Johann Strube

On Thursday, 27th May, I’ll give my debut as an solo artists, performing own songs and compositions as well as a live electronic performance. Besides a fantastic band (Maria Finkelmeier, Venla Hinnemo, Leyli Afsahi, Jonathan Börlin, Johan Petterson, Patrick Anderson, Davod Basri, Vanessa Martinez, Johan Bertilsson), the concert will feature Lindie Boström doing lights and visuals and a dance performance by Tore Alsegård.

Black Box, Piteå, 27th may 10, 9 pm

spring-cleaning on www.johann-strube.org. So what’s new?

• new design: new, clear design. I dumped some unnecessary information such as the tag cloud and everything is now laid out in two instead of three columns.
• soundcloud player: I finally got rid of the ugly myspace player. Instead, you can listen to my portfolio on the smart soundcloud player. Looks much better and offers some features as sharing and commenting music.
• tumblr and twitter feed: In the right column you will now find my latest posts on tumblr and flickr. So you find everything I’m posting aggregated at one place.
• wordpress 2.9.: I also updated wordpress to it’s latest version.
• improved commenting: The comments are now powered by DisqUs, enabling cross-platform discussions.
• sharing: Under each post you’ll now find a button to share the post on your social media.

Piteå is surrounded by two paper plants, which on same days smells like… hard to explain… I tried to make this unique smell audible…

(the smell of) kappa by Johann Strube

Since I moved to Sweden, I engaged in composition a lot. Therefore, I like to share one piece of mine with you. “bakom brus” (swedish, “behind noise”) is a piece for noise generator and friends, which I wrote for my composition class with Johan Samskog (Stockholm). Tack för kritiken och synpunkter.  Hope you enjoy it.

bakom brus by Johann Strube

der mensch muss essen. klare sache. klare brühe oder aus der mülltonne. hauptsache gesund. wenn die tonne aber verschlossen ist? scheiß faschisten. sollen die sich doch selbst wegschmeißen. idioten sind nicht gesund.

Bebbe Bigazzi, italian tv-chef recommends his audience to eat cats. House cats. Soak them 3 days in spring water and then stew them in there own juice. Buon appetito!
That statement caused a lot of protest and Bigazzi got fired at the end. I wonder why. Most people don’t care to eat for instance cows, chicken, pigs. Their keeping emits more greenhouse gases as the worldwide traffic and causes hunger and thirst in many areas on the earth. Not to speak of the brutality of factory farming. I haven’t heard from large scale cat keeping for meat production and the most cats are living a life, pigs and co. just can dream of. So where is the problem in eating cats? Because they are more intelligent than other animals? Cuter? That means, we evaluate the value of life on the basis of intelligence and cuteness. That’s cynical.
Some of Bigazzi’s opponents said, that eating cats has no tradition in Italy. That’s the worst argument ever. Is there a tradition of treating animals as machines? Is there a tradition of a kilogram mince meat under 2 €? A tradition of fast food?
I certainly don’t want to encourage people to eat cats. But I want that everybody applies the same moral standards to animals, of what ever species.

Some french chef once stated: “There’s no german cuisine. There’s just the german art of using up what’s left.” I agree. I’ve no cue what german cuisine might be (what is “german” anyway?), but I know, how to squeeze out my fridge and turn its often minimal content not into gold, but into some delicious, quick meal. As lent will turn me into a vegan, I was furthermore forced to use up my last animal products. In this case it were just three eggs; not too much of a problem. Than I had some old heel of a bread and fortunately a couple of these boxes with grains such as rice, bulgur, couscous and wheat. I went for the latter which I simmered until ready. In the meantime, I beat the eggs into a bowl and mixed them with some salt and freshly grounded pepper. I chopped the bread into small bits and soaked them in the eggs. Then I chopped two tomatoes, gave everything (egg with bread, tomatoes) into a pan and fried it from both sides to an omelette.
That gave a delicious and fast (about 15 min) dinner. I just seasoned the wheat with a dash of soy sauce.
Quick and dirty. Maybe it’s that what german means?

What are you doing with your old, hard bread, that feels like a stone when you bite on it?

I’m happy to announce a new series of articles on www.johann-strube.org; “the kitchen.” As this place become more and more a central part of my life in the last year – territorially as well as mentally – it seemed logical to write about it.
Actually I planned to set up a subblog for that. But since that appears to be technically impossible with wordpress, I’ll just weave this new series into my general stream of consciousness, that is blog. Just click on “the kitchen” among the categories on the right, and you’ll find all the corresponding entries. All right, then.

