Valdemaras' Thoughts

Ai Wei Wei and Politics

2011-08-07T23:58:00.003+02:00

More than one year since my last blog post. I think writing is very useful, especially if you don't have a very good memory. It's good to remember things. You remember them best if you write down and perhaps talk to someone about it. Writing makes thoughts more defined.

Today I was reading interviews with Ai Wei Wei, a Chinese contemporary artists, architect and political activist. Political activist in China?! Yes, he has just been released from jail after spending close to three months in there. China is so interesting. Apparently the party is pretending to be just, although it is not. It can't be, because you can't be just and restrain free speech at the same time. It's commonly thought that China is soon to be the new super power, which might overwhelm the western civilization. But can you imagine a super power without the freedom of thought? Is this possible? Can innovation and growth come from a state where there's no freedom of information?

It's very interesting to hear about China from a Chinese, who is familiar with the western culture and can explain things so that it's easy to understand for me. The book contains Ai Wei Wei's interviews conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Ai Wei Wei recently had his exhibit called Sunflower Seeds displayed at Tate Modern in the turbine hall. (In the photo on the top-left he is in Tate Modern, several months before his arrest). 100 million handcrafted and painted porcelain sunflower seeds were spread out on the ground. You can find some Ai Wei Wei's photo art at Moma's website. Very political.

P.S. I really like Obrist's idea of Brutally Early Breakfast Club. And a very good name for the club.

London

2010-06-14T21:45:00.010+02:00

Tomorrow will be three weeks since I moved to London. Here are some impressions about the city:

Accommodation: if it's not terrible - it's good.
Culture: Tate Modern - very impressive. Science Museum - very conservative (comparing to Bremen's science museum). Most museums are for free! Waterstone's at Picadilly - Europe's largest bookstore. Seven stores filled with books makes it really hard to choose one if you are not sure what you are looking for.
Camden market: full of people, some nice things if you look carefully, nice bookstore (used books), tempting smells of food, a very nice and a very expensive fashion store.
Job hunt: everyone's extremely professional, very polite. IT job market is quite active, recovering from crisis.
Architecture: very diverse. I've noticed some very cosy houses very close to the center (East from the Tower Bridge), with big balconies or terraces, gardens. There are some amazing places to live in London (accompanied by even more amazing prices I guess).
Language: getting used to the British accent.
Sports: climbing gyms are still to be visited in the future (including The Castle and The Arch, which is a walking distance from where I live!). As for now I just went to boulder to one of the two parks which have a boulder each. Massive boulders were moved there several years ago (check out the youtube video below). A bit scary to boulder there without a crashpad.
General feeling: fantastic!

Milgram's 3

2009-07-21T14:19:00.004+02:00

For many Germans Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg is a hero. 65 years ago on July 20th he planted a bomb under Hitler's table with the purpose of overthrowing Hitler's regime. He was one of few people who refused to obey to authority and followed his conscience.

Indeed obedience to authority is an interesting aspect of human psychology. Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, in 1961 conducted experiments that revealed how much humans tend to listen to orders instead of following their own ethical judgment.

The numbers are stunning, what is now widely known as Milgram's experiment showed that more than 60 percent of people obey to authority despite their deepest moral beliefs. (For those interested there is a movie created by Milgram named 'Obedience' or you can also see a modern replication of the experiment here). In the Milgram's experiment number 18 only 3 persons out 40 refused to obey and followed their conscience.

Clearly, Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg belongs to those 3.

Down and Out in Paris and London

2009-02-04T15:30:00.011+01:00

Currently around one half of the human population suffers from poverty. The book by George Orwell "Down and Out in Paris and London" helps to imagine what it is like to live in poverty. It narrates about a man's life in poverty in the beginning of the 20th century. So what do you do if you haven't been eating for three days already?

search for any job you can get.
try to borrow some money from your acquaintances.
pawn your clothes (the only thing you have left).
go fishing.
remember that fasting is quite pleasant after the fourth day.
Feel a relief “at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety."

George Orwell claimed: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.". "Down and Out in Paris and London" was published in 1933. However, one can feel an inclination towards Socialism already.

According to the book there was a vast number of laborers back at that time, laborers that were as wasted slaves, doing largely unnecessary work. "And they are kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling [of the rich class] that they would be dangerous if they had leisure and time to think"

Summing up, although at some places the narrative isn't very organic and consistent, the book is very easy to read. In my view, the book is more valuable not as a piece of art, but as a chronicle and a collection of ideas. It might definitely help to understand the evolution of Orwell's thought and serve as a good introduction before reading his other, more famous, books like “1984” and “Animal Farm”.

Vilniaus Džiazas

2008-11-26T15:47:00.002+01:00

“Vilniaus Džiazas“ - the book by Ričardas Gavelis engrossed me completely until the moment I finished reading it. The novel is not only extremely captivating, but it is also interesting because it narrates about my city. Despite Vilnius being very different now, it is a good feeling to know the streets and the places where the action is taking place.

The narrative is built around the life of a physics student Tomas Kelertas and his friends. Briefly put, the book speaks of the search for identity during the times of communism oppression. It talks little about communism as a political regime, it instead analyses its impact on human mind.

The plot fluctuates with the rhythm of jazz, unnoticeably jumping from one character to another, immersing the reader into different emotions and perceptions. As you read on the plot becomes more and more surreal, with the visitors from the parallel worlds, characters suddenly gaining telepathic powers and talking to already dead philosophers or musicians.

Definitely a good read, especially for people who have had an opportunity to live in Vilnius.

Election and Emotions

2008-11-10T19:24:00.008+01:00

For the first time in the history of the United States its people elected an African American President.

