The splintermind history - as a novel

As I remember it - a kind of memory by Mikael Scherdin

NonTVTVstation - An Intro[1]

The nonTVTVstation case has its birth, struggle and finality over a period of ten years. Therefore, we are now trying to go back ten years in our minds, doing a countdown to travel back in time and space.

I will perform a countdown from ten. When I have reached zero, we will in our minds be in the year 1996. When reaching zero, we will switch places in an attempt to put you into my clothes. You will start seeing the case with “my eyes” and gaining your own understanding of what happened.

- I say ten.

We are now sitting on a train taking us back to 1996. Try to make yourself comfortable and take away the electronic distractions of the Internet, broadband, Skype and mobilephones ringing, and texts disturbing you. During the journey, which will take some time as trains always do, we will use the time for gaining a rough description of all the bits and pieces you need to fully enjoy the case.

- I say nine.

We have just started our journey, and have a long way to go. In fact I would say a very long way to go. We will use this time to stroll around and gain an understanding of the Swedish Art Arena in which the nonTVTVstation was residing. You will become acquainted with many actors, authorities and key people in the story. We will start to use our time by listening to the sounds of the train wheels on the rails, getting us into a travel mode and the necessary inner silence for reading the story. As we will see, the overall structure of the Swedish art arena is heavily dependent on public sector funding, coming from different channels like The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, The Swedish Artists Council and different national foundations like The Foundation for Culture of the Future and The Foundation for Knowledge and Competence. These funding structures are national but still we are living in an international environment, and we will see that the nonTVTVstation starts working with the Modern Museum of Sweden, the Modern Museum of Finland, Kiasma, and several other internationally highly respected contemporary art institutions and individuals like curator Benjamin Weil at Eyebeam in New York City and the Museum of Modern Art MoMa, San Francisco. We will also see that international opportunities and sponsorship from the IT boom through their cooperation with Telecom companies and accompanied by diminishing opportunities for the public sector funding of avantgarde art ideas. Despite its considerable success, particularly in the international sphere, nonTVTVstation is facing severe financial difficulties.

- I say eight.

You are now quite comfortable in your chair. You start feeling secure, the train is slowly gaining pace and you are beginning to reach a meditative state. You begin to think of who is running this train and where you are heading. I can say that we have gone some years back now, and my idea is to take you back there in this fashion with a remarkable story, a story that nearly, in the end, killed me after all the fun stuff in the arts, struggling with the domestic scene, context or whatever label is put onto it. I was close to the phenomena of Karoshi – the Japanese term literarily meaning, “death from overwork.”. Imagine you have an inner drive, needing to produce art pieces that you can’t handle or stop. In a way the art pieces are produced outside your control, they simply arrive in your head and demanding you turn them into reality. More and more I felt like a diagnose. It was a mess. Imagine that you are asked for and admired internationally but neglected locally. It was like living in a ten-year long paradox. In fact one of our final art pieces, shown at the World Expo in Nagoya at the Nordic Pavillion, was entitled “Ten Year Daydream”.

- I say seven.

You are now beginning to wonder about other levels of the art arena – what about the regional and local levels? And you are very insightful indeed; of course there are several actors like these in the fine-grained system of support for the arts. We have the Regional County of Stockholm and local authorities such as the City of Stockholm. You are now starting to get interested in those many names and putting them together in an initial rough pattern, previously quite unfamiliar to you. You begin to wonder if there weren´t individuals behind all those authorities and foundations.

- I say six.

Between 2000 and 2006, there were in fact a number of important people associated with the nonTVTVstation journey. One of them, Erik Åström, a manager at the National Council of Cultural Affairs, will pass by as an important person when the nonTVTVstation tried to connect, by broadband, transmissions of art directly to museums, live from the studio in Stockholm. In its humble simplicity, it was a TV-Studio using broadband cables for the transmission to a network of museums, indirectly paid for by the National Council. What about this broadband thing?

- I say five.

We are about halfway back to 1996, and about to pass the year 2000. It is in fact an extreme period of the IT economy. Ideas are highly prized and visions are important – the grander the better. Even some squibbling on a napkin could fund you a million or two. Nothing seems impossible and the pace of society is at a dizzying level. In this particular period of time, the nonTVTVstation survives by being in the melting pot of IT and the emergence of the Internet. The nonTVTVstation, in fact, manages to cooperate closely with companies like TeliaSonera, Panasonic and Stokab. TeliaSonera with people like Lasse Lindblad and Björn Landelius was at the centre of the development of broadband TV. The nonTVTVstation, together with TeliaSonera and a group of people around it, was developing what would later be known as Internet-TV. The nonTVTVstation was now a mixture of state of the art technology with its own TV-station technology, own production studio facilities, several employees running the activities, and a global, but narrow, network of contemporary musicians and artist.

It was running the world’s first Internet-based TV station, with a live production concept, 24 hours a day. The initial concept was to develop the concept into a subscription service for citizens to get live video art directly to private residencies.

We have here reached a peak in the development of nonTVTVstation, but need to go further back in history. Now perhaps you are thinking of what this place is? Perhaps you are trying to get an image of the place as such – what is this nonTVTVstation? An art space, an IT-space, or what?

- I say four.

The train is moving away from its previous peak around the year 2000, and we move our eyes into the studio of the nonTVTVstation. It is a studio in the nexus of state-of-the-art communication technology of the emergent Internet, supplied by high-tech corporate partners using the space as its test partner. The studio is a complex milieue of constantly evolving and changing interiors, different from one day to another, a super-dynamic setting with creative people, musicians, artists, technicians and scientists reorganizing the space into a moving space, a hybrid of a garage and hi-tech laboratory. Its reputation is now attracting people to the space, making it into something of a creative explosion. The studio has a mix of computers, low-tech analogue technology from the 1960s, egocentric musicians from the electronic music sector and a constant stream of artists with wild ideas in the new media art sector using cameras, videos, TV-sets and moving images as their working equipment. The studio is in practice, stacked with computers, video cameras, the latest telecom-equipment and whatnot.

