Differens Magazine

10/10/2024

Differens Magazine . miss universe OUT NOW!

Featuring artist Kris Lemsalu.

In her Essay An argument about Beauty, Susan Sontag writes:

“Unlike beauty, often fragile and impermanent, the capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful is astonishingly sturdy and survives amidst the harshest distractions.”

It is a quote working at the intersection of beauty and universalism, exactly where we've chosen to dig in this issue.

. miss universe Still from ”The birth of Venus”, a performance 2010 by Kris Lemsalu . miss universe Can the notion of universalism be (re)used for inclusive purposes, or is it nev…

19/09/2024

In Elite Placemaking: How Housing and Neighborhoods Reinforce Class Status, Krista Paulsen and Jenny Stuber are looking at some dynamics involved in elite placemakin, highlighting how affluent groups shape and transform spaces to reflect their status and preferences. They trace the history of this practice from grand estates to modern gated communities and gentrified urban neighborhoods by emphasizing the visual and social markers of exclusion that are typical in these developments. The text also introduces the role of affluence in gentrification, pointing out how wealthier individuals displace poorer communities both in cities and rural areas, while taking into account potential challenges to elite power, including resistance from marginalized groups and shifts in suburban demographics.

Available now at https://differensmagazine.com/2024/08/03/elite-placemaking-how-housing-and-neighborhoods-reinforce-class-status/

Picture: Kåre Frang, Attention Crisis

17/09/2024

During his studies, architect Emil Bäckström abandoned his affinity for ideological principles to instead embrace the contradictions and nuances that are, according to him, inevitably included in the practice of architecture. Taking us through formative writings and buildings, and inviting us into the working process at GIPP arkitektur, he explores his current attitude and how it is manifested in his own projects. To him, architecture is a teamwork and a constant wade through a sea of driving forces. It is a knowledge of how to navigate the complexities that each specific project, site, and material entails.

Full text available here:

MEANDERING Emil Bäckström for . ugly housing/housing aesthetics Differens Magazine, summer 24 When I started my education as an architect, almost twenty years ago, I was drawn to architectural ma…

14/09/2024

Kåre Frang's artistry, primarily video and sculpture, often merges these mediums within staged environments to explore themes of change and fragilities of everyday life. His works are characterized by the distortion and transformation of familiar objects like children's games and toys, evoking a sense of estrangement or unease in the viewer, while also exploring notions of shelter, housing, and homes examining how these things—and our interactions with them—transform and hold under various pressures.

Differens' Amanda Winberg and Astrid Elander got the opportunity to interview Kåre Frang and to share some reflections on his work in the latest issue, available at

Some Reflections with Kåre Frang for . ugly housing/housing aesthetics Differens Magazine, summer 24 For Differens Magazine issue . ugly housing / housing aesthetics, we are very excited t…

14/09/2024

Don't forget to read out latest issue . ugly housing/housing aesthetics, available in full at https://differensmagazine.com/

Picture, Kåre Frang, "Attachment", solo exhibition in Oslo 2021-2022.

15/06/2024

Where in the city can you find the silent traces of q***r history, often hidden and neglected in the main historiography? Makz Bjuggfält shows us in this essay that public urinals can be a place to start looking. Through archival material, a picture of a secret q***r meeting space appears. However, this perhaps unconventional function of public restrooms has not gone unnoticed from architects and city planners. Bjuggfält shows how the layout of urinals and their design solutions can be seen as a reflection of the public perception of homosexuality throughout history, and the measures taken to control it.

Ache and Urinals An Essay on Q***r Encounters in Public Spaces Makz Bjuggfält for . ugly housing/housing aesthetics Differens Magazine, spring 24 Two public urinals outside of the Grand Hôtel in …

12/06/2024

How can we understand the remodeling of Stockholm’s central Klara quarters in the 1960’s and 70’s? The erasure of the old city center has been a central focus in the public debate on architecture in Sweden ever since. Is the new Klara to be seen as an expression of a soulless, market oriented, modernist architecture? Or as Anders Wahlgren formulates it in his 1992 film Staden i mitt hjärta, a materialization of capitalist space? Or is the remodeling a successful example of modernist planning?

