Hello and welcome to the free art show. I'm Kim Holm and with me is my lovely wife Beanie. Hello. Yes, we're doing it tight. And yes, the free art show is the very tight show where I draw your request and put them up for free use. And we also have a contest. Do you see this free art show intro card? It's a postcard and you can win it. But first, let's draw who won last week's intro card. We have six commenters on YouTube who all have an equal chance to win. The dice decides. And the dice decides. If we get more than six comments on YouTube, we will have to have a really geeky dice. We're hoping to get a d10 next week and then a d12 and then a d20 and then a d100. Sure. Sure. My wife didn't understand anything of that but you understand because you're watching this. Okay, let's see what the dice says. The dice says that Mona wins the card. Not this card. But this card. Number four is Mona. So Congress, Mona. And now we're going to explain the rules again. If you want to win this, you have to go to my YouTube channel. This week's intro card. And just subscribe and comment and then you may win. If you do it by the next live stream. And then we're not finished rolling the dice because we have... It's so hard to decide what he wants to draw. This week we had about 20 suggestions and we cut it down to six different suggestions. We have Matteo who says draw your take on the three swords monument outside of Stavanger. And I know the monument somewhat. So that is... it's a cool monument. It's statues of three swords standing in the stones out by a fjord or by the open sea I think. I haven't seen them in real life. Morten says he said a king for an emperor on the toilet. Yes, and I went for Odin. Yes, my lovely wife went for the king of the gods of Valhalla. Odin sitting on the toilet. That's number two. Oh wait. I'm rooting for that one actually. Did you get the poo pun? Oh yes, I put it on number two. And is it Ilmar? Ilmar wants a tired night sitting by the campfire and wondering if his quest is over. And then RCVPV wants depression. He or she doesn't want depression. People seldom want depression. But you can't always get what you want.  Something symbolizing depression. And I pushed him a bit on it. And what was it? Someone trying to escape from a... Dark hole or something. Dark hole. Yeah. I'm getting something. I don't know.  That's just grisly. And then we have Hanna who wants a nightmarish phoenix. It's like the bird phoenix. So that might be fun. That was number six. Let us see what I'm going to draw today. Number four. I want number two. We all want number two sometimes. But this time we went for depression. Okay then. I'm going to go out of my comfort zone. To draw the depression. Yeah. I don't know where to start. In your head. In your head. Well we can start by... Okay I'm sorry for mocking you. The cranberries. I don't know which way this will be even. But we'll see. I will not be using red I think. For depression? Yeah. You need something blue. But I can talk about depression. It's an expertise of mine. I'm one of those sorry bastards that have basically struggled with depression every day I was 12 or 13 or something to that extent. And the analogy of a hole is sort of slip sliding back into a hole. There is a good image for it. I don't quite remember when my depression started. But I remember in 7th or 8th grade when I was 14 or 15 I had the clear conviction that I had been depressed with suicidal thoughts for every single day for at least a year. So that was happy. Bridgette Sadova Adam says hi. Hello. Today we're drawing depression. On the request of someone. And during all those years since I was 12, 13 and the depression started I haven't been able to figure out how to beat them. But I've been slowly, slowly getting a lot better at managing them. And at the same time I'm getting better at managing them. The depressions are also coming harder and harder. So it's a constant uphill fight. And just for transparency's sake Now when I'm drawing this, when a stranger on the internet gave me the request of drawing depression I was already a few days into what I suspect will be a pretty harsh depression. It seems like it. And whatever I'm doing now, I should draw more and talk less. Whatever I'm doing now is just an act to make you not notice how awful I feel. So this is kind of perfect subject matter to draw. And that's one of the things that Bridgette says. Depression is something no one should go through. And I'm sorry you had to go through a stage of mind. Thank you. I think, I almost think that depression is something everyone should go through once in a while but not too often. I don't want to romanticize it. I don't want to say that depression is good or anything like that. But having been at your imaginary lowest can help you with empathy. With depressed beings. Not depressed but with people who are in lousy situations. I think. And also one of the things that is really hard as an artist is that when I'm depressed I don't like my stuff at all. I really don't like what I'm drawing when I'm depressed. I will not be satisfied with this one no matter how good it turns out. I