I cried today in a museum. It's not ever museum that does that but this one did.
The first exhibit was interesting it was all about feathers in history and their use as decoration. It discussed the cultural use of feathers in various cultures from PNG to Native Americans, from pacific islanders to their use in the Stuart Dynasty in Britain. In the middle of the room it had a taxidermy exhibit of various birds which was most beautiful, going from tiny tiny honey eaters to Ostriches. The final bit went on to discuss the modern inspirations and fashions inspired by or still using birds and some of the techniques. So that didn't make me cry.
We then rode up the elevator to the fours floor and the first exhibit was three life jackets. One a blue plastic inflatable learn to swim jacket, designed for use by a toddler undercareful supervision. It looked like it would last about three trips to the pool before it ripped. Think of those cheap plastic toys you see at frat parties that would be about the strength of this jacket. One of the others was a marine grade life vest and the third who knew. It was simply lit the exhibit with a wooden boat in the background and on the side a photo.
The boat was a elongated wooden dinghy, painted in blue, made with cheap wood, the layers overlapping and it hardly looked watertight. It had four rows of rough bench seats and two mini platforms at either end. The paint was peeling. It should have been hung with nets and fishing equipment. It was bare just the boat and the life jackets. The boat and life jackets were not from the same place, one did not signify the life of the other and yet they both told the same story.
A mass migration of humanity needing to move from their own place, to escape violence and hatred from a loved country. 25 people were pushed onto that boat and left to the mercy of the sea. They were lucky and made it. 100's more boats just like it are burned by the Italian police, this one saved and placed into a museum. It was evidence in a human trafficking case.
The photo was hundreds and hundreds of life jackets washed onto the beaches at Thassos in Greece. Imagine for a second, the desperation of the mother who with no choices left places their child into such a vessel praying that the 'pool aid' life vest might just protect their young long enough for them to survive.
It was a sobering exhibit. And you can will it away and say those people shouldn't leave, shouldn't seek to keep living, but can you blame them?
The next exhibit themed also on water it showed a wonderful range of water jugs. People in Sweden on average use 200 litres a day of clean water. In refugee camps and many third world nation that number is 7 litres. Water is precious and becoming more so. Still the wall of containers was beautiful, ranging from the tight woven reeds of native people, to gourds and clay pots. But on the opposite wall containers abandoned north of the USA border with Mexico, containers filled with tiny amounts of water to try and get across a dessert. Cloth wrapped around coke bottles, linen handkerchiefs and handles to make the carrying easier. So very close to home.
On further and still about water, the pollution of the ocean. The loss of land, the fact that the Kiribati government has brought land in Fiji already to move its population. The release of greenhouse gases not from cows of power stations but simply from the melting permafrost in the north.
It felt like getting slapped, one exhibit after another. Ramming home how lucky we are and how fragile our democracy and our lifestyle is. There was a brief interlude while we saw some interesting things from when the Spanish and the Inca's met. The Inca's I think thought differently, their history told in binary codes of knots braided into circles, their stories woven into geographic art on blankets and clothes. It's mostly lost now but it can be likened to the way perhaps a computer 'thinks' they thought not in here and now but in space, time and place. The future behind us unseen as the past has already been travelled and seen.
The interlude led of course to more discussions not so sad this time but on Democracy and what it meant. I took a picture of a art installation come voting tool. A wire frame hung from the ceiling, dripping with plastic strips of different colour. Each colour representing an answer to a single question what is most important in a democracy. IKaruS and I stopped and read then reread the answers one could pick. Did consensus make a democracy, or perhaps everyone having a vote, or maybe freedom of the press? iKaruS choose that openness and transparency of government was the most important. He might have been right. To know the puppet masters behind the strings, to understand not from the media swaying the popular opinion but because it make good government.
I choose having the right to a vote, but without the openness it is a hollow right, and we decided that the right isn't enough. It should be a duty to understand, to choose your government and to vote for what you believe.
There was more and I will upload some images, powerful exhibits that make you think not just on what culture is but on how we choose to be in this world. So the Museum made me cry as I thought of the pain and loss in the world. The needs of others. I don't have the answers, there is twin evils in all decisions made.
Sweden is an interesting place it recognises it's own failing, it recognises it doesn't have enough accommodation and that despite being one of the worlds longest running democracies it has at times failed in its obligation to be open and free to its people. It used a form of apartheid with the Sami peoples, almost destroying the culture and forcing the young people into destitution, it has a problem with the ultra conservatives who still believe the size of your head denotes intelligence of your race and blond and blue is true.
But it puts these out in the open, art exhibitions highlighting the impacts on the refugees and the existing populations, highlighting the differences and the values that can be gained. After Helsinki's racial sameness there is a huge mixture of people here of all colours.
We have another two days in Sweden before heading to Denmark. I will if the weather is kind, try and find a house I lived in a long long time ago, dim memories of parks and castles and beaches. The beach I saw not only my first nude people but people having sex at that. A short trip down memory lane for me. Who knows maybe I'll get to eat an apple and enjoy my memories but that is for tomorrow.
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