There is an extraordinariness to Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s works. He constantly combines the past and the future, the mediocre and the remarkable. The abandoned robots, mysterious machines and even dinosaurs, roaming through the hyper-realistic tornadoes of rural Sweden, have earned him a great many fans so far.
‘We walked in long lines through winter nights, and you could see little points of light go on and off in the darkness – cigarettes smoked by teenagers who had gathered around their wrecked memories, like a requiem. We made our nights our days, squinted at the horizon, and sighed. Way over there, the morning dawned.’
INTERVIEW BY ELİF BEREKETLİ PHOTOGRAPHY BY FREDRIK BERNHOLM
Directed by Mark Romanek and Jodie Foster, with a screenplay adaptation by Nathaniel Halpern of Legion fame, the series focuses on the extraordinary happenings in a town, set atop an underground machine called ‘the Loop’, which was built to discover the secrets of the universe. As the characters complete a process known as ‘mystery’, we also get to witness their daily lives. Although the adaptation is set in the US, many of Stålenhag’s works focus on rural Sweden. It is important for the artist to reflect ordinary life there. The street lamps and cars all mean something to Stålenhag. ‘That was my original passion, when I started to do these science fiction scenes,’ he says. ‘It was to capture the mundane reality first and then something extra.’
What do you think technology shows us about ourselves and about humanity?
I think the whole point of technology is to do those things that you, as a human, cannot do, and that you are bad at. Social media, I think, shows us what is good and bad in human cognition – like confirmation bias. More people have become aware of that because it is happening all the time, in front of our eyes. We can follow and see people’s discussions with strong points of view and we can elect somebody like Trump. So clearly, it shows us the fallacy of human cognition. How can you support him while he says these things? Thanks to social media, the discussion is very much alive and it is easy to see the fallacies of human cognition – and also my own fallacies. It is easy to see my own confirmation bias on social media. When you become aware of it, it is not easy to unsee it. I think that is a very good thing that we are becoming aware of the complexity of problems relating to the human condition. Humans are imperfect. The human brain is imperfect and it evolved for other things, and not the society we are living in.
And how many of those answers is technology capable of providing? Do you find the direction the technology is taking comforting, or is it worrying for you?
The spread of information is accelerating, and I think things like ‘flat earthers’ and ‘anti -vaxxers’ are kind of a symptom of that hyper-acceleration. It is like the first time that people have come to understand that misinformation is really dangerous. So, it is a very big cause of alarm, about vigilance on how information is spread. But, when you think about it, the other side of the coin is that people are much more aware about social injustices, like black people’s history. In a history book called A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn has written an alternative look on history, talking about minorities’ struggle and the workers’ struggle in America. It was a fringe book – I think you would have to study political science to come across it – and I only learnt about it through reading Noam Chomsky. But now those things are becoming mainstream. Even huge corporations are joining the movement. I don’t know if we can say that they are really joining it, but at least they carry out some performative acts. I think that, when a huge company like Nike or something does that, these ideas become mainstream – and that’s thanks to technology.
What do you think about the series, Tales from the Loop, adapted from the visual world in your 2014 book?
I wouldn’t call it my show, but yeah, it is my childhood. Also actors and charac- ters saying things that are from the book – it’s really, really weird. I did some designs for the show, but I didn’t write the scripts or anything. I came up with the English translation as ‘the Loop’. I was so flattered that they kept the title. One thing I keep thinking about is that they talk about ‘the Loop’ and I came up with that. In Swedish, it is called ‘Slinga’, which is a very mundane name. Then I thought of what we would call that in English, and it’s ‘the Loop’. It has a slightly cooler sound than the Swedish ‘Slinga’. It’s what you could call a kindergarten, ‘slinga’. It’s kind of cool that it is set in the US because it creates a kind of distance between me and the show. But it’s still similar, with the Jacob character who grows these robots. It feels nice actually. It feels like a personal thing, but it doesn’t feel private. You cannot say much about my life from looking at the show – so, it’s not a documentary. But it feels personal, since it feels very much in harmony with my feelings when I was growing up. Well, it’s a little more vintage-looking than my real life. In the show, it even looks like the ’50s sometimes – primarily due to the monochromatic filter, the production designer and the cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth. I think they have that kind of look. If you look at Never Let Me Go, it has the same kind of aesthetic, in terms of the ‘vintage-y’ feel. I think it’s smart for them to do it this way, instead of doing ’80s nostalgia. They went with a more post-war, mid-century vintage look – so, visually, it’s not very realistic... I mean, Sweden in the early ’90s, parts of it looked much more modern.
There is an extraordinariness to Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s works. He constantly combines the past and the future, the mediocre and the remarkable. The abandoned robots, mysterious machines and even dinosaurs, roaming through the hyper-realistic tornadoes of rural Sweden, have earned him a great many fans so far.