But now I have to impose a question on you, are you not interested in knowing more about its beginnings further back in time, some more details of the start of crazy ideas? Relax. The train will take you there– all the way back to 1996.

- I say three.

You are now asking yourself, how did this nonTVTVstation start – why did it attract so many people and wild creators from so many different fields? Now we are back at the very birth of the idea behind the nonTVTVstation, the TV format if you wish.

We are in the year 1998, and the Internet is slowly coming out of the closet and into diffusing general knowledge among people, away from being a playground for pure technicians and into the hands of creators, like us. We –, Martin Thulin, Thomas Linell – are working together with no background in computers. In fact we have no knowledge at all about the Internet when the idea is discovered. If we can produce a video directly in the studio, why don´t we send it directly into the living rooms of citizens around the world? Why not become a studio serving otherwise empty screens to people’s homes with the painting of the next century? Paintings that are constantly changing, day and night, as dynamic flows of videos, subscriptions to Avant Garde Art directly into the living room without the need for going to the museum. But how do you produce a video that changes 24 hours a day, you ask?

- I say two.

We have now travelled far back in time and the train is now slowing down. We are about to reach our final destination, the seeds of the very art idea that created the nonTVTVstation, Randomstudio, Splintermind and all the other things connected to its existence. Really, the start was a mistake with a video camera coinciding with a teacher not showing up for a week at the art School. We were left alone and needed to work out for ourselves how to make a video. One of us just happens to direct the videocam connected to a TV-set, which is the common way of having a proper view of what you actually see in the video studio when editing a film or video. In other words, a TV-set is connected to the videocam as a screen to better “see what the camera sees”. What happens if we film the TV-screen, we ask ourselves? So we do. It becomes a loop: the TV and the videocam begin to create patterns and abstract images in an endless stream without the need of other input. It becomes a system of its own. The artist just needs to help the system to maintain its perfect dynamics. Okay you say – I understand – but what about the connection between an art idea and the distribution to citizens?

- I say one.

We are at the place and time where you will take the train back to the present again, but this time with a lot of details added. But first, a short description of the very first connection between the art idea and its distribution. In the art school setting there was no Internet. We are back in 1996 and the Internet, web, mail and surfing on the Internet are only becoming generally known and used. We have already hatched the idea of producing constant and evolving videos in an endless stream, but decided to stay away from making a “short movie” from it, to our minds, the concept its fragrance of being new at every single moment of its presence. We cannot record it on tape – we think then that the idea is gone. Recorded items are just a form of archive; we want to be more radical than that. By accident, I mention the idea to a doctor at the hospital I am involved in connection with another art project. He says: “There is a high-speed Internet connection between the different sections at this hospital. It is possible to send videos electronically somewhere else – live”. There it was, the seed to an idea that would occupy me and the nonTVTVstation group for about a decade!

- I say zero.

This is 1996 before the Internet, most of us are without mobile phones, and e-mail and texting does not exist for many. We are in a time without Internet communities and advanced computer games. We are at the beginning of the Internet revolution. You will now find yourself in my seat. My eyes are now yours. The following presentation will take you back to the present with a lot more details about the events and occurrences that were associated with the development and fate of an avant-garde concept.

nonTVTVstation

An artistic idea evolves into a work of art, the idea

becomes an art group, and the group initiates an IT

company on the contemporary art scene. International

success is accomplished despite increasing resistance

in Sweden.

The Artistic Idea, the Nexus and the Method (1996)

A powerful idea evolves during my art education in Visby, in a situation where our teacher in “video” is absent for a week, leaving us, the art students, more or less on our own. I and some others at the course have no idea how to use the video cameras and mixing equipment for producing art videos. Since we don’t know how to work it properly, instead of “mixing it”, as is usually done, we invent another way. We take the equipment apart to use it in the way which we think will best suit our creative process. During the next few weeks, a new way of working with video is created, the method that will lead us for almost ten years and nurture carriers, a company and the case you are just about to read. A piece of profound and highly experimental work is done in the studio during those two weeks. A number of art pieces take shape, and a method that is direct and live is discovered. The process is similar, to a certain extent, to that of the early video artists of the mid 1960s. The method becomes the very key to the art in creation. Until that time, an art video will have been approached mainly from the direction of film narration. Documents with ingredients or plots that are more radical, or have more artistic images involved, than in purely narrative movies. The art videos use images of a more abstract kind, are often much shorter, and have, in a narrative sense, an indirect way of leading the film forward. In general, one can say that the art videos produced are much shorter and look to work with the medium in a new way, rather than taking the traditional “narrative” approach through the spoken word. New technology also makes it possible to use rather cheap cameras to achieve fairly good results; results so good that it is possible to tell some sort of story using simple hand cameras. More experimental elements appear in the shapes of Lars von Trier and Peter Greenaway, both, in our opinion, future world names. Both are using a mixture of cheap camera equipment and professional equipment, to blur the boundaries between art film, video film and TV productions. They are consciously using blurriness and the shaky aesthetics that come with handy cams, along with a much wilder, very different form of expression which stresses other elements. What we are creating is a way of making video at the same time as it is watched. A performance-like way of working. Sounds and pictures mixed in real-time. Pictures become parts of collage videos, produced in the same instant they are watched by a viewer. A teacher points out that collage was a technique that made the establishment mad more or less exactly a hundred years ago. The establishment, such as the painted world, is challenged by new artists who don’t care about usual techniques and instead just start to cut and glue! She points out that this resembles that crack, except this time it is motion pictures.

We simply connect a lot of in-sources or video cameras, and use many mixer tables connected in series. This makes it possible to add video sources in many layers. In effect, all the in-sources of the cameras are added into one picture. Besides, video sources added upon one another, are a “now”.

