Preparations for the IMS student exhibition are in full swing. Between writing tours, proofing activities, translating texts, and practicing improv, my team is officially in the thick of it. By tomorrow, the exhibition Gender Matters opens at three museums and must be staffed with daily tours, take-home activities, and weekend workshops. Good thing my sister's coming: she can be my personal assistant!
Gabby arrived last Friday, jumping off the bus in Centralstationen dusty and tan. She had just finished a five-month expedition to Jordan and so life in Sweden brought her a taste of first-world luxuries she hadn't had in a while. Unfortunately, Annika has been gone on a trip to Spain while Gabby's been here, but we've been having fun anyway (really would have liked them to meet). In between classes, I've attempted to bring her to all the places I love going---while also taking the chance to relive some of them before I, too, am going to leave. My departure date for Seattle is June 9, and Lord knows I have much to do...
One of the things I had Gabby help me with was get rid of all my excess furniture before exhibition opening day: selling my bed (gonna miss that one), delivering furniture I had pulled out of dumpsters back in December, and abandoning IKEA rugs at one of the biggest open-air flea markets in Gothenburg---Megaloppis!
Yesterday was Annika's big birthday celebration. All Friday and Saturday morning, we baked and baked and baked until the apartment was a tea party the White Rabbit himself would have even come to. We even stocked the tub with beer and had tea-themed playlists playing all night. :)
I asked Annika what she wished for for her birthday and the reply was wonderfully simple: American cupcakes. So, I followed through. Here are some pictures of the Green Tea cupcakes I made for her that day. To say they were a hit might be an understatement; they were gone within the hour!
At the end of the night, I think she was happy. :)
This is what they must have been talking about when they said the life of a museum worker is the essence of busy. Annika can attest: I haven't been home much. As project leader, my schedule has now been whisked away from fika and the occasional yeast transformation to packed weeks of meetings, lessons, planning, and work. And, you know, an meal or two.
As far as the work goes, my team hasn't done much yet. Education and programming is really for later in the game, and when the rest of my peers have been racing to pick up the slack, I've given my team the chance to appreciate their time off. Though I wish I could recap everything here, I honestly need to post the headliners of the last couple days out of pure necessity---even though my team isn't doing much, Steering Group (or Cheering Group, as we call it) certainly gives me enough to do.
After much toil (to which my friend, Csilla, deserves much applause), we finally decided the focus of our exhibition to be gender. Not sure what I mean? Here's our exhibition's main statement, hot off the press:
We have applied gendered labels to objects and to ourselves for centuries. Should we blindly accept these labels? This exhibition, across three museums in Gothenburg, examines how and where gender matters in society. Through the exhibition at the City Museum we explore 19th century gender roles in relation to those of today. At the Maritime Museum we look at how gender roles on land are contested at sea. In the Natural History Museum we discuss how the animal world challenges human ideas of gender roles.
We've been toying with numerous names, but I have a looming feeling Gender Matters will emerge from the cutting room floor (we'll see how many people like that). In addition, we have also decided:
The exhibition will be at three museums: the Natural History Museum, Gothenburg City Museum, and the Maritime Museum and Aquarium
It will have four-five items highlighted in each museum exhibition and at least one headlining installation
It will highlight visitors from the coinciding Gothenburg Gay-Pride Festival, students, and tourists.
The exhibition will have an unconventional catalogue made up of individual postcards which act as a playful extension of the exhibition as additional interpretation of museum objects
The exhibition will be in both English and Swedish (gulp)
As you can imagine, the last decision has been my biggest worry, as of late.
However, I can't say that I haven't been having my share of fun. Eurovision 2011 was last weekend and an experience I certainly have never had before. Monique and Lisa invited a whole bunch of international students over to their apartment to watch this American Idol-esque European competition of cheap song-singing, and rate the crazy results. I'm happy to report, it was everything I hoped for. I...was a fan of Moldova. :)
Yeah. You should have seen the other contestants. One chick broke into sign language mid-song.
While we were in Edinburgh, looking at museums and drinking Ginger beer, our supervisors sent out information regarding our student exhibition. There were three monumental things we learned in this singular email: (1) that our goal was to “hack” into an existing exhibition in Gothenburg and analyze their resources from a ‘different’ perspective, (2) that the exhibition was to take place in 3 local museums in only 7 weeks (holy shit), and (3) that I was elected project leader for programming and education. The last one came as a total surprise.
It’s almost ironic that once the real work starts in this course, I find myself the most distracted I’ve ever been. The International Science Festival in Gothenburg has begun to permeate the city with many public science events. As I mentioned before, the Science Festival has been a huge interest of mine for some months and upon learning it’s major theme—Creativity—it’s no surprise that my team didn’t accomplish much while I was buzzing around.
Doing the “Scientist Roulette” event actually took a bit of effort for me; it was definitely one of the wackiest teaching experiences I have ever had. This gig was an attempt for the festival staff to better link the Gothenburg with their local scientists and researchers. Fifty different scientists and researchers were put in a car of popular Gothenburg Ferris wheel for two hours and joined by the public. When I signed up, I knew I was going to represent my Swedish lab (Göteborgs Universitets Department i Mikrobiologi) but what I was to present about cellular biology in this context was beyond me. I had a small amount of room, 10 minutes per session, and no idea if my audience would speak English. It had to be fast, easy to understand, and (to my preference) hands-on.
In the end, I chose to actually talk about my current research about stress granules. After a brainstorming beer with Annika outside Pustervik, I came up with the following, participatory exhibit scheme which I think Nina Simon herself would be proud:
Using pipecleaners, I was going to have my visitors make my Ferris wheel car into a model cell---complete with personalized stress granules. In cellular biology, stress granules are little "granules" of RNA and protein molecules that accumulate when the cell feels stress, whether it's environmental or internal. By sequestering these molecules, the cell can focus on what needs to happen when stressed: putting energy to other processes, harboring bad molecules, etc.
In my presentation, I had visitors make their own stress granules based on what they thought they forgot about when stressed. Colors represented "family," "eating," "work," etc. and visitors could self-evaluate and construct their own. By the end of the presentation, I had a Ferris wheel car filled with stress granules: it was awesome.
Needless to say, I was very excited. :)
The other highlight of the Science Festival was my admittance to the EUSCEA Annual Conference as a volunteer intern. I owe it's main coordinator, Jan Riise, an immense thank you, as he essentially made me a guest with all the benefits of any other conference member. As a result, I got the amazing opportunity to sit in on lectures from directors of science festivals all around the world. I met Ben Wiehe, director of the science festival in Cambridge, Massachusetts (one of the oldest in the States; super nice guy, we talked together often as we had much in common), as well as Simon Gage of the Edinburgh science festival (oldest in Europe; busy man, but gave me much career advice).
Lectures included everything from sponsor and stakeholder strategies to international mass experiments to political consciousness. As it was international, we also got a very holistic perspective of what each country was doing and addressing within each of its events. To cap it all off, Jan even invited me to the conference main dinner, which was held late at night in a candle-lit Fiskkyrkan and was the biggest and best smorgåsbord of Swedish seafood I had ever had. It was a superb learning experience, one where I met some brilliant and inspiring thinkers.
