We love Sweden too!

We all have those countries that feel like they embrace us whenever we visit. Whether it’s the friendly chatter of strangers, the taste of the local, or the difference in the way the sun seems to shine, they are places that feel both foreign and like coming home. Parisian Valerie Toumayan feels this way about Sweden and is on a journey to capture the music of the city that has touched her.

Her film “Sounds of Sweden” captures the music and musicians she loves. The settings are casual and local, taken on rooftops overlooking the city, in green forests, and neighbourhood streets. Toumayan says she discovered each artist through the others and realized she should capture them where they live. This comes across wonderfully in the film, it has the feeling of a private concert, especially in comparison to videos of “intimate” music performances with an audience of hundreds. At the moment, many of the artists are the direction of folk, but her goal is to film a much broader spectrum and to take some time to explore the Scandinavian rock, electro and jazz scenes.

You can sense Toumayan’s love for the city and it’s music. It shines through so brilliantly that it takes me back to my own favourite city away from home. White Line Hotels edit Hotel Skeppsholmen knows something about creating a home away from home. It’s easy walking distance to everything or if you want to go further abroad, hop on one of their bikes for a few hours. It’s likely that you’ll recognize some of the sights in “Sounds of Sweden.”

Listen and love the entire video : www.ilovesweden.net

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Categories: Nacka Strand, Stockholm, Culture

Contributing writer: Alicia Reuter

INVESTIGATIONS OF A DOG

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm

Whether the characters of Beatrix Potter, Mickey Mouse, or George Orwell’s Animal Farm, unless you grew up on an island or remote mountaintop with no books, no television, and no local tradition of oral storytelling, I bet you’re pretty familiar with the anthropomorphism of animals as a literary device. And let’s face it, sometimes getting at the truth is just easier when it’s coming from the whimsically moving lips of a talking horse, pig, or dog. Themed on Franz Kafka’s short story of the same name, Investigations of a Dog looks at the artists it contains as the sort of ‘re-humanized’, if you will, incarnations of Kafka’s animal protagonist. Now, whether that intensifies the ability to keep a critical eye on society through the artworks or descends into something truly Kafkaesque will certainly make for some good discussion on your visit. Read the rest of this entry »

Stockholm: Everything’s Dandy

The term “Dandy” has gone though a series of interpretations in the last 250 years; the most concrete being a man attentive to his appearance, speaking a refined language, all while pursuing leisurely hobbies with an air of nonchalance. Perhaps even more intriguing is Charles Baudelaire’s definition of dandyism in reference to painter Constantin Guys, as a man who ‘elevates aesthetics to a living religion.’ The Dandy was thought to be the perfect gentleman, however, he required an audience to propagate his ideas. Another one of his characteristics: cultivated scepticism. There are a number of known Dandies, although much like modern day “hipsters” it’s not a title one would assign themselves, it was bestowed upon you by others as simultaneous approval and affront.

So what is a dandy in modern terms? Not quite a hipster, and slightly different from a metrosexual, it’s unclear if it’s a type of dress, a style of intellect, or a way of life. This is the question that is enthusiastically addressed at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm. The exhibition “Dandy”, designed by Stockholm based firm Form Us With Love, dissects what it is and means to be elevated, or denigrated, to “Dandy” status.

The exhibition space has mannequins, or mannequin parts, fused with boxes throughout. Each mannequin part wears one article of typical “Dandy” clothing. It goes one step further by giving examples of how a contemporary Dandy could look. Tailor Frederik Andersen, fashion researcher Rickard Lindqvist, journalist Olaf Enckell, stylist Lalle Johnson, author Björn af Kleen, designer Göran Sundberg and shop owner Christian Quaglia have all given their suggestions on the modern styling of the Dandy.

The exhibition runs through the 1st of May 2011, while you’re there be sure to drop in the 300 years of fashion exhibition at the same museum.

Photography by Jonas Lindström

www.formuswithlove.se

www.nordiskamuseet.se

If you want to be Dandy, or Quaintrelle (a female Dandy) about town you couldn’t have a better platform than White Line Hotels edit Nobis Hotel. Try out the Gold Bar & Lounge – even with spectacularly irresistible drinks and a 28-meter high ceiling, it still maintains a comfortable living room atmosphere. The just finished renovations at the hotel harmoniously update the classic structure, integrating elements of its previous life as a bank throughout.

Not your cup of tea?  Then check out it’s sisters – Hotel Skeppsholmen & Hotel J.

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Categories: Stockholm, Design, Fashion

Contributing writer: Alicia Reuter

OMG 11 Years aGo…WIN

It seems like just a whisp ago that we were all getting excited at the prospect of the start to the new Millennium – yes the first decade of 2000 has passed at ninja speed.

Back then there was the predicted doom and gloom of a digital meltdown – those clever computers were about to go into wind-down, being unable to cope with a double naught–and then there was all the panic associated with it, like filling up your bathtubs in case the water supply shut down –(not sure what that had to do with the dawn of the digital crisis – but hey). Maybe you were one of those that emptied the cash machine, or went on a mad spending spree hoping the credit card computer would miraculously would also wipe away your debts ……or like me , gazing at the stars dreaming of space – could also have been the effects of excessive drinking.

10 Weekend Breaks to be WON

WIN yourself a weekend break in Stockholm at the newly opened NOBIS HOTEL – simply email us at feedme@whitelinehotels.com and tell us:

WHAT WERE YOU DOING ON NEW YEARS EVE 99/00?

Tell us your stories before the 15th January…best 10 entries win!

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All the best for 2011 –

LOVE HUGS + PEACE

Lars Tunbjörk: L.A. Office

Gun Gallery, Stockholm

The poor modern office space…it’s caught a lot of flack in the last decade or so…

There are some exceptions, and sometimes those exceptions are just a matter of taste, but generally you can say that most things are built for a purpose, and luckily for our poor modern office, at least it could always call itself and its furnishings functional. A chair, whatever its design, is built for sitting. A table is built to provide a space to sit at. An office space is built to work in, and then fitted with chairs and tables so that one can sit, around spaces to sit at, all in order to facilitate to the purpose of the greater thing: the office space. When things are so purposeful and logical, it can take a challenging work of art to make them appear not just useless, but actually illogical, if not somewhat frightening.

Lars Tunbjörk starting turning his camera on offices in the early 90s while traveling as a photographer for the New York Times. The ensuing bodies of work are mysterious when populated with workers – some say you can’t explain the behavior of teenagers, but Tunbjörk’s eye makes the office worker at least as equally baffling a character – and tragic when stripped of their human elements, like the sparse and utilitarian spaces depicted in L.A. Office. A funny thing happens in this absence. The painfully mundane becomes painfully confrontational. With no one to sit in them, chairs become aggressive. Filling no purpose, tables appear bored and dejected. The space’s very purpose for “living”, to continue with the anthropomorphism, is left as an open question.

Beautiful, challenging, international, and yet undeniably Swedish in it’s attitude, L.A. Office is a must-see if you’re in Stockholm this month.

November 25, 2010 – December 19, 2010 at Gun Gallery, Runebergsgatan 3, 114 29 Stockholm.

The latest White Line Hotel to hit Stockholm – the Nobis Hotel has been designed for optimal function, beauty, comfort and atmosphere by world renowned Swedish star architect studio Claesson Koivisto Rune, in a style of contemporary yet timeless and classic, durable elegance, mainly in natural materials of superior quality, subtly influenced by the colours, moods and features of the Swedish Royal Capital.

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Categories: Stockholm, Art, Photography, Exhibitions

Contributing writer: Melissa Frost