The image of icelandic kitsch six minutes in is the turn in this video: all the slow motion photography of landscape is problematized by this interlude: which is the “real” experience of Iceland? How is it problematic to sell your nation– to literally use it up– for the sake of its “realness”?
What does it mean to consume iceland as a cultural construct– natural, eerie beauty–when Iceland itself is literally being consumed by rising sea levels, a sinking economy, and its literalization– Alcoa’s mining and abuse on the island? Will a “woman” “know better”, “do better”? Could she? Death, according to Blanchot, held no terrors for him because he had already faced it as a child— is the “death” of a planet different or nation different?
population of just over 300,000 people, has been overwhelmed by an economic disaster that is threatening its very survival. But for a generation of fortysomething women, the havoc is translating into an opportunity to step into the positions vacated by the men blamed for the crisis, and to play a leading role in creating a more balanced economy, which, they argue, should incorporate overtly feminine values.”
