Category Archives: Country

John Stanley Martin – Australia as an Iceland of the south

By KDSMurray | January 21, 2010

One way of reading an antipodean country like Australia is through the lens of its symmetrical opposites. For many, Australia has been compared to Nordic countries. One of Australia’s leading Nordicists, John Stanley Martin, unfortunately passed away this week. Here he talking about the commonality between Australia and Iceland.
John Stanley Martin, descendent of [...]

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Vertiginous Africa

By KDSMurray | December 20, 2009

Tourist images of the African continent are dominated by scenes of safari adventures. While these entail their own colonial associations – Africa as nature rather than culture – there is a more phenomenological dimension to the African experience for westerners. This suggests a continent that we look down to.
Virgin Airlines have just released their first [...]

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Jorgen Jorgenson returns yet again

By admin | June 23, 2009

Jorgen Jorgenson was a Danish adventurer who travelled to Tasmania twice, first in the founding party of Hobart and then as a convict. Between visits, he had been bestowed with the title of the first King of Iceland. He wrote many books, including a study of Tasmanian aborigines. His life sustains a ongoing link between [...]

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When children grow up in the Kingdom of Bellavista

By admin | April 23, 2009

In the Kingdom of Bellavista there lived two peoples. For centuries they had lived in perfect harmony, but lately there had been troubles.
High on the hill, there lived the refined nobles, who cultivated highly sophisticated sciences and arts. With great care and kindness they managed the affairs of the realm, particularly those they fondly called [...]

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Do we need another north?

By admin | March 13, 2009

The South African design expo Design Indaba makes the claim that global ascendency has passed to the other half of the world:
Stand back Milan, London and New York, here comes SOUTH! SOUTH is an inversion of hand-me-down Eurocentric creativity, a world map turned upside down conceptually, so that South Africa is on top. Over [...]

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