hope it turns out excellent. Maybe I will see that in a month or two. But at the same time at least the way my brain works and I'm very sure it's not the same way for every depressed person. But the way my mind works even though I'm depressed it's still pointing out real problems in my art. And in my personality and in everything. So the problems. So you're saying your depressive thoughts have some truth to them. Yeah they're exaggerated but they're pointing to problems. And in life it's hard to take that criticism to heart. But in art it's easier for me to sort of come out of a depressive period with a new insight in my work. And I'm not saying that if I could, like every depressed person, a depressed creative person at least, I've been afraid that if I lose my depressions I will lose my creativity.  The experience of having been depressed will stay with me. And it's valuable in some sense. Bridget says I understand what you're saying. Thank you Bridget. And so I think that it's bullshit that your creativity goes away if you get well. But at the same time there is something valuable there. Like there is something valuable in all experiences that you survive. And experience makes you smarter I think. Except experiences that make you dumber. So what I'm doing now, and it actually is some way it helps talking while doing this. Because when I talk I can't really focus too much on what I'm drawing. And I'm just trying to let it come naturally. So it's this guy crawling, he's probably crawling through depression. And it's like this whole, we will let something drip here. Depressions are dripping beans. Ah, beautiful. And it helps talking a bit too much. Because then I can't think of what I'm drawing. Then I just have to follow whatever happens. And if I stop and start thinking about this, I'm sure the depression will kick in.  But hopefully it's not. I can't really think about it too much. Right before the live stream today, I was watching wrestling. Live wrestling, WWE, Sasha Banks versus Daily. And it was a pretty good Iron Man match. And towards the end it was just crawling and trying to reach the ropes. And I'm guessing that's what got into my brain. So that's why I'm drawing this. So you can imagine that this is Daily. That Sasha Banks will come here. Oh yeah, dragging. Dragging is a good word. Dragging you back down. Yeah, so I think that conceptually this should be a good image of depression. And then it's all execution. Going to switch to a thinner brush. Don't pick on the table because the microphone picks it up. Sorry, now I'm going over to a thinner brush to sort of start defining things more. And like I'm doing with most of these drawings, I... Great that Sasha wants to get into drawing. Cool, getting into drawing is something that people should do. People don't cherish that. Oh yeah, I really believe that the main reason why people stop drawing is because of how our schools are organized. Because every... You blame the schools for everything. Yes, I do also blame the schools for my depression. But this is sort of more specific than that. Or as specific as that. I think that the one thing is that the school system is so focused on written skills. Because those are easy to teach and easy to define. While artistic skills are really hard to teach. Especially to teach to many kids at the same time. So that's one problem. And also, schools are focused on what's right and what's wrong. And in drawing, there isn't a clear distinction between right and wrong. No, you can learn how to draw anatomy and perspective and color theory and everything perfectly. But it's completely wrong if you want to do a stick figure comic. And perhaps that is the best way you can say what you want to say. Because drawing is... You often think about it as just self-expression. But it's not just self-expression. It can be self-expression. But it's a language. It's a way of expressing yourself to others. And whether you want to express very sophisticated, detailed ideas or you just want to express your love for the natural beauty of the world or you want to express something silly with a stick figure. Drawing is... At times it is so much superior to words. Because it can... A picture says more than a thousand words. A picture does say more than a thousand words. Or it can. And it can also say things that are unutterable. Anna says homework, winky face. Yes. Yes, nobody likes homework. So what I've found when working with kids teaching them drawing or comics I've found that every kid draws when they're eight. And then they start... Some stop early when they're nine. And by the time they're 12, almost everyone has stopped drawing. Because they can't draw. If you ask them, do you know how to draw? They say, no, I don't know how to draw.  Especially since they draw letters all day. If you can draw letters, then you can draw whatever you want.  