Barack Obama's charming personality and his fascinating presidential campaign made it possible. Not only his speeches were reasonable, but they were also very emotionally involving. People were crying listening to him. The way he spoke and what he told made people feel important, his speeches made people feel that they can change something, gave them hope and a feeling of pride in their nation.

Certainly, the speeches were prepared with the help from (if not by) public relations experts. But does it imply that all that he told was a lie and that all the emotions were simply faked? Apparently not, as it does not imply the opposite either.

Seeing the popular music videos created during the Obama's presidential campaign leaves no doubt about how extraordinary the elections were: Yes We Can, I Got a Crush...On Obama.

Self-Esteem

2008-10-18T20:19:00.001+02:00

Every person desires to be appreciated or, in other words, to be worthy of esteem and respect. Paradoxically, the feeling of self-esteem mostly depends on other people's opinions. To put it briefly, person's self-esteem is damaged when they are criticized and their achievements are depreciated. People feel more appreciated when their achievements or traits are praised.

It is very interesting and sometimes also very useful to observe how people react to criticism or praising. In my limited experience I noticed that people who have a lack of self-esteem tend to lean to the following two states of mind. Wether they start talking down others and become extremely categorical in their opinion or, on the contrary, loose their self-confidence.

I have had an opportunity to observe the first case much more often than the second. So, if some friend or acquaintance is talking you down for some trifle, or someone is assuring you too often that he is right and you are wrong, then you have all the reasons to suspect that a person just wants to gain more confidence in his merit and increase his feeling of self-esteem this way.

In these cases, I think, it is important not to start fighting back, and proving who is wrong, which would leave the person feeling even more depreciated and also angry on you. In my opinion, the wisest would be to understand that the argument is not about the trifle you're arguing about, it is about someone trying to become appreciated. Sometimes it's enough to show some appreciation to solve all the problems.

Free-doing

2008-10-02T16:25:00.002+02:00

Sometimes you can not write anymore, especially when you have to write something like an essay for your English exam. You don't like your text, you feel anxious and frustrated, you are stuck. Peter Elbow in his book “Writing Without Teachers” introduces a method to overcome the so called writer's block. As a main tool to fight the anxiety he introduces freewriting. Freewriting is a process of writing for a certain amount of time non-stop. You can write something on a specific topic or just write down all the thoughts that come to your mind. When you freewrite, you don't judge your text, you don't delete or correct anything either, regardless of the mistakes and the stupidity. Freewriting is claimed to help to develop and to grow the ideas for the text, an activity being similar to brainstorming. Peter Elbow claims that a chain of associations that can produce precious ideas and words is often stopped by critical thinking. Freewriting allows all of your ideas and thoughts to grow regardless of how stupid they are. I believe it helps a lot to overcome the anxiety while writing, since you let everything that is in your mind go to the paper, you don't block anything.

It appears that sometimes critical thinking is a hindrance not only in writing, but also in drawing. Bert Dodson in his book “Keys to Drawing” describes two types of inner dialog when drawing: the critical dialog and the practical dialog. Critical dialog includes judging your drawing in the process. For instance: “That arm doesn't look right” or “I never draw the legs right”. This kind of thinking often stops from finishing the drawing and causes impatience, anxiety and confusion. Another, practical way of thinking includes practical thoughts like “What does that shape look like?”, “How bumpy is that contour?”. Practical dialog is all about observation of the object that is being drawn.

I found the concepts of freewriting and practical dialog in drawing somewhat similar. They are similar in the way they make you stop the self-involved process of criticizing what you do. I wonder what could be the other fields where one could use the method of free-doing to expand and explore the ideas. Jazz improvisations could probably be called free-playing. What is free-speaking then? The process of free speaking in a group of people could eventually bring out many interesting and smart ideas. If one starts speaking only smart things the process of associations is crippled and many wonderful ideas are left behind. What about free-coding? Probably it is something similar to agile approach, where you explore the ideas by constant refactoring.

Kolekcionierė (The Collectress)

2008-09-07T19:48:00.004+02:00

Recently I had an opportunity to see the movie “Kolekcionierė” by Kristina Buožytė which was awarded with the silver crane as the best Lithuanian movie of the year 2008.

The movie tells a story about a young and ordinary woman who loses her ability to feel after her father dies. She later finds out that she can experience feelings only when watching herself in videos. This is where the adventures start. She finds a guy who films her and helps her to create the first scenario. Different scenarios represent distinct emotions. She starts with the emotion that makes her laugh, she kisses a random bridegroom in front of everyone (including the bride) and finishes with something rather fierce like killing a dog by slamming a door on it. She watches the videos on the screen later and each time she gets a dose of feelings which make her laugh and cry, feelings which become like drugs to her.

The movie made me ponder upon people trying to boost the intensity of their emotional life by watching television. Movies, TV-series, reality shows endow us with emotions which can hardly be experienced in real life with such intensity. Once we get used to the vivid and diverse feelings aroused by the television, reality might seem not to provide the needed amount of positive emotions any longer. Then there is no easier solution than to sprawl out on the sofa and turn on the TV.

The movie is very different to the typical Hollywood production, on the contrary, it bears many properties of what I call a typical Lithuanian movie, which I don't admire so much either. Gloomy scenes, special kind of sad music, theatrical dialogues. However, what I discovered to be very exceptional to the typical was the occasionally emerging humor which made the viewers laugh at a sad movie. I would recommend this movie to everyone who likes non-commercial and European cinema.

It is also interesting that the movie was directed by a student of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater and was a graduation work for the Master Degree. Good job!