‘We walked in long lines through winter nights, and you could see little points of light go on and off in the darkness – cigarettes smoked by teenagers who had gathered around their wrecked memories, like a requiem. We made our nights our days, squinted at the horizon, and sighed. Way over there, the morning dawned.’
INTERVIEW BY ELİF BEREKETLİ PHOTOGRAPHY BY FREDRIK BERNHOLM
Directed by Mark Romanek and Jodie Foster, with a screenplay adaptation by Nathaniel Halpern of Legion fame, the series focuses on the extraordinary happenings in a town, set atop an underground machine called ‘the Loop’, which was built to discover the secrets of the universe. As the characters complete a process known as ‘mystery’, we also get to witness their daily lives. Although the adaptation is set in the US, many of Stålenhag’s works focus on rural Sweden. It is important for the artist to reflect ordinary life there. The street lamps and cars all mean something to Stålenhag. ‘That was my original passion, when I started to do these science fiction scenes,’ he says. ‘It was to capture the mundane reality first and then something extra.’
What do you think technology shows us about ourselves and about humanity?
I think the whole point of technology is to do those things that you, as a human, cannot do, and that you are bad at. Social media, I think, shows us what is good and bad in human cognition – like confirmation bias. More people have become aware of that because it is happening all the time, in front of our eyes. We can follow and see people’s discussions with strong points of view and we can elect somebody like Trump. So clearly, it shows us the fallacy of human cognition. How can you support him while he says these things? Thanks to social media, the discussion is very much alive and it is easy to see the fallacies of human cognition – and also my own fallacies. It is easy to see my own confirmation bias on social media. When you become aware of it, it is not easy to unsee it. I think that is a very good thing that we are becoming aware of the complexity of problems relating to the human condition. Humans are imperfect. The human brain is imperfect and it evolved for other things, and not the society we are living in.
And how many of those answers is technology capable of providing? Do you find the direction the technology is taking comforting, or is it worrying for you?
The spread of information is accelerating, and I think things like ‘flat earthers’ and ‘anti -vaxxers’ are kind of a symptom of that hyper-acceleration. It is like the first time that people have come to understand that misinformation is really dangerous. So, it is a very big cause of alarm, about vigilance on how information is spread. But, when you think about it, the other side of the coin is that people are much more aware about social injustices, like black people’s history. In a history book called A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn has written an alternative look on history, talking about minorities’ struggle and the workers’ struggle in America. It was a fringe book – I think you would have to study political science to come across it – and I only learnt about it through reading Noam Chomsky. But now those things are becoming mainstream. Even huge corporations are joining the movement. I don’t know if we can say that they are really joining it, but at least they carry out some performative acts. I think that, when a huge company like Nike or something does that, these ideas become mainstream – and that’s thanks to technology.
What do you think about the series, Tales from the Loop, adapted from the visual world in your 2014 book?
I wouldn’t call it my show, but yeah, it is my childhood. Also actors and charac- ters saying things that are from the book – it’s really, really weird. I did some designs for the show, but I didn’t write the scripts or anything. I came up with the English translation as ‘the Loop’. I was so flattered that they kept the title. One thing I keep thinking about is that they talk about ‘the Loop’ and I came up with that. In Swedish, it is called ‘Slinga’, which is a very mundane name. Then I thought of what we would call that in English, and it’s ‘the Loop’. It has a slightly cooler sound than the Swedish ‘Slinga’. It’s what you could call a kindergarten, ‘slinga’. It’s kind of cool that it is set in the US because it creates a kind of distance between me and the show. But it’s still similar, with the Jacob character who grows these robots. It feels nice actually. It feels like a personal thing, but it doesn’t feel private. You cannot say much about my life from looking at the show – so, it’s not a documentary. But it feels personal, since it feels very much in harmony with my feelings when I was growing up. Well, it’s a little more vintage-looking than my real life. In the show, it even looks like the ’50s sometimes – primarily due to the monochromatic filter, the production designer and the cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth. I think they have that kind of look. If you look at Never Let Me Go, it has the same kind of aesthetic, in terms of the ‘vintage-y’ feel. I think it’s smart for them to do it this way, instead of doing ’80s nostalgia. They went with a more post-war, mid-century vintage look – so, visually, it’s not very realistic... I mean, Sweden in the early ’90s, parts of it looked much more modern.
There is an extraordinariness to Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s works. He constantly combines the past and the future, the mediocre and the remarkable. The abandoned robots, mysterious machines and even dinosaurs, roaming through the hyper-realistic tornadoes of rural Sweden, have earned him a great many fans so far.
