Category Archive for ‘Events’ at Simple Common Sense

Archive for the 'Events' Category

1,298,847,000

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on August 12, 2008

. 3 Comments

Some books seem essential in the modern Western world; Let this be Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Voltaire’s Candide or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. All of them are seen as important to our society and its literary maturation. I haven’t read any of the above-mentioned books though, but I’ve started reading another highly admired book recently. Not known for its literary qualities or narrative development, George Orwell’s 1984, certainly is one of the most well developed intellectual political puzzles, combining governmental spin with the resistance and acceptance from society and its people.
For those of you who haven’t read it, few words are more describing than BIG BROTHER!

Of course, what I want to remark here at Simple Common Sense is today’s discovering of the fake singer, fireworks and cheer squads at the Olympic games in China. Yes, the country where some people actually think a computer can translate the name of their restaurant rightly.

Well, not all of them are that stupid of course. But this place, where I’ve for as long as I can remember have wanted to go, is somewhat rotten. Terribly wrong policies on Tibet, forbidden websites such as the one of Amnesty International, and the highest death penalty rate in the world is to name a few of the horrible things that are happening in the country with the quite unsuitable name of the ‘People’s Republic’ of China.
But sticking to my point, they now - finally - try to work out a better image; re-branding themselves as flawless:
-They can’t have an ugly looking child (ugly here means crooked teeth) singing at the opening ceremony, so instead they get a cute little girl to lip-sync the song, and act as if it was her singing.
-They can’t have empty stadiums, so instead they import and hire cheer squads to create atmosphere and disguise the unfilled blocks of seats.
-They can’t just have normal fireworks. Although the fireworks actually took place, they found out it was too difficult and dangerous to film, so they decided to make and show everybody around the world a computer-generated film of what the ‘real’ fireworks might look like.

But someone should have reminded them of journalists amazing eye for cheating. And with this in my mind, I am tempted to quote Orwell’s 1984, where the Party’s (with Big Brother as their leader) three repulsive slogans might as well be the ones of China:
WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

All pictures and illustrations above are taken or made and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

The Hype and The Hullabaloo

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Christian Halsted

on August 4, 2008

in Events, Fashion, Photography and Publications

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As written in may last post, Copenhagen Fashion Week will cast a glum shadow over the pretty and deserted streets of wonderous Copenhagen in a few days. As my position as anthropology student is far away from the press or fashion buyers, I haven’t got much to do with it this year. But as Copenhagen is rather small, most people will notice 50,000 people more, Paris Hilton and the extreme amounts of parties beginning with the in vogue word; ‘Fashion…’

Anyhow; set aside my title as a student. Friday day and night I helped out my old employer, Vs. Magazine, with setting up their launch party celebrating their 6th magazine and their, now, annual photography exhibition.
The new edition is much better than the previous ones, with 4 different covers and some great pictures and editorials. My only drag was the name of the photographic exhibition: Keep it Fashion (But Keep it Real). I mean, that would be like saying ‘Be Vegetarian (Eat Chicken)’. Keeping something fashion is to me a quite illusory as the fashion realm is somewhat superficial, which makes me unsure what to keep real? Your own fashion? Who then knows it’s fashion? Hmm… Maybe I’m just a little ignorant. Please help me out?

Yesterday’s event was an exhibition in partnership with WWF and RFC (Forest Stewardship Council) as Vs. Magazine is now ‘green certified’, which is really great i think. It was held at 5 star Hotel Skt. Petri, in the center of Copenhagen.

All pictures and illustrations above are taken or made and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

Time Is On My Side

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Christian Halsted

on July 26, 2008

in Design, Events and Various

. 0 Comments

Denmark is 30 degrees these days. It’s hot; it’s beautiful; and most importantly incredibly relaxing. It seems like everybody is in a trance of lackadaisical summer mode where time is as unimportant as which hand you decide to scratch your crotch with. In Denmark this means beer, meat and another beer; maybe a little trip to the sea – but only for the vigorous ones.

End of July is also a sign of the annual soon-to-come Copenhagen Fashion Week where my good friend and fellow CP’er, Jakob, dragged me to Amager in Copenhagen to help out an amateur wake-boarder build and paint some small Gaudi’ish houses for Stine Goya’a fashion show in two weeks time. Totally Art Nouveau, as the clever ones would say. I wouldn’t.

