2013-05-24T12:34:18-04:00 Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=viki-imrie Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Viki Imrie Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3236883 2013-05-08T08:49:22-04:00 2013-05-08T09:49:13-04:00

Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viki-imrie/
Travel and journeys are all about seeing things through the filter of your own unique perspective, and Iceland in particular seems to draw huge quantities of awe, admiration and joy from people. Certainly on my own visits I've experienced a feeling of anything being possible, of people making things happen and of an overwhelming feeling of peace.

It makes sense then that Inspired by Iceland have taken this idea of creating a web of personal experiences and run with it, asking fans and visitors to offer up their own suggestions of what they would call Iceland.

The subject of Iceland's name isn't a new one, with debates often raging over whether Iceland and Greenland should swop names. And in fact Iceland has already experienced its fair share of names includng Snæland (Snowland), Garðarshólmi (named after Gardar Svavarsson) and Eylenda (Island).

It was a Norwegian Viking called Hrafna-Flóki, or Raven-Flóki, who gave it a name that actually stuck, spotting an icy fjord which prompted him to christen the land with the name we know today.

Challenging Floki's slightly restrictive and purely ice-based naming, Inspired By Iceland's campaign encourages visitors to think beyond frosty and explore all aspects of the country. And with 25,000 responses it's certainly got people talking (and indeed naming). Currently on show in Reykjavik is an exhibition showcasing the top twenty names suggested, along with beautiful imagery and a story for each.

Lava Land tells Andre's story of the beautiful moment that the sun rose behind his wife as she climbed across a lava field, bringing him a revelation and a lasting memory. Jason's Best Place to Grow A Beard Land tells of the stubble he lovingly nurtured on his journey around Iceland and his planned return for Airwaves Festival 2013 where he will grow his next beard! Warming Heart (but not feet) Land contributor Sue tells of her feeling that no matter how cold the weather, the people of Iceland seem to perpetually glow with warmth. It's a truly beautiful collection of imagery and stories.

Now Inspired by Iceland are down to the final two names - Isle of Awe Land and Let's Get Lost Land. Filmmakers and music video directors Rollo Jackson and Abteen Bagheri have created two beautiful films to showcase each land and help voters make their minds up. Directed by Rollo Jackson, Let's Get Lost Land is a heady, visual mixtape careering from the calm interior of the Hallgrimskirka to a steamy underground gig. Directed by Abteen Bagheri, Isle of Awe Land is a magical sweep over black sand, through long grass and across the night sky. Both films showcase completely different sides of the country and the experience.

What do you think of the films? Take a look below and visit the voting page to choose your favourite.



]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2909099 2013-03-19T14:30:03-04:00 2013-05-19T05:12:01-04:00

Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viki-imrie/
So what drives these people to create? The current textbook answer is that Iceland is 'consolidating its economic recovery though the creative industries' but I think this is a bit of a cop out. Sure, the economic situation has pushed Icelanders into action in some ways, but I think the reason behind the boom in creativity has a lot more to do with the Icelandic soul than the financial situation.

Sari Peltonen of the Iceland Design Centre attributes it to something like a cultural (and indeed climatic) coping mechanism:

"Perhaps living on a cold, windy, volcanic island in the middle of the North Atlantic requires a certain blend of a courageous spirit and creativity - often new, imaginative solutions are required."

I saw this firsthand during my recent trip to Reykjavik's DesignMarch festival and I can safely say never have I seen jewellery, products, fashion and furniture scattered so far and wide into every nook and cranny of a city. My journey in pursuit of design took me to garden sheds, basements, rooftops and fish packing warehouses.

My first foray, having just arrived in the city, was to a small wooden shed deep in the suburban belly of the city (and the night) which somewhat stretched my severely limited map reading skills but didn't defeat them. Amazingly, I forged on, guided by the plume of smoke twisting into the sky from a pot outside the small, rustic shed that served to heat hot chocolate - rather like a modern-day smoke signal.

