Category: English

Danish Diaries #9: Nordisk Panorama 2011 — Various shorts and The Green Wave

Some of the films I will remember from Nordisk Panorama 2011, a Nordic-centred film festival that took place in Aarhus.

From The Animation Workshop in Viborg. I’d love being an animator myself…

I regret this does not exist online in its entirety, I’m sure everyone would love it as much as I did. I still sing “Eg har klina med ein skallamann!” whenever I remember it, not caring about the risk of people misunderstanding me!

Eläimiä eläimille, a deliciously disgusting Finnish short. No trace of it exists online. I hope one day it does so it is available for all to see.

And the one that struck me the most, The Green Wave, on the forged elections of Iran in 2009 and the uprising that followed (click on the link just for the website design excellence, if regrettably you are not interested in the film itself).

THE GREEN WAVE teaser (ENGLISH) from PORT AU PRINCE on Vimeo.

Green is the color of hope. Green is the color of Islam. And green was the symbol of recognition among the supporters of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who became the symbolic figure of the Green Revolution in Iran last year. The presidential elections on June 12th, 2009 were supposed to bring about a change, but contrary to all expectations the ultra-conservative populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was confirmed in office. As clear as was the result, as loud and justified were the accusations of vote-rigging. The on-going Where is my vote? protest demonstrations were again and again worn down and broken up with brutal attacks by government militia. Images taken from private persons with their cell phones or cameras bear witness to this excessive violence: people were beaten, stabbed, shot dead, arrested, kidnapped, some of them disappearing without trace. What remains is the countless number of dead or injured people and victims of torture, and another deep wound in the hearts of the Iranians.

THE GREEN WAVE is a touching documentary-collage illustrating the dramatic events and telling about the feelings of the people behind this revolution. Facebook reports, Twitter messages and videos posted in the internet were included in the film composition, and hundreds of real blog entries served as reference for the experiences and thoughts of two young students, whose story is running through the film as the main thread. The film describes their initial hope and curiosity, their desperate fear, and the courage to yet continue to fight. These fictional ‘storylines’ have been animated as a motion comic – sort of a moving comic – framing the deeply affecting pictures of the revolution and the interviews with prominent human rights campaigners and exiled Iranians. Ali Samadi Ahadi’s documentary is a very contemporary chronicle of the Green Revolution and a memorial for all of those who believed in more freedom and lost their lives for that.

After watching The Green Wave in Øst for Paradis, the local cinephile theatre, there was a live Skype discussion with members of Amnesty International (one of them was in Iran in 2009) and Ramy Raoof, an activist from Egypt that leaked info out through Twitter during the “Arab Spring” (and still does). He tried to make clear the point that Facebook and Twitter, often used as the taglines of the Arab Spring by Western media, were not pivotal in organising the revolution; even after Mubarak had cut off the Internet and SMS, people of course used other means along side digital means. Ramy stressed that, even if Twitter and Facebook had not existed, the revolution would still have taken place…

…and added that, in Egypt today, the “temporary military government” after Mubarak has taken too many liberties and is not looking to be all that temporary at all…

 This film shook me as few have. Imagine living in a country where you could be tortured or killed just because you were out in the streets demanding your vote to count, where the government would stop at nothing to muff you or your blog. Where merely me posting this could be deemed a crime punishable by… well, any means necessary. Maybe it’s far too easy to imagine other countries having such horrible regimes. Anyone who has read or watched Persepolis will be familiar with Iran’s difficult recent past and to see that things have certainly not improved is at least troubling. It also made me think about our own situation in Greece and how far things could go before spiraling into a similar scenario… When Alex Grigoropoulos was shot in December 2008, Greece was in flames for a couple of days. What would happen if (young) people got shot every day? Would people still go out to protest? Or would our generation freeze in terror, remembering that real protest against governments caught with their pants down could very well mean very real death, or worse? I have to admit that I don’t know how I would act if faced with these options. Looking at all of history’s failed revolutions, I do not want to shed blood for a pre-determinedly lost cause. Hell, even if the cause was not lost, I don’t want to die! Would a successful revolution won with the blood of hopefuls be worth it? Is anything won with blood worth it?