In his article, Jelrik Hupkes argues that while economic interests might have been a driving force in its creation, a city space is always shaped and altered by the people living in it, resisting and renegotiating the meaning of its architecture.

Read the text here: https://differensmagazine.com/2024/06/10/to-read-a-book-at-sergels-torg/

Picture: Kåre Frang, Life and Luck. 2021

11/06/2024

Read German author Hans Magnus Enzensberger's energetic denunciation of the architect, the poem ‘Architekten’, translated into Swedish and English by writer and translator Mats O. Svensson, out on our website now!

https://differensmagazine.com/2024/06/06/architekten-arkitekter-architects/

Picture: Kåre Frang, Overwhelmed, 2023, detail

30/05/2024

Erik Ogenstedt (b. 1985) is a filmmaker and librarian living in Stockholm. In Differens Magazine : ugly housing, housing aesthetics, he contributes with a soundpiece called ‘Ljud för fula hus’ (trans. ‘Sounds for Ugly Houses’). By focusing on the urban sounds of everyday life, a soundscape is created that is both disturbing and homely, organic and industrial, mechanical and natural. It situates the listener in a city-landscape with its noises and sounds, seemingly emanating from nowhere and everywhere. This prompts us to think about how the city is planned and experienced sonically. Which sounds are pleasant and which are ugly? Why does the city sound the way it does? And how does it affect the people living there?

Listen to it here: https://differensmagazine.com/

To see more of Erik Ogenstedt’s work, please visit his Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/erikogenstedt

Picture from Kåre Frang, "Loving Eyes", 2021. Bronze, paint, non-hardening modeling clay, lye and soap treated wooden floor, baseboards, painted walls, LED-lights

20/05/2024

Participate in our next issue . miss universe!

Topics that may be of interest are: plastic surgery, the political economy of beauty, feminine universality, an intellectual history of symmetry, ”natural” beauty/beauty in nature, religious/ideological depictions of universalism, beauty privileges, beauty and violence, masculine beauty, and utopian aesthetics.

For more information: https://differensmagazine.com/participate-in-the-next-issue/

Send your pitch/material/text to [email protected] by 1 June

The issue is featuring artist Kris Lemsalu (https://www.krislemsalu.org/) and made with financial support from The Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet)

participate in issue . miss universe Still from ”The birth of Venus”, a performance 2010 by Kris Lemsalu . miss universe From the 1960s and onwards, beauty has repeatedly been at …

18/05/2024

In 'Response to Inger Nordangård and Alfred Arvidsson', Miriam Weber enter the debate on modern vs. traditional architecture by questioning the Architectural Uprising's advocacy for historic and biophilic design. She problematise the character of spiritual and mental health that the Architectural Uprising suggest traditional and biophilic aesthetics offer and points out argumentative strategies in AU’s constructed dichotomy between ‘alienating modernist styles’ and ‘spiritually fulfilling traditionalism’.

https://differensmagazine.com/2024/05/13/response-to-inger-nordangard-and-alfred-arvidsson/

Picture: Kåre Frang, Привързаности (Attachments) 2023, Biscuits, glue, wood (detail)

17/05/2024

Is there a human soul to which architectural form should speak? A sympathiser of the Architectural Uprising, librarian and cultural critic Alfred Arvidsson reflects on the role of the soul in contemporary architecture in Sweden. Drawing on progressive critiques of modernist architecture like those articulated within the 1970s counterculture movement, Arvidsson highlights the soullessness of functionalism, and seeks to affirm the spiritual dimension beyond utilitarian rationality.

https://differensmagazine.com/2024/05/13/on-the-inexplicable-and-the-progressive-in-modern-architecture/

Picture: Kåre Frang, Head-in-the-sand, 2023 (cropped)

15/05/2024

Our webpage is now updated with three new texts from our upcoming issue # v. ugly housing / housing aesthetics, texts that discusses the Architectural Uprising movement, its views and implications from different angles. Check it out!

In "Principles for Harmony", Inger Nordangård (Architectural Uprising) criticizes modernist and contemporary architecture for its lack of beauty and harmony - two aspects that, according to Nordangård, is taboo to talk about in debated on architecture today. Drawing on mathematician Nikos A. Salingaros definition of harmony as a continuous scaling that can also be found in nature, Nordangård argues that the architecture of today often fall back on repetitive monotony and random chaos, to which our bodies react negatively.

