The World is Mine

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My plan for this evening was to start on one of the many papers I have due in the next couple weeks. What have I done with my time instead? Watched Whale Wars on Animal Planet, of course. And an interview on BBC's Hard Talk with the Hungarian Foreign Minister. So it was still a totally educational, academic evening.

Today my Women, Art, and Identity class took a field trip to two museums. The first one had an exhibit of Edvard Munch (of The Scream) which was ok, but not mind-blowing. Mind-blowing is, however, the adjective I will use to describe the two exhibits I saw at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The World Is Yours included pieces of all different materials and mediums. There were several video installations, pieces that played with sound, and even a scratch-and-sniff wall of fear. The second exhibit was less interactive and playful but much more emotionally gripping. Faith Hope & Love: Jacob Holdt's America included photographs from the past 40 years that Danish photographer Jacob Holdt has spent vagabond-ing his way across the USA, befriending the marginalized of our society and intimately capturing their lives on film. The photos were made even more intense by the stories that accompanied them, giving names and histories to different people he befriended: prostitutes, serial killers, Klan members, Nazis, anti-war terrorists, ex-girlfriends, migrant workers, and others. If any of Jacob Holdt's stuff comes near you, check it out. It's very thought-provoking, to say the least.

I never realized the difference in latitude between Ohio and Denmark before tonight. I mean, I knew it was notably further north, but it took a constellation to make it sink in. As I was biking home from the station tonight, I paused to look up at the stars. Even though I'm only about half-an-hour's train ride outside the city, the light pollution is minimal. It seems like nearly every night is clear enough to see stars sprinkled across the whole sky, horizon to horizon. I look for constellations or stars that I recognize, the Big Dipper obviously being one of them. I followed the Big Dipper's lip to the North Star; it is so much higher in the sky than I remember from back home.

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Photos

Øresunden
Stephanie running towards the sound between Denmark and Sweden.

The World Is Yours
The sign atop the Louisiana.