Review: Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past

Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past
Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past by Douwe Draaisma

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“You’ll come away with hopefully more questions that you had at the beginning”. It says something along these lines on the back cover on “Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past”. I didn’t come away with more questions. In fact, I didn’t even get an answer for the title of the book! It’s structure and content is such that it doesn’t analyse the problems at hand in depth or in a way that led to some visible conclusion (I’m one of the people that accepts the conclusion of no conclusion quite alright. Imagine.) Instead, it’s little more than a collection of case studies. Interesting case studies, I have to give Mr. Draaisma that, but ones that do not come very close to trying to tackle the huge chapter of human life that is autobiographical memory. This book could be so much more. Instead, it’s just a text of well-organised and researched memory-related anecdotes that might be interesting by themselves but come across as superficial. A pity; memory, together with time, is one of my favourite topics.

View all my reviews

Danish Diaries #8: September Equinox

It’s the equinox, the middle of the seasonal change. This time of year, day gives way to night three minutes every day at my latitude, at its annual max. Every night from today til the Winter Solstice will still be longer than the previous one, but getting longer at a slower rate. The slowing will turn into a grinding halt on the Solstice itself, also known as Christmas, when the day will start gaining ground again. And long and cold nights they will be, here in the north. Let’s hope they’ll be hyggelig as well.

So it’s the first day of Autumn, if you’re one that prefers his astronomical seasons to the arbitrary calendrial ones. If you’re like me. A lot of leaves have already put on their jackets for the coming cold (it’s already ~12C every day here). They’re very pretty in their last days of life, their colours saturated with deep, earthly reds. As the days pass, more and more leaves will find their beautiful deaths on the wet streets. It feels wrong drying them, preserving them, when their rightful place in the circle of life is death and non-preservation, becoming food for bacteria and fungi.

This environment is quite perfect for going to lessons and having to preoccupy yourself with creative ideas. Perfect environment for sitting at home when you’re not out walking in the rain listening to music or Spanish lessons, doing your assignment for Media Management and Journalism 3.0 in the Digital Age, on Search Engine Optimization and Croud-Sourcing… What’s better than being at a Great Works of Art class, it pouring outside and you analysing Monteverdi and Vivaldi inside, in the cozy warmth of knowledge, academia and the body heat of art-thirsty colleagues?

Ψιλαίνοντας τα δίχτυα

Φόρος από τα 350 ευρώ το μήνα! 300 ευρώ θα παρακρατηθούν από μισθούς ώς τον Ιανουάριο • 4 χρόνια θα πληρώνουμε το τέλος ακινήτων • Αύξηση φόρου πετρελαίου: θα κάνουν 980 ευρώ τα 1.000 λίτρα • Σε θεωρητικό αναβρασμό οι βουλευτές του ΠΑΣΟΚ

ΦΟΡΟ εισοδήματος ακόμη και για όσους ζουν κάτω από το όριο της φτώχειας (6.500 ευρώ, Eurostat) επιφύλαξε η κυβέρνηση, η οποία ρίχνει το αφορολόγητο στα 5.000 ευρώ, κόβει μισθούς και συντάξεις, στέλνει στην ανεργία αμέσως 30.000 δημοσίους υπαλλήλους του στενού και ευρύτερου δημόσιου τομέα μέσω της εργασιακής εφεδρείας, αυξάνει το φόρο στο πετρέλαιο θέρμανσης, που θα μας στοιχίζει 980 ευρώ τα 1.000 λίτρα από τον επόμενο μήνα, και επεκτείνει τον ειδικό φόρο στα ακίνητα μέχρι το 2014. Η τελική συμφωνία θα κλειστεί με την τρόικα την ερχόμενη εβδομάδα. Εντονη δυσαρέσκεια, αγωνία και προβληματισμός, όπως και απόψεις που φτάνουν μέχρι και σε σενάρια κυβέρνησης εθνικής ενότητας ή και πρόωρων εκλογών, υπάρχουν στο εσωτερικό της Κοινοβουλευτικής Ομάδας του ΠΑΣΟΚ, μετά το νέο σοκ των μέτρων.