To elaborate past the wooden exterior, this was the opening of designer Erling Johannesson's fish bone-inspired jewellery creations. After identifying exactly which bearded man out of a selection was the designer himself, I asked him about the choice of venue and he told me the shed was a creative space that anyone could use. Nice. He also revealed that he moonlights as an actor/director. I'll warn you now - this is something of a common theme with the Icelanders. They are extremely creative and always multi-talented.

The next day took me to the festival's DesignTalks with lectures on 'the magic of creativity' from speakers including London-based designers Eley Kishmoto and MoMA curator Juliet Kinchin. FoAM founders Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney gave us a fascinating spiel on their work communicating with plants and the importance of pursuing a calm, 'vegetable' state of mind in a world overrun with movement and 'doing'. Sounds very sensible to me.

After I'd recovered from this slight overdose of creative wisdom, a pop-up catwalk from Icelandic designer Mundi greeted me on my evening wander through the streets, full of slightly post-apocalyptic rags and bare feet. All in the best way possible, of course. More fashion awaited me at The Culture House, with Icelandic collective Vík Prjónsdóttir and Eley Kishimoto collaborating on a freshly printed sealpelt - what can only be described as a giant (and completely amazing) onesie inspired by Icelandic folktales.

Next on my travels was The Reykjavik Letterpress; perhaps now my favourite place on earth. Speaking to the founders Hildur and Ólöf, I ask how they learned a skill which is fast dying out? In fact the pair are the only studio in Iceland using a letterpress machine. "We learned from the old man who sold us the machine," the designers say casually, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. The products the pair produce are beautifully crafted, from tags and letterheads to notebooks and branding work. For DesignMarch they had chosen to print clichés onto drinks mats and napkins, from 'Tea, coffee or me?' to 'Do you come here often?'

Cheerfully serving up Pimms, ("We know it's Winter but we thought it would be nice,") they insist I sample the mix first as the only British person present. Chomping on popcorn from hand printed bags and listening to an Icelandic comedian tell jokes (in Icelandic) which he then proceeded to translate into English for my benefit, I really feel quite at home.

Later on, standing inside SPARK design space in the centre of Reykjavik, surrounded by a crowd sporting an excellent array of knitwear and firmly clasping cans of beer, I experience something of this almost physical need to create.

All anyone here wants to talk about is how fiercely proud they are of the talent brewing in Iceland. But more than this, they want to talk about their own part in the phenomenon - what they individually are doing and creating. This isn't just a group of people spouting carefully rehearsed rhetoric about a project they have been planning for a several years, mysteriously rooted to the ground by their own creative inertia. These are people just doing stuff. In Iceland there is a feeling of nothing being impossible. As if to prove my point, a man chips in; "You have to trust that everything will work out," he says. Wise words.

This eternal optimism is something of a boon, and can perhaps be partly attributed to the small size of Iceland's population; not too much over 300,000. Halla Helgadóttir, Manager of The Iceland Design Centre (and graphic designer) cites the matter of size as a major factor.
"We are very few people living in the middle of the Atlantic, far away from both Europe and America. Being so few, one individual can have a huge influence on society and I guess in a way that makes us more optimistic and confident in our own abilities and the creative possibilities of a project."

Having been lucky enough to work on various different projects with the Icelanders, I've seen this easy, laid-back attitude to 'doing' in full swing. Design and print flyers in an hour? Sure. Construct a small wooden house and transport it to the remotest backwaters on wheels? No problem. For Icelanders, the need to create, do and fulfill is like a hunger - and you don't just stand around talking when you're hungry, do you? As Sari explains, creativity is a very 'natural and obvious' part of the culture - more of a necessity than a conscious choice.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg (rather appropriate imagery I thought) as far as design goes. But DesignMarch is something of a necessity for design fans and non-fans alike. There's a lot of ambition here.