‘We walked in long lines through winter nights, and you could see little points of light go on and off in the darkness – cigarettes smoked by teenagers who had gathered around their wrecked memories, like a requiem. We made our nights our days, squinted at the horizon, and sighed. Way over there, the morning dawned.’
INTERVIEW BY ELİF BEREKETLİ PHOTOGRAPHY BY FREDRIK BERNHOLM
Directed by Mark Romanek and Jodie Foster, with a screenplay adaptation by Nathaniel Halpern of Legion fame, the series focuses on the extraordinary happenings in a town, set atop an underground machine called ‘the Loop’, which was built to discover the secrets of the universe. As the characters complete a process known as ‘mystery’, we also get to witness their daily lives. Although the adaptation is set in the US, many of Stålenhag’s works focus on rural Sweden. It is important for the artist to reflect ordinary life there. The street lamps and cars all mean something to Stålenhag. ‘That was my original passion, when I started to do these science fiction scenes,’ he says. ‘It was to capture the mundane reality first and then something extra.’
What do you think technology shows us about ourselves and about humanity?
I think the whole point of technology is to do those things that you, as a human, cannot do, and that you are bad at. Social media, I think, shows us what is good and bad in human cognition – like confirmation bias. More people have become aware of that because it is happening all the time, in front of our eyes. We can follow and see people’s discussions with strong points of view and we can elect somebody like Trump. So clearly, it shows us the fallacy of human cognition. How can you support him while he says these things? Thanks to social media, the discussion is very much alive and it is easy to see the fallacies of human cognition – and also my own fallacies. It is easy to see my own confirmation bias on social media. When you become aware of it, it is not easy to unsee it. I think that is a very good thing that we are becoming aware of the complexity of problems relating to the human condition. Humans are imperfect. The human brain is imperfect and it evolved for other things, and not the society we are living in.
And how many of those answers is technology capable of providing? Do you find the direction the technology is taking comforting, or is it worrying for you?
The spread of information is accelerating, and I think things like ‘flat earthers’ and ‘anti -vaxxers’ are kind of a symptom of that hyper-acceleration. It is like the first time that people have come to understand that misinformation is really dangerous. So, it is a very big cause of alarm, about vigilance on how information is spread. But, when you think about it, the other side of the coin is that people are much more aware about social injustices, like black people’s history. In a history book called A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn has written an alternative look on history, talking about minorities’ struggle and the workers’ struggle in America. It was a fringe book – I think you would have to study political science to come across it – and I only learnt about it through reading Noam Chomsky. But now those things are becoming mainstream. Even huge corporations are joining the movement. I don’t know if we can say that they are really joining it, but at least they carry out some performative acts. I think that, when a huge company like Nike or something does that, these ideas become mainstream – and that’s thanks to technology.
What do you think about the series, Tales from the Loop, adapted from the visual world in your 2014 book?
I wouldn’t call it my show, but yeah, it is my childhood. Also actors and charac- ters saying things that are from the book – it’s really, really weird. I did some designs for the show, but I didn’t write the scripts or anything. I came up with the English translation as ‘the Loop’. I was so flattered that they kept the title. One thing I keep thinking about is that they talk about ‘the Loop’ and I came up with that. In Swedish, it is called ‘Slinga’, which is a very mundane name. Then I thought of what we would call that in English, and it’s ‘the Loop’. It has a slightly cooler sound than the Swedish ‘Slinga’. It’s what you could call a kindergarten, ‘slinga’. It’s kind of cool that it is set in the US because it creates a kind of distance between me and the show. But it’s still similar, with the Jacob character who grows these robots. It feels nice actually. It feels like a personal thing, but it doesn’t feel private. You cannot say much about my life from looking at the show – so, it’s not a documentary. But it feels personal, since it feels very much in harmony with my feelings when I was growing up. Well, it’s a little more vintage-looking than my real life. In the show, it even looks like the ’50s sometimes – primarily due to the monochromatic filter, the production designer and the cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth. I think they have that kind of look. If you look at Never Let Me Go, it has the same kind of aesthetic, in terms of the ‘vintage-y’ feel. I think it’s smart for them to do it this way, instead of doing ’80s nostalgia. They went with a more post-war, mid-century vintage look – so, visually, it’s not very realistic... I mean, Sweden in the early ’90s, parts of it looked much more modern.
POSITOPIA
17
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Mim Kemal Öke Cad. No.6 D.6 Nişantaşı, Şişli, İstanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com
POSITOPIA
17
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Mim Kemal Öke Cad. No.6 D.6 Nişantaşı, Şişli, İstanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com
POSITOPIA
17
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Mim Kemal Öke Cad. No.6 D.6 Nişantaşı, Şişli, İstanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com