Wow. It’s April already. I guess that goes to show you how busy March was. Let me just say, it was an agonizing end to the Collections portion of my program. Six dry cups of tea, two old dinner plates, seven overturned books, and two magpies watched me typing frantically on my bedspread in the candelight to finish this exam. I turned that bastard in at 24.00 on the dot and instantly flopped back in the bed. Finally: done with material culture…
I'm happy to report that March has also brought to Gothenburg slightly warmer temperatures—much to the collective relief of the area. Gray, gritty rain has been coming in from coast these last few mornings, blowing sideways and sometimes straight up, but usually running dry by noon. And when it does, the air is heavy with that soggy smell of spring. Slick, brown mud lines the path up to my flat now, and from the large, single-pane windows of the kitchen, I’ll sip tea by the radiator by five, eying the clouds and watching the magpies re-align their feathers again for the next morning…
Sweden definitely feels like home now. There is a comfort level now present in my life that had not been there before. I think a lot probably stems from the traveling; the continuous ‘coming-backing’ to Gothenburg has certainly widened a hole in my heart for this place. Although the city has a lot more to offer, I find I am constantly seeking refuge really when home; I hardly go out nowadays, preferring to stay inside to read books and try and improve my cooking skills. Plus I’m sick again. And I go to Dublin and Glasgow in little less than one week.
But, if I look back on my life last March, it’s a staunch contrast. Instead of frantically labeling dozens and dozens of tiny tubes, my days now are incredibly relaxed. If I have class, I get up at 8:00, make a Wasa-bread-and-cheese-yogurt-and-berries breakfast, ride the tram to class, and sketch on the sides of my notebooks in the halls of an old hospital-turned-school building until noon. If I don’t have class, I get up at 9:00, go to work to do a bit of wet science, and by four I’m in a café, either with friends or alone. While there are still things here that get me wildly frustrated, I think it is these moments when I snap back into reality: that this is my reality, and it is right fanciful one—one that I may not have again for a long, long time. I mean, it is quite feasible here sometimes that the hardest decision in the day is whether to get a pastry or not…
This is not to say that I am not busy. As ridiculous as that may sound, graduate school has definitely got my head buzzing—so much so that sometimes at night, I can’t sleep. After three courses worth of literature that I’ve never read before, and ideas that never had the chance to really ignite, it sometimes feels like my head is a spinning compass, constantly pointing to new things. As a result (and maybe from the Collections course), I’ve started to lose my perpetuity for clutter in favor of Swedish white minimalism. Lately, the only breath of air my sprinting mind takes is when I enter—dare I say it—a big, bright, white cube.
April and May plan to bring major events, though, to these otherwise calm days. In less than a week, I travel to Ireland and Scotland with my class to study Glasgow’s Open Museums, one of the most innovative and inclusive museological infrastructures in the world. When I return, work at the Lundberg Lab will hopefully change over to larger, more exciting trials of my earlier experiments. In addition, the Gothenburg Science Festival—a major 15-year-old event of public science activities, lectures, and symposiums across the city—takes place in early May, and I’ve registered for about 50-60 hours of lectures—including the International Symposium on Science Journalism and the European Science Event Association 10-Year Conference. Not to mention an odd little side-job of mine involving a Ferris wheel...
And all this takes place in the background of what looks to be our most intense course yet in the program, which cumulates in an actual exhibition and an actual exhibition opening at two of Gothenburg’s museums in early June. Our two module directors are a duo Swedish curators with fantastic chemistry, who have arranged for us a (comparatively) stunning array of speakers within museum management. As a gesture of good faith, the course opened last week lectures with the famous Nina Simon—exhibit designer and museum consultant from the Bay Area who is top-dog in the museum field right now. I was positively thrilled when her first slide that morning read: “Hi, I’m Nina, and I want to change museums.” Needless to say, I bought her book, The Participatory Museum, on the spot.
Oh, and another thrill factor that spiced up my day last week: the exhibition opening—the party for the debut of my first exhibition ever—falls on the first day my dear sister, Gabby, arrives in Sweden. Kickass.
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