrrrv
On september 8th 2009 I wrote from Beijing “…It may be that there really is no word for blllrlrlrlllw” in Chinese? If that is really so, then one would have to take everything people say seriously in Chinese – and I am sure the Chinese, like anyone else, have heard enough bullshit to be careful…
-
More than just a unwanted thought?
Today I had a minor disagreement with the head I used to be in. I feel she reduces me to just the uglyness from within. I can’t blame her really, it is in her culture to think that the within is made of all the ugly hidden away truths, but I will do my best…
-
Losing and finding myself part 7 – Losing oneself in nature and time
In China it is said, that one is not a real man before having climbed this particular peak on the great wall. There is indeed something that feels particularly real in the stunning view and in the feet that are trembling from fatigue and heights, as well as in the the staggering yet illogical feeling that…
-
Contemporary China part 1-2-3
Part 1 – Contemporary Romance: In the middle of an exemplary image of progress and modernity, a bear gets a weird feeling of uncanny romance by the ghostly rumbling of metal, fire and hard labor, from a no longer active pit. Part 2 – Contemporary sunset in the rubble of the recent past: “Contemporary”…
-
Losing and finding myself: part 6 -Beijing from Above and behind the lines
Tian’anmen Square, (天安門廣場) the very center, of the kingdom in the middle was blocked from view and the access on the rainy sunday where I went there. Policemen, and restrictions indicated that something was going on that did not concern white bears. I pulled in my claws and strolled towards Jingshan park (景山公园 – prospect hill) it is…
-
Losing and finding myself -part 5 – disorientation in the anywhere- and the unique no where else
In 798 one you could be anywhere in the world – and yet, I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where you would find anything like it. In zone 798, an apprentice policewoman voluntered for an artsfestival, an artsfestival-organizer sold his house to invite more than 150 artists from all over the world,…
-
Chinese and Tibetan medical Center
For years doctors have assured me that there is no reason to feel like I do, but as I still feel that way, it makes sense to look for a cure beyond the limit of reason. After a tibetan paw-reading, the doctor had a cure – but I didn’t have the money. It is…
-
The back of a bears mind in Beijing
grooaaaauwwww! In the Beijing zoo the brown bears danced for crisps, and in my head I kept hearing”Atta Troll”- an epic poem by Heinrich Heine about a trained bear, and it’ s tame melancholic entertaining of man. In the streets of Beijing” my head manically repeated Katie Melua’s: “there are nine million bicycles in Beijing.”…
-
Losing and finding myself part 4 – Lost for words
At the Iberia Center of Art, the translator had no translation for “the back of the mind” where I am from. Maybe I should not think too much of that, because then I would probably also have to think something of the dazzled look of the translators when a friend of mine wanted to indicate that…
-
Enclaves and enclosures
In The Beijing Zoo, i found Chinese workers on display. Look at the smile – he is happy. I smiled back. It was a good day. On an internet search about Beijing, I found a traveller to traveller site, with 2 listings of “artists” filed under “annoyances”. Zone 798, where I am staying in Beijing, is…
-
My Chinese Pragmatism
Smacking mosquitoes with “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions”, by Fyodor Dostoyevskij, 1863, translated by Kyril FitzLyon 1955
-
Losing and finding myself part 2 – Self-forgetful Sublime
“Colour Considered as Productive of the Sublime: AMONG colours, such as are soft or cheerful (except perhaps a strong red which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images. An immense mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the…
-
My chinese market economy
On the Chinese marketplace I felt free to be me. No one sent me suspicious eyes for my protruding instruments of death, and they even helped me get the right amount of Chinese Renminbi (translates into the peoples money) when I couldn’t get them with my claws. Money are not made for claws, claws are…
-
Empathy
I go to the restaurant – I pull in my claws, because I am strange enough as it is, I think they talk about me. I don’t like that. I feel they are saying things like: “ Is that really her own hair?” ; or whatever people say behind backs. But I don’t know, I…
-
Getting from there to elsewhere
My claws were safely stowed in the suitcase, my cold heart trembled in nervous excitement, and a couple of hours later, I was in transit in Istanbul waiting for my Turkish Airlines connection headed for Beijing, China! I passed the time in pleasant conversation with a distinguished Chinese businessman, who gave me some good tips…
-
Almost in Peking..
” Major: Allright Marines – we’re almost in Peking – the Capitol city of China – This is an ancient and highly cultured civilisation – So don’t get the idea you’re any better than these people just because they can’t speak english – A few words of chinese will go a long way – repeat…
-
A western beast
There are apparently high hopes in me, and such great expectations can make a creature want to do it’s best, but I do feel I have remind you, that I am but a western beast – the selfindulging bear that Dostoyevskij saw in the eyes of the free men in western Europe- the beast of…
-
A white bear in China, brotherly love, and Fyodor Dostoyevskij (posted by Ulla Hvejsel)
“Try and set yourself the task, not to think of a white bear, and you will see that, the cursed thing comes to mind every minute.” This was written by Fyodor Dostoyevskij in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions”, a critical report of Dostoyevskijs encounters in western Europe, where he had travelled to consult western…