Study diary

A lovely week. We biked to Krumme Lanke to swim on Wednesday, and joined my classmates for beers in Gleisdreieckpark on our way back. I realised how much I had missed them!

My supervisor responded with detailed comments on my thesis, which I’m now reworking. I’m a bit taken by his commitment to my research. I feel that I’m in very good hands, and I see clearly how he betters my thesis. He has suggested some interesting future collaboration.

He also recommended me to check out a job opportunity, a paid PhD programme. As much as I wanted to apply, I realised in the end that the subject was too far away from my research interests. After all, you only do one PhD (if you’re not Patrick Galbraith), and if you’re going to spend several years doing it, the subject better be a perfect fit.

I might have found this fit elsewhere. I emailed a prospective supervisor early in the week and got a positive reply on Thursday. We have since corresponded regarding requirements, funding, etc.

No matter what happens, I must say that it’s such a lovely feeling to be at the end of something and to be totally open for future opportunities!

Got another “not selected” on Filmfreeway. I guess my kind of “ethnographic” film is not a fit for regular film festivals, despite they’re “independent” and I applied to the student category on this last one.

Got a bit caught up in the “MIA drama” in the Japanese learning community.

Anime

• Some episodes of Made in Abyss (2017) on Netflix

Video

• High Score, E1–3 (Netflix)
• Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm (series pilot, 1999)
• Ricky Gervais Meets… Larry David (2006)
• Crunchyroll: Adapting ANIME Logos Into English (Rent-A-Girlfriend, Seton Academy, Quintessential Quintuplets)

I sent off a new draft of my thesis to my supervisor tonight!

I got my first “not selected” on Filmfreeway. I also got a no on the “blindbewerbung” from last week, but it was still fun to apply.

I published an article on my research site.

And I worked (as in, you know, a job).

Anime

• 2019: Boku no Hero Academia S4, E6–8

TV

• Babylon Berlin, S2 until the end (E8)

Video

• Ayishat Akanbi: “Victimhood is a State of Mind”

Articles

• New York Times:
  • David Graeber, Caustic Critic of Inequality, Is Dead at 59
  • How a Massive Bomb Came Together in Beirut’s Port
• Onyanserat/Emil Viksell: Spelet om Stockholm i SVT (2014)

Some writing, some working, some Babylon Berlin, season 2. Was stood up by A for our Friday dinner. Talked to R regarding a position that I decided to apply for “blindly”. Saturday ouzo with O, who is back from Sweden, and the rest of the gang.

• Kvartal/Lars Vilks: Konststudenter rasar mot provocerande konst
• Wolf Vogel: Heimliche Liebe (1997)

A pretty inefficient week, but I did finish the methodology section and started diving into the findings, which of course are the real meat of the thesis.

I participated in a film screening with S on Thursday.

And we enjoyed another sunny day at Sommerbad Kreuzberg on Tuesday, which was also the day for another Editing Forum, the class that I like so much – since I learn so much.

All the Manben videos that I watched over the last few weeks have been deleted, so I’m happy that I watched them so fervently! I found the original Tezuka Osamu documentary that the Manben series was based on. We also started watching the fourth season of Boku no Hero Academia.

But what really gripped me this week was Anders Wahlgren’s film Staden i mitt hjärta from 1992, about the destruction of the Klara quarters in central Stockholm in the 1950s through 1970s. I’ve known about this project as long as I can remember, I think every Swede has, but I always thought it was slum that was torn down. Not huge stone palaces and the like! It’s quite unfathomable how such a project could be realised so swiftly and without much protest, and also without proper documentation and museal preservation of what was being destroyed. But it also somehow fits, a bit too well, into the story of a country that always wants to be special or, let’s spell it out, superior.

Anime

• 2019: Boku no Hero Academia S4, E1–5

Video

• Osamu Tezuka documentary (1985? The precursor for the Manben series! 45 min)
• Staden i mitt hjärta (Anders Wahlgren, 1992, 59 min)
• Flotten (Marcus Lindeen, 2018, 98 min – brilliant!)
• World’s Busiest Station: Shinjuku Station Tokyo (made by a production company in Berlin apparently, 49 min)
• ANN News: スウェーデン“収束”の理由は・・・現地医師に聞く(2020年8月27日)

Articles

• Global Bar Magazine/David Isaksson: Är det rätt att säga icke-vita? (Tobias Hübinette interview) (non-https link)
• Expressen Kultur/Karin Olsson: Den skrikande tårtan känns så länge sedan

Got the reply from my supervisor on Monday. The film is now finished and we move on to finish the written thesis, which I might rework for a different purpose as well when it’s finished – very exciting. I also communicated a bit with participants in my film.

But mostly I read up on the philosophical roots of phenomenology. This methodology is so hard to grasp, which is sort of the point, I guess. I reread some papers from Qualitative Methods, most notably Moustaka and Desjarlais & Throop, as well as the introduction to Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (as recommended by S), but it wasn’t until I started reading David Cerbone’s Understanding Phenomenology that things really started to make sense to me. I’m now halfway through reworking the methodology part of my thesis. It’s messy, so messy, and I like it very much.

We took a break from anime and watched the whole first season of Babylon Berlin – what a fantastic series, in so many ways!

Article

• Pedestrian Observations/Alon Levy: Construction Costs in the Arab World
• Berliner Zeitung: Autor Jeremias Thiel: „Ich will weg von zu Hause, weg von meinen Eltern“
• Vassa eggen/Olle Lidbom: CNN fyller 40 år

TV

• Babylon Berlin, S1 E1–8 = end

Last week with the film? I hope so. I spent it adjusting audio levels and grading the colours, although I ended up reverting all the grading. Learning … But the film is there now and I sent it to my supervisor today. Let’s hope he likes it. Yesterday I signed up on Filmfreeway.

My main protagonist got back to me with a long and positive response about the film. I also got a very good response from a couple of Japanese creators whose work is shown in the film. I will continue next week to correspond with other people who are involved.

On Tuesday I participated in Curating ethnographic exhibitions, unit 3, although I was ill prepared after having read only about half of one of the two mandatory texts.

Next I’ll start focusing on the written essay.

We finished Boku no Hero Academia season 3!

Japanese

• Flashcards Deluxe: Ca 20 min per day
• Anki: 2–3 hours per day
• Mornings: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信
• NHK Manben documentaries:
  • 花沢健吾
  • 藤田和日郎
  • 浅野いにお – most inspiring!

Anime

• 2018: Boku no Hero Academia S3, E17–25 (end)

Article

• Harper’s Magazine: A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
• Spiked/Andrew Doyle: We need to be braver

Video

• Al Jazeera: Alain de Botton and Ayishat Akanbi | Studio B: Unscripted