I have uploaded some pictures as a little teaser, and if you are lucky you’ll get to see some pictures from the show. Wow! A real fashion show, man. That’s just so awesome. Even mind-boggling – with real models and all that! Maybe even some drinks.
Sometime in the 19th century, Oscar Wilde was aware that ‘fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months’. See that’s clever said. If only…

Stine Goya is good, though. Very good actually – if you ask me at least (which for most probably isn’t assurance enough; especially when talking about something as momentous as fashion).

Fuck. This could be Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and The City writing this. Guess I better stop now. I am daft today. Very much actually. It’s probably the sun.

All pictures and illustrations above are taken or made and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Published

Christian Halsted

on June 28, 2008

in Events, Me Myself and I, People, Photography and Various

. 0 Comments

Eric Cartman of South Park can finally agree upon something with God; Hippies. “Hippies. They’re everywhere, They wanna save the world, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad”. And go to festivals, I might add to Cartman’s classic itch. Anyhow, it seems like the same interpretation God has of them, as he every year decides to let it rain during both Roskilde and Glastonbury Music Festival.

I went to Roskilde in 2004 - one of the many years where it rained cats and dogs nearly 6 out of 6 days. I mean, not that watching Iggy Pop while water from the heavy rain was diluting my beer wasn’t cool enough in itself, but still, the mud is generally pretty annoying in the long run. Last year was even worse as far as I’ve heard. Hippies almost drowned in rain and mud, and a lot of people headed early home because of the terrible weather. This year seems to run into the same problem. But, what is really dense in my opinion, is to keep running the festivals in these specific last week of June/ first week of July. For as long as I’ve lived the two weeks of Wimbledon, which is pretty much the same, have been a combination of washouts and extreme heat-waves, so why is it that late July or early August isn’t the festival weeks? I really can’t figure it out…

But maybe I’m being this negative only because I’m not going. Neil Young is there, Radiohead will be playing and then of course Mike Skinner as The Streets. Even Slayer, Cat Power and Jay-Z will be rocking up the crowd… So why am I not a proud Roskilde festivalgoer this year? Well first of all, I haven’t got a ticket and don’t really want to pay 1800 DKK for one (call me niggardly). It might also be Platon and Aristotle’s idea of the human nature as reacting on background of prudence.

But then again; prudence my ass… - I fear that I’ve turned boring and old before time…

All pictures and illustrations above are taken or made and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

Copenhagen, helt sikkert!

Published

Christian Halsted

on June 6, 2008

in Events, Me Myself and I and Music

. 0 Comments

I am now back in Copenhagen for a little summer vacation, where I am currently enjoying the 25 degrees and blue sky. Quite opposite from what I came from in London where it was raining and windy most of the last days I enjoyed in The Old Smoke.

Enough about the weather though. Copenhagen is red hot these days as the city has its annual Distortion Festival where the trendy youth of Copenhagen gets very drunk 5 days in a row and listen to electronic music (not that there’s anything special in that, really). The distortion festival is the Danish proud answer to Sonar Festival in Barcelona, only a bit smaller and less respected (pathetic might be the right word, but I’m not gonna use it, as it actually is great fun). No matter what, it is a good excuse to go out and enjoy the summer nights, meet a lot of old friends as well as stand next to some bald, big and asinine Hell Angels rockers (and other Yobs). For some it is also a perfect way to check out the sultry unclad Scandinavian birds that makes your saliva run wild.

All pictures above are taken and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

One down: Two to go

Published

Christian Halsted

on May 12, 2008

in Events, Me Myself and I and Music

. 0 Comments

This is pretty wicked. Rather effortless and what a convenient timing weather wise! I am of course referring to my deserved summer vacation, which started Friday last week and seems to have been celebrated just until now: Celebrated with a Kim Larsen concert Saturday and followed by some good days with sun, friends and dry martini’s. Now starts 4 months of trying to earn some money, go to Spain, USA and Italy. This can’t be any better I guess!

Kim Larsen was really really cool to see live as he, eventhough he is 62, managed to pull off a rather excellent gig playing most of his classics and had energy to entertain for almost two hours. Especially ‘Rabalderstrœde’, ‘Kvinde Min’ and ‘Køb Bananer’ seemed to make people dance and sing around Shepherds Bush Empire, which was for one evening only, turned into an ensemble of pork-eating and beer-drinking overweighty Danes, many of them with annoying kids and a rather pink/violet tan. I am included in this category myself, of course (except the kid point).

