Swedish Press Sample Oct 2016 Vol 87:08

[

]

Swedish Press N Y A

S V E N S K A

www.SwedishPress.com

The fusion of Swedish fashion and technology

P R E S S E N

E S T . 1 9 2 9

October 2016 Vol 87:08 $4.95

08 2016

Sweden’s Fashathon Interview with Konstfack’s Maria Lantz ShareWear

YOU ARE INVITED TO SACC-USA’S PREMIER NETWORKING EVENT SACC SUMMIT 2016 SACC-USA and SACC-DC invite you to SACC Summit on November 2-3 in Washington, D.C. Join us for the 2016 edition of our annual event for networking, connecting, and insights. We are gathering members, business partners, and our 19 regional chambers for an inspiring summit of an exciting time. The event will be held in Washington, D.C. one week prior to Election Day, don’t miss out on this opportunity to be in the nation’s capital during this dynamic time!

We are proud to present a number of interesting and inspiring speakers for the 2016 edition of SACC Summit.

Day 1 will be highlighted by panels, speakers, and networking centered around the 2016 U.S. election and transformational innovation for a greater good. Torsten Jansson, founder and CEO of New Wave Group, will be our keynote speaker. Day 1 will also feature updates and exclusive insights from the Embassy of Sweden’s top diplomats and representatives from Capitol Hill. To conclude the day a dinner buffet reception will be hosted by H.E. Björn Lyrvall, Ambassador of Sweden to the United States.

Day 2 is for SACC Chamber Representatives and will focus on internal information, discussion, and strategic planning for the SACC network. Day 2 will conclude with the SACC-USA annual meeting.

Gary Bruce

Chairman SACC-USA gary.bruce@sacc-usa.org

Johan Marcus

Executive Director SACC-USA johan.marcus@sacc-usa.org

Christer Bergman

Chairman SACC-DC christer@novexus.com

Nancy Fischer

President SACC-DC nancy.fischer@pillsburylaw.com

REGISTRATION WHEN: November 2-3, 2016* COST: $ 200 SACC Chamber Representative $ 500 Member $ 800 Non Member

We have a limited number of rooms at a discounted rate on hold at Georgetown Suites (georgetownsuites.com).

In order to book a room call 1-800-348-7203 or 202298-1600 and ask to speak to In-House Reservations to secure your booking by using Group #8228 and group name: SACC Summit

RSVP (before October 7): memberservices@sacc-usa.org * November 3 - only for SACC Chamber Representatives

U N O N N A BE TO RE O M

H.E. Björn Lyrvall - Ambassador of Sweden to the United States Randy Hultgren - Congressman (IL-14), U.S. House of Representatives, TBC Torsten Jansson - CEO and founder New Wave Group Natalia Brzezinski - CEO Symposium Stockholm - Brilliant Minds Thomas Östros - Executive Director at International Monetary Fund, TBC Evan Burfield - Co-CEO and Cofounder 1776, TBC Chris Core - Core Values, American Media Personality Hon.Thomas L. Siebert - Former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden Alan Gregerman - Author, Business Consultant, Teacher, and Speaker Karin Henriksson - Journalist, Author and Foreign Correspondent

CE D

AMONG THE DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS

Swedish Press is the world’s leading magazine on all good things Swedish.

An authority on design, business, culture and travel since 1929, Swedish Press delivers insightful news and commentary in a visually striking format. With a nod to the past, and a peek to the future, Swedish Press is your go-to source for updates and inspiration from Sweden.

SWEDISH PRESS (ISSN 0839-2323) is published ten times per year (Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July/Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan) by Swedish Press Inc, 862 Peace Portal Drive, Suite #101, Blaine WA 98230 for $39 per year. Periodical postage paid at Blaine, WA 98230-9998 (No. USPS 005544).

