Ideas for Change - Because the right idea can change the world » Art & Culture

Just received a photo from Palestine

Daniel Daboczy - Editor in chief — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:30:29 +0000

On both sides of that wall, regular people like me and you are stuck.

I am so proud to tell you about this photo that I received from Palestine. This is what you can see there right now.

No one is alone in this world, not anymore. This project shows how a simple idea can move the world and hopefully bring everyone closer and open the eyes.

Please support our friends at www.sendamessage.nl

Write your own message on the Palestinian wall

Hank Nokanami — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:23:49 +0000

The Wall won’t fall just because your text is written on it. True.
But your message reminds Palestinians trapped inside the Wall they have not been forgotten. You help to keep hope alive. ‘Our’ Palestinians want to send you one single, simple message: “we are human beings, just like you, with sense of humour and lust for life.” That’s why they do this, and enjoy it.

http://www.sendamessage.nl

The Dada revolutions

Daniel Daboczy - Editor in chief — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:33:52 +0000

Without Dada there would be no surrealism, no fluxus, no pop art, no video art, no punk, no performance art, no slam poetry, no conceptual art.

It’s hard to grasp or to imagine what the world would be without the meetings at Cabaret Voltaire at the beginning of the last century. These meetings witch eventually come to stand as symbols to the changes in society and to experiments and movements in the art world, witch have led us to today’s conceptual and contemporary art scene. What would the art world look like without the birth of Dada? This anti-art witch not only changed the expectations of what art could be but also most importantly opened the doors for what art could become.

It occurs to me that the famous Romanian revolution from 1989, the first televised live revolution ever, is like the first Dada – meetings. This revolution is in its form very similar to the birth of Dada. It also sprung out of a frustration towards the existing society, it also started in closed underground meetings and it also started as a chaotic reaction without clear course or direction, only with a kind of utopian dream of freedom and change. But most importantly what they both managed to accomplish is that they opened the doors to what one and society could become.

And even if history is full of these kinds of events, events witch have changed the entire world, it’s still quite hard to pinpoint exact dates or places where one meeting or one group changed history. Personally I can remember to the day, when I first met Dada. When I first realized that everything could be possible. Because Dada for me is of course an art-movement, but most importantly it’s a state of mind, it always was. A way to be. It’s actually a kind of key to everything that might be. It opens up to every possibility imaginable. I can go so far as calling it the perfect kind of freedom.
And I am quite sure that the meetings at Cabaret Voltaire almost a hundred years ago, the meetings led by exiled Romanians where for the simple purpose to change the state of mind. In every way possible!

/ Daniel Daboczy

“HOPE – the Obama Musical Story” World Premiere

HOPE-Musical — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:43:27 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

“HOPE - the Obama musical story” celebrates its world premiere on 17 January 2010!The venue Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt will experience a sound it has never heard before: formed to a huge percussion ensemble, the audience accompanies US president Barack Obama on his successful way into the White House. The event organizer MOVE GmbH promises a double world premiere: at the premiere of “HOPE – the Obama Musical Story” on Sunday, 17 January at 8:00 pm, the audience will rhythmically participate on specially developed percussion chairs – for the first time ever worldwide. “Hope is the first interactive musical of a new generation”, says musical producer Roberto Emmanuele, CEO and creative director of Move GmbH based in Bad Soden. “This is an enormous sound and a great musical experience for the audience.”

The musical stages two moving and exciting stories in parallel plots. The audience looks behind the scenes of the presidential election in 2008 and follows the career of the present US president Barack Obama. The main character is presented less on a political level, but rather as an emotional person who fights for a new, more forgiving and peaceful world and a better future. At the same time, the viewer experiences the societal events from the point of view of a multi-cultural apartment-sharing community in Chicago. Caused by the prevailing tight political and economic situation, societal and social frictions and emotions arise. The people are given new hope by the new spirit of the age.