For more on DesignMarch visit the Inspired by Iceland blog]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2831710 2013-03-07T16:22:50-05:00 2013-05-07T05:12:01-04:00

Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viki-imrie/
We need an answer to everything. Don't have your dream career? You can be a high flyer if you read the right books. Failing relationship? You're not trying hard enough. Unhappy? You're obviously not attending the workshops.

Maybe striving for perfection has got boring. Flicking through a weighty tome that boasts it can change my life in two weeks, I wonder why we can't just embrace the old (yet wise) words of Wordsworth, thinking of life simply as 'spots of time'; a series of moments - some happy and some sad - rather than trying to make the whole lot into one long, happy moment. After all, wouldn't happiness become boring if we felt it all the time? We'd all go around grinning inanely and weeping with joy at every turn. Yuck.

According to my enormous stack of borrowed reading material from the well stocked 'self-help' section (I think the librarian was tempted to put me on suicide watch) it seems the whole thing is about status. According to Alain de Boton (and if he doesn't know, who does?) all we really want is recognition from people. Sometimes it's as simple as an acknowledgement of our existence; a hello when you walk into the office, and sometimes it's a bit more. In an evolutionary sense we're constantly in competition with each other for wealth, resources and food but in a status sense it's about feeling valued and confident in ourselves.

I spoke to artist Kent Rogowski about his work making self-help books into art. Like me, his research in the self-help section led him to some interesting conclusions.

'I was in a bookstore and noticed that the self-help section was much larger than the art section of the store. There seemed to be a book for each moment in life, or rather, it seemed there were an endless number of books for each of those moments. The bookshelf seemed like a living catalogue of human failures and disappointments, but with little hope that things could get better.'

Constant dissatisfaction, or (in de Boton's words) 'the feeling that we might be something other than what we are' is a relatively new problem. Back in the days of old we were stuck in a particular class, born into a profession, probably devoted to religion. The one curse of social mobility and freedom of belief is that we feel we have the potential to do anything, which is an incredible gift but also creates a huge amount of pressure. 'Rags to riches' stories are circulated like modern folklore, but how many are down to pure luck? And how many more people in comparison are stranded, eternally dissatisfied and feeling they should be more than they are?

Rogowski agrees, saying what struck him most whilst collecting the books to create his art, was that they simply seem to satisfy our need for guidance. They fill a void that previously may have been filled by religion, a closer family unit or a stable, lifelong job. Looking at Rogowski's art, the collection of title pages that resonate most are from a piece entitled 'Am I the Only One'. A collage of self doubt and questions, ranging from 'Am I happy?' and 'Why am I crying?' to 'Who am I?' and 'Why do I feel the way I do?' Heartbreaking in its accuracy, these are the kind of questions we are being forced to ask ourselves. And why? Sometimes it's better just to be.

But first we need to change our way of thinking. To return to my workshop on the art of conversation, the one useful thing I did learn was that the first thing we ask people is, 'What do you do?' Of course by this we mean a career, but wouldn't it be more accurate to ask 'What do you like doing?' This is where art comes in. It doesn't have to be art in the traditional sense of painting, photography or sculpture. Our art is whatever we like doing and creating for ourselves. People often say art is a way of trying to express what we think is wrong with the world. Call it commenting, fixing, correcting, educating, rebalancing; it gives us control.

For Rogowski art is definitely a form of self-help, so much so that he has never been tempted to read any of the hundreds of self-help books he has photographed in his work.

'Really, my self-help is being an artist. My work isn't explicitly autobiographical, but it certainly has elements of myself in it, so when I am thinking about my work, it is also an act of introspection. When making art, I frequently have to approach a problem from a new direction or try to get a fresh perspective to make progress. I assume that this is precisely what effective self-help books claim to provide their readers.'

Take Tracey Emin. Her art is nothing if not confessional. She's not striving for perfection but admitting what's wrong and accepting that it's part of life. It's the crippling honesty of her quilts that I'm thinking of, proclaiming matter-of-factly, 'I do not expect to be a mother but I do expect to die alone' stitched in capitals, or, 'Sometimes nothing makes sense and everything seems far away.'