So the video creations also become a system of machines, which can be said to work on its own. We soon discover that we can place different moving objects in front of one or more cameras, thus creating a moving video “film”. We are erasing the borders between the object and the work of art. Is it “the machine itself”, or what it shows, or….? The approach and the result of this are close to performance art, and to the sixties’ early video experiments made by world names like Nam June Paik and Steina Vasulka.

We understand that we will need to be unorthodox to be able to lift this discovery. We play around with thoughts of who would be interested in helping to develop these kinds of ideas. Early in the investigation process we start to see music, music videos and the artists of that world as possible recipients, rather than the actual art world. This is because there is an obvious point in getting sound to inflict picture in immediate synchronization, and also in the fact that we can, meanwhile, control this process.

We’re playing with the idea that this could be the ultimate tool for a techno group to produce a motion picture, at the same time as the live performance is going on. Teachers at the art school, seeing our way of working, ask what we “mean” and what our purpose with the videos is. We say that it is impossible to answer – it’s a flow. We are just doing, we continue, and we’re right in the event. We evoke a feeling in the very moment and we’re feeling utterly captured by the situation, beyond time and space, we conclude. Martin Thulin[2] (my colleague who will work with me for many years to come) and I are creating a working process, our own new vocabulary to understand the diverse abstract formations, and an intuitive understanding of this creation process. We talk less and less to each other in the studio. The work is running on its own, and the intuition guides us towards a deeper and deeper understanding of flowing video. We create a process for approaching the work. On one occasion, while producing the piece ”HEAD”, the sounds are so loud and the images so extreme, that we do not have any contact whatsoever during the whole production. We are recording a sequence live on the spot, without being able to, or even wanting to, talk to each other.

”HEAD” becomes a key piece of work.

I understand that we are approaching something of importance.

I clearly feel that this might be something like an artistic focus.

We are working hard for a long time and we succeed in creating a number of experimental pieces, fragments as well as something finished which could be called artwork. One of the teachers senses the extent of our work, and says “you could go on doing this for the rest of your lives.” We take this as just a typical cliché (Eva Trolin) but we have no idea how right she will prove to be. Martin assumes a thoroughly investigating role in the process, and works simultaneously with improvised music and video. As for me, I’m trying to focus on developing the image in the video further, as well as keeping as far away from the predominant art video conventions as possible.

I realise we will become extreme if we hang on to this track. That would be nice, I feel, and I do not think Martin would oppose it either.

Only extremes are good enough in our world.

We sniff at compromises and middle courses. If I have got clear role models, they are Constantin Brancusi and Morandi. Brancusi with his extreme view on shape, or maybe even rather Morandi, who spent his whole life painting still life in his own kitchen, more or less in a consistent grey-scale.

Extreme viewpoints which take time to develop, maybe a whole life, but that have a distinctive aftermath. We see mainstream as something nasty, and on one occasion Martin says that once you’ve started getting scholarships and resources for what you do there’s only one option; quitting. Our attitude is pure spearhead, without a thought of what the use of this would be or what it is any good for. We love the video-picture-flow that is created. Without one thought as to where it will lead, or to what “use” it could be. Is it a method, a way of working, and new works made every time, or what? Only the investigation is in focus. Everything else can wait until later. Definitions are for others. We become one with the works. We are completely absorbed by the process. We work manically, day and night. We turn the day around and work while others sleep. We sleep while Visby is awake. We manage to create the optimal environment, or rather we steer the unpleasant everyday away for the artistic flow to get the maximum amount peace to work. The work at the school and the compulsory courses receive less and less focus, which is just as well since most of the basic education is finished.

When we’re working, we need rooms as dark as possible, without any light reflections disturbing the sensitive live processes, which in turn risk creating disorder in the works. The picture flows are made in fragile rooms and are of an unstable type. Some kind of fully dynamic creations, extremely hard to steer. Part of the research process is our learning to steer ”unstable real-time processes”. To control dynamics, as little as possible; to make it stay, but to do as we want it to. It is difficult. Very difficult. The locales of the art school are constantly booked, and we’re having a hard time finding space to experiment. The solution is trying to reserve weekends and longer holidays.

Then we also have the option of using AV central equipment, which then can’t be borrowed since schools and similar institutions are closed. However, they also have a surprisingly good understanding of our work, especially Henrik, who helps us a lot. Through persistently asking, we get to borrow all sorts of equipment time after time. Luckily, they are situated next door to the art school.

An Artistic Idea on Distribution (1997)

At the beginning of the year, I am working on yet another art project, this time at the Visby Hospital. Using computer tomographic camera technique, I want to do a layer X-ray of myself, imitating the position of a famous Renaissance portrait. I get in touch with the chief physician at the radiotherapy department, who proves to be an art lover as well as being married to a writer of articles on art for one of Visby’s newspapers. The hospital possesses one of the most modern pieces of equipment in Europe, when it comes to managing digital images and internal image transmissions through fibre optical networks. The amount of information in a single X-ray picture is enormous, and the hospital therefore uses the capacities of computers and transmissions, and other knowledge of information management, all completely new to me.

During my work, the chief physician wants to see more of our work to be able to get the bigger picture. He is especially fascinated by our way of working with video. He is so fascinated that he asks about how it is meant to be shown.

- What do you mean? I ask.

- Well - if you can create the pictures live, couldn’t you show them live as well? Isn’t that the point? He asks.

- But that’s not possible is it? How do you mean? I ask.

- You know, here at the hospital we’re transmitting pictures and documents through our intranet, and it should be possible to show video in another location as well, through a server system.