So why writing about “the kitchen.” The kitchen for me is more than just a room. It’s the space where raw food is being processed into something edible, hopefully enjoyable and sometimes inspiring. As even the richest among us have to eat and as the quality of what we ingest to a great extent determines the quality of our lives, we better treat the kitchen and its activities with fair respect. Moreover, it’s also often the place, where people come together to eat, sit and have a good time. Therefore, it serves an important social function and satisfies another vital need.

It’s rather interesting, that my enthusiasm to cook was mostly lifted during my time in Iceland; in a country with a very limited range of fresh, organic, inspiring groceries. However, it was part of my job for the fantastic record label bedroom community, to meet the high culinary demands of amazing musicians, engineers etc. almost everyday with just these limited options. So I was forced to creativity.On the other hand, I was part of a unique community of international students, couchsurfers and hosts, activists and artist, where mostly vegan, sometimes skipped dinners served for the main social venue.

Whereas “cooking in Iceland” is worth an own series of articles, I will also cover other culinary treats and habits I discover along my journeys, handy tips and recipes for the everyday-cuisine, thoughts about where our food actually comes from and more semi-intellectual meta-musing about the sense of the kitchen like this very first entry.

I hope you’ll enjoy it and your meal. Verði þér að góðu!

The whole north of Europe is struggling against an extreme winter. While the majority of the population is confronted with cancelled trains, burst pipes and snow clearing, homeless people have to fight for their survival. According to Spiegel Online, 15 people has been killed by the cold only in Germany. It’s a question of humanity, that (semi-)public institutions such as schools, churches, stations etc. open their doors for them. The life of people is more important than physical education. A good example is the occupied lecture hall of the University Vienna, where the students allow homeless people to find a shelter from the cold. All of us, who have the opportunity to help freezing people to survive, commit non-assistance of a person in danger. Or something like a passive murder.

The 2009 UN Climate Change conference – better know as COP 15 – ended with a surprise. Many expected the conference to fail, but even the notorious naysayer  was staggered by its apparent collapse. Though I can not hide my satisfaction about COP-15s triumphal disgrace, the “outcome” of the conference was a disaster for the planet. Basically, there’s no agreement on any limitation of CO2 emissions, no roadmap how to support each other to combat climate change nor even the will, to achieve any kind of binding agreement in the new future. To say, we don’t want the global average temperature to rise by more than 2 degree until 2100 won’t bother the climate at all. Considering, that most states and scientist were frankly aware of the dimension of the threat of global warming before the summit, the result is the more embarrassing. It’s like Spock asking “Captain Kirk, our starship is about to crash into that huge rocky planet in front of us. Do you want me to slow down and change direction?” And Captain Kirk answering “Thank you for that information. Please, open another bottle of wine.”

So who has lost? Most obviously, the victims of climate change – that is future generations, third world countries, peace – are the main losers. But as I will point out later, there’s still hope for them. However, the idea that the climate crisis can be controlled on a governmental level has shown to be false. Not only that the so called political leaders had been unwilling and incapable to seriously fight against global warming and climate justice, the problem was way too complex and the positions to diverse to be solved by one huge summit. This fact challenge the role of the United Nations to host a framework in the fight against the climate catastrophe. If the UN fail to develop new forms of global governance, there historical doom is inevitable. Moreover, both the United States of America and the European Union passed up a chance to take a leading role in the global struggle against global warming. Consequently, they missed a chance to increase political, international influence and to open new markets. As a result, the saving of the planet will take place without  governments, or it won’t take place at all.

The COP-15 conference showed clearly, that the support of the civil society wasn’t welcome. The number of NGO delegates has been reduced from day to day and the peaceful demonstrations faced with police violence. On the other hand, the politicians and delegates who felt to be in charge, failed as mentioned above. As a result, we – the civil society -  have to claim leadership. It’s our last change. We have to build local communities to fight against global warming. We have to inspire and empower each other to find creative and working solutions, we have to exercise non-violant disobedience to stop the building of new coal-power stations, highways etc. and we have to organise climate protection bottom-up. If we lead the turn of our carbon addict society into a zero-emission society, our elected representatives will follow.