All pictures above are taken and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

Wisdom Teeths and Sexuality

Published

Christian Halsted

on May 4, 2008

in Events and Me Myself and I

. 0 Comments

The last 7 days has been quite hectic due to a lot of revision for exams, a visit from my mom and sister, a Tellier concert and a rather hardcore dentist appointment that ended with me getting a tooth pulled out and now lying all drug up on anti-biotics.
However, I am young and fresh (though a little pale) so I should be able to do well in my coming exams while tripping on some heavy medicine.

Anyways, never mind the bullocks and let’s get to the fun part. The thing I want to post a little comment about today is the Sebastien Tellier concert in Scala last Tuesday. I went to another concert with him a couple of months ago just after the release of ‘Sexuality’, and I must admit my expectations were quite high as a result from the last one. Nonetheless, this was a bit chaotic as it seemed like the people/ guests weren’t that interested in the music, he wasn’t that interested in performing and the consequence was a perverted version of a 110 kilo french ‘Jesus look-a-like’ running around the stage with a bottle of wine too much in his blood. While moaning he sang and danced around the most of the evening, and ended up undressing himself after lying on his piano almost too ducked to say anything. But what the hell, he’s french. That is probably how he is raised to behave when in England. Even though he was rather bladdered he managed to throw some dirt at the English audience by saying in his very french accent: ‘You are all fat. And ugly. But you have very nice personalities’. Just the opposite of Frenchs, right.

Im off for a little week, as I need to do some more revision for my exams tuesday, thursday and friday. Wish me luck as it is much needed…. Ciao.

-C

All pictures above are taken and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®

Love Music Hate Racism

Published

Christian Halsted

on April 27, 2008

in Events and Music

. 0 Comments

Today I went with a bunch of friends to the so-called ‘Love Music Hate Racism’ one-day/all-day festival event in Victoria Park, London. Yesterday, when nothing really happened except some mild care-taking of some annoying hangovers, the weather was quite amazing with temparatures on the right side of 20 degrees - today, when more than 100.000 people were gathered to support the fight against racism and facism in London, it rained cats and dogs for nearly 5 hours and exactly until there was 30 minutes left of the event. I believe that is what is known as bad luck and just so really really typical.

Nonetheless, it was a quite kicky happening with more than 50 bands playing at two separate stages for more than 6 hours. I got there somewhat late though, but it was still cool to see so many people being there and supporting the initiative even though the weather was horrible and the sound pretty bad.
The event is made on background f the equivalent one some 30 years ago where a group of political activists got together with a group of musicians to form ‘Rock Against Racism’. It was a movement formed in reaction to rising xenophobia and racism fuelled by Nazi organizations like the National Front whereas today most of the musicians and people demonstrated against the BNP (British National Party). In 1978, bands like The Clash, Steel Pulse and the Tom Robinson Band, to name but a few, helped create a political movement among music fans. This year my personal favourites were among others; The Good The Bad & The Queen, Roll Deep and Wiley : A rather different line-up from the original one, but The Times They Are A-Changing as my non-mutual friend Bob Dylan says it.

The festival’s main bulletin was to campaign for the idea of ‘Racism seeks only to divide and weaken us’, and I hope everybody who’s reading this blog can agree to that. I mean, just look at some of of BNP’s main policies at their website, which I hope will illustrate their illogical contribution to uphold an irrational tension between races. One of their policies is, according Richard Barnbrook (member of BNP), to discourage interracial marriage as; ‘We believe in human diversity and in preserving the individuality and identity of all different ethnic groups… While a small number of mixed marriages in Britain – or mixed race children - won’t, in themselves, make any difference, if this is encouraged however as it is at present by politicians and the media then inevitably the traditional British genotype will be endangered in the long-term.’ It reminds me scarily much about Le Pen’s rehtoric positions immigrant groups as the ‘foreign enemy within’ with images of purity, cleanliness and contamination distinguishing the genuine ‘French French’ (In this instant the ‘English English’) from their sullied pseudo-compatriots (as described by Ann Stoler, the anthropologist, in ‘The decolonization of imagination’). I must admit that I am rather dissapointed and ashamed to live on the same planet with people like that.

I have uploaded some pictures from the park, and as you can see, a rather big number of people went there although the weather was horrible. Tomorrow I am going to a Sebastien Tellier concert in Scala, so I will upload some pictures and write some notions on that here at simple common sense (hopefully by Wednesday).