The idea of showing video live in one place, at the same time as it is made in another place, is born. And so the idea of”instant distribution” is launched by the chief physician of a radiotherapy department at a hospital in Gotland. He applies his specific knowledge about image transmission

to our wanting to work with pictures live. He gives birth to the distribution idea. Right then, through my earlier studies of important events in art history, it hits me. I’ve read somewhere that through history there have been many glorious discoveries and stars, some of whom fade despite glory in their own time, while others are remembered hundreds of years later. I’ve read that these inventors, scientists and artists have not just added one new unique aspect to what already exists, but two or maybe three aspects.

Is this something with multiple layers?

Is this something with a greater explosive force, which can make it possible for the idea to reach further than the predominant mainstream? I suddenly feel that there are many unique potentialities on the track of this idea! How do I make the best use of this? While Martin and I work on the creation of several works, and on investigating diverse directions, we personally go two different ways. Martin works a lot more on the sound. He tries to create pictures in real-time, from the sounds or musical parts he composes. I, on the other hand, examine a more traditional direction with focus on the picture, often with sounds or music as a complement. Though I, like Martin, do want sound and picture to be perfectly synchronized.

They are to be one.

We also try to make a short film using the same technique. The basic material, or the “raw films”, is recorded at Visby airport in the winter. The piece is called “Follow me”. I play a figure walking very slowly, bare foot, along Visby airport without direction, goal, purpose or idea. It is very cold to walk without socks or shoes on the naked asphalt. The temperature outside is -10 ˚C and my feet get stiff after just a few minutes. After a number of retakes I sit down in the car, feeling very ill and dizzy. Back at the school I remain seated on the floor in the shower, utterly exhausted. I shower in hot, very hot water for hours. I am cooled down to the bone. Having grown up in Northern Sweden, there is nothing I hate more than freezing.

The shots are amazing.

Though we develop the short film till it’s finished, spending a lot of time on it, it is a side issue. It is a movie. A movie using our technique, but without the live aspect. During my time in Visby I often pass the art museum, (the County Museum), noting that many rooms are often left empty. Showrooms which could be used for art exhibitions, for example. Our headmaster believes that this is simply because the museum hasn’t got much money. A very expensive and seemingly uncontrolled renovation has crushed the whole museum so that they can’t afford the contents.

The museum itself - to express it diplomatically - does not exactly show any great innovations, but tries to do everything in budget. I get the situation, and propose that the art school, the composer’s college and the museum cooperate on ”experiments” being shown. The experiments are to be just that and not Artworks with a big “A”, that’s the whole point. Nothing too polished. The proposal is that we get an exhibition space while they get free exciting experiments. The name “Vacuumakuten” (”The Vacuum emergency”) is chosen and a series of minor exhibitions are produced.

Many exciting and innovative exhibitions by young artists-to-be are made. However, this is abruptly ended by KRO, Konstnärernas Riksorganisation (The Artists National Organisation) on Gotland. They’re complaining about not being asked or informed. They don’t turn to us or to the museum but to the headmaster of the art school who is himself a member of the board. The solution to this is that, for a while, we have a “council” consisting of the headmaster, the museum manager and some people from the art schools. The project loses all its freshness, is taken over by the museum manager, and we are outmanoeuvred. The project goes on with the same name, but with invitations from the museum. After a while everything becomes pretty confused.

The project is ended.

The rooms become empty again.

The time at the art school is coming to an end, and it is time to decide on the future. Martin succeeds in getting into the reputable Nordic Art School in Karleby. I myself am trying to find scholarships and further education where I can keep working with the ideas. Elisabeth Edlund, head of Film on Gotland, having seen my work gives me several scholarships. She also writes a letter of introduction that I can use in my application to the Experimental Film School in Gothenburg. She believes that my and our works are important. She knows ”film” more than art, but understands that there is something unique about my/our work. Elisabeth finds that it doesn’t resemble anything she has seen lately, except maybe Disney’s ”Fantasia” from the 1950s.

I receive a message saying I made it to the third round of student admissions to the Experimental Film School in Gothenburg. I get notices to attend tests and interviews along with many applicants. I think we are 20 of 200 applicants to get this far.

Extremely nervous.

The tests and the interviews go fine. And still the answer at the end is that I am way too independent. They believe I will be difficult to have in a group and that I have too many ideas, and they also find it hard to see why the picture in film should be developed and not the dialogue. I am furious and tell them that in that case I am not at all interested, since I realise that these teachers are all ”film”, and are unlikely to care about spearhead experiments. Staffan Lamm, speaking to me on the phone, hints that there have been disagreements behind the decision, but that I am considered too irregular. My impression is that he at least has been working for my being the right person, but has had everybody against him. Between the lines I understand that they do not want anybody who could challenge their own (documentary) film world. I get a feeling that the profile is meant to be below my level of ambition. A profile set by old filmmakers rather than by experimentally (artistically) aiming people. It is a huge disappointment. I have really had great hopes about the Film School. In my view, it is after all the one place in Sweden that could have created a possible path for me. The disappointment is severe since I can’t see who will understand if they don’t. I also lack a physical room for creating and all equipment, but thanks to contacts on Gotland I can keep working there from time to time while living in Stockholm. Between the creative periods on Gotland I am walking in an utter vacuum. Time after time I fall into the mire of depression. Into endless black holes without possibilities. An endless indolence. I start trying to cure this myself though, prescribing equally endless walks. I am reminded of Ingmar Bergman’s good advice, to keep the demons away through long walks in bad

weather. I follow his example. I’ve already experienced that this is great medicine for the restless thoughts in an overly creative, hot brain.

When the chaos appears, an immense number of threads create themselves and flutter and elude. Mostly in the night. I try to put the threads in their places, work through it while walking all over Stockholm’s streets and squares. I often set the alarm to wake me up, thereby effectively forcing me out on excursions that are miles and miles long and last for whole days. I often walk the same set route, from Aspudden where I live to Stockholm’s city centre, hover about the central parts and then go back home again. I walk in never-ending tracks for whole days at a time. What is the context of the unique? Where can I find like-minded people? Where are there other practitioners and visionaries working in a similar direction?

