Life without HDK

Yesterday I met some of the old foxes downtown. We had a great lunch and God how I miss all of you. When walking on Kungsgatan another friend showed up, Julia. So here we were four of us from the same class. What a nice reunion. We shared some nice memories and had a good laugh. We decided to come and visit HDK in a couple of months and have a nice "fika" with all of you including students and teachers. Now let me share my present days as an art teacher with you. The six graders are working together on a very big piece of art, the seven graders are fully concentrated on putting together a presentation of today's designers, moviemakers and artist, using new technic by showing their power points and you tube short cuts on the big screen. My eight graders are discussing and exploring the world of making picture analyzis. They are doing a very good work and being creative. In this project we're also going to visit the art museum. I would have liked to bring them HDK as well, but they're so many!

A couple of weeks has past since examination day, and, my last day at HDK. It's empty and I grieve. It was all a very nice experience which gave me a lot of engergy. Now expectations and demands are steeling my attention. It's the school world. Reality. Great teenagers, but, too much hard work. Give, give, give. My only connection with this wounderful place is this blogg, which probably will disappear in a short time of period. Here I keep reading my friends' bloggs just to get a little touch with what's going on here. It's great so see that you're so many. Good luck with your projects and enjoy and stay positive when you're there,because it's not going to last forever.

AN INNER CHANGE

End of vacation! Yesterday evening I returned to Sweden after spending two weeks in the U.S. Difference in 41 degrees C and losing 9 hours made me sick when I woke up this morning with a bit of fever and a dripping nose. While making complaints I have to add that it was a really tuff trip getting there tree days later than planned and being without my luggage for 9 days, which ment no camera, no medication, no Christmasgifts, no dresses and no underwear! It might seem to be an "industry-country-connecting-problem", but for me it was like being lost. Still I had this HDK project in my mind. I bought a new camera and I borrowed a videocamera. I'm not done! Does it matter? I don't think so, even if it would be better if it was the opposite, mentally.

Snowstorms have been following me during my trip but also sun. I've been taken pictures and I've started to make a short movie. I have two shootings so far and my plan is to add two more and then some music. It took me quite a lot of time to film and edit, but it was fun and I want to continue and learn more using this form of visual art.

In this final project at HDK I'm working with myself. The essay and the practical work are dealing with parts of me. It's all about changing. We do that all the time, change, but for me it's more obvious now when taking a brake from my ordinary everyday work as a teacher. By being a student and given time to work with art I have time to feel and reflect on myself. Something is happening inside me filling my thoughts and my feelings. It is some sort of change. How on earth can one visualize that? Maybe the main thing isn't WHAT I decide to present, but THAT I do and WHY. In trying to find a way of expressing a change I choose a, for me, new way of working with the process. I simply left the project for weeks to see what would happen. Maybe this was an attempt to, as Bruce Mau suggests, "go deep" or to allow myself to "drift", trying to explore new sides of myself. First I thought nothing happened accept getting worried. But after reflecting I found out that change was taking so much time from me both in conversations with friends and family but also in my mind. A change is a process. It can take many forms and appear in thousands of ways. Many people have written about the creative process. I studied some of them, but took help from and got inspired by Claes Janssen who's written "The four rooms of change" which I've mentioned earlier in my blog. He is deviding change into 4 parts describing them as rooms. I'm using the headlines of these four, each one of them representing one stage in a change-process. It starts with the word contentment. Then comes denial followed by confusion (disorder) and renewal (inspiration). After going through these four stages the process starts all over again.

If I had been given time to continue my art studies at the teacher programme, I would have concentrated on something completely different. After spending 8 days in L.A I am upset! People with dreams come to this city of angels. Very few succeed and many many people live here in poverty. I have never seen so many homeless people in my whole life. There were raggamuffins lying in every second corner sleeping on the streets (and I was complaining about the loss of some personal items). This is what I would bring to light in my next project. Sometimes you need to switch enviroment to see clearly or to be able to see at all.

What do I bring back to the school world after these three semesters of education? Many things of course, but above all using art as a language, where young people are given the possibility to express themselves in issues that concerns them. Debate, protest, provoce, discuss and working with feelings, indivually and in collective processes. Secondly, our subject must cooperate with other subjects in school, because this form of language comes naturally for young people. They are using pictures, computers and music in so many ways in there everyday lives and we are waisting capacities and possibilities by not using this visual language in a broader range. Also, today I'm more aware of all the different ways that you can use art. By given the opportunity to use my own body as art, using the public room, exploring and experimenting together with others and by using new media (photo and film) I have changed!