This kind of confession is so much more refreshing than the regurgitated 'wisdom' we get thrown at us from all angles. Pages and groups on Facebook churn out 'inspirational' quotes to make us feel better. Posters, pens, calendars surround us. Trying to solve the problem of happiness is quite the lucrative business.

But what if we were to just be and create things that make us happy? I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for anything, just that maybe we should put less pressure on ourselves to be something other than what we are. A fear of failure overcomes us and becomes a failure in itself. After all, we are all born with only two fears; loud noises and fear of falling. The rest we pick up along the way. I'm returning those books and turning to my art.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1670444 2012-07-16T06:18:58-04:00 2012-09-15T05:12:02-04:00

Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viki-imrie/
My quest was far flung, reaching all corners of the UK- Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Norwich, Chester, even Derby. You see I was dedicated to my desire to find second hand sartorial happiness. And find it I did, in the form of peach pullovers, pleated floral fancies, oversized jackets and strings of battered beads. I would scurry home with my haul like a woodland animal, sketching ambitious pictures in my mind of what my garments would look like when worked cleverly into an elegant ensemble. Of course many required work - a nip and a tuck here and there, a hem shortened or lengthened (mainly shortened), a sleeve snipped off. In fact I still have a box under my bed full entirely to the brim with severed sleeves, lounging in a tangled pile as if waiting for a group of lost arms to arrive and claim them.

As a teen I subjected my poor mother to many a distressing retail experience, once dragging her into a charity shop only to rummage elbow deep in a plastic drum helpfully labelled '10 PENCE TRAMP BIN' in an effort to dig out a particularly pleasing scrap of peach cotton which actually turned out to be a large pair of stained control pants. At this point an actual homeless person turned up to try his luck in the bin of dreams. As I grudgingly stepped aside, forced to acknowledge his need as greater than mine, my mother started to have mild convulsions, muttering something under her breath about how we needed to get back in the car immediately and go home so I could wash my hands (and possibly my entire body).

As time passed I started to see an increase in the number of establishments pronouncing themselves 'Vintage Stores'. As a teen I would rifle and pillage my way around Manchester's Northern Quarter for hours, salivating over floral dresses and 70s sports tees. After a short while I began to realise that aside from the occasional gem, these shops were really just a slightly more weathered (and overpriced) version of the high street, dressing girls head to toe in secondhand uniforms of floral tea dresses and flouncy blouses. Increasingly it was 'reformed' or 'recycled' vintage that was most popular, simply using secondhand material to create rack upon rack of essentially the same dress or playsuit.

On moving to London this manifested itself even more clearly (particularly the overpriced part) and I yearned for a good old-fashioned charity shop that wasn't pretending to be anything other than just that. I missed the smell (which ranged from vaguely unpleasant to delightfully musty depending on the outlet), the people (who ranged from devastatingly brilliant to awkwardly indifferent) and the time spent sifting through utter rubbish before hitting what you were looking for (which ranged from 30 seconds to 45 minutes).

The trouble is that in London you have to work that bit harder to find a good charity shop. Everything remotely central is classed as vintage/reclaimed/thrift and therefore extortionately priced with far too carefully edited a selection of 'cool' and 'tasteful' garments. Where's the fun in that? Catford has been very successful for me (excellent embarrassing smock creations), as has South Woodford (odd accessories and blouses that make you sweat excessively). I have ventured further afield from the capital via train to far flung lands such as Eastbourne (excellent knitwear) and certainly plan to indulge in more of these trips. As long as I return with a bulging carrier bag of questionable items I'm happy as Larry. Normally my favourite finds are those that paint expressions of utter horror or disbelief on the faces of any unfortunate bystanders/family/friends as I proudly extract the garments from the bag.