Principles for Harmony by Inger Nordangård from the Architectural Uprising, Sweden [Arkitekturupproret] ”Principer för harmoni” was originally published in Swedish on the webpage Arkite…

30/03/2024

19th century Britain saw a battle between radical, proletarian newspapers and the new, commercially driven press. How did these two types of newspaper differ? How did they shape the public sphere and the minds of their readers? And how are changing media habits affecting the role of the press today?

Examining the newspapers of the time, Jonas Thoresson finds that "print media appeared in a dual guise, simultaneously promising enlightenment and threatening subjection".

Read Thoresson's essay in Differens - The medium is the message?

https://differensmagazine.com/2023/12/18/print-media-and-class-conflict/

21/02/2024

Datafication has emerged as the dominant paradigm in media research. Using quantitative approaches, media scholars hope to produce more reliable results. But there are trends that point in a different direction, challenging the positivist framework.

These alternative methodologies have in common that they do not view data as pure information or mere representation, but instead focus on the point at which “data recombine into an identity in the ‘concrete’, ‘corporeal’ and ‘material’ reality”, as media scholar Maria Rogg puts it.

Rogg traces the roots of the “ontological turn” in the field all the way back to the Toronto school of communication theory in the mid-20th century, with scholars such as Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan paving the way for modern media research that centers around the body and its experiences. Read the essay from Differens - The medium is the message? here.

https://differensmagazine.com/2023/12/08/heralds-of-the-ontological-turn/

Crust (Ceramics), 2022, Ekta Bagri . the medium is the message? . a. medium and mediation In the fourth issue of Differens Magazine, we investigated the “middle” that takes place between mess…

16/02/2024

What does climate change look like? We can see how places change from it and look at the graphs that prove it, but that doesn't capture the atmosphere - the feeling - of the concept itself. Nicole Miller made an attempt to visualise the atmosphere of climate change by combining individual interviews with analysing 2,000 photographs found on Google. Using a machine learning program, she ran the pictures over and over again, aiming to identify common aesthetic elements, until she came up with a picture.

In her essay in Differens , Nicole Miller describes her creation process, while reflecting on the making of an atmosphere, and shares the end result: what climate change might look like, at least in the eye of the media that shape it.

the atmosphere of climate change The Atmosphere of Climate Change by Nicole Miller The Atmosphere of Climate Change is a multi-faceted research project undertaken in 2019-2020 that involved intervi…

09/02/2024

What does it mean to be a media materialist? Many have been labelled as such, from Marshall McLuhan to Friedrich Kittler. But for media theorist Jussi Parikka, the starting point for thinking about media lies buried beneath the ground, in the geophysical environment that underpins our media use.

"[I]nstead of radio, I prefer to think what components and materials enable such technologies; instead of networking, we need to remember the importance of copper or optical fiber for such forms of communication; instead of a blunt discussion of “the digital,” we need to pick it apart and remember that also mineral durations are essential to it being such a crucial feature that penetrates our academic, social, and economic interests."

Read Parikka's essay in Differens Magazine - The medium is the message?

an alternative media materialism An Alternative Media Materialism by Jussi Parikka Excerpt from A Geology of Media by Jussi Parikka. Published by the University of Minnesota Press. Copyright 2015 b…

05/02/2024

Ekta Bagri is a ceramist and visual artist. She is the featured artist in Differens - The medium is the message?

In the issue, we present excerpts from a series of Bagri’s works, such as The Clay Cycle (2023), Memory of nature (2021), Landscape (2021) and Folded Ceramics (2020).

“Central to Bagri’s practice is an exploration of clay as a material and a medium. Clay is both a material with its own principles and aesthetic qualities and a medium showcasing human’s relation to earth, exposing historical and political practices of exploitation and coexistence.”

30/01/2024

Differens Magazine - the medium is the message? is now out!

In the fourth issue of Differens Magazine, we investigated the “middle” that takes place between message and messenger or message and recipient, often referred to as medium, media or mediation. This intention resulted in a double issue, in which the first part includes texts exploring what a medium actually is, how it operates and affects the message it delivers – an impact that is demonstrated throughout the issue, while the second part takes a closer look at our own being: the Magazine as a medium.