Πλήρες θέμα…

(Ελευθεροτυπία, 22/09/2011)


Mια ματιά σε αυτό το γραφικό από το παραπάνω άρθρο της Ελευθεροτυπίας είναι παραπάνω από ενδεικτική σχετικά με τις προθέσεις των «ψαράδων». Τα υψηλά εισοδήματα δεν έχουν υπωστεί καμία αύξηση στην φορολογία, η οποία παραμένει χαμηλή (κάτω από το 25%). Και τι κάνουν; Μειώνουν το αφορολόγητο στα 5.000 ευρώ. Είναι σαν να πηγαίνεις για ψάρεμα, να πιάνεις ξιφίες και αθερίνα (για να μην πω κριλ και θεωρηθώ υπερβολικός), και να πας σπίτι σου για να ταίσεις την οικογένεια σου με την αθερίνα. Εν τω μεταξύ έχεις και φαλαινοκαρχαρίες σε αυτή την φανταστική θάλασσα, αλλά ούτε καν σκέφτεσαι να τους χρησιμοποιήσεις για τροφή. Αυτοί όχι μόνο θα έτρεφαν την οικογένεια σου για έναν μήνα, αλλά ολόκληρο το ψαροχώρι για τρεις.

Ίσως επειδή στην δική μας περίπτωση οι φαλαινοκαρχαρίες δεν είναι τόσο Μεγάλοι Φιλικοί Γίγαντες…

1. Μηνιαίος μισθός 6.100 ευρώ. 2. Σύνταξη μετά από 4 χρόνια βουλευτικής θητείας. Ποσό σύνταξης μηνιαίως 4.880 ευρώ. 3. Για συμμετοχή σε επιτροπές, 250 ευρώ την ώρα… 4. Οι βουλευτές της επαρχίας παίρνουν το μήνα 1.000 ευρώ για ενοίκιο. 5. Όλοι οι βουλευτές παίρνουν άπαξ 1.500 ευρώ για οργάνωση γραφείου και 1.000 ευρώ τις γιορτές λόγω αυξημένης επικοινωνίας με τους ψηφοφόρους τους. Το Δώρο Χριστουγέννων, Πάσχα και επίδομα αδείας είναι ξεχωριστά. … … 6. Δικαιούνται 104 αεροπορικά εισιτήρια ετησίως δωρεάν και απεριόριστες μετακινήσεις με ΟΣΕ και ΚΤΕΛ. 7. Πολυτελές αυτοκίνητο, δωρεάν καύσιμα με επίδομα 600 ευρώ το μήνα, ένα χωροφύλακα για φρουρό, 4 κινητά τηλέφωνα τελευταίας τεχνολογίας και ένα στο σπίτι, σταθερό, όλα δωρεάν. 8. Απολαμβάνουν πλήρους ασυλίας για όποιο αδίκημα διαπράξουν κατά τη διάρκεια της θητείας τους ως βουλευτές. 9. Δεν πληρώνουν φόρο για ένα μέρος του μισθού ή της συντάξεως. 10. Δικαιούνται γραμματειακή υποστήριξη για 4 υπαλλήλους και 1 επιστημονικό συνεργάτη. Όλους αυτούς τους πληρώνει το Δημόσιο. 11. Δικαιούνται άτοκα δάνεια ως βουλευτές και ως επαγγελματίες. 12. Δωρεάν γυμναστήριο, σάουνα, νηπιαγωγείο για τα παιδιά τους. 13. Τηλεφωνική ατέλεια. 14. Δωρεάν επισκέψεις σε αρχαιολογικούς και καλλιτεχνικούς χώρους. 15. Δωρεάν διόδια. 16. Δωρεάν εισιτήρια, ξενοδοχεία, γεύματα όταν ταξιδεύουν στο εξωτερικό ως μέλη επιτροπών κλπ…..ΟΙ ΑΜΟΙΒΕΣ ΤΟΥΣ ΤΗ ΣΤΙΓΜΗ ΠΟΥ ΟΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΣ ΣΤΕΡΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΤΑ ΒΑΣΙΚΑ …