After months of brooding a certain realisation has grown that I am outside the structures, and so I begin to think a little about other possible ways. More and more I understand that there are no real choices here.

I have to start walking on my very own. If the idea is unique and if, on top of this, there are, several layers on one another, communication is going to be difficult. I see this. Maybe I will have to come up with a path of my own? I’m thinking a lot about this, going my own way to create the truly unique. It may take time, I’m thinking, but if anything is to become unique I must let it take its time.

During the autumn and winter of ‘97, I work on multiple fronts to get my ideas across. I’m working on multiple fronts with several possible paths leading forward. I feel that even if I want to go my own way, this might to a certain extent have to be controlled by opportune and short-term elements to reach a long-term goal. Different parallel paths may have to be tried, to see if one single strategy will be more rewarding and last longer. I have much to learn and new contacts need to be built. Yet naïve, as I’ve always been, in my beliefs that a unique idea will always gain a foothold, I’m working more and in a more target-oriented way. Through the interviews at the Experimental Film School, I’ve understood that it is crucial to find a good context of like-minded individuals. One group or several groupings. I constantly keep an eye out for similar ideas on television, in the media, in art and film contexts.

The only artist who in some way strikes a tone and in some respects feels close is Peter Greenaway, particularly because of his experimenting in the film ”Prospero’s books” which deeply influenced my mind a few years earlier. I saw it several times at Fyrisbiografen in Uppsala where I was doing research training. I took a classmate with me once, but he didn’t understand anything. It seems like my world is far ahead of everybody else in society, or at least that it’s a parallel world in this specific area. A world which is obviously also in the minds of others, but to me those people are unreachable stars on the sky of art, as they are not easy to get in touch with. I play with the thought of contacting Peter Greenaway. I track down his address but I don’t dare to do it. Instead I go back to my own road, because if I met him what would I say?

I’m attempting to meet camera manufacturers, since with this unique technique of ours we are in need of many cameras to perform the experiments. I visit technical fairs and look for funding to create a studio with possibilities like the ones I had earlier, through the Art School. Film on Gotland, through Elisabeth Edlund, lets me return. I make sure, through the local Cultural Workers Agency, to create opportunities for her to make room for a trainee post. Then I can use this post, which makes it possible to finish a number of important tracks. Among other things, I develop several short film ideas further. Manuscripts that are finished but undeveloped.

They’re about some experiences from my childhood and still feel too raw to become static artistic objects of any kind. I am also creating necessary references to be able to proceed with my work.

On 15th November I go to see a concert with ”Prodigy” at the Globen Arena. Amazing. Completely to my taste. I’m standing among teenagers gaping at me as if I was from the parents’ association. For a moment the strobe lights twinkle hysterically at a sign on the rink. I think it reads ”Solna B Offset” but the strobe light makes only “B Off”[3] noticed. The name B Off is born. It feels totally right.

To put oneself on the side of things goes perfectly with my intentions. It also goes along with the question that I, a few years earlier, had the opportunity of asking the philosopher Carl Henrik von Wright at a seminar in Stockholm. I asked this thinker that if you wish to change something in society without getting swallowed by the system and work from inside it, and yet not isolate yourself completely as a statement by living in a cottage in the woods….

….is there any other way? I asked.

“Place yourself on the side.

Or maybe rather: place yourself by the side”, he answered.

And so B Off becomes a working title in the process of creating a new type of art. It feels comforting. The ideas Martin and I have all cross the borders between art, music, performance and recent technology. It really is an impossible combination, but this very fact just makes it more appealing. Through my earlier studies I understand (unlike many of my classmates) that this may, on the contrary, be the key to success for me. I’m older than all the others, and my only chance to get into the art world will be to create something new in fields where few or none have been before. All other areas I suppose will already have been created, occupied and filled with strong structures. I am also of the nature that I can scarcely find it interesting to just add a little to something existing. It is not to my taste.

I want to change the world, anything less would probably feel petty. I want to destroy all slow-wittedness, conventions and stiff structures slowing down the dynamics in society. I am driven by a type of inner anger, wanting to demolish old structures.

The sentence I hate the most is ”…it won’t work…”. I often wonder where this aversion to order comes from. I soon realise that I love the new, the changes, and that I often look scornfully on given structures and – naturally - hate nostalgia. I create a device which I think should become a guiding star into the future.

Everything new is good – everything old is boring.

When I’m done with the studies and the intermediate process of scholarships at Film on Gotland, I move back to Stockholm permanently. I have an idea; to distribute art directly to people in their homes, live, with a sort of subscription. No contacts. No money. Since I have recently moved here from Nothern Sweden, and I have no friends or connections that could help with necessary contacts, almost immediately I start unwinding the possibilities I think might exist. “Capital of Culture 1998”[4] is one, and is just coming up. I’m trying to present a few ideas to a project manager, Felippe Legros. Another track I’m working on is Riksutställningar, (National Exhibitions). The one that first gives response is Felippe Legros. Though the initial interest seems to fade in a never ending line of - in my view - peculiar meetings. At each meeting new questions are aimed at me. Before the next one I always make sure I do my homework, hoping that this time we will reach an understanding. But time after time Felippe plays his tricks on me. He is slippery as an eel, raising completely new issues and problems every time we meet. After five project meetings of this kind, the process starts feeling really complicated and troublesome.

I even manage to get permission from the National Road Administration and other authorities responsible for the city area where my installation would be placed, but Felippe arrives unprepared and uninitiated to the ensuing meetings. After a process lasting perhaps six months, I am suddenly told that the money has run out but that if I want to I may do all the work by myself, and in exchange get one line in a flyer. He smiles broadly and seems to honestly think that this is a great offer. Not only does he think it’s great, he also appears to believe in it.

