naomi's livejournal movie night
May. 30th, 2012 | 02:51 pm
i sent out t-shirt orders to lovely ladies in florida and australia today! i'm working on some paintings as well, which maybe i can show tomorrow... for now, pertaining to my recycling business and my last entry ... here are two films that i highly recommend watching and that inspire me to keep on never buying any new thing made by a corporation.
'the fuck it point' - a documentary about how we can't consume our way out of the earth's crisis. it's not the best or most slick film, and probably only contains things you already know about. however, it's good to have things summed up for you, and it's good to be reminded and a little scared all over again.
john carpenter's 1988 masterpiece 'they live' -- perhaps one of my favourite films of all time. it moves at the perfect pace, it builds up in a totally genius way, there's mullets and beefy dudes and my favorite fist-fight scene in the whole wide world because it is such a beautiful, straight forward metaphor for the way i feel about these issues.
'the fuck it point' - a documentary about how we can't consume our way out of the earth's crisis. it's not the best or most slick film, and probably only contains things you already know about. however, it's good to have things summed up for you, and it's good to be reminded and a little scared all over again.
john carpenter's 1988 masterpiece 'they live' -- perhaps one of my favourite films of all time. it moves at the perfect pace, it builds up in a totally genius way, there's mullets and beefy dudes and my favorite fist-fight scene in the whole wide world because it is such a beautiful, straight forward metaphor for the way i feel about these issues.
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just a monday night pouring my heart out
May. 28th, 2012 | 10:33 pm
when i was 13 or 14 years old i became a vegan and got really into activism. animal rights, non-consumerism, human rights, social politics. some of the cute things i did included getting searched by the police for getting too close to animal testing facilities, picketing outside of a lab where my mom's best friend's son worked at the time and then having to defend it over dinner with them (for a 14 year old i think i really held my own!) -- one time my friend and i got thrown out of a big chain store for 'disrupting the customers' -- we quietly held up a sign informing them about the sweatshops that that particular company used. i believe it was H&M, no idea why i just wrote 'that company'. i wish them bankruptcy, no joke. (but i'm not discriminating, i wish for everybody who uses sweat shop labor to go out of business).
i got disenchanted because so many of my fellow activists turned out to be just as boxy in their thinking as the very establishment we were opposing; as long as we were out picketing this was fine because we never got deeper into it but once i started going to meetings i honestly couldn't handle it anymore. it was too pre-packaged and showing up meant you were assumed to agree to the extent that if you raised qualms even about details or minor issues you were glared at. of course i'm not saying that's the case everywhere, just my experience.
i wonder sometimes what happened to me. i walk the walk for the most part, still - i'm fiercely anti-consumption, ergo, i don't buy stuff. sometimes i write about it, or i write about small alternative life style choices that help along the way. i learn more and more about self sufficiency and i hope i can keep on living the way i do, not working for 'the man'. by that i mean having a job where your brain or your body are being used to make money by people who produce absolutely nothing of value, or even things that are downright harmful. if you've got such a job (i've had two), expect to die a little on the inside, not just because you are perpetuating negative forces in the world, but also because you will be working ridiculously long hours to support yourself. meanwhile, other people don't have jobs because (this is according to an article i read today in aftonbladet) work efficiency is 20 times what it was 100 years ago. then why do we expect to have the same amount of jobs? so that everybody can buy things and we can continue to feed mammon, all of us, while we can all still conveniently look down on someone else, the unemployed and the poor.
i used to work behind a cash register selling completely worthless clothing. a machine could have done that job. a machine should've done that job (that is assuming those clothes were needed in the first place) so that the people standing there could do something worthwhile instead. how about volunteer work, in a hospital -- that's not for everybody, how about babysitting for a friend then, or just staying home and reading a book or getting laid? positive things. read valerie solanas. forget about the killing men part -- except for the hilarity and the provocative examination of privilege that i'm sure we all need -- read SCUM for what she has to say about money, society and the necessity to 'groove'. i read groove as kind of a renaissance ideal, sadly outdated by a society that sticks to lutheran ideals finely adapted to oppress the peasants of rural europe in the 1500s. the upper classes used to value not working; because it allowed them to sit around and eat bonbons while the rest of us died of the plague but not just because of that. it also allowed them to learn several languages, master the arts of watercolor, arithmetic, horsemanship, archery and the pianoforte to name a few. i'm the last person to advocate a class society, of course. what i mean is that in my ideal world we could all have time to take a little leaf out of the book of old time aristocracy and be better people for it. the bonbons and the schoolin' … both good things.
even if you completely disagree with the above paragraph and are a lutheran who claims that hard physical labour it what maketh man, fine - argue with this: the planet cannot support this ideal of economic growth. who suffers? it sure as hell aint the rich, it's us and the animals, the forest and the sea. my favorite things, mkay? our ideals of work ethic stem from a time when work meant cultivating the land (without chemicals), sewing clothes, forging tools, healing, rearing children. those are only a small part of the jobs we do now. and the people who created the ideals were certainly not the ones who did the actual work.
