Archive för Art

Göteborg is the host city of one of the biggest book fairs in Northern Europe. The latest years, the need of finding another positioning has evolved and to meet this need Mediadagarna – The Media Days fires off for the second year in a row.

Nätverkstan and Kulturchock, who work vividly with different ideas and initiatives to meet up the needs of the cultural journals, see this platform as one way of putting the Swedish cultural journals on the map.

We are already convinced of the multi-dimensional spread in content as well as subjects presented in the printed cultural journals and their role in Swedish democracy. What we had not digged deeper into before was the sound of them. What would they sound like if it was sound? We decided to build a sound installation in order to make them ”speak” in a new way.

From an old portable typewriter you hear the sound of typings from laptops as well as manual key buttons in a mxi with lead pencils writing on paper. ”Typings” is a 7`48”tape recording played in a loop.

From the headphones attached to the installation play a variation of sound samples from cultural magazines that work with additional formats as sound. Some do radio, talking magazines or present sound art works along with their releases. For this special occasion we also did a special recording of a young girl reading poetry from the arty, literary, and philosophic edition of OEI.

Text and photo: Helena Persson

Ghanian writer Kojo Laing talks softly but with emphasis. Every word comes from the heart and touches the heart of the audience. It’s the most generous and honest presentation I have heard in many years.

It’s like a curse, he says about writing. He can’t stop. He has tried to stop, but he just can’t.

Coming from a Christian family in Ghana, his father was a priest, and with all his five siblings working within the church, he is the only one being a writer and also in pressing doubt in faith, something that is also topics in many of his books. He leans forward in his chair, looks over the audience, hitting his chest with his hand and asks, insisting on the honesty of this question: Am I a fool? Am I crazy having this doubt? Can anyone in the room say that they are anywhere near the doubt I have?

His writing is anything but a simple process, he tells us. One of the books took eight years to write. He wanted to write Ghanian and English, not for the sake of it, but because he wanted to squeeze out the English from the Ghanian languages. With his hands he shows us the guesture of thoroughly and hard squeezing water from wet laundry. And that took time. He picks up the book, shows it, and looks at it, exhausted. And goes quiet.

He answers each question posed by Kwani Trust Chairman Tom Maliti sometimes with a big smile of a question that he founds on the spot, then continues with a story and sometimes ends abruptly. The room gets quiet a short second before a new line of thought is unfolded.

Kojo Laing is like a ghost in his own country, he describes his situation. His books are mainly published outside of Ghana. But on the question if he would rather write something else, if he got the chance to re-do things, something less controversial that sold many, many copies of his books and made him more famous, his answer is distinct and clear. He couldn’t write anything else. This is what he writes.

A young woman raises her hand and asks what he suggests a young writer should think about pursuing a career as a writer?

Be yourself, is his first answer. Read as much as your brain can contain. The more you read, the more complex you become. And it applies to experience as well. Paradoxical experience. Encourage many identities. It will be needed as the world goes smaller.

And he adds and laughs: And when you get advices you reject them.

Kwani? Litfest 2012 is a yearly literature festival run by Kwani Trust in Nairobi. This year the theme is Conversations with the Horn. Writers, artists in exchange.

Christmas carols are on the schedule this afternoon and on stage of the outdoor assembly hall in the township Kogorocho in Nairobi, the young musicians are in deep concentration practicing for a show later on this week. And a small taste of the concert is given in an open session for whomever who would like to listen. Kids fill up the rows, together with a few others and us guests.

”Making music can make a difference” says Elisabeth Njoroge, Head of the Art of Music Foundation, the Foundation behind the project. Getting the chance to play an instrument, learning music, can actually change peoples lives, she says, and tells us examples of children from the slums who get a chance to play and how that has opened new possibilities and hope for a future.

Ghetto Classics, the project was named by the children, started in 2009 and has become an important contribution in the township. The foundation also runs the National Youth Orchestra in Kenya with the same ambition and conviction:

Music can make a difference in the lives of young Kenyans.

Nätverkstan, together with Ole Lützow-Holm, Assistant Professor at Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, are in Kenya to work together with GoDown Arts Centre on the education Creative Entrepreneurship. Read more of Nätverkstan’s cooperation in Kenya here.

Since 2009 large and small newspapers around the world have been facing difficulties with drop in profit, drop in sales with job cuts as a result.

