Stockholm by night is a beautiful place.
I have some news. Are you sitting down? Good. I haven’t seen a film since Monday! I know, it’s pretty crazy. It’s like an English person not having tea for 2 days. The reason for this is like I said before, I needed a little time to clear my thoughts. And when it comes to “thought clearing” there isn’t a better place to do so than Stockholm’s waterfront.
I took a little stroll and that took me to Fotografiska. This museum is the best place in Sweden if you like photos and art. I went in and enjoyed Nick Brandt’s exhibition on animals. It’s absolutely stunning and a perfect way to reboot my film brain.
But just like an Edgar Allen Poe moment, I felt a heartbeat in the building. Film was present. I went upstairs and found Johan Wik’s work.
Johan Wik graduated from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm this year and his current piece is called Untitled. To put it bluntly, it’s 6 minutes of people beating each other up in slow motion. Here, let Fotografiska explain a little more:
“In Untitled Wik attempts to penetrate the role of this particular masculine stereotype via an experiment, in fact a performance, consisting of real violence. The brutal punches depicted in Untitled are not the result of special effects. The impact of each blow was experienced fully by the men and faithfully recorded by Wik’s camera. Wik himself participated in the performance, and, in the process, lost a tooth.”
I enjoyed his work very much and even if it was tough to see sometimes, his point comes across crystal clear. I took some pictures with my state of the art camera, my iPhone, to share the experience with you.
So if you are in Stockholm, go check out Fotografiska. It’s definitely worth the price of admission, and then some. If you want to see Wik’s work, hurry up. It’s only there until the 11th of December. Read more about his work here.
And don’t worry. For my next post I will be back on track blogging away about film, giving out my opinions on the world of cinema.
And now If you’ll excuse me, I have to pop out for a cup of tea.
I would have liked this film soooo much more if it didn’t have a problem with pace. This is a slow film, not a lot of things happen. That’s of course fine. I like films that takes its time. But it also takes way too many freedoms with skipping in the story and it starts a bunch of storylines that never really get to pass the finish line.
That was what my friend asked me after yesterday’s red carpet event for the film Shame. The remark made me laugh for two reasons. First of course because Shame is a about a sex addict (played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender). For the second it was a spot on remark of the way this film plays out. The troubles and weight the characters all carry around with is nothing they put on display, it’s all underneath, very beautifully.
