Looking at an artwork in a certain way with a certain analysis method in mind you automatically choose something away and neglect some parts. After you establish what it is that you can see, you also have to ask yourself what is it that I don't see. And how can the problems with this method visualize the potentials and open up new areas. Seeing and perception, interpreting is a part of everyday life.

The answers you get generates from the questions you ask.

the tulips are dying.

it doesn't even look like hair, just a lump of whatever.

perhaps I should take better care of it.

Testaments Betrayed, LouLou Cherinet.

I met Loulou last April during Street View, a group exhibition produced by MAP, she was one of the trio GoodTV which showed the work This Image Is No More along with Jean-Pedro Fabra Guemberana and Michele Masucci. I was engaged in their work by being a volunteer at the whole exhibition but I also ended up as one of their storytellers. (I'll explain another time)

I had no previous knowledge about them, nor did I grasp what kind of art they were doing when flying solo. But I was sure of that it wouldn't be boring.

Testaments Betrayed is what she calls the exhibition, mixed with a new work and older works. She works in moving visuals, video art, and engages the viewers in race, gender, ethnicity and identity issues. I know I know, when I first read that, I thought, oh that's new... and wasn't to keen on that simple description which is inserted in most of the contemporary art today. But I had to go to the exhibition to see for myself, and most of all I wanted to meet her again. (social networking is crucial in the art world.) In the rooms and in the cathedral of Röda Sten I found video art that moved me. Many times, here comes a confession, video art has been much of a monotonous bore, but not this. She's not just making arty videos and playing hard to get, well she does that too, but it's not entirely abstract video art. She adresses the issues directly and far more visual than I'd like them to.

For instance in one of her works, Bleeding Men, she has several dark colored men lying in a what I assume is a bathroom floor, a lot like the showers in gymhalls, anyway, they are lying there all dressed in white tunics, and then you see them cutting themselves in the arm. It was like it was one person and you just saw them in different angles at once, and you see them bleeding and in the end they stand up walk away and all there's left is pools of blood on the floor. I actually saw it in reverse order, it was even more powerful. I walked in on the video, going in loops, at the end of it, so I saw the pools first and then the beginning with them lying there. That's what so unpredictable with video art, you can catch fragments of it if you don't watch the whole or start from the beginning or get another experience from it that intended.

Another video work is White Women. Where several black men sitting around a table eating and telling stories of their first encounters with white women. The hierarchy, patriarchy and and race-difference is discussed without disguise. They talk and laugh freely about these white women as their conquers, encounters and broken loves and so on. They all wear the same red striped shirt and the camera is placed in the middle rotating as one of them is telling their own story. You're not so sure if it's OK to laugh at the stories they are telling, you are not sure if to identify with them or with the women they are talking about or as another authority to morally judge them. Because many of the stories are quite discriminating, both in race and in gender and at times offensive but also hilarious.

One with dual screens which I did not catch the name of was screening two different landscapes but same motifs. One of Sweden and one of another what we might call third world country. Where the difference between two women in respectively country is shopping for groceries and another screen of the accomodation, graffiti on the walls, the sea, the trees. What can be found in one country can be found in another, but there's still a significant difference. But also very much like the other.

There were several works which I have not covered here and those I did were only fragments. My poor description of this exhibition does not do it justice and I have even left out one of the great parts, the building itself. So go there if you can. It's worth it.

www.cherinet.com

We took the boat to the otherside to the opening of LouLou's art exhibiton. Got to know her during Street View last year in April, she's having her biggest show at Röda Sten in Gothenburg till 27th february. More on her exhibition coming up.

itsanotherfashionweekandimnotapartofit. everytimeofthisyearihatethatiactuallywalkedawayfromfashion.

another film by Wong Kar Wai. 墮落天使.

another likely story.

all or nothing.

lately. Acne Paper, Air, wine and tulips.

transparent belief.

Vito Acconci - Lobby for the time being, Bronx Museum.

source. Purple-diary.

On hold.

Vivienne in a tree. collage.

Daul.

a quick sketch.

one of the most beautiful asian models on the runways.

she died at the age of 20.

A pile of diaries, Chairman Mao, detail of one the structures

and the tip of the iceberg of my stacks of books.

Originally intended to post twice as many film stills.

Twohundredfortytwo were made.

I'd forgotten about colors. About Ninagawa Mika. About Tsuchiya Anna.

About my obsessions. About the me then.

edit. 5781.

5.23-6.19.

det kommer bli varmt.

riktigt varmt.

Best new years present ever. One day old.