The latest in the line of newspaper cuts is Newsweek announcing earlier this fall the end of printed publication, and only going digital. December 31 is the last printed issue being distributed changing an eighty year chain of printed publications. The Independent as another example of a troubled newspaper and in the US the newspaper scene has changed drastically with papers like The Seattle Post-intelligencer, The Detroit News, and The San Francisco Chronicle and more severely being reduced and some closed down.

The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter has seen a drastic cut among employees and the latest news is that the other large daily Svenska Dagbladet has to save around 40 million SEK leading to cutting off it’s cultural pages and having around 50–60 employees are loosing their jobs.

Smaller newspapers are facing the same future. Nerikes Allehanda and Vestmanlands Läns Tidning, who both have the same owner, are cutting with 75 people during this year (read more here).

Times for newspapers and journals are dramatically changing. What is the future of printed press? Will heaps of printed books, journals, newspapers just be stored in piles collecting dust while the readers are elsewhere?

Cultural critic Olav Fumarola Unsgaard addresses this challenge and the future of print in an article at A-Desk Critical Thinking. He writes:

To understand the media landscape of today we must change our point of viewpoint. The world of printed media is today going through very rapid changes. To make it simple all these changes are in one way or another connected to digitalisation and the Internet. First of all we must understand that these changes have an impact on the entire sector of print. This means newspapers, journals, magazines, books and comics. It will affect the worldwide media conglomerates as well as the small fanzines. In the words of Joseph Schumpeter is there a massive creative destruction going on. Someone will lose and someone will gain.

Read the full article here.

Olav Fumarola Unsgaard is cultural journalist, book editor and project manager, also a former project manager for the long tail-project at Nätverkstan. Today mostly working with the Swedish publishing house Atlas and the journals Fronesis and Ord&Bild.

Swedish photographer Mats Bäcker had a flying start of his career taking the legendary black and white photo of Iggy Pop at Dad’s Dancehall in Kopenhagen in 1977. Thirty-five years later the photo of Iggy Pop showing the finger to the audience sold at a famous Swedish Auction House for 56.000 SEK (6.489 euro).

He is driven by a feeling of ”it will go to hell anyway” and says that ”when the entrepreneur goes in, the artist goes out”. The entrepreneur and artist seem to be like a swingdoor in constant movement in his life.

During the one hour lecture at the six fulldays course on art and entrepreneurship hosted by Kulturlyftet and performed by Nätverkstan, Mats Bäcker tells a wonderful success-story full of worries and disbelief; a constant force to develop his artistic skill and challenging his perception in trying new things; networking; and, as he puts it ”good luck and a good gene to endure disappointments”.

The last is, he points out, how to live on your art. The other is to recycle. The artistic work he did when he started as a pop- and rockart photographer is used again, in new settings and imagery. Later as a performance photographer at the Opera in Stockholm he developed new ways of taking photos of movement. All can be used again in new playful ways.

”Recylce, recycle, recycle” he says with emphasis looking over the audience of illustrators, photographers, designers, filmers, and visual artists, and, he points out, not trying to do everything but instead choose your artistic form and work hard on this.

Today the Cultural Affair’s Committee in Region Västra Götaland is gathering to decide on the proposal of the regional culture plan for 2013-2015.

The culture plan is part of the new ”trunk model”, decided by the Swedish government in December of 2009, introduced, after another round of detail study in how this model should be performed, in 2011 to move (some) decisions of cultural investments from the state to the regions. This way, the argument is, the decisions are taken closer to each region’s citizens. Instead of the state deciding where money in a specific region should be spent, the region gets to decide.

1,2 billion SEK of the cultural budget is moved from the state to the regions. But to get the hands on the money, each region has to present a plan, a cultural plan, and inform and negotiate with the state, here handled by the Arts Council, on where to spend the money. This has of course caused a lot of discussions. Is the trunk model only a paper product, where the Arts Council is taking the real decisions? Are local politicians to be trusted? Do local politicians really know enough about art and culture to be able to decide on investments and make the difficult priorities needed?

Västra Götalandsregionen was at an early stage the role model for the trunk model. The negotiations between the Arts Council and Region Västra Götaland started earlier where the region did very well in negotiations and held a high profile in debates, discussions and visions of the role of art and culture in the region.