As long as you can write somewhat legible letters. So doctors control. Doctors, yeah, doctors control. There's a lot of things you don't want to have written. Many people make fun of the IKEA user manuals instructions. Yes, just imagine the clusterfuck if they were written. Take the doohickey and turn it twice into the thingamabob. And then at an angle, you can't explain those things as easily and as precisely in words. So both when it comes to expressing yourself and when it comes to describing a physical reality, drawing has a lot of things that you can't do in any other way. That's the same for any medium. Singing is great for self-expression. Not so great for IKEA instructions. It would be good though, I think. Anna says, hello, I'm helping Sara with her work animation illustration. And since I don't know much about it, who best to show than one of my references, our dear Kim. Yes, was there a question there? No, I don't think so. Although you can probably talk about other references if you want to. I'm a bit slow today. What do you mean? Other videos, other artists. That you should watch. No, it was just a hello, she says. Okay, just a hello. Hello! Since we're drawing depression, and I've gotten to vent about being depressed, perhaps I can try to talk about some of the artists where I feel at home in their depression. I'm trying to think about what type of art I like watching. That's got that feeling. Every weird frame of mind has got its own sort of style. So you've got the neurotic art of someone like our crumb, Robert's crumb, which I very much feel at home with, even though I'm not all that neurotic, I think. All the artists I'm thinking about are, of course, comic book artists, because that's what inspired me all my life. Because you used to be one. Yes. You are my company this Sunday, Anna says. Excellent. That's nice. And thinking, well, there are some non-comic artists that I do feel resonate with me, especially in my down periods. Like, for instance, Francis Bacon, who is not the philosopher, magician, which has this kind of vicious quality where it's a lot of evil in his art that I kind of resonate with how I view the world when I am down. I find that just even visually, things and people start looking evil. I can watch paces on the streets. They look sort of like some of the worst of Francis Bacon. I think the German expressionist, the surrealist war painter Otto Dix, which has a good name. And there's an ugliness there. I feel, resonates. When I was younger, I was drawn towards these melancholy depictions of depression. But there's something there.  That's so meaningful. But watching it, not so much. Not anymore. And there's a problem here. The problem is that... What don't you like? I think the fact that it's light here. Would you like it to be darker? I would like it to be dark, but with that ruin, everything. I'll wait a bit and consider that. And while I consider it, I'll use some white paint. We are drawing with golden fluid acrylics. Using it basically as it was inked. They also have... They also have some acrylic ink, which I do like. And they have... Usually, I draw in China. Hello, Mona! Our dear winner of today's postcard. You won today, Mona. You won a postcard. Good job on the commenting. Yes. Let's see if we can find the postcard you won. You won this postcard. No, no, that's... That's correct. Maybe you should number them. Yes, I should. We'll start numbering them next week. So, congrats. And we're also... The request today is to draw depression. It is so fitting. One of the things I find in art is... I don't really find that much comfort in art, but I do find resonance as important. And different art this sort of can have different parts that I really empathize with, and others that I don't get at all. It is also often hard for me to look back at art that I made when I'm in the deeper states of depression, because it reminds me of... I can't see what I have actually drawn. It just reminds me of... We'll go with... We'll do something here. The monster will have three eyes. I'm guessing that's a symbol of some sort of enlightenment through depression, which is not really the point here. I want it to be... Yeah, and we need to make things black behind the characters. We'll just do a little bit lighter on the figures. That's too light, but we're getting there. It actually looks good. Did the visualization of those monsters help you through dark times, as Ana? Yes, sometimes... Sometimes just drawing random shapes in ink, especially, and just figuring out the worst aspects of them, and just digging into the ugliest parts of what I'm able to draw. There's going stream of consciousness. It's something that I can appreciate also while being depressed, and I can do, and it feels worthwhile. So it doesn't in itself make me feel better, but it makes me feel better in the sense that I didn't want to do anything today when I woke up, but now I've drawn a fantastic, ugly, shitty monster. That feels good. It's a job, mission accomplished. So yeah, drawing... And also there are, at times in my worst depressions, there are drawings and projects that I've started that probably will never be shown to another living soul, which are just in order to figure out what is happening in my head. And that does help. And you do have things like art, therapy and stuff, but I've never... I've always intended to research that, but I have never