November - Are you normal?

Today Väggen försvinner turns 1 year and is yet still only in the beginning of the beginning, because as Bob Dylan sings,”it's not dark yet, but it's getting there”.

In 1970 the movie The Conformist exposed the core of the concept normal as an ingredient in the rule of fascist Italy, and this ideal of normalcy has survived and is no longer associated with fascism.

To conform, to be normal, is still the core of the Western society today. The result is that vital questions disappear, as in the case with the Banksy painting, as well as the messengers that are a threat to the conformity must be killed, as in the movie Kill the Messenger.

Yet to dissolve this system of suppression we need to keep asking questions and discuss them openly. How can this system be successfully declared as a democracy at the same time as it is promoted as the only possible worldview?

Citizenfour is a documentary about Edward Snowden and the mass surveillance he disclosed in 2013. What will happen next? Who will be the next whistleblower/victim of this so called democratic system?

Prince and 3RDEYEGIRL give an upbeat message about shifting from the conformity in their song Fixurlifeup: ”when you’re just another brick in the misogynistic wall of noise … don’t worry about what the crowd does, just worry about being good at what you love”.

September - Revealing Revolution and Folk Music

A little more than a month has passed since a new era began. Väggen Försvinner has become the seed to a database of movies and music that all show different angles and shades of the wall. Together all the perspectives gained through V-Art will paint a more and more clear picture.

Since the premiere we have presented a new Essential V-Perspective, the documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, that makes it obvious that we live in a world with no clear answers to fundamental questions. A few days ago the world also got to view the result of what Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have been doing since their release from imprisonment over hooliganism charges in December 2013, after performing a protest song against the leadership of Russia. The outcome of their work is the Russian news outlet MediaZona (easily translated to your language through Google translate), that reports on what other Russian media are banned from covering, such as human rights abuses by Russian courts and law enforcement and any critisism against Putin's policies.

Bob Dylan is another significant addition to V-Art and V-Music, this time with his 1963 song Only A Pawn In Their Game. Bob Dylan was an essential link between traditional folk music and popular culture, he brought music with substance and intention to a wider scene by going electric, and played a large role in the emerge of the whole music genre of folk rock.

And you haven't missed that there are now hitchhiking robots, have you? Just a few days after our publishing of the story of HitchBOT, the goal of the hitchhiking trip, Victoria on the west coast of Canada, was reached, and the first-ever hitchhiking trip by a robot was completed.