Now the region seems to have out-dated itself. The culture plan for 2013-2015 is without any vision and, to be a bit bold, not even readable, something also noted among many of the parties, including Nätverkstan, responding to the circulation of comment before the decision (se today’s daily Göteborgs-Posten). ”It’s a culture plan without a plan”, as David Karlsson puts it.

To the leaders of Region Västra Götaland’s culture affairs we are many that wonder: Where are you heading with arts and culture in the region?

Find attached the culture plan of Region Västra Götaland that is up for decision here: Västra Götalands kulturplan.pdf. See also Nätverkstan’s respond to the circulation here: remissvar vgr_kulturplan_120905.pdf. Read a post by Swedish Radio from 2010 here. And former posts here.

Kulturlyftet is a large European educational project started by KRO/KIF (The Swedish Artists’ National Organization and Swedish Handicraftartists and Industrial Designers, my translation) with the aim of offering a range of educational initiatives for their members.

The project offers courses in areas such as Media and Communication, Pedagogics, Culture and Availability, and Project- and Process work with Art and Culture in Focus.

Nätverkstan is responsible the course Artistic Practice and Entrepreneurship together with Republic Consulting. Last Monday we started and around fifteen participants; illustrators, photographers, publishers, filmmakers, will gather once a week for six weeks in WIP Konsthall in Årsta to dig deep into entrepreneurship and how to live on your artistic practice. Exciting!

Kulturlyftet is run by KRO/KIF in cooperation with Svenska Fotografers Förbund (Association of Swedish Professional Photographers), Svenska Tecknare (Association of Swedish Illustrators and Graphic Designers), and Konstnärscentrum Öst. Their members are photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, visual artists, and artists within handicraft and industrial design.

Try to describe dance and choreography in words or text and you are bound for a challenge. To catch the essence of bodily movement and the artistic process and thought behind a dance performance is difficult. What you see is what you get, so to speak. Dance is best felt and experienced when it happens, it’s a direct contact between performer and audience. It’s therefore often difficult to try to describe dance experiences in project plans and evaluation documents.

In the newly published book 100 Exercises for a Choreographer and Other Survivors, a way around this difficulty is somehow found. You not only get practical exercises to try on your own, but each of these exercises quite informally also catches the artistic thought and process in choreography. Reading them, each ending with the sincere request ”Do it.”, exposes the experiments of action that can be translated into movements and dance. Quite shrewd, actually.

Perhaps something for policy- and decisionmakers? Trying these small experiments might raise your awareness and understanding of the artistic process. And it’s not complicated. Just do it.

Efva Lilja, choreographer, Professor of Choreography, and  Vice-Chancellor at DOCH, the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, and author behind this, has just published two books with the aim to in a practical and poetic way offer strategies for active presence and bodily knowledge in your daily life.

The two books: ”100 Exercises for a Choreographer and Other Survivors” (both in Swedish and English) and ”Förstår du vad jag inte säger? Om dans som samhällsomstörtande kärleksförklaring” (”Do you understand what I am not saying? Dance as a subversive declaration of love” – in my translation) can be found here. Read also a related post on an editor’s view on quality and creativity here.

For those interested in trying the New York Art world, the magazine New York (April 30 2012) is giving some handy tips in a nineteen rules handbook. Maybe worth looking through…?

Rule no:

1. Reject the Market. Embrace the Market. Hm. That contradiction. Always present.

2. Stay on Trend…Things we’ve seen a lot of lately, New York says, is Trash art, Cindy Sherman-esque, Neon Words, Candy-Colored Sculpture and Video-Game Art…

3. Make Art That’s Difficult to Collect. So only Museums will collect it. Example: Sarah Sze‘s The Art of Losing.

4. Be Young, Post-Black, and From Chicago. Examples to follow: Theaster Gates and Rashid Johnson.

5. Survive With your head down. Artist Alex Katz (84) remember how it was: ”A lot of people respect me” he says ”But people used to really hate my work. As late as 1975, I had a show in Paris and people were screaming in the gallery. They were saying this is terrible art and I should go back to art school”. Sort of Don’t Give Up.

6. Outsource to China. Artist Kahinde Wiley came to Beijing in 2006 and has set up a studio which has become his main production hub and second home.

7. Know These 100 people. An insider’s list of art insiders. The necessary list of gallerists if you are to make it in New York or perhaps the US…

8. Don’t Be Afraid to Trade Up. When a bigger gallery comes calling, listen. Since the recession, three powerhouse galleries have been especially aggressive in grabbing talent. And those are: David Swirner, Larry Gagosian, Sean Kelly.

