Mul-Åland Drive

Between the mainlands of Sweden and Finland lies the Åland Islands. Before christmas I cascaded through the plane-bus-bus-ferry cleansing ritual that Åland guides you through before arriving upon her shores.

I spent a few days in this wonderful place. Philosophically and geo-politically, opportunities to ponder the relationship of 'belonging' and 'independence' arose and I lost them all under the rug of my yawn and some belly scratching. 

You see, when you arrive in the upper hemisphere during the winter solstice, your orientation is gently disintegrated.

The sun takes a relaxed attitude to rising. Here it is kissing the horizon yet you're facing neither east or west. It's midday. Your nose is pointing south and your stomach is anticipating breakfast and supper all at once.

My colleague and host heard it resembled the setting of David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks' and I think it does, albeit without peaks - Åland is insistently flat.

This serene and beautiful pancake is built on pinkish-red granite, quietude, armies of trees and the possibility of infinite reflection.

Wait, infinite reflection?! Bah, we unloaded it into wheelbarrows and built a fire to watch it burn deeply through the night (it really did burn a long time. Infinite reflection is a tenacious fuel).

In the morning (and in the fantasy of my mind) I tried to engage my host in a bike race which he reacted to by barely acknowledging me and casually accelerating off. 

Non-chalant overtaking

Photo shoot for 'Rapid Yee-ha Pedal Monthly'

As I snapped out of my fantasy, I noted my host is setting up an impressive studio on Åland - a printing press. It is a project 'in process' as he takes on the stewardship of some industrial printing presses. I am not posting any photos of the studio space (it's not finished!) but we did have some fun making postcards with the little hand-press.   

Brace yourself, I will momentarily enter a hippy state.

There's a poetic bond between being on an island and making postcards. This isn't an ethereal assertion. The desire to communicate is funnelled through a self-reflection (which ultimately proved inexhaustible by fire) offered by the island.

The postcard seems the right format. Concise in its volume and therefore perfect for the distilled pondering gathered on bike rides or from gazing on the shoreline, squinting at the fuzzed out sun, still wondering if it's breakfast or supper time.   

Larchimesh

I have this new blog up 

larchimesh.blogspot.com

It's a little more spatially and critically focussed. 

Check it out!

Stockholm

holm = island

Stockholm = Island of Stock

Navigating by street names may be tricky but I believe my map has a faithful je ne sais quoi, as the situationists would say.

Being on a train is a microcosm of the private/public blur. Not only is the carriage leaking out business and living room phone calls but it's being instagrammed, emailed and tweeted from - a carriage of documention. I looked down the aisle once to see a guy sat with his smartphone square in my direction. I don't think he was taking photos, but the psychological panopticon effect had already snapped my posture into david bowie's "Heroes" pose (in reality, I hopped on to the next seat. Away from the line of sight and my rock star photo shoot).

Catenary Curves

Perhaps I posted something about catenaries before?? But I've never found a more concise video than this. Do not be freaked out by the maths, allow the hidden descriptions of your environment be explained by one James Grime. Let the chains of understanding (yes, permission to shoot me granted) free you from the cold winter morning.

Timothy Ingold Rant on Haraway

I thought this was superb.
Transcribed for your pleasure

"If i get annoyed with Latour I get positively angry reading Haraway, its got nothing to do with her arguments, it's her style. I find her style pretentious in the extreme and quite unnecessarily so, it's badly written and it's just that kind of stuff that everybody loves because [its] sort of written in this academese and I'm really fed up with bad academic writing parading as something deep." 

"So anyway I really really don't enjoy reading Haraway. The other reason why I don't enjoy it is most of the time when it comes to the dogs and things, companion, animal stuff, she's catching up where people who have been working on animal - human relations have been talking about this for donkeys years and just re-packaging it. So I'm not terribly impressed. I sort of threw her in because she's been talking about this 'being with the animals' and rest of it - but we knew that!"

He concludes, "in terms of the argument I'm on the same page as she is."

Deep link here 

"I think you can find them on the internet"

It's true.