US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Swedish Press, PO Box 420404, San Diego, CA 92142-0404 OFFICE: 9040 Shaughnessy Street, Vancouver, BC V6P 6E5 Canada US MAILING ADDRESS: PO Box 420404, San Diego, CA 92142-0404 WEBSITE www.swedishpress.com E-MAIL info@swedishpress.com TEL +1 360 450 5858 TOLL FREE +1 866 882 0088 PUBLISHER Claes Fredriksson Claes@swedishpress.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Claes Fredriksson Claes@swedishpress.com ART DIRECTOR Joan Law Joan@swedishpress.com COPY EDITOR Alisha Fredriksson Alisha@swedishpress.com

[

N Y A

S V E N S K A

P R E S S E N

4 Letters to the Editor

5 From the Editor’s Desk

6

6 7

Swedish Headlines Headline News – Feminist strides in Sweden News at a Glance Swedes in the News

Business 8 Business News 8 Borgström’s Blogg 9 Company File: Hövding Feature 10 Scandinavian Style: Pushing Fashion to its Limits

SweMail TRANSLATIONS to English of the Swedish parts of Swedish Press are available free of charge every month. Visit http://members.shaw.ca/swemail1/ © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduction in whole or in part without written consent of Swedish Press is strictly prohibited. Unsolicited material is welcome, but never the publishers responsibility. Enclose stamped self-addressed envelope for return. Statements and opinions expressed by the writers and claims in the advertising are their own and do not necessarily represent Swedish Press.

Global Swedes 16 Putting Sweden on the Map – Abroad: Monica Enqvist

Lifestyle 18 Top Sju 19 Music: “From Sammy with Love” at the Apollo 20 Fashion: Fashion needs foundations 21 Road to Community Refugee Tech

Hemma hos 22 Design: Sustainability threads its way through Swedish fashion with “ShareWear” 23 Treats à la Åsa Johansson Bagley In the Loop 24 Landskapsnyheterna 27 Canada, US & Beyond 28 Calendar and Events

ADVISORY COMMITTEE Björn Bayley, Peter Ladner, Brian Antonson, Christer Garell, Anders & Hamida Neumuller

ADVERTISING visit www.swedishpress.com/advertise-us for advertising rates. Call +1 360 450 5858 or +46 725 607800.

E S T . 1 9 2 9

CONTENTS ( October 2016 )

REPRESENTATIVES Calgary: Carin Pihl +1 403 931 0370 Thunder Bay: Elinor Barr +1 807 344 8355 Toronto: Gunilla Sjölin +1 905 727 9837 Winnipeg: Laurel Anderson-McCallum +1 204 255 5224 Los Angeles: Birgitta Lauren +1 310 201 0079 New York: Timothy Lyons +1 732 685 3747 San Diego: Sue Eidson +1 858 541 0207

SUBSCRIPTION rates per year $39, 2 years $69, 3 years $99, 1 year abroad $105. Digital edition $28. Subscribe Toll Free at 1 866 882 0088 or at www.swedishpress.com.

VISA and Mastercard accepted.

]

Swedish Press

29 Ads and Info Diana Irving SS17 collection © Mathias Nordgren

Interview 12 Maria Lantz – The Insider’s Sketch to Konstfack Heritage 14 Lär Dig Svenska 15 Mitt Stockholm

30 Sista Ordet The dust and light of Lapland 31 Press Byrån Cover image: Stockholm-based fashion designer Bea Szenfeld dresses Clyde Archer of the Royal Swedish Opera Company with ‘Haute Papier’ in Everything You Can Imagine Is Real exhibition.

Photo: Karolina Henke © Dansmuseet Below: Stockholm Gamla Stan ©Tamara Kulikova

CANADIAN PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT No. 40010214 Return Undeliverable Canadian addresses to Swedish Press, 9040 Shaughnessy Street, Vancouver, BC V6P 6E5 Canada We acknowledge the assistance of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

PRINTED IN CANADA NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE: OCTOBER 10

[]

Swedish Press | October 2016 3

Scandinavian Style: Pushing Fashion to its Limits

S

By Lara Andersson

tockholm rang in its 11th annual Fashion Week this August, showcasing the top artists and designers from across Scandinavia.

Established brands like Hope, Whyred and Rodebjer hit the catwalks at the same time as up and coming talents debuted their works at various venues throughout the city. It’s no secret that Sweden pushes the envelope with its fashion innovations, and this season it lived up to its reputation once again. The buzzword for Fashion Week this August was hybridity, as designers emphasized the unique meeting point of fashion, art, literature and technology.