9. Show up. Mainly: When you mingle and network, make sure you are caught on photos (and look cool…).

10. Pick Your Artists and Stick with Them. Whole-life art patronage – collecting work is just the start.

11. Buy the Same Thing Everyone Else is Buying. A shoppinglist would include, according to New York and art collector Adam Lindemann: Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, among others.

12. Get Born into It. The inheritance class.

13. Don’t Let a Gallerist Take Half the Profit. The collective gallery Reena Spaulings is an example of how to organize and show work in a different manner.

14. Be Ruthless. Making a killing in the art world’s dark market.

15. Pretend You’re and Outsider Even When You’re at the Center of Everything. The gallery Family Business is a gallery – but not.

16. Pack Your Bags, Fly Around the World, and Hang Out With Everyone You Know From New York. 

17. Be Everywhere at Once (But Rarely New York). On the same theme as Rule no 16. Be there but look busy.

18. Join the Establishment. Cling to Your Street Cred.

19. There Are No Rules. Break barriers. Do what you have to do.

Yesterday Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival (dance and theater festival) opened in a grand opening at the large Opera house, GöteborgsOperan. Two dance performances were showed; Falter by Johan Inger and Your Passion is Pure You to Me by Stijn Celis. The dance continued in big hall during the break with live music, loosing up the distance between dancers and audience in a wonderful way.

Three speakers introduced; Adophe Binder, Ballet Director at the Göteborg Opera; Thomas Martinsson, Head of Cultural Committee at Municipality of Göteborg; and Gunilla Heilborn, Choreographer. All spoke about the role of a festival like this with local and international guest and with complete focus on the performing arts both for the art scene and for the city of Göteborg.

And Gunilla Heilborn, the last speaker, but her attention to what dance can express in all its quietness.

”When you have a microphone people, artists, tend to think you have to scream in it. But with an amplifier close to your mouth it’s enough to whisper.” Gunilla Heilborn said and whispered the last words. And sometimes you don’t need not speak at all. Just listen to the movement and the quietness, she said in a low voice and officially opened the festival.

In the freshly published anthology Artists and the Arts Industries, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee puts the artistic perspective in centre of the discussion on cultural and creative industries (CCI).

Five people; researchers, independent analysts, professors, and an artist, were asked to contribute a text reflecting on the artistic practice and CCI and the result has become an interesting anthology putting the light on different and perhaps unexpected aspects of the discussion.

Yudhishthir Raj Isar, independent cultural analyst and Professor of Cultural Policy Studies at The American University of Paris, puts a critical view on the whole paradigm with the conclusion that economy is not everything and that it’s necessary to include reflection on cultural economy and non-market forms of cultural activity.

Kate Oakley, writer and political analyst specializing in the fields of culture and creativity (UK), is focussing her text on innovation, which is as she calls it ”not the New, New thing”. The arts have a complex relationship to innovation, being both on one hand avant-garde and cutting-edge, and on the other saver of tradition. Talk of innovation within culture and art needs to be nuanced, reflected, and with a critical perspective.

Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London, is discussing key concepts of urban development and gentrification in the light of the policy-development of CCI in the UK since middle of 90s and onward, and comparing development in three different cities: Glasgow, Berlin, and London. Her reasoning is around employability, livelihood and how artists and young people within the field will be able to earn a living and sustain life within these fields.

Ylva Gislén, Visiting Professor at Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts and cultural writer, also put a focus on the artistic livelihood and puts this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s reasoning putting a qualitative distinction between different types of human activity in the book The Human Condition; the distinction between labour, work, and action.

Klas Östergren, author with his first book published in 1975, writes an insightful and personal story of his daily work and artistic practice of writing books, his relation to audience, and how he at one point when things were going well decided to write the complete opposite of what the market expected.

Perhaps common for all of these reflections are how pessimistic they are in their views of the role of the artist in CCI. It should be understood in the light of the economic crisis, but it’s more than that. It’s a disappointment. A question shining through is the somewhat disillusioned question of: Who today believes in art as something other than contributing to economic growth, innovation, and job creation?

The anthology can be ordered from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and is written in both Swedish and English.

Also read related post on work here, here, and here.

A way to understand Creative Business?

