Friday 6th November 2009
16.00:a meeting with Svanbjörg Hróbjartsdóttir, home/hairdresser, Laugarnesvegur 96, 101 Reykjavik.

Saturday 7th November 2009
14.00: a meeting with Svanbjörg Hróbjartsdóttir, home/hairdresser, Laugarnesvegur 96, 101 Reykjavik.

Hairdressers – besides performing one of the most ancient and yet very important manual occupations – play a significant role also in the different fields of interpersonal relations. In fact, barbers and hairdressers, represent the last “popular handcraft” who have an active role and trades in today’s economy, and they reflect the actual social contest through an original establish close relationship between craftsman and customer. As a matter of fact barbers and hairdressers become in virtually all societies the friends, advice-givers and even kind a “psychotherapists” of their most affectionate customers. Moreover, customers establish close relationships even among and between themselves while waiting for their turn. Many people stop and wait, meet and get to know each other at the barbers or hairdressers.

The hairdresser’s shops project began during a research year at the Center for Contemporary Art – Kitakyushu in Japan in 1998 and 1999. In Japan the length of hair symbolizes the life of a woman: since ancient times mourning and religious women cut and sacrificed their hair. The first women with short hair were scornfully called “moga” or “modern woman”. The project involves hairdressers and barbers shops, seen as special places of material and popular culture, and analyses these as creative contexts and places of socialization between different cultures, generations, as well as in a context of urban environments of the city development. The project took shape in Japan, Norway, Netherlands, Italy and Liechtenstein.