Author and composer Randall Hutchins works with the best Afro-American singers and actors of the German musical scene. He produces inter alia for “The very Best of Black Gospel”, “Musical the Gift” and he participated in “Starlight Express” as a musician. In “HOPE”, he combines an affectionately arranged mix regarding taste and aesthetics of different music styles in the field of Pop, Soul, Gospel, HipHop and Rock. The diversified mixture of catchy melodies electrifies the audience right from the beginning. Undoubtedly, the songs have what it takes to become hits.

For “HOPE”, 30 world-class artists, singers, dancers and actors perform on stage. They participate in the production with great enthusiasm and dedication. “The spirit of the show is carried by the spirit of the entire team”, praises the producer Roberto Emmanuele. Della Miles and Jimmie Wilson, known as the dream duo of the Michael Jackson musical “Sisterella”, as well as Dynelle Rhodes, the original lead singer of the Weather Girls, join the cast as soloists. They are supported by well-known performers who are leads in “Cats”, “The Lion King” and “We will rock you”. The rehearsals took place inter alia at mediaArt FORUM in Bad Soden.

The production is realized in German and English, so that the story line can be followed by everyone.

On percussion: the audience sitting on specially developed musical chairsIn the course of the musical, the audience develops to co-musicians. For they sit on a musical instrument with an astoundingly high sound quality. Approximately 1200 of the 2000 available seats in the domed hall of the venue Jahrhunderthalle will be equipped with design chairs which house the smallest set of drums worldwide. The special construction of this musical furniture allows for a distinctive bass and snare sound. The people play while sitting, drumming with their hands on the percussion surface. Inspired by this characteristic sound, Roberto Emmanuele and his partner Patrick Strese call the innovation “BAFF musical furniture”. The other musical spectators do not sit quietly on their chairs either. They are handed out rattles, so that the sound of “HOPE” will fill the entire hall. The producers want all people to have access to music as a strong medium.

As early as in September, the musical company enthused about 45,000 viewers with a first musical foretaste during a successful performance at Commerzbank Arena next to stars like Bob Geldorf and Samy Deluxe. After only a short period of time, the entire stadium swung and clapped along to songs never heard before like “Rock the Vote”. Experts of the German music scene praised the high level of the American Pop music and certified the sound to have “Earth Wind and Fire quality”. The most important concert organizer worldwide, Fritz Rau, says: “Respect and two thumbs up for this musical”. According to the slogan “Yes we can”, the musical is to tour in Germany after having premiered in Frankfurt.

Tickets for the premiere can be purchased via the ticket seller EVENTIM within the price scope of 40 to 149 Euros in several seat categories. Following the premiere, a VIP premiere party will take place, at which special culinary refreshments will be served to the guests and the musical performers can be experienced up close in an “unplugged performance”. The VIP tickets can be bought for 99 Euros directly from the HOPE production.

Important note from the HOPE production team:
The “HOPE musical production” does not pursue any political interests with their production. Being artists, we merely stage a piece of attitude to life of the “historic year 2008″ with topics still prevailing today as well as good entertainment and music!

Chimamanda Adichie. The danger of a single story.

Invited Contributor — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:30:04 +0000

After reading Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write about Africa, my friend Katarina Hedrén sent me a link to this wonderful talk by Chimamanda Adichie. She tells how she “found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.” The single story robs people of dignity. We need a balance of stories to repair broken dignity. By rejecting the single story, Adichie says we can regain a kind of paradise.

The talk was given in July, so you might have listened to it already. If not take the time to listen to this.

On the same subject, Katarina wrote a piece on stories for a Swedish website. Who tells which stories? Who represents whom? She writes “An African pro-verb says that “Until the tale of the hunt is told by the lion, it will always glorify the hunter”. One could add that “Until the day the hunter hears the lion’s account, the hunter will remain misinformed”. Also worth reading.

By Minor Matter

October 24th: Kumi Naidoo will speak at Kulturhuset

Karin Styrenius — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:24:14 +0000

We´re very happy to present Kumi Naidoo as one of the speakers at Kulturhuset/Ekoteket on Saturday.