Artist Jörgen Svensson has an exhibition at Göteborgs Konstförening until May 6 where he is reflecting on the discussion of creative businesses. In this painting looking like cross stitch he is reflecting on David Throsby’s and UK’s (Departement of Culture, Sport, and Media) concentric circles.

The artist is in the center. Around him or her you find those surrounding the creative business; parasites (brown), idiots (red), fatheads (blue), assholes (green)…

Read more related articles here, here, here, and here.

GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi started in 2009 workshops in art and entrepreneurship for the art community in Kenya and East Africa. The workshops has now evolved to build a Capacity-building Program for Creative Entrepreneurs and Artists in East Africa that is long-term and this Summer a pilot will start, a 10 weeks Summer-course in art and entrepreneurship.

Nätverkstan has been a part in this cooperation since the start, holding workshops, arranged study visit, facilitators workshops, and discussing content and educational planning. Last week (26–28th of March) a facilitators workshop took place in Nairobi, held by GoDown Art Centre, Sian Prime at Goldsmiths University and Nätverkstan.

With such a commitment and talent as found in the arts community and among institutions in Nairobi, this Summer-course is not far from coming true.

Read more of the cooperation with GoDown Arts Centre, Nätverkstan, and Sian Prime at Goldsmiths University here.

The main worry in everyday life of many Kenyans is the election this year. It brings back horrifying memories of the post election violence in 2007, something that is still unresolved.

Many put their hopes to the International Criminal Court in Hague, where four Kenyan leaders are put to trial with charges of crimes against humanity and for their active role in organizing the mass violence that took place.

”Something just must be done! They have to be charged. Everything else is inhuman and wrong” someone tells me.

In Breaburn Theatre in Nairobi poet Sitawa Namwalie addresses the consequences, fear, and worry in a very warm, partly humours, and self-critical way in her poetry-read and performance together with Alice Karunditu and Shan Bartley on Saturday evening.

”Can you trust your neighbour?” she asks, looks around the audience with her sharp eyes and authority. And she opens the read of Cut off my tongue. 

The photographic exhibition Kenya Burning will be put up again at the GoDown Arts Centre as a reminder and reflection of what can not happen again.

According to the Martin Prosperity Institute and the index The Global Creativity Ranking Index Sweden ranks number one of countries in the world when it comes to creativity. The index is built on economist Richard Florida’s three T’s Talent, Technology, and Tolerance – he is in fact Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute – and his results show that Sweden is ranking top on all the three T’s. Finland, being strong on technology and talent, but less on tolerance according to this thinking, scores number three.

There is a lot to be said about Florida’s three T’s. What factual figures is it built on? Tolerence is for example interesting. How can a country be counted as tolerant when facts show that people with a foreign-sounding name– that means all foreigners except Europeans and Americans –are being continuously discriminated on the job market? Something that is a fact in Sweden today.

The Swedish Council for Cultural and Creative Industries has the role of acting as a consultancy towards Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Entreprise and putting the light on questions in the cross-line between culture and business.

On the meeting on Monday (February 13) together with the two ministers, Minister of Enterprise, Annie Lööf, stressed broadening the notion of innovation in the innovation strategy now being discussed on national level. Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, put forward the artistic competence as a resource in other areas in society such as business side.

But it’s easy to miss the complexity in the overall discussion on cultural and creative industries. Tourism industry is an area often discussed in this context. It’s easy to talk about the importance of tourism, visitors from abroad spending their money on food, guest houses, museums and other activities. In 2010 a national strategy was presented for the ”visiting industry” in Sweden 2020 called Nationell Strategi för Svensk Besöksnäring.

A quick look through the document shows the lack of any analysis on the role of art and culture. So you wonder, what is it that people are visiting? Tourism and places to visit is strongly connected to production of high quality art and culture. If you plan investments in tourism industry, you also have to speak of investments in artistic and cultural research.

if you speak of investing in technology you also have to build strategies of how our society will become more tolerant. It goes hand in hand.

The creativity index might sound like music in the ears for Swedes. But it’s useless unless we start see society as whole puzzle where all pieces are connected.

Read more of the Swedish Council of Cultural and Creative Industries here. 

American artist P Nosa, he draws art on a sewing machine, is planning a sewing tour in the US with the mission: ”…to navigate the country promoting people’s creativity, providing a tangible patch of their ideas, and to teach how to use alternative energy sources”.