Anyway, the point is that vintage shops are boring. They're a glorified version of the high street and the selection is so carefully thought out that really you know you could pick something with your eyes closed and it would be perfectly socially acceptable and most definitely wearable. For me, a secondhand item has to be fun and a little bit risky- you have to be able to play with it and chop it up, all the while pondering ecstatically over the fact that you purchased it for less than the price of a chocolate bar. How infinitely satisfying.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1323200 2012-03-06T05:42:47-05:00 2012-05-06T05:12:01-04:00

Viki Imrie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viki-imrie/
Icelandic folklore is absolutely fascinating and what's even more fascinating is that 53% of the population either believe in or won't deny the existence of spirits. And really it only makes sense what with the almost supernatural beauty of the lava fields, midnight sun and endless twilights acting as the perfect backdrop for sharing tales. In fact here's an interesting little nugget of information for you; J.R.R Tolkien was a keen scholar of Icelandic folklore and took it as his inspiration for Lord of the Rings. It must be pretty good then.

Folklore rests right at the heart of the country, in fact even its coat of arms depicts not one but four guardian spirits of Iceland. The story concerns a magician (as all good stories do) who was sent to Iceland by King Harold Gormsson of Denmark to investigate the lye of the land before a possible Danish invasion. The magician turned into a whale to swim to Iceland but on every coast was met by a different spirit protecting the land, thereby thwarting the Danish invasion. Good work from the spirits.

The huldufólk or hidden people are the largest manifestation of the spirit world in Iceland who are considered to be elves and are believed to be living underground. Icelanders often have tiny houses and even churches at the end of their gardens for the elves to reside and worship in.

There are disagreements over their origin but most believe the little critters are the disgraced children of Eve. Let me elaborate: Eve had many children and she didn't have time to clean them all before God wanted to inspect them. So, as anyone would, she hid them and denied their existence to God, meaning the children were destined to remain forever hidden, except when they want to be seen that is.

It seems the occasions they most want to be seen are New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Midsummer night and Christmas. Midsummer folklore states that if you sit at a crossroads, elves will attempt to seduce you with food and gifts which you will be rewarded for resisting. At Christmas elves are known to take over any farmer's barn that happens to tickle their fancy and hold wild parties in them. Well, I suppose it is Christmas after all.

But it's not all unexpected gifts and crazy barn dances with the huldufólk; those who disturb or destroy their dwellings should beware. There are many reports associated with a boulder outside of Reyjavik which is the former home of a group of elves. Fascinatingly, attempts to build a new connecting road repeatedly failed with construction equipment breaking down each time it attempted to approach the boulder and move it. A local women known for her ability to communicate with huldufólk was asked to assist and said that the spirits were preparing to move but needed more time. A little time was allowed to pass and the woman reported the spirits were now ready and the boulder was successfully moved. There have been many similar circumstances where cables or building work have been changed or re routed so as not to disturb the little fellows.

But enough of the huldufólk; I'd hate to leave out the other spirits. The Yule Lads or jólasveinar are exclusively festive spirits that plague the Scandinavian countries during the Christmas season. These pesky lads are the 13 sons of the terrifying ogress Gryla who kidnaps naughty children and eats them (obviously she cooks them first). So really I don't think we can blame her 13 sons for scuttling down the mountain to escape for the 13 days before Christmas. During this time 'Window Peeper', 'Bowl Licker', 'Door Slammer' and their 10 other friends do just what their names suggest. They have become a little kinder recently though, choosing to leave small gifts in children's shoes rather than stealing things. Christmas spirit and all that.

But it's not all jolly japes where folklore is concerned. This is mainly due to the presence of a herd of giants ambling angrily over the Icelandic mountains, better known as trolls. They do have one serious flaw though; they turn to stone if caught in the sunlight so have to lurk in the shadows. There are even formations in the lava scattered over the country which are said to be the bodies of petrified trolls, trapped for all of time in stone. Folklore is pretty exciting stuff you know.]]>