The South African social justice campaigner Kumi Naidoo is a board member of the board of GCCA (Global Campaign for Climate Action) which is one of the organizations behind the International Day of Climate Action.

He will come to Ekoteket in the afternoon and speak around 16.50.

Welcome!

(The program for October 24th is presented under the headline Join us at Kulturhuset. You can also look at www.350.org to see what´s going on in Stockholm and other places in 170 countries all over the world)

Bill McKibben: We will have more than 4 000 events on October 24th!

Karin Styrenius — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:01:21 +0000

Dear friends,

For 20 years the world has managed to do very little about the greatest problem it’s ever faced. In three days time, you can help change that–and if you step up you’re going to have a lot of company!

It looks like the International Day of Climate Action this Saturday October 24th will be the single most widespread day of political action the planet has ever seen–we’re closing in on 170 nations, and more than 4000 rallies and events.

There will be climate events from the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef to the summit of Mount Everest. At each event — at rallies and parties and deep-sea dives — people will take a big photo that somehow depicts the number 350. Our crew at 350.org will be taking these thousands of photos, projecting them on the giant screens in New York’s Times Square, and delivering them directly to hundreds of world leaders and politicians in the coming weeks.

There’s almost certainly an event happening near you–if you’re not sure what, this link will let you find out quickly and easily:

www.350.org/map

People in all those cities and towns all around the world will be saying the same thing: science tells us that we can’t have more than 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere if we want a planet like the one we were born onto. That sounds complicated, but it isn’t–350 is the bottom line for the earth.

Please take a moment to forward this along to everyone you know in your community and around the world, and ask them to find an event near them to take part on on this important day: www.350.org/map

Thanks for everything you do,

Bill McKibben for the 350.org Crew

P.S. We’re simply astonished by the viral growth of this movement in the last couple of weeks–can you spare 15 seconds and two mouse-clicks to share the momentum with everyone you know on Twitter and Facebook? Many many thanks.

No More Lullabies – 350 minutes of music and film

Karin Styrenius — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:46:31 +0000

October 24th 2009 at Södra Teatern, Stockholm.

Twenty-five Swedish artists will go onstage one after another for a total of 350 minutes. The aim is to draw attention to the International Day of Climate Action. The appearances will take turns with minute-long short films with climate change and the individual as a common theme.

Participating artists:

Asha Ali, Robyn, Ane Brun, Louise Hoffsten, Promoe, Tomas Andersson Wij,
Nina Ramsby, Benny Andersson, Elin Ruth Sigvardsson, Emil Jensen, Jaqee,
Kristofer Åström , Loney, Dear, Nicolai Dunger, Deportees, Wendy McNeill,
Tobias Fröberg, Rebekka Karijord, Those Dancing Days, Ossler, Bob Hansson,
The Tiny, Nina Kinert, and others.

The artists who have chosen to participate will appear at Södra Teatern as individuals – not activists – with a mutual wish that we all have to take the climate issue seriously.

Climate change, in one way or another will affect all of us. Yet we don’t speak openly about our feelings concerning out uncertain future. We all tend to handle the situation in different ways. Fighting spirit, angst, ignorance and denial are just a few of the states that we’re in.

No More Lullabies wants to open up for a more straightforward dialogue, man to man. Conversations about climate issues that goes beyond political rhetoric, defence mechanisms and vested interest. In the long run, this dialogue could make the global climate crisis become a subject that we choose to talk about more often in our daily lives and thereby inspires us to take action.

Ane Brun is the initiator of the event. Tällberg Foundation is co-arranger (www.tallbergfoundation.org). The evening will also be the starting point of the long-term project No More Lullabies.

No more lullabies – time to wake up.

Neither East Nor West

banafshe.zabeti — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:33:05 +0000

Ideas for change has met Professor Kerstin W. Shands. Ideas about East and West are discussed by different theorists in Neither East Nor West, an anthology edited by Kerstin Shands and published in 2008 by Södertörn University in Stockholm. After reading Neither East Nor West, I felt that this is a book that actually contributes to changes for a better world with a variety of postcolonial essays on literature, culture and religion. The emphasis is on the ideas of development and how we can progress and deconstruct stereotypical ways of thinking about race, gender, caste, subalternity, and religion. You can find debates about postcolonialism versus postmodernism and learn more about the very roots of postcolonial theory.