actually done it. So that's something I reckon I will get into at some point in my life. I do like using art, therapy quickly for myself, and I do like teaching and talking and holding courses and stuff, so maybe that would be a great idea. A good idea. I don't know how to be great. I like that the ground is sort of holding him back. Perhaps it needs to hold here as well. I think we're nearing something here. Things are getting close to something that looks finished. Stop that. No, thank you, honey. I'll take comfort-eating when I'm done and when I'm just... That's another thing about... Since we're drawing depression, we're talking about depression, and another thing is what happens when you have to perform publicly when depressed. And I noticed that I'm always disorganized, but I'm a bit more disorganized and I'm a bit slower, and I'm not as in control of the chaos, and it's going okay, but I know that when I'm done, I will get anxiety.   The thing is I always say something stupid, but I don't really care that much unless I'm in a depression. But still, I think it's better for me to just keep on trucking and get this stuff done than it would be to flake out and restarted Free Art Friday and now the Free Art show quite some time. Sometimes, but it's better when I just learn how to keep on trucking, I think. It's nice to respect your own rhythm and adapt accordingly because there are patterns in your experience already, says Anna. Yes, and that's the important thing. While some aspects of the depressions just keep getting worse, I am a lot better at managing. If I wasn't better, I probably wouldn't be here. But luckily, I learned sometimes. That's a lifesaver. And yes, there are patterns. I'm much better at recognizing when I'm pushing myself past my limits and not always stopping, but just judging whether I should stop or not. Too much, too much. Yeah, this is going to be good. It needs to dry a bit before I... and we need to accentuate some of these a bit. That's the tiny bit. And then we're going to get some of the blacks back and then I think we're going to be finished. Then absolutely no need to force otherwise on a slightly better community. Susanna. Yeah, careful about forcing yourself, if you're prone to these moods. Okay, I think part of this looks lovely. What do you think? Just to widen the perspective on the conversation. Not necessarily to go in depth, but one thing that's probably in many ways worse or as bad as being depressed is, of course, a living with a depressed person. That's not fun. We're not that fun to be around. Oh, you're lovely. Anna says, not to this. Thank you, it looks lovely. XOXO. XOXO. She didn't say that. And Muna Nigo says it looks great. Thumbs up. Thank you, Muna. Now, we're nearing the end here, so if you like what I'm drawing, please share the video, whether you share the livestream or the YouTube version with better sound and video. I'm still on properly, and you're wrong. And that was my train of thought. Sorry. And if you like the art, this art specifically, then it's for sale only until the next livestream for 100 euro, including international shipping. And you must claim it by posting claim or sending me a message in any of the places where it will be released.  We aren't that much fun to be around, but, like my friend says, say, it's never boring. Yeah, that's... Oh, actually, some of my depressions are very, very boring because you don't really have the energy to do anything, so you just sit around. Okay, and if you want to follow, if you want to support me even more than buying the art, you can use the art when it's released for free and put up at my gallery, and you can go to my, let's say, my resting, but soon-to-be-awoken Patreon campaign, Patreon.com slash came home, where you can support me with a monthly sum, and a few of you do, so that's helped me a lot, especially through periods where there's been more depression than work. That is something I can't say enough how grateful I am for anyone who has the good heart to support what I do. I couldn't do it without you. Oh, and this piece of art, I think I'm finished. I'll sign it, then I'll be finished. It's against the law to continue on the work of art after you've signed it. This video will be up on YouTube in a couple of days. Go and subscribe to youtube.com slash den unge herholm. Slash user slash den unge herholm. Slash user slash den unge herholm, sorry. Apparently, I don't know. Yep, and if you do that, and comment on the video, then you can win this piece of art. The intro postcard, which we will send to you with a little message. And with that, I think we're finished. You feel better after drawing depression? I wasn't allowed to draw properly because of the microphone. See, it's properly, not proper. Yeah, that's a different use of the word. No, it's not. It is. No. Okay. I'm right, and my wife is wrong. I'm Kimbom, and she is Nini. Thank you for watching our show today, and we will be posting it on YouTube soon, and we will be posting the art for free use very soon. And yeah, I'm out of words. Properly? Properly out of words. Yes, that is correct. Thank you for watching.


Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva. I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by John Kiff, who is a senior financial expert for the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. John, welcome to the studio. Thanks, Max. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about perhaps you could share your experience at the IMF in the area of digital currency, which is very much what we've been focusing on this week, or central bank digital currency.  Monetary is a key component of our work. And until recently, that would be focused on conventional money. But now with the world of crypto and cryptocurrencies and so on, there's been a growing interest in applying some of that technology to central banks and their money making operations. And for many, they've seen opportunity to save money by reducing the number of paper bills and coinage that they issue and replace it with digital currency. And so many of our member countries, and there's around 180 of those I lose count, maybe it's 190, but they're coming to us now and saying, we would like to be part of this new revolution. And that one of our roles is to give what we call technical assistance to countries that are, and in this case, want to come first and out of the starting gate and start issuing central bank digital currencies. So why should central banks consider issuing digital currencies? And if so, for what purpose? I mean, we obviously say you mentioned they're reducing paper, et cetera, but what are the other advantages that they could hope for? Well, we think in fact there's other more important dimensions that they should be considering. And one of them is financial inclusion. In many of the countries that we service, there are many people who are unbanked. And sometimes they're unbanked because they've got very concentrated banking systems that aren't incentivized to bring in new technology and so on. And everybody these days wants to be in the new mobile money world and so on and digital banking. And in other cases, we're talking about, say, island countries where there's just not much of a business case for a bank to set up a bricks and mortar branch on these individual islands. And so you've got people that have no access to banking services at all. And so I think that's a very compelling case for many. And some of the advanced countries, the amount of cash being used is falling rapidly. Sweden's the poster child for that where apparently you can go into some restaurants and they will refuse your cash. And in that case, the central bank fears that money making and money management has fallen out of the central bank's hands. It's now being run by private actors. China, for instance, has the similar problem. We've got Alipay and WeChat Pay. You go to China and pull out your wallet and try to pay in the local currency. Forget it. I've been there and I was almost starved except that someone was at the table who had an Alipay account. Wow, that's great. I haven't been there for a while, but obviously things are changing quite rapidly. You say a lot of countries are approaching you saying, you know, we desperately want to get involved. But I think that I was asking somebody here yesterday in terms of the rollout time, it's, of course, going to vary quite substantially. What are the main issues and challenges that they're going to be facing? The main first issue is they've got to realize that this is not just a matter of setting up a computer in the basement that's going to spit out new digital notes instead of physical notes. A central bank digital currency operation involves beefing up IT operations and cybersecurity. We hear about all these hacks. We'll imagine a hack of that computer that generates the bank notes. It would be the ultimate in counterfeit because you could create billions of dollars or whatever currency overnight. So there's all sorts of infrastructure issues that have to be considered. In fact, in my presentations I often show what we call a circle of life for cash. And that usually involves printing money, designing money, shipping it out to banks and distributing it and ultimately destroying it when the bills are old. And then beside it I have a circle of life for a digital currency and it looks an awful lot the same. There's a counterpart to almost everything you do on a cash operation that you have to do in the digital side. And in a way the cost balance is different in cash. It's a lot of physical type expenses, transportation, printing. On the digital side it's sort of on the other end of the circle which is the things like the IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and so on. So what's the, in terms of trust you mentioned of course people, individuals are going to be quite concerned. You mentioned the circle of money, paper, money that's obviously being created and then eventually having to be destroyed if they haven't been hiding it under the bed, etc. But in principle is it digital financial inclusion that's going to be the biggest incentive or is it going to be something else? I think the most compelling case is for the inclusion aspect. Even though we know some of the advanced countries are looking at it, China, Canada and Sweden and so on and of course they're not going to come into us for this technical assistance I mentioned so that's maybe another reason why I sort of put them aside. And so the countries that are coming to us are looking at the financial inclusion angles being the primary one for them. In one case for instance Uruguay they've done an actual pilot and one of their motivations was that the population wasn't being served well by the existing banks and in effect the central bank is looking, this is a way of giving a little prod to the banks. So actually a successful implementation of a central bank digital currency there may not be massive take up of central bank digital currency but it could be that the banks will step up to the plate and start offering digital services to their clients. And then finally in what areas of digital currency are standards required for central banks and how do you think that the output of the focus group that you've been involved with the digital fiat currency focus group could help or ITU in general in fact could help to bridge the standards gap? Well most of the thinking to this point for us has been about what we call retail central bank digital currencies to be used domestically only. They're not intended to be used outside the country. But we look to the next stage where other adjacent countries or trading partners are also joining the party and there's also countries that are very tourism oriented. They've got people coming in that want to exchange their digital currency for that country's digital currency. So some degree of interoperability is required I think for that future world. So why not now build towards that future by building standardization into central bank digital currencies so that when you move up beyond the domestic only CBDC that you're ready to interoperate with other countries. And so in that case that's where the work we're doing here at the ITU is really important because we're moving towards that standardization because other individual central banks aren't terribly motivated to standardize. They just want to get something out the door that suits their needs. But we're the guys that say wait a minute let's do this properly. Let's try to build as much commonality as possible in our products so that some years down the road when we've got these vibrant central bank digital currency ecosystems in our countries we're ready to link up with others. Thank you very much for joining us today in the studio and sharing some very valuable insights and we hopefully will catch up with you again in some stage in the very near future. Thanks Max. Thanks a lot.


