Swedish News:

Timbuktu receives Stora Retorikpriset. Turning Torso in Malmo for sale. Artist Yoko Ono's secret Stockholm visit. 

  • Timbuktu receives Stora Retorikpriset
    The hip-hop artist Jason "Timbuktu" Diakité is the recipient of 2012 Stora Retorikpriset (the Great Oratory Prize), which is handed out by the Rhetoric Center. The motivation for the prize is that Timbuktu is a “person who with a unique and expressive talent puts puzzle pieces together with words and rhythm, that make feelings and thoughts vibrate accordingly.” Earlier recipients of the prize include actress Pia Johansson and sports journalist Lasse Granqvist.

  • Turning Torso for sale
    Turning Torso, the Malmö skyscraper designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and officially opened in 2005, is for sale. The current owner is housing cooperative HSB, which built the twisted apartment block for a cost of over US$ 230 million. The head of HSB in Malmö, Michael Carlsson, says that "it has been a fantastic journey, but now we're moving on and taking new steps." The cooperative wants to build 100 new dwellings in Malmö. Michael Carlsson says that HSB is using an international consulting firm and is hoping to close a deal for the Torso this year.

  • Yoko Ono’s secret Stockholm visit
    Wait a minute, isn’t that…? Yes, it is. John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono is in Stockholm preparing for an exhibition at Moderna museet. Ono was seen breakfasting at Grand Hotel with an unidentified man, and an hour later she left in a limousine headed towards Djurgården. Her exhibition at Moderna will open on June 5. “I can neither confirm nor deny this,” says Kristin Ek, Press Secretary at Moderna museet. “But it isn’t unthinkable that she’d be here knowing she is about to exhibit here in June.” According to the museum’s webpage, the exhibition, titled “Grapefruit”, will feature “a selection of Ono’s installation works, which invite us to see life and art in an imaginative way”. With a number of experimental films and some early central works, Yoko Ono is presented as a pioneer in the so-called conceptual art, and the international Fluxus movement, and the exhibition shows the artist’s lifelong fight for peace and love. Yoko Ono was married to the Beatles-legend from 1969 to his death in 1980, and the two have a son, Sean, now 36 years old.
    www.modernamuseet.se/sv/Stockholm/

  • Hudik artists to receive more money
    The criticism of the low salaries received by the mentally-handicapped actors (they brought their show-stopping “A Tribute to Elvis” to BAM, in Brooklyn, NY two years ago) has paid off. For their new performance, an agreement has been made, and each actor will receive 1500 SEK ($222) per performance. “Apart from the salary, the Glada Hudik Theater will put aside 5000 SEK ($742) per actor for further education and development,” says Municipal Director Bengt Friberg in a press release. The previous salary given to the mentally-handicapped actors was 920 SEK ($136) per performance, which was highly criticized by a TV show called “Uppdrag Granskning” and which led to a hot debate in Sweden.
    Read our earlier story about Glada Hudik’s visit to New York:
    Swedish Glada Hudik—a different theater