#
Fear to become a hashtag #fear
Ambition to be a hashtag #ambition
Fame through a hashtag #fame
Your existence #myexistence
Your life #mylife
Your values #myvalues
Your world #myworld
All reduced to a hashtag #I_exist
Risk
Casting a stone into a lake changes the shape of the water. The ripple it creates moves away from you until it disappears and becomes one again with its source. It existed for a brief moment to vanish into the big mass. So we do it again. We cast a little stone into the water to see the effect of the ripple moving away. Somehow it gives comfort having the illusion that you control the behaviour of the water by casting a stone into it.
Thoughts are directed to the future with a feeling of uncertainty. Will we be safe no matter where we live on this planet? Will our hearts be filled with joy in the future. I guess every generation has its doubts. Doubts indicate that nothing is set in stone and that we do have some influence on our lives. Nothing is certain, everything is possible… Risks are taken every day.
Starting a project, starting a business, starting a relation,… everything caries a risk. As long as you believe in it and have passion for it… whatever the “it” is… in the end it is all worth it. Doing things you believe in are always worth doing, no matter what the results are. It shapes you as a person and lets you be the person you are. I believe in my project, I believe in myself and I believe in my life. I trust in myself and the people that care for me and that gives me comfort to take some risks…
Clouds
So long, my dear
For the time is near,
Where we live in fear
And see loved ones march
To disappear
Good Bye, peace
Is it too late?
Or just not yet,
That hope still is embraced
To find some happiness
Warmongers create fear
And divide to conquer
Call names to provoke
Send armies to destroy and plunder
Until there is nothing left
Hello, my dear
I hold you near
and I have no fear
For our love is strong
And ever so real
I embrace, our love
Finding warmth and care
In this cold hard world
You and me and us
Together, in the hope it all will be better
Oh, so afraid…
Mushroom clouds are not welcome
Not here nor in my nightmares
Friendship and love are found
When people talk and listen
Understand cultural differences
Embrace our diversity
And learn from one another
To embrace a prosperous life
As equals under the same skye
Not damaged by clouds
Listening!
Your mind wonders away into a void where only you seem to understand what is going on. You sit on a chair, look out the window while absorbing impressions. Autumn leaves are passing by. They travel distances unknown. The blue sky is covered by clouds that resemble objects and figures. Fantasy plays with you. Only lack of imagination will spoil the experience of an adventure you see being played before you.
Then it comes. It smacks you in the face. You run into a concrete wall with high speed. Hard reality knocks you back on your feet, back to earth, back to the now and what is deemed as so important. All that dreaming and wondering around in a fantasy, is not what you should waste your time on. You cannot just waste your time looking out a window and do nothing. This seriously is very unproductive behaviour…
So here we are… We are defined with what we do for a living. It sits in our culture that we define somebody with what that person is doing as an occupation, as work. One of the first questions you get asked, when talking for the first time to somebody is; “What do you do?” as in “What is your occupation?”. You answer most likely with a similar phrase as this one; ”I am a student”; “I am a lawyer”; “I am an engineer”. Your answer allows to set a picture that the questioner can relate to and the tone of exchange and conversation is as such set. Having no occupation, saying you are un-employed, or that you do nothing is received with silence or a frowning face… Euphemisms are used to mask that you are by definition inactive in the rat race by using the phrase “I am in between jobs”; “I am looking for new opportunities and challenges”; and others…
No matter how you look at it, we answer with the intend to inform about our main activity, with the knowledge (and in some cases hope) that it will give you a level of status. It is that status we deem important. Being unemployed is not something you want to communicate. Main reason, it puts you in the bottom section of the status ladder. We communicate our profession as who we are and preferably we infuse the title we use with some more fancy wording in the hope we are put higher up the status ladder. It is all about the first impression we make. The same goes for the set of clothes you are wearing. We judge every person all the time. My argument is that we discriminate people in forming an opinion about somebody when we box them in their profession and occupation to define who they are. We form an opinion of someone before we even known the person.
Next time you meet somebody new and you start a conversation, try very hard to not ask anything about that person. Try and have a conversation about some topic that fits the occasion and avoid getting trapped in forming an opinion about the person by just looking t their clothes or shoes, before you actually had a meaningful conversation. My experience is that the less you know about somebody, the more you might be inclined to listen to what that person has to say without being prejudiced. Especially in those cases, where you would have boxed people into their boxes, where the box makes you to form a more sceptical or negative opinion about them. Avoiding this, stops you from defining up front an opinion about the person and might give you a chance to enrich experiences by hearing what others have to say more objectively. Try it… It is worth doing it!
Light
I was witness of a conversation about light between Lene Hau and Olafur Eliasson (Art of Light) on Friday, August 25 – 2017 in DR Concerthuset (Copenhagen). The conversation was organised by the Carlsberg Fund and the New Carlsberg Fund and brought science and art together in a very interesting way. Hearing two persons speak with passion about light is an experience I will never forget. Light is fascinating, no matter from what angle you look at it.
My first conscious experience with Olafur Eliassons work was an exhibition of Din Blinde Passager back in 2010 in Arken, Museum for Modern Art (Ishøj). The exhibition let you embark on a journey through fog that was illuminated. Your senses reacted in strange and peculiar ways when interacting with the light and fog while walking inside the tunnel.
You walk through the fog. You are blind yet you see. You sense, yet you get confused on what you sense. You get disoriented with coinciding excitement that flows through your body. You get confused and loose sense of direction and time. Even today, after all these years the experience still is very vivid and clear in my mind. Once out of the tunnel, it took minutes to grasp what exactly I had experienced and how the light inside the tunnel had enormous effect on your senses. One thing is for sure, it was an amazing experience.
It makes you think about light in a different way. We take light for granted in our lives. We just switch it on when we need it. We watch it on our screens everyday, on television, monitor, tablet or smartphone… We switch it off when not required and don’t think about the science that allows our actions to control light in such a way. We see the light from the sun as something so normal that we do not think about the uniqueness of our world we live in.
We think we understand light, but actually don’t. Lene Hau’s research made a leap into understanding light better bodying something that even Einstein deemed impossible, which is stopping light from moving. For more info on understanding how the speed of light is slowed down and ultimately stopped follow the link to the Youtube Video Prof. Lene Hau: Stopping light cold.
Try and imagining what it means having the possibility of slowing down light to a speed that you can walk faster than it, and then actually stopping it from moving. Imagine having the possibility to just park the light somewhere for a while until you decide to make it go again. Maybe my brain is too small to comprehend what this actually means, but it sounds to me that the practical possibilities are endless whit this concept. This is very exciting stuff.
Hearing a conversation about the subject and where science and art come together about talking about light was a learning experience. The conversation touched on the positive but also negative applications of scientific discoveries and inventions. Stopping light from moving might trigger ideas to be used for the good of mankind, but we all know that anything can be used to do harm. There are ethical questions that require consideration when we embark to make new discoveries. How we use the scientific breakthroughs as humans within our world and what we do with it is our choice to make. The ethical subject also is of importance in the world of art. Olafur Eliassons Little Sun project is one of those ethical positive projects where an artist designs a product with a vision. Our actions have consequences! That is so with everything we do. We have to be mindful of that.
Wherever we bring light; wherever we control light or stop light; what we do with it and how we interact and use it, it all is up to us to decide if it is used for good or for bad. Being mindful about this is a step in the right direction in making a better world to live in. When art and science meet, a small positive step is being made in that direction…
Peinsejoager 