Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness presents a series of elaborate vignettes about isolated characters.
Sweden
Posted inArt
The Afro Pick as a Symbol of Home
Simon Skinner, a Stockholm designer with Afro-Caribbean roots, is challenging the perceived homogeneity and whiteness of Sweden.
Posted inArt
This Colossal Goat Sculpture Is a Swedish Tradition, and Almost Every Year It Goes Up in Flames
Since the 1960s, the city of Gävle in Sweden has annually built a towering Yule goat, and almost every year someone burns it down.
Posted inNews
The Country of Sweden Has a Phone Number and I Called It
Yesterday, Sweden became the first country to install its own phone number, inviting anyone around the world to dial in and connect with a random Swede.
Posted inIn Brief
Swedish Supreme Court Rules Against Wikimedia for Database of Public Art Photos
The Supreme Court of Sweden ruled yesterday that Wikimedia Sverige (Sweden) violated the country’s copyright laws by gathering and posting photographs of public artworks on a website, the Local Sweden reported.
Posted inArt
The Swedish House Built by 200 Million Clicks
Putting all of a country’s dream home ideas into one design could easily result in abomination, an architectural version of the bubble-domed, smooth-driving “Homer” car from The Simpsons.
Posted inNews
Undermined by Mining, Swedish Town Plans to Move Two Miles East
Kiruna, Sweden, must move or be destroyed. The state-run LKAB iron ore mine that was the impetus for the town in 1900 has dug so far below its streets, residents have to move or risk plunging into the earth.
Posted inArt
In Malmö, Street Art with a Social Conscience
MALMÖ — The capital of Skåne County, Sweden, enjoys a scenic coastal location, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen, and has a strong creative output — in the words of one artist I met, it’s Sweden’s best city for street art.
Posted inArt
Sentenced: Swedish Artist Dan Park “Incited Against an Ethnic Group”
The imprisonment of artists and the shutting down of galleries by government agents are incidents we associate with North Korea, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, not a progressive Scandinavian democracy.
Posted inArt
The Celestographs: August Strindberg’s Alchemical Shots of the Night Sky
In the 1890s, Swedish playwright August Strindberg photographed the night sky without a camera or even a lens. These “Celestographs,” as he called them, were both a folly and an innovative work of experimental art.
Posted inOpinion
Swedes to Apply Gender Ratings to Movies
Four Swedish film organizations are banding together to fight sexism by applying a letter-grade rating to new releases, the Independent reports. That’s awesome news in and of itself, but the idea is even cooler because it’s based on criteria that come from a comic strip by cartoonist Alison Bechdel.
Posted inArt
Controversial Afro-Swedish Artist Speaks, “It’s a Disturbing Picture But It’s Also a Disturbing Subject”
In the last few days, Afro-Swedish artist Makode Linde has learned the power of the viral web. His controversial cake performance at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet has ricocheted around the world and has garnered reactions of all types from support of his edgy gesture to raise awareness about female genital mutilation to the denunciation of the artist and the Swedish culture minister pictured in the event photos as racists. Linde spoke to Hyperallergic about the controversy and he was happy to explain the context for the piece and how commenters have not wanted to delve deeper into the work and what it has to say.