English translation for my non-Greek speaking friends:
1. Monthly salary 6.100 euro. 2. Pension after 4 years of parliamentary service. Pension is 4.880 euros per month. 3. For participation in comitees, 250 euros per hour. 4. PMs from rural Greece receive 1.000 euros per month to pay their rent. 5. All PMs receive 1.500 euros to reorganise their office and 1.000 euros during holidays due to increased contact with their voters.Bonus salaries paid at Christmas, Easter and paid leave count separately… 6. PMs are entitled to 104 free air tickets per year, as well as unrestricted transportation by train and intercity bus. 7. Luxury car, free fuel paid for with 600 euros per month, bodyguard, four state-of-the-art mobile phones and a fixed one at home, all for free. 8. They enjoy full parliamentary sanctuary for any legal offense they commit during their work as PMs. 9. They do not pay tax for part of their salary or pension. 10. They are entitled to secretarial support for 4 employees and one scientific adviser. All paid by the state. 11. They can take out 0% interest loans, as PMs and as professionals. 12. Free gym, sauna, kindergarten for their children. 13. –no idea what this is, someone help!– 14. Free visits to archaeological sites and artistic venues. 15. Free tolls. 16. Free tickets, hotels, meals when travelling abroad as parts of delegations etc… THEIR INCOME, WHILE CITIZENS ARE LACKING THE BASICS…

Κι έτσι, οι αθερίνες εξαφανίστηκαν από αυτή την κατα τ’άλλα μαγική θάλασσα, και η τροφική αλυσίδα έσπασε. Κανείς δεν ξέρει τι απέγινε το ψαροχώρι. Κάποιοι λένε ότι ήρθε η πολυεθνική αλιευτική από την διπλανή πλούσια μεγαλούπολη, αυτό θα εξηγούσε τα ιχθυοτροφεία τα οποία βρίσκονται τώρα στο πρώην ψαροχώρι, αλλά κανείς δεν δίνει πολύ μεγάλη σημασία…

Downsides of Denmark

A Dane criticizes Denmark and the Danes. We gape at this apparent contradiction in terms and, when we’ve got over the shock, sit back and enjoy.

http://blogs.denmark.dk/peterandreas/

Just in time for this:

Faunts – “M4 (Part II)” music video

First found out about this song from the credits of Mass Effect, like most people that like it. Didn’t know there was a music video until yesterday. Great stuff.

Lyrics
I have wondered about you
Where will you be when this through
If all goes as planned
Will you redeem my life again?

Fire the fields the weed is sown
Water down your empty soul
Wake the sea of silent hope
Water down your empty soul

Fight your foes you’re on your own
Holy war is on the phone
Asking to please stay on hold
The bleeding loss of blood runs cold

And I need you to recover
Because I can’t make it on my own

Review: Anarchy and the End of History

Anarchy and the End of History
Anarchy and the End of History by Michael Ziesing

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Just when you thought it was safe to be a anarchist, Gunderloy and Ziesing are at it again, asking questions you thought you had answered, or maybe forgot to ask.
This anthology brings together a collection of essays by people who positively relish a good think – about anarchy, themselves, and so what difference does it make anyway?
More than a series of opinions, Gunderloy and Ziesing offer a dialogue among people who see their common ground as the greatest opportunity offering diversity, individualism and personal freedom.
Who are the anarchist? What, why and how are they in the world today? Maybe you’ll find some answers here. Maybe not. What you will find is an opportunity and a chakllenge to think about it!”

And make me think it did. This book could well be an 101 in Anarchy, but with all the advanced and meaningful debate that is going on about it in a completely different kind of depth, questioning at some points the very foundations of anarchy — see there? Anarchy is not something that is supposed to have “foundations”, yet we speak of it as a concrete idea, just like any other theory out there. You’ll encounter many such examples when reading this book if only because it includes texts by so many people. I wish I could find the original paper the replies to which comprise most of this book just so I could post it here and further spark debate myself. It was published in 1991, on the eve of the information age. 20 years later a highly anarchical World Wide Web is dominating our lives. You’d think a lot must have changed, surely it must have. You might be surprised.

I found this book completely randomly, in a second hand book sale in Aarhus and got it for only 5kr. It might be extremely hard to find, so if you’d like to read it I can lend it to you — yes, whoever you might be, dear reader (BookCrossing might also work well…) It’s a book I’d like to read again though, there’s just so much thought, references and a lot of optimistic ideas distilled in such a small number of pages.