He thinks that”the publicity” I will get from this will lead to many tremendous future opportunities for me. I take offence to this. He does not seem to understand that this is exploitation. Nor does he appear to reflect upon the big administrative structure they have created and how much this costs. This is really growing on me.

After yet another meeting with Riksutställningar and their exhibition manager Magnus af Petersens, I understand that they too have a hidden agenda and are really quite

uninterested in external impulses. It is true that I am met by a certain curiosity at the first meeting, and a small hope is lit; that my idea could be made into a travelling exhibition at public baths throughout Sweden. My idea is that most remote villages in the countryside have public baths, but very rarely have a cultural institution of their own. This is simply art in an unexpected manner, in an unexpected place, for the people. I think this idea is brilliant, and that it also ought to suit an institution like Riksutställningar. It should be right on the spot within their mission.

At the following meeting a team of those interested has been gathered, a potential production team. It feels really nice that more people have joined to discuss and perhaps strengthen my embryo with more ideas. Though the meeting will soon prove to leap in a completely different direction. Many people, many points of view. More points raising more questions. It feels like, now we’ve been talking for a while and a number of people have cross-examined me on all the details, they were searching, and now finally have a common conviction: this will be difficult. Nobody has done anything like this before. People are feeling insecure. It feels like the ”meeting” is pleased to be sure about one thing. Sure about not being sure. This gives a good ground for making a decision.

I try contacting them again but just like with Legros, things seem to be slipping in the wrong direction. The more I am asked to explain my ideas, the more new questions arise. My ideas are just a path to more and bigger question marks and dimmer eyes among them.

I’m starting to feel insulted. Not by them saying “no”, but by nothing being said. Something is being kept from me. These two odd processes confuse me. What are they telling each other when I’ve left the conference room?

To me everything seems to be a game, about clear yet unsaid ”nos”, always without the organisation formally saying no. It feels like these institutions and major project organizations have their own agendas, creators not included, but with a completely different focus. A focus on themselves. It becomes clearer and clearer to me that these organizations have a life on their own terms. They’re disengaged. A life on its own. Ideas from outside it appear to be seen as weird.

I get the feeling that they “have to” allow a few creators into the meetings so it will look like they are indeed seen as interesting. Maybe they have to meet some sort of statistics, I’m thinking. Maybe the system demands that certain quotas be filled. Everything seems to be made up beforehand. The meetings become more and more like a game, a show for the galleries, to make the masses believe that there is a chance. I’m not really getting any information or answer at all. What’s unravelling is just a more and more boring process without a purpose.

I feel like an alibi.

Cat and mouse.

Fooled.

I decide to start trusting myself and my ideas to a greater extent, and to run my own process even though I may be without money or connections. A process which may even mean I will have to develop the ideas all by myself, without getting any help from institutions in the area. On 9th October a Sound and Picture Fair is held at Sollentunamässan. I go there to try and learn things in my new area. I’m greedily strolling about all the technical solutions. A new world. At first everything is hard to understand, it is really a trade meeting itself. I am certainly an outsider. Somebody without a wallet is not really the first priority as prospective salesmen try to flog expensive technical solutions. I suppose my clothes don’t signal any great purchasing power either. The dress code probably does not match at all. Despite this, I manage to get in touch with two companies which would later prove to be very interesting. One of them is STV, a media company providing various technical solutions within sound and video. The other is Karlberg and Karlberg, a retailer of advanced technology for multimedia solutions.

I make contact with Peter Lilja who would come to be an important figure to us. Parallel to acquiring knowledge of a number of fields, I also try and create new works. I get the option of working for Elisabeth Edlund in the summer on a film manuscript. ”Bubblan”, (”the Bubble”) comes into being. A children’s film which exists as a complete manuscript, but which I don’t take any further.

During the autumn I’m helping out a little at film on Gotland in exchange for getting opportunities to create a number of new experiments. Among other things the works ”Dubbla Vyer” (”Double Views”), resulting from earlier studies in philosophy. I’m trying to have two views simultaneously of the same work. I’m also trying to raise funds by writing applications to Framtidens Kultur (Culture of the Future) and Konstnärsnämnden (The Artists Council). They’re all turned down. I realise I need to change my tactics. Something new needs to be added on this front as well, but what? During the autumn and winter I’m gradually cutting myself out of Gotland, and try to be more and more target focused in building a concept, knowledge and a new network around what I want to do. Through seeing that the idea is on multiple levels; distribution, a new way of working in the studio and new technique, I see that it all has to be put together as a whole of some sort. And I think Stockholm is the place to be.

Attempts to Establish a Network (1998)

I move back to Stockholm with the intention of starting an art project based on my ideas from Gotland. I peel off all the ideas except one. One single idea. Not to risk becoming an ”alibi” again, I’m trying to work in a different way. Having been confronted with obvious resistance twice, with KRO on Gotland as well as with Riksutställningar, I decide to develop everything from scratch. Besides, nothing else would be possible, since I believe that the original idea on Beeoff carries the greatest long-term potential. I understand that this is going to be a hell of a job but I accept the challenge, knowing in my heart that this is unique and that it is right in contemporary focus. All the magazines, the fast birth and growth of the IT companies, the whole big future focused mentality - in Sweden in general and Stockholm in particular, convinces me that the timing is perfect. It is to be seen daily in newspapers that IT ideas are getting millions to be developed. For a while I consider presenting my ideas to investors as one pure business idea, but I feel pressured by the fact that in the same instance I do this, the artistic values will lose their credibility. It will basically be a venture project, not built on art. Business and company plans are developed, but I never carry then out since it feels deeply wrong and also because I don’t have the right connections. I also don’t feel ready for constructing a company that was not why I entered the art world. Besides, the ideas feel way too unfounded, not safe enough to be launched. The focus is on the artistic development of the idea, but I promise myself that sometime in the future this will be a company so that we can live from the ideas.