The Modern Museum, located on the small island of Skeppsholmen, welcomed curious minds to a

Yayoi Kusama, Louis Vuitton shop window display with Tentacles ©Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton. Photo: Vegard Kleven/HOK

[ ]

Swedish Press | October 2016 10

series of lectures uncovering the intersections of art, fashion and politics. Celebrating its current exhibition featuring Yayoi Kusama, a renowned Japanese artist known for her multimedia sculptures and installations, the museum used her experimental fashion designs as a springboard for discussion. Jo Widoff, curator of the exhibition, discussed the challenges involved with treating fashion as art, especially when putting pieces on display. “For example, I was resistant to the idea of using mannequins to display pieces because it places them in such a traditional light,” she said, “but in the end that’s what we had to do.” Michael Elmenbeck, creator of the fashion and art magazine Bon, was another featured member of the museum’s panel discussions. He brought up one of the fundamental differences between fashion and art: whereas artists track the whereabouts of their pieces with each sale, ensuring proper archival, many fashion pieces inevitably wind up being sold without so much as taking the name of the buyer. The art of fashion is essentially allowed to disappear.

Issues such as presentation and archival are tackled by museums like Liljevalchs. Liljevalchs, the first independent public museum for contemporary art in Sweden, was launched in 1916 and is embracing the future of fashion wholeheartedly. In 2015 they launched an exhibition called “Utopian Bodies:

Fashion Looks Forward.” Rather than “expatiate problems,” curators urged visitors to question how fashion can “be harnessed to create a better future… [as well as] how fashion relate[s] to the human body, to us as individuals and groups, and the world around us.” The exhibition ranged in content from intelligent designs intended to adapt to global changes, to “memory designs,” spotlighting the ways in which “fashion is… a material memory – showing how clothes can make us recall the past, and almost take on magical properties.”

Utopian Bodies Fashion Looks Forward exhibition. © Liljevalchs

Museums aren’t the only institutions taking part in the future fashion movement. This past April, KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology, joined forces with The Swedish Fashion council to put on “Fashathon!,” a two-day summit dedicated “to combin[ing] sensors, smart materials and digital mobiles with clothing to create new visions about the future of fashion.” Maintaining the sleek shapes characteristic of Swedish design, fashion “hackers” added cutting edge embellishments to classic items. Some of the resultant products were a bit more comical, such as Lazoschmidl pants, which vibrate when you’ve been liked on a social media dating application. Others, such as Reschia shoes, which aid those with impaired vision by using temperature-regulating fabrics that correspond to navigation, were more practical. Elin

Frendberg, CEO of the Swedish Fashion Council comments that… “the wearable scene has huge potential and clothing may in the future account for many of the functions that currently operate through mobile phones. However, wearables today are mostly focused on biometric data, which measure physical performance.” Ultimately, she says, the aim is to create a seamless marriage between design and data.

As we see, the future of fashion is harnessing new technologies to create products that challenge the status quo. However, not all future fashion is necessarily high tech. One of the major milestones for fashion brands down the line is becoming more environmentally friendly. As written on Sweden’s official homepage, challenges in the industry include “a growing mountain of waste, harsh working conditions in the supply chain, the high level of water consumption and the use of chemicals in the production process.” Brands like Swedish Hasbeens, Nordisko, Bergmans and Uniforms for Men are all committed to treating the Earth with respect at the same time as they produce novel garments and accessories. In the years to come, we are sure to see an explosion of intelligent design that both solves everyday problems and alleviates the fashion industry’s current burden on our planet. Sweden, we can be sure, will be one of the nations leading the way.

Shoes consist of smart fabric that regulates temperatures, can guide its user to lead the way for someone with impaired vision. © Reschia

[ ]

Swedish Press | October 2016 11

E X C L U S I V E

I N T E R V I E W

The insider’s sketch to Konstfack

By Sofie Kinnefors

Vice-Chancellor Maria Lantz | © Hironori Tsukue

Among Maria Lantz’s favorite places as a child was amongst the textiles, ribbons and threads found in her grandmother’s draper’s shop (manufakturaffär) in Kristianstad, Skåne. It was there that Lantz, now the Vice-Chancellor of Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) developed an interest in arts and crafts.

While travelling to Eastern Europe with her father during the 1970s, she also developed her love of story telling.

“Travelling in combination with my love for working with my hands made me choose to be an artist,” said Lantz.

[ ]

Swedish Press | October 2016 12

W I T H

Please tell us a little bit about your background.

I was born and raised in Lund, a University city in the South of Sweden.

I started my studies at the art history department at the University of Lund, then moved to New York to attend the International Center of Photography, before I was accepted at the School of Photography and Film at the University of Gothenburg. After working as a freelance photographer with assignments in combination with my own art practice, I continued my studies at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and took freestanding courses in architecture. Along with my art works I started to write about photography and architecture. I was published in various magazines and journals and eventually became the art critic on photography at Dagens Nyheter. As a scholar I was interested in photography as a problem rather than looking at the aesthetics of the image. This is still something that interests me: how photography works on us and how photography makes us see the world (and what is missed).