View all my reviews

Review: Machine Man

Machine Man
Machine Man by Max Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the first audiobook I ever, uh, heard. It took me 9 hours of listening to Sean Runnette’s good narration over 3 days and it was a unique experience, just walking around while at the same time reading a book, or should I say, following a story. The added layer of voice and sound effects makes it more of a temporal experience than reading the book, with all the good and bad that fact might imply.

Machine Man tells the story of a thirty-something end-all be-all nerd, the kind of person that wanted to be a train when he was a child (yes, be one), loves describing the world with adjectives like “inefficient”, replies to everyting with an “OK” and manages to score zero at any social skills test thrown at him. Give this guy mad engineering skills and an amputated leg and sit back and watch (or read, or listen).

It was very engaging after the third or so chapter, I could see where this was going, but I’d need Z-specs to see how FAR it might go. The plot follows Charlie Newman’s addiction convincingly. I don’t like giving much away when writing my reviews, but I can’t help but applaud the side characters, they are particularly strong here; the ambitious but unappreciated Cassandra Cautery, Lola Shanks (Charlie’s prosthesiologist) and maybe my favourite character in the book, Carl.

Actually, the side characters are so strong they serve to underline Charlie’s single-dimensionality. So comparatively shallow is he that it’s easy to see him merely as the character carrying the plot’s central idea, its gimmick (I don’t like this word). This is perhaps the book’s single biggest problem for me, Charlie’s actions often seem unrealistic and his thoughts completely alien. I cringed all the time when he spoke, or at least when he attempted to. It’s no accident others — even his own self– compare him to a machine even from the start of the book. Are all labcoat-donning specialists so close-minded and awkward? If so, that might explain a lot about science in our world today.

I should however cut Charles Newman’s tormented existence a little slack. It might very well be that Max Barry wanted him to be so exaggeratedly awkward and obsessive-compulsive for comic relief (the book has many dark, uncomfortably funny moments), but also maybe to indirectly comment in his own way on the very foundation of the book’s premise: “biological vs mechanical”, “inefficient vs superior” and perhaps even “mind vs body”, the kind of dualist dilemma that is very natural to follow such what ifs as the one portrayed in Machine Man. What part of us is “us”, and what isn’t “us”? Is the brain more part of us than the rest of our body? Is it, then, that houses our consciousness? These questions are the delicious driving force of the plot and the thinking it provokes.

For example, in a part of the book, Charles says that when people achieve or pull off something (obviously –but exactly because of its obviousness, often overlooked– using their bodies), it’s we, as in our self, our consciousness, that achieved whatever it is that was achieved, the body shrinking into the tool used by the mind/brain it was and has always been, whereas in our failure or when an uncontrolable situation goes bad, we become disassociated with our bodies, they’re Others, and as all typical Others receive the blame for any problem. It reminds me of Heidegger’s take on how Dasein interact with things, the difference between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. When our body works well, it’s ready-to-hand, it disappears in the background, too obvious to consider, only working as a tool. When it fails to serve us perfectly, its short-comings made obvious, it breaks, it becomes present-at-hand: welcome for optimization, as if it never belonged to us a tall. Machine Man gives food for many such enjoyable parallels.

In fact, Machine Man is one of the most sophisticated cultural items that deal with cyborgs I have encountered and had the pleasure to dive into. It’s definitely filled with all the appropriate nerdy scientific jargon that would satisfy any sci-fi fan (I wonder how many readers will find themselves identifying, even a little bit, with Charles!). But more interistingly, it goes beyond respecting the deep ontological problems that arise from the idea of cyborgs, prosthetics, implants and bio-enhancements, and their implications, if any, for (Cartesian) dualism. It uses these philosophical connotations and gives an interesting and believable story of what meddling with all this might bring about. In other words: it’s not as simple as it looks — it never is — but this time there’s a realistic, (super)human story behind it.

I almost forgot to mention that it has bits of horror and and it’s sprinkled with romance and action and a lot of suspense. You just keep reading, wondering if Max Barry will go all the way. He goes all the way… and then some.

~
I wonder when that had happened, that we had started making better machines than people.

View all my reviews