I feel a strong need for autonomy. I believe that a company generating its own receipts is a better answer to this request than an allowance structure. Though I keep fairly quiet about this. I keep these lines of reasoning mostly to myself.

I know how the talk goes in the art world, and what is considered right, wrong and acceptable. To talk in terms of business is not acceptable.

I really think that it does not actually matter from where funds come. Nothing is better than anything else. Money is money. I think money is just not yet realised ideas. Or, as Aristotle would have put it ”…in every seed there lies a potential tree…”. I agree. In money lies a potential realisation. Though I am all the time striving towards the independence, or pride if you like, which lies within one’s own generation of money. An independence from structures, they might be investors, institutions or companies.

I want to show them all.

At the beginning of January a first meeting is held with Emma Stenström and Madeleine von Heland, whom I have met during my doctoral studies. I have a complicated marketing idea about how to launch an idea, an art piece or an organization. I want to create a myth. A myth about ourselves. We have an interesting meeting, discussing many ways of doing this. One of the most important clues for creating a myth is, according to Madeleine, to build contradictions into it. A (novel) character, a project and perhaps art works are in need of this. In order to be remembered as “mythical”, at least one, and perhaps more, contradictions have to be included. There has to be a contradiction or inconsistency in the depiction or the actions.

I embrace this.

It feels like an important clue, though I don’t really understand how to use it in practice. My idea with this meeting is also to try and get Madeleine and Emma involved in creating this myth or organisation. Perhaps in the shape of a steering group, advisors or similar. I lack people to bandy ideas with. However, the meeting takes another direction where both Emma and Madeleine are busy in careers and art projects of their own.

I move on, trying to create a stronger network around the idea locally, in Skärholmen, where the ideas and the infrastructure (IT structure) are. I’ve looked into the IT structure of the different districts, and come to the conclusion that Skärholmen is ahead of the others. Through a number of meetings with IT technicians, civil servants and the district president in Skärholmen, the work towards starting up a ”real” platform proceeds. There are quite a few problems, but they’re more of a practical nature. By practical I mean that the two people I have with me, an IT technician and the district’s culture manager, are trying to dribble my expenses (costs) away instead of raising funds. They realise that it is hard to do this at local level.

But the costs for the computer, telephone and even the rent disappear into other cost accounts. That’s all fine. Actually it makes a fairly big difference to me. I am preparing, studying and handing in many applications to foundations, funds, Stockholm City and the County Council in Stockholm. The major part of my time is taken up with writing. The applications are handed in, slanted to show that we wish to create a new art base for un-established artists using new technique in new ways to reach a new audience.

A thought within this, which my background has given me, is the lack of all contemporary culture and impulses that comes with being born in the countryside, to be outside and excluded from all that’s interesting, from where things happen. This is a nagging thought within my ambitions. I see the potential to change this with new IT technology. It will become possible to send art, videos and pictures directly into homes, into places, directly to people who might never see a National Stage in Stockholm. The other built-in intention is to try and be as unbound as can be possible to traditional categories. A width crossing all the borders of art is needed to move this project forward.

I soon get in touch with Per Mårtensson, a composer working at the Composers College on Gotland. He proves to be a key person in extending the network. I also take in the fresh idea that there is a lot to obtain from the music area, for a simple reason. Composers and musicians had been working with synths (in a way a kind of ”analogue” computer) since the 1960s, and then rapidly moved on to computers for their music composing. By now most is conducted and performed(!) in and through computers. Because of this there are no conceptions of good/bad or resistance towards the new tools within the music society. The idea of IT and computers is completely natural in their world. Here is a natural support, as well as creational tools. Per enters the picture as an advisor and through him I also gain Sven-David Sandström as a supportive signature on various papers. For several years, Per Mårtensson works as an active support for my thoughts. At first active practically, and then later on as a working unit in the up-coming council as well. Since he is not exactly in my own art territory, he feels easy to talk to. He also thinks very freely, and has apparently already been talking to many composers trying to work in a similar direction.

I write a fairly extensive ”business plan” and send it to (the big telephone company) Telia, as a venture proposal. I do not really have any great expectations about what this will lead to, considering the size of Telia. But I will need to have web connections to make the transmissions, I’m thinking.

I’m not asking for anything in particular in this business plan, I’m, rather, just trying to explain what I want to do, and I enclose a letter saying I want to get in touch. Time passes and I forget all about it.

One night a person from Telia calls me at home. My first thought, when I notice how outspoken he is about Telia, is that this man is either exactly the one I’m looking for or a total maniac sitting in the wrong place. I am stunned by his criticism of Telia, and it is tricky to have this conversation since I’m not sure of his position. We soon meet over a beer in southern Stockholm, and he tells me that there is a research network with extremely high speed transmissions. A network which is just now trying to interconnect different content activities. “We have to have something to play about with”, seems to be his motto. We get along well, though I don’t really understand what these people are working on. Their lab is called S-Lab, and their research network is called Internet 42. Parallel to the anchorage meetings in the cultural sphere, there is this frantic activity in trying to create a technically possible commercial plan which makes Telia accept that we are connected into their network.

I trust my key person at Telia, the one connection I have there. He is called Lasse Lindblad and is the boss of the lab (S-Lab). I use him as my stepping stone in trying to create a realistic technical structure. He indirectly also becomes an important portal to get to other operators of this trade, and we learn things about technique and technical possibilities through him. We’re not sure whether we should take purely commercial measures. I’m feeling split like a donkey between two bundles of hay.

I develop a double way of talking to the different camps, and I decide to just let this road take me where it pleases. Neither Martin nor I have ever worked with computers before, neither of us even knows how to e-mail, and we have even less idea about how to transmit pictures over the Internet. Though I am convinced that this will all work out, with all the companies and our budding contacts with Telia. The technical skills we need to obtain are plenty. We have no idea about where to find them.

They can be arranged into five diverse parts.

(a) How do we start up a producing structure in the studio?