Contributions by Ekta Bagri, Jussi Parikka, Maria Rogg, Nicole Miller, Jesper Olsson, Klara Hjorth, Lars Bang Larsen, Astrid Elander, Jonas Thoresson and Max Pihlström.

Read the double issue here:

Crust (Ceramics), 2022, Ekta Bagri . the medium is the message? . a. medium and mediation In the fourth issue of Differens Magazine, we investigated the “middle” that takes place between mess…

18/12/2023

Differens Magazine is pleased to announce that we have been awarded support from the Swedish Arts Council, allowing us to extend our work and continue building a platform for discussions on aesthetics and politics.

Our next issue is out soon - The medium is the message?

Kulturrådet är en myndighet som – genom att främja utvecklingen, informera och ge bidrag till kultur – är med och förverkligar nationell kulturpolitik.

14/05/2023

"Since the Industrial Revolution and the system of commodity production, housework has come to count as so-called reproductive labor. And cleaning is per definition the least productive of those chores, since it doesn’t produce anything at all, but rather faces backwards and downwards, toward that which we leave behind."

F***y Ambjörnsson is Professor in Gender Studies at Stockholm University and author of the book Tid att städa (2018). In a conversation with Differens Magazine's Ale Låke, Ambjörnsson talks about the politics of cleaning in contemporary society and how writing about cleaning has changed her as a researcher.

https://differensmagazine.com/2023/02/07/on-the-practice-and-politics-of-everyday-cleaning/

From Differens Magazine - pure danger / dangerous purity

Foto: Sweeping (Figure 2224), 2016, Lisa Torell.

17/04/2023

"Räcker den svenska antirasistiska hängivelsen, som sträcker sig över de politiska partigränserna, för att göra upp med renhetsbegäret och dess ordnande processer, eller står vi inför en ny variation av renhetsbegär, lika mån om att uppvisa sin egen fläckfrihet som någonsin förut?"

Arild Säll tittar närmare på hur begäret efter renhet har sett ut genom historien och vilken form det tar idag. Essä ur Differens Magazine - pure danger / dangerous purity.

Foto: What Was Seen, Could Be Seen, 2018-2019, Lisa Torell.

11/04/2023

Dear friends of Differens Magazine, in the coming months, we are hosting an online study circle, that will be discussing some theoretical attempts to bridge the gap between materialist and idealist traditions. To participate, send an email to [email protected]. For more information, visit the link below:

https://differensmagazine.com/sunday-brunch-with-differens-magazine/?fbclid=IwAR2xMn2gEBwdJlLMRMi9W3fDLP5C03lXQ_qvGVcwzMSelZD0c7f5NY3tbMQ

Spring 2023 Bridging materialist and idealist theory. Some contemporary and historial apProaches An online discussion series taking place every other Sunday 11.00 – 13.00 (CET) between the 16…

30/03/2023

"Att skriva om smutsen är ett sätt att ta kontroll över den, nagla fast den i dikten, göra ordlöst skräp till språk. Men som vi brukar säga på pralinredaktionen, memento mori. (Brukar vi verkligen säga så? Kanske inte.) Du har ingen kontroll. Den glada nyheten är att dikter sällan blir bättre av kontroll."

Ida Mirow och Maria Bodin tog en stunds paus i arbetet som Pralin Magasins redaktörer för att prata med Differens om smuts i litteraturen och på redaktionen. Från III – pure danger / dangerous purity.

https://differensmagazine.com/2023/02/07/om-pralin-magasin-och-smutsens-poesi/

Foto: Pralin Magasins redaktion, 2023.

21/03/2023

"På samma gång är det ett verk där författaren verkar vända upp och ner på motsatspar som natt–dag, ljus–mörker, vetande–ovetande och kropp–själ, genom kombinationen av ett hyllande av döden och ett förnekande av den egna kroppens begränsningar."

Viktor Engström utforskar den litterära dialektiken hos Novalis och Bataille - läs hans essä från Differens pure danger / dangerous purity här.
https://differensmagazine.com/2023/02/07/solformorkelser-litterar-dialektik-hos-novalis-och-bataille-2/

Foto: Human Population, 2016-2020, Lisa Torell.