STOCKHOLM
Perhaps it's slightly odd that I chose this one to be the first project to publish here, primarily because it's not my most recent one, to say the least. It actually goes back to spring 2014.
At that time, I was teaching in a secondary school and living in a small town in the middle of Sweden, and had already been to Stockholm a couple of times (and would go another couple of times more). Mainly because I wasn't my best self when I arrived there and I was heavily focused on myself and getting better both mentally and physically, it took a while until I started to notice certain behavioural patterns among the school kids. The one that stuck out to me the most was conformity, and it was there and then that my strong belief that human beings are the best means of advertising solidified. Not the kind when, for instance, famous people get a pile of money and utter carefully chosen words to manipulate you into buying things - that's just too direct. I mean the kind when we go after one another (and out of our own ways) to prove that something does work. When we use something in religious awe and deem it sacro sanctus.
With the world becoming an ever smaller place and experiences being reduced into commodities, I feel that there's a strong tendency that certain places and lifestyles are fetishised into products and fall into these kinds of holes. Stockholm is not unfamiliar in and to this process and, as I sense, this might also happen to a certain degree of quiet pride. This is a way of spreading its message of greatness and prosperity into the world.
The Swedish capital and, as a matter of fact, this beautiful Scandinavian country has long been regarded as a touchstone of pristine, uncluttered style that yells minimalism. Because why would one unnecessarily complicate things that shouldn't be complicated, right? Or is this the edges being taken off right before our very eyes? Only you can decide.
In my experience, the truth is between the two: a kind of back and forth, to and fro between a sense of reassuring admiration and stomach-turning boredom that Stockholm has always stirred up in me. The kind of uniformity that screams at you to get back in line and the sudden pops of colour and joy that privately reveal a side of the city unbeknownst to many. And then you're left to do whatever you want with these experiences which, ultimately, cannot be commodified. No matter how much you chase down someone in a school corridor. (Or in a street - but that would be more awkward.)
Infuriating, isn't it? Having to put an experience in a box but not quite being able to because it doesn't really fit in any. It doesn't matter if you're 13 or 30, you still want to do this.