After my studies and two years of research at the Royal Institute of Art, I was offered a position as a senior lecturer at the school. For 12 years I ran the program Art & Architecture, which investigated public art in relation to architecture with a focus on various themes, such as speed,

M A R I A

L A N T Z

romanticism, game, law, formal/informal and landscape to name a few headlines. We produced publications and exhibitions and the course developed new methods for crossdisciplinary collaborations and research.

Please tell us about Konstfack.

Konstfack was founded in 1844 and is the largest arts, craft and designschool in Scandinavia. We have about 900 students and one third are studying to become art-and-sloyd teachers for primary and secondary school. We are independent and state funded, we have undergraduate and graduate levels, along with a PhDprogram together with KTH, Royal Institute of Technology. The majors we offer are Fine Art, Interior Architecture, Visual Communication, Industrial Design, Craft ( jewelry/ corpus, glass/ceramics, textile) and two different teachers programs and free standing courses such as Curator Lab and other. We have extremely well-equipped workshops and all of our teachers have their own practice.

Some of Sweden’s most prominent artists and designers work with us.

Please tell us about your role as Vice-chancellor at Konstfack.

I was asked to apply for the position as Vice Chancellor in 2011 and started at Konstfack in 2012. I have

T H E

V I C E - C H A N C E L L O R

been appointed for six years with another three years as a possible extension. First and foremost, my job is to gather different groups of my staff in order to discuss, highlight and develop Konstfack. We constantly need to change and adjust along with the world around us. An art school can never stand still – it needs to move in relation to the world around it. I spend quite some time dealing with the political aspects of being an art school; there is often misunderstandings and prejudice about what we teach and stand for. For instance: Did you know that you meet with products, images and signs every day that have emerged from Konstfack? The international symbol for handicapped is one example, the plastic dish brush with a hook at the handle and an edge to scrape off dirt is another. Elsa Beskow and Tove Jansson were students here – just to name a couple.

What do you like the most about your job?

I love to meet with the students and I truly believe we are improving the world a little, step by step, starting from Konstfack. I learn a lot from the students and they are totally great as a crowd. When they arrange the Christmas fair every last weekend in November and the Spring Show every spring, the atmosphere is awesome!

O F

Konstfack is known as a university college with an international character. How many international students do you currently have?

Any American students?

Since four years back we are obliged to take fees from international students (outside EU) which we are quite unhappy about. American student numbers have dropped since then as the fee is about the same as at American universities, but we don´t have a grant system. We still get international students from the EU and a few from the US – but those who pay are usually from Asia. Last year we went up in the international QS-ranking and we are now number 41 in the world, 11 in Europe and best in Sweden so maybe we can get back some of the American students we used to have.

Konstfack offers a great variety of art, craft and design workshops. Who are they for? Which workshops are the most popular?

Our workshops are exclusively for our students and in some cases for alumni. The reason for not opening up for the public is because the facilities are very specialized and you need to take a course before entering them. For some machines you need a driver’s license, something that will be registered on your personal tag so that you can log in and work on

K O N S T F A C K

them. This way we can have the work shops open 24/7 and students can work independently without having a teacher around. Right now the 3D print shop, the hot shop for glass, the sculpture department and the textile print shop are the most crowded. But it differs, all of a sudden it will be the wood work shop, the sound studio or the ceramic department.

Who inspires you in your work?

I am very much inspired by 19th century landscape paintings together with texts from comic strips in my art. In my leadership position my former boss Marie-Louise Ekman inspires me and in my institutional talks and presentations I am inspired

by Olof Palme and Barack Obama!

What projects are you currently working on?

I am working on a series of images about the sea. The sea as a surface, political arena, liquid, void… beautiful pictures with some disturbing texts.

Who is your favorite artist?

I have so many – it is hard to pick one!

Martha Rosler is someone I like a lot, as well as Mary Kelly. Raqs Media Collective (India/US) are good, but so is the Swedish painter Anders Zorn. I also love C.D. Friedrich.

Exhibition Hall Vita Havet | © Åke E. Lindman

[ ]

Swedish Press | October 2016 13

Hope you enjoyed this sample of Swedish Press.

To read more, please click the link

https://swedishpress.com/ subscription to subscribe.