i worry that my generation is way too comfortable - not physically, i love my creature comforts, thanks, but in the head. glazed over and focused on the right style, knickknacks and home decor. again, i fucking love style, knickknacks and home decor, but i never believed that that's all there is and that it should come at just about any price. maybe it's my idealized view of the past, but i feel like in the 60s clothing, art and decor made a statement along with new age ideals and the yoga/mediation boom in the west. a statement about change -- equality, peace, love, freedom of mind and body. many people of my generation are saturated with new age and occult symbolism without necessarily caring about the meaning and power of symbols. i worry sometimes that i'm one of them and read constantly about the symbology and archetypes that i use in my work. the more i read, the less i feel like i know. everybody does yoga and meditation now -- yoga is a great way to stay fit and meditation is a nice way to calm down when your life is stressful. yeah, sure. i have a nice little copy of patanjali's yoga sutra here and it states clearly that the breath and movement of yoga practice are but two of the eight limbs of this art, which is an art of living; meant to permeate every step taken in the world. non-violence and the absence of greed are two of those limbs. clearly, these are things we're not living up to. not saying i'm perfect but at least i think about them. i could go on about this and i might, some other time -- for now it's just a really good example of how something that actually has deep meaning gets appropriated by money and is now -- for the most part -- business. branding. not art of living but 'life style'.
i've been seeing a lot of debate about privilege lately. i'm really glad it's being talked about; don't get me wrong and i've certainly tried pretty hard to examine my own (mostly i'm pretty privileged) as well as try to figure out what my disadvantages have been. here's a quick run through, cause i guess i'm learning it's always relevant. my two greatest advantages are: being (in most, but not all, people's eyes) white and having grown up multilingual, surrounded by art and literature. disadvantage: girl. also (if i had been born in the states this wouldn't have been a thing) but here's another disadvantage: i grew up in sweden and to be honest, yeah, i'm pretty damn pale, but i'm actually not white enough for this place. it's hard to talk about but i've felt it several ways, in the 'i'm better than you' way, in the 'i wish i was exotic like you' way and in the 'i'm going to hold off judging you until i can figure out exactly what your ethnicity/nationality is'* way. and i get to hear a lot of shit about people of my origin, sometimes from people who don't know where i'm from, sometimes people just don't care. yeah, being a scandinavian male would make me more privileged but living in a country where the internet is uncensored, there is no war and you've got food on your table means you have at least some sliver of privilege… and i'm interested to know what we are doing with it. i'm worried that my generation is going to use it's privileges to bake a huge cupcake while we let the 1% continue to screw us over and ruin the planet in the meantime.
we are the consumers, you know. the base of the pyramid that they stand on. if we don't buy their shit, they can't oppress us any longer and they can't pollute the sea any longer. let's not work-work-work, never have time for a book or a cute creative hobby and only have the energy to play house for a little bit in the evening before we go to bed too exhausted to take care of our loved ones. just, please. i was going for a better crescendo actually, but i've run out of steam. this was nice, it cleared my head. i'm sure you understand why i love to recycle clothing, yeah? thanks for reading. love // n
ps. rip bill hicks <3 u
*most people get it wrong.
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more handmade
May. 27th, 2012 | 04:03 pm
this is some of the clothing i've made that's currently for sale in the clothing section of my etsy. i make these from recycled garments and/or fabric - do sewing and alterations where needed and then dye them by hand using eco-friendly dyes. it's been a lovely outlet for me; i've been so focused on the minute work of drawing and painting that a while ago i realized i just can't stay so firmly in one niche -- my temperament is way too fickle and i missed getting my hands dirty; missed needle pricks, even missed swearing over how i never, ever seem to have a pair of sharp scissors at home, just a small lake of blunt/rusty ones.
i learned how to sew before i even entered my teens, mostly because i always had very specific ideas about what i would and wouldn't wear. i've continued to make clothes throughout my life but it's only now i'm selling some. these garments are all one of a kind (even though i make stuff to order it can never be precisely the same, because i don't work with new fabric and i don't use any kind of stencils for the patterns, they're all freehand). the carbon footprint of one of these tops is virtually zero - a small amount of thread and dye of course, and if you're not local there's the shipping, but that's it.
my current inspirations are rainy skies, myths and astrology.
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pale moon tank top
May. 11th, 2012 | 07:25 pm
listed the first of my mini clothing collection on etsy -- more to come over the next few days; i was going to take more photos today, but my head hurts.
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salvaged
May. 8th, 2012 | 11:15 am
i managed to get some pics out of a half-deceased sd card ... these are from a couple of months ago.
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luna lovegood
May. 6th, 2012 | 10:39 pm
so happy i can finally show this, the opening for 'geek girl' was yesterday. luna lovegood (with crumple-horned snorkack, heliopath and moon frog).
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portrait project continued
May. 3rd, 2012 | 10:15 pm
finally! i'm sorry i had to put this on hold .. thanks everyone who volunteered, hopefully i'll have some more this week :) these are freesamuel, emeliesofie and henrik.