Is there a risk of creating a kind of intellectual and critical elite who understands the problematic, while the “common” people who clearly need to question there own stereotypical way of thinking, remain unaffected?

-I think we always have to be aware of risks of reinforcing rather than deconstructing cultural divides, and this is something we have to work against in different ways. My own university is a meeting place for students and teachers from very different cultural and social backgrounds, and part of the aims is to encourage not only a multidisciplinary, but also a multicultural education. Education has a tremendously important role to play in making studies and research part of constructive forces for change.

Is it possible to discuss how different identities are constructed and how stereotypes are reproduced through the media, with the journalist elite who work within a cultural frame and a normative way of writing? (Is there hope?).

-One would hope so, and I think it is done. This is a question that could be more fully answered by the media specialists in my department. We also have to be clear about whose identities we are talking about, and whether identities are indeed constructed (we are not brick buildings), by whom and in what context, because we all consist of several identities and roles, and identities tend to be fluid. Elite journalists too are personalities and we cannot just take the journalist elite as a group and say that they are all the same.

Are the stereotypes and pictures of the others deeply rooted in our minds or can the “common” people be critical?

-Unpalatable as it may be, the sensationalism and stereotyping you refer to may be a way for the media today to attract readers’ attention in a competition with the Internet. But yes, every reader has a responsibility to read critically. Information is power – but it is we as readers who give media whatever power it has. Again, this is why I think education is crucial in developing critical thinking skills. Not just learning how to read, but learning how to evaluate what you are reading.

Do you think that there always need to be a group that according to the media are to be blamed for the failure of integration or do you think we can reach some kind of deconstruction, and in that case HOW?

-Ideally, no group should be blamed for failures of integration. Everybody has a responsibility to counteract such ‘othering’ of particular groups. Awareness and vigilance are key aspects. Will the media change? If society as a whole changes, the media will change, too. Every society tends to have its ‘others’. So far, our collective level of maturity hasn’t reached the level where we can deal with this constructively. But there is no law of nature that says that it should be impossible. Every human being needs to look inside and deal with their own shadows and understand the mechanism of projection – projections of fears and insecurities. And of course we can help each other in this process. Only when individual human beings have resolved these issues from within will we be able to move towards this greater change on social and collective levels.

Banafshe Zabeti

No related posts.

Concerts for change – Charity entrepreneurship

anders sporring — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:13:23 +0000

….Or how anyone can create something that will make a change

How it started
End of June I was contacted on Twitter by Globalpatriot who told me he was coming to Stockholm and wanted to set up a charity benefit event. He asked me for my email to send me all the details. So I did and when we setup our contact I invited a couple of my friends from Twitter to join us at a tweetmeetup in beginning of July to talk about what to do and how to do it. Out of that first meeting with 9 people a group of three came out, Me (Anders Sporring), Renee Viterstedt and Johan Burell

The mission
We as part of Concerts For Change want to create fantastic events/concerts to support preferably sustainable projects around the World.

How we used Social media both to promote and plan
Planning and organizing the event took place mainly online in the Wiki we setup. In our case we used Pbworks and adapted it to fit our use. A blog is also essential, so we got a sponsored web hotel and domain name from Binero. We added functions like Twitter, Vimeo and Flickr to the blog for added content.

Promotion for the event was mostly achieved online using Twitter and Facebook to link back to our blog and repeatedly making posts with hashtags pointing towards the event.

The Event
Our first production was a concert with two liveacts and two DJ’s which took place at the Hilton Eken Bar In Stockholm. Attending was about 100 people and the revenue to Doctors Without Borders was about $650 A good result for a first try. Next event will be in November and will be a club event.

Anders Sporring
Social Media Facilitator, Social Media Blogger, Project Manager, Mobile geek, Composer, Creative Idealist.