The Thoughty Autie podcast. What is it, babe? I think something that you mentioned was, like, um, like you had a lot of kind of behavioral modification, like to do with, like, all remote issues, which is something that... Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, thank... Yeah, no, I remember that. So, um, when I was five, that's when... That's why they started taking me to the, um, to the doctor when I was five. This is how ADHD in my brain is. You asked me what happened between, like, when I was five and got depressed until, like, I got out of it, and so my brain doesn't count the time before that, which was when they were going through the behavioral modification, because that's what caused me to reach to that depressive state and then shut down and, you know, internalize all that and be overwhelmed, because, um, that's what they were doing. Like, you know, I was existing as a person with autism and ADHD, and they would, yeah, and they would stop me from being the way that I am, telling me that I'm bad, telling me that it's wrong and that it can't happen.   And then I started to actually bite my knuckles themselves until they were wrong, would bleed, and then, you know, that wasn't okay, obviously, and now I'm back in therapy, then I start pulling my hair out, and, you know, now that's not okay. And so then now I'm literally just internalizing everything, you know. They're trying to like remove all of these coping mechanisms that you have that, you know, necessarily probably might not be good, but they're not like adding in anything for you to use, like. Exactly.  And so, you know, all that anxiety over stimulation and, you know, due to the diagnosis is, you know, caused me to start to need, you know, an outlet because right part of what's, I wouldn't say wrong, but part of what we struggle with is regulation and staying regulated, and our bodies don't do it naturally. So we need a physical outlet for it, whether it's like or a motor or, you know, like my fidget that I've been messing with this whole time or, you know, taking a sip of a drink, just we need something external to help us to help us to regulate and bring things to a manageable, homeostasis level. And so that's when I started to bite my nails, because it was, you know, all too much.  When you were saying your story about that, I mean, it kind of brought up the chat that I had with another kind of autism advocate called Ortinell, and they were talking about like their habit, their stim of like sucking their thumb. And that was, you know, all these just in terms. Sometimes that can be not so great in terms of dental development, you know, pushy front teeth, that was probably not a good idea, but like they just definitely didn't give them any ways to do things differently. They're not like, okay, they are all remote in need, so let's get them some two things or let's like, they must be experiencing these sensory things. So maybe let's try and reduce the sensory or the like, the social stress that we've got on them. It's like, it's just never considered. It's like... Exactly. Humans do things for a reason quite often. Exactly. And that's honestly like one of the things I struggle with, you know, I love my family to death and you know, I talk to them, I don't hold them accountable because that's not really how you ever move forward in life. So the biggest thing that I struggle with is that they never once to themselves were like, nothing's working. Let's try something else. Like that kind of like what you said is like, you know, people don't just behave and act the way they do for no reason.  You never once asked yourself, hey, why don't we try something different? Why don't we go get re-evaluated? Why don't we, you know, ask him actually like what's going on instead of keep doing the same and telling him that he's, you know, all of these things and not really offering any help.