Thinking piece on Understanding of Modern Political Challenges

 © Marta Podniece

The Earth is round? Right? That is the universal truth we all tend to believe, because there has never been any discussion about it in the past few centuries or possibly no political campaign has found it an attractive reason to make people believe it will change something for them. Let’s face it - we are egoists. Many things have been happening on this round ball called Earth, especially in political matters. It’s easy to see the point of one individual by just hearing him commenting on the news, while reading an analytic piece on the second page of the daily newspaper every morning. This is a habit. And politics is a habit as well. Politics of a particular newspaper, which include choices on exactly which activities will be commented on on the second page of the paper. Sensations? Surprises? Money laundry? Politicians involved in the international scandals? Yes, please! We want it! We want a theme to talk about during the lunch break! We want a theme that we can be smart about! And here we go...

The World On a Day Before Yesterday: A Global Image of 14th March 2012

Guardian, India; Parivartan Sharma/REUTERS

Once I prepared a workshop for young people on the theme of stereotypes and I used visual data of online media [to be precise - I used photo galleries posted on different news sites under the name "Photos of the Day" as a data set], as a source that represents different countries and influences different reading audiences on their opinions about the world here and now. It's undoubtedly a free space for stereotyping and identifying global players in the global politics, but from other perspectives such a gallery of the day reveals a lot more information about what is important for different nations - individualism versus collective consciousness, traditions, culture, the life quality and life priorities, the importance of time and status, money and wealth, and if you're just a reader of a particular media, such visual interpretations even unconsciously influence your view about the world, as according to S.Sontag or any non-expert in photography - "we tend to trust that the image is showing the truth as  in the reality we don't have enough time to travel and check it "... so therefore I wanted to check: How the world looks like on 14th March 2012?

Let the Party Begin... Carnival Days in the Netherlands.

It's great to realize that the carnival tradition in the Netherlands is treated as something very usual and a way to create yourself a little celebration in the middle of February by participating in such a massive activity. Yes, in the Netherlands it was really a celebration weekend. In total four days of parading and partying. One of the most famous carnivals in the Netherlands is held in Limburg area, particularly in Maastricht, but other towns and cities are as impressive with their carnival shows. Though it is said that in the North of the country the carnival is not so popular [well, they don't know what they are missing though]. However, I'm in the sort of South and I had a chance to experience two local parades - one in a medium-size village Horssen, and other in a small town Druten, which is nearby.

Kathy Bee - A Collector's Tale

Kathy Bee in her own creation. Hostel in Belgrade, Serbia

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear a term "Knitting"? I guess your thought flies not far from boring stuff that only our grandmothers tend to do in a big love to their grandchildren, caring how to keep them warm in cold winters by making a cute pair of gloves or socks. But it's not so easy. There's definitely much more to see in this as old-fashioned perceived hobby. There’s actually a huge industry hidden behind it. The world of knitting and textile - we see it everyday on the urban catwalks [especially in Serbia], but we never really dig in deep how actually the production process of creation of new materials and fulfilment of crazy ideas is happening.

I give myself a chance to dive in deep into the curiosities of textile world and speak with a brand new textile engineer Katharina Bredlich. She's just 24, freshly graduated from North-Rhine University of Applied Sciences [Germany], holding a Bachelor’s degree in textile engineering. We meet in Belgrade, and it's a place, where she did her internship in a knitting company “IVKO” [http://www.ivko-knits.com/en/ - by the way, the promo video is quite impressive] and where she got a job offer to continue her life-long learning experience adding to it a few extra years in the management of textile world...