(b) How do we obtain transmission possibilities in the studio?

(c) How do we connect this to the Internet?

(d) How will the transmissions occur between us and the people watching?

(e) Who will watch and how, using what?

The positive initial contact with Telia is good, that’s true, but through the course of events it will prove to take a long time before anything concrete comes about. To start with it is just good to have a major name to refer to, so I can get the snowball rolling. B Off is started in a small conference room at Skärholmens District Administration. An enthusiastic IT manager has understood that the Internet webs can be used for much more than was first intended. The different unit managers are looking slightly confused, as if asking what the hell this is about.

Most of them seem to be thinking; ”…my God, why are we discussing this when we’ve got things like unemployment, problems with integration and so many other bad things here…”.

A stake in art on the Internet, in Skärholmen?

A sort of virtual art showroom?

The meeting, or the anchorage work, is actually going quite well, since we are not presenting any expenses but just asking for a place to be and some kind of address. Most of the managers keep fairly quiet and show neither ambitions nor a profile. Our first address is B Off C/o The District

Administration, Bodholmsplan 1, Skärholmen. Within the actual habitats of this District Administration, we are temporarily situated on the fifth floor. The first very important factor which has often felt so burdensome …we have an address, and we have a phone number which is not our home number.

Slightly more professional, even if it is far from having a place for doing any actual work.

Having gained an initial basic understanding as well as an interim address, I keep up the work with developing and understanding “how” things are to be produced in the studio. It is not entirely simple to figure out how one ”sends video” through Internet. We decided early on that everything we’re transmitting is to be happening ”live”, and at present this is an extreme challenge. This is the very aspect that makes Telia interested in supporting the project. They do not want to work with what’s possible (“We’ll leave that for TeliaResearch”, Lasse Lindblad acidly says.); they want to do that which is not considered possible. Via Lasse Lindblad we get a certain insight into the type of manufacturers on offer.

It is soon clear that their specialist areas are, naturally, ”communication” through different kinds of cables. And so we are once again left in the lurch when it comes to studio technology. I’m trying my luck calling various companies, TV, computer firms, consultative businesses, but no one has any ideas about how to transmit live over the Internet. A tiresome grind is started on the Internet, to try and find out ”how” this is supposed to happen. A US company, RealNetworks, comes up, that has for some time been ”streaming” sound through a sort of web radio or file radio. Players or reception tools exist, but how to create the files? And worse, how to move on from making simple files to sending live? I contact the leading companies selling computers with a higher performance, those that can manage demanding processes. Intergraph and Silicon Graphics are contacted. Both these companies have powerful machines. Intergraph jumps at the problem, but none of them are willing to let us have the machines we think we need. Nor do they have a clue about ”how” to use the machines for conducting a ”live stream”. To my surprise this field is very specialised. Few people have an overview. Most are specialists, and this makes the answers hard to get at, even when one has found machines or software that’s fairly suitable.

During the year, an intense undertaking is performed on many different levels and in different directions, and diverse tracks are investigated. Applying for funds from different institutions, working through the trade economy, attempting to create an artistic network. Working out a plan for some quality anchorage to please scrutinizing parties. I’m working on every possible level at once, simultaneously.

In several meetings with the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence[5], the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs[6], and representatives of the County Council and the District Authorities, there is always talk about the importance of ”diversity and to not shut any operators out so that this becomes like one financed club”, ”the importance of multiple operators in the cultural arena”, and the importance of ”artistic quality”. The first one feels pretty basic since the openness is part of the actual idea. It is built on the very idea of the Internet. The second one is a bit more tricky, since I sense that they are looking to formalize and want ”famous names” that can work as guarantors. This is a bit alien to me, since when I’m talking to representatives of, for example, the Culture Council and Stockholm City Culture, I expect them to have insight as well as being the main authority on the issue. That is; they can make decisions. These three directions of the instructions are contradictive. Meeting the Culture Council and other institutions, it appears between the lines and grows on them when we meet; they can’t really label what we’re doing. I get the strong impression that the label is more important than anything else. This feels utterly odd to me.

Time after time they’re asking what the difference is from two other similar projects. One is a collective workshop for new media, CRAC, and the other is a sort of art producer place that has received big money, more precisely 6-8 million, “from above” to create a spot for the new. They have managed to receive a combination of governmental, local and private foundation funds. These projects have appeared out of the initiatives of certain individuals, who have had the opportunity of anchoring the ideas before starting the actual projects.

CRAC is a kind of collective workshop in an old well-known manner, the difference being that it concentrates on new techniques. ArtNode is built on the idea that artists pay to get ”the new” done, like a web page or video productions that might be put on web pages. ArtNode also tries to elevate them by working with Moderna Museet (the Modern Museum of Sweden).

The issue comes up every time we meet; what is the difference? You get the feeling that they are writing on a sort of whiteboard, which they then wipe clean as soon as you’ve left the office. Same questions the next time…..and though we are a completely different type of project idea - we’re building the idea of a virtual art showroom – all the time we are compared to CRAC and ArtNode. The major difference I experience is that we ”come from below” while they’re from above, with all the polished manners it takes to sail really high. Again and again at meetings it becomes obvious that the civil servants do not find us, the project managers, ”established enough”, we’re not “names”, and might therefore not represent any quality in their eyes? That’s how it feels. A boring attitude. As an idea we are not questioned. As being good or bad art we are not questioned. Instead, I get the feeling that we are questioned based on the amount of “fame”.

They suggest we contact more established people, such as Michael von Hausswolf (at a meeting with the KK foundation), who is at the moment on everybody’s lips.

We ignore this completely.

It is opposed to our own budding underground culture! It would be like having a fifth columnist in our own construction! Can’t they see this? This is so not our thing, and we also fear that ”the established individual” would get all the attention. Who would end up on the cover of the culture pages if - against all expectations - a feature would be written about us in the near future?