To fulfill his idea, he has created a website where you can donate money. If he gets to the total amount of the cost (7500 USD) he is on his way, otherwise the tour is cancelled.

The funding idea of the project goes in line with the idea of crowdfunding, where people pitch in a sum of money, big or small, to an idea they like. If fully funded, the projects runs. It’s the thought of ”the crowd decides”. These types of alternative funding ideas are growing and in Sweden you find for example the site Funded By Me.

Support the sewing tour here. Read another post of P Nosa here.

Sarah Thelwall, a British researcher and consultant in creative and cultural industries, has written an interesting paper (July 2011) based on research on the value of small visual arts organizations in the arts ecology as well as society. Some of the outcomes include:

• The role and value of small visual arts organizations in society and within the arts ecology is often under-estimated by public authorities.

• The evaluation and measurement methods, ”the metrics”, of government and funders do not correspond to the value produced by these small organizations who build their operation on collaboration and flexibility.

• By investing in risk-taking and development of work, small arts organizations contribute to the development of larger art organizations.

• Small art organizations have very few tangible assets to capitalize income on compared to larger organizations, un often unacknowledged incomestream to be found in these small organizations is the intangible assets such as organizational expertise and experience, intellectual property, research skills, risk-taking etc.

• The report suggest a new investment model in order to measure the value of small visual arts organizations.

Download the report here: Common-Practice-London-Size-Matters.pdf. Sarah Thelwall also initiated the service MyCake as an easy way to manage your finances.

The three year old current culture exchange program between the state of Karnataka, India and the region of vastra Gotaland, Sweden has kept developing and does incorporate collaboration in many art and culture fields today.

Nätverkstan was part of the initiating process concerning this collaboration and is still an active actor in Bangalore.

KMV, the film, culture and media production centre based on sociala entrepreneurship in Bergsjön, a suburb in Gothenburg, has since a year back started to cooperate with Nätverkstan and Mediaverkstan.

During the Bangalore International Film Festival a joint seminar by KMV and Nätverkstan was held with Leif Eriksson from Nätverkstan as the key speaker. The seminar, held at the Department of Information in Bangalore, attracted a large audience consisting primarly of youngsters and young women, most of them active as film makers, or studying film and media production in Bangalore.

The seminar emphasized new ways of funding feature film in the ongoing digital paradigm shift  as well as a case study on ”Bloody Boys”,  the feature film produced by KMV. Topics in the seminar included issues concerning how the film was financed, how amateurs and residents in the suburb collaborated with top actors and crew from the professional part of the swedish film business. An intense discussion was initiated raising questions about filmproduction, social entrepreneurship and media production catalyzing social change.

Another aspect of the discussion also included new ways of nonlinear collaborative postproduction work in the digital flow-work. ”Bloody Boys” was also screened during the fim festival and was sold out on every screening and did receive intense media attention.

Text by Leif Ericsson, film producer and Nätverkstan

The seminar is a cooperation between Nätverkstan and KMV in Bangalore, India. Se more posts here on the exchange in Bangalore.

The verdict fell heavily yesterday on the two Swedish journalists, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, in prison in Addis Adeba, Ethiopia.

They were charged and convicted by Lideta Federal High Court for being terrorists, the most severe of the charges they were accused for. It’s no doubt that the conviction was political, and so the trial.

Johan Persson and Martin Schibbiye are not terrorists. They went to the Ogaden-province to document and inquire about the multinational oil companies work in the area and the consequences of this. It’s a completely closed area, and word is that people live in the most severe circumstances and in complete absence of human rights as well as international law.

The verdict is a clear statement to journalists to keep out, and of course a large threat to freedom of speech and the journalists task as critical observers and reporters. We have seen many examples of this, just recently artist Ai Weiwei’s as well as many other political writers and journalists imprisonment in China. On December 15 Nätverkstan arranged Imprisoned Day in Lagerhuset, an arrangement together with the PEN club, to put the light on imprisoned writers.

Read other posts on Ai Weiwei here, and Imprisoned Writers’ Day here. Also related reflections from an article in New York Times in April this year by Salman Rushdie here. Read todays daily Göteborgs-Posten (in Swedish).

Ira Glass, an American public radio personality who has among other things produced This American Life for tv and radio, has shared quite a lot of his experiences during his career. Here something on the creative process.