The Museum of Broken Relationships

"The Museum of Broken Relationships is an art concept which proceeds from the assumption that objects possess integrated fields - ‘holograms’ of memories and emotions - and intends with its layout to create a space of ‘secure memory’ or ‘protected remembrance’ in order to preserve the material and nonmaterial heritage of broken relationships. Unlike the ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from failed loves, the Museum offers every individual the chance to overcome the emotional collapse through creation - by contributing to the Museum's collection. The individual gets rid of ‘controversial objects’, triggers of momentarily ‘undesirable’ emotions, by turning them into museum exhibits, and thereby participating in the creation of a preserved collective emotional history."

www.brokenships.com

Average Citizen Project

The Average Citizen Project is a political and social experiment aiming at facilitating change in society through opinions of one person by using mass media channels.

The Average Citizen is a ten-year lobbying project aiming to change public opinion in accordance with the opinions of a statistically average citizen. An “average citizen profile” was created in collaboration with The Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics, and a media campaign was conducted to find someone fitting it: female, forty, single, childless, living in a two-room-and-kitchen apartment, etc. That person was found, her name is Marianne, and her social views are disseminated to the Swedish public that she statistically represents.

To date, Marianne’s opinions have reached millions of people on hundreds of occasions, e.g. by way of a line in a popular TV series, a speech by a leading politician, an editorial in a major newspaper and a theme for a public debate program.
The project is in initiated by Swedish OMBUD.

www.averagecitizen.org

inspiring website and blog

http://www.janchipchase.com/

"Future Perfect is about the collision of people, society and technology, drawing on issues related to the design research that I conduct in part, on behalf of my employer - Nokia... The material that you see on this site is what I do in my spare time - the stuff that inspires or challenges me, helps me understand how the future might turn out. To avoid any confusion regarding the photos that are posted here - this site contains both my personal material and also draws on my published research." - Jan Chipchase

Resilience and Gender

Another example of how gender issues affect the (present and future) conditions of a given environment.
See: http://www.albaeco.se/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=8

Aspudden: an other story of un-real estate!

Today, Wednesday, 25 Nov. police raided to a public pool in Aspudden area and arrested 3 activists who had been there for more than two months to preserve area from demolition!

According to thelocal.se, 25, nov:

"Police raided an indoor public pool south of Stockholm on Wednesday morning to remove three activists who were part of a group which had occupied the facility for nearly two months.

The three squatters are members of a protest group made up of residents from the Stockholm suburb of Aspudden who have been attempting to stop the planned demolition of the Aspuddsbadet public pool.
Since early September, at least five members of Rädda Aspuddsbadet (‘Save Aspuddsbadet’) have occupied and kept watch over the facility in hopes of delaying the planned demolition.
But after two months of waiting, the group’s act of civil disobedience came to an end."

“We have taken out three people who are set to be questioned and emptied the facility. There is a decision from prosecutors that the building should be handed back to its legal owners, the city’s culture and sports division,” police spokesperson Karin Solberg told the TT news agency.

According to her, the raid took place without incident.

But Ola Schubert, a spokesperson for Rädda Aspuddsbadet, was upset following the police action.

“I’m speechless. We’ve tried to have a discussion with the politicians for two years and no one has made an effort to contact us. We’ve had a dialogue with police since day one, and no one said that that dialogue had broken down,” he told TT.

“This is like a punch in the mouth.”

Read more on thelocal.se

All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Hi!

Thanks Ramia for this page, so we can share our interests and findings here: News, books, images, movies, other projects, or even an inspirational word. Just share knowledge, we need it in our group!

I would like to start with a book that could be inspirational for course and some other projects.

"All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity" (1982) by Marshall Berman

Marshall Berman (born 1940, The Bronx, New York City) is an American philosopher and Marxist Humanist writer. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaching Political Philosophy and Urbanism.

All That Is Solid Melts into Air (ISBN 0-860-91785-1) is an academic text written between 1971 and 1981, and published in New York in 1982. The book examines social and economic modernization and its conflicting relationship with modernism. The title is a line from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

This is actually like a personal journey to the heart of modernity and seeing how values changed during making a modern culture, society, and life. Berman takes metaphors for each section to articulate how people act and react to new demands in a new civilized society.

How can you get it:

-You can download the introduction of book to getting a general picture, from here:

http://a.aaaarg.org/text/4504/all-solid-melts-air-experience-modernity

- In addition, you can find the Swedish translation in Konstfack library and main version (English) in Stockholm University library and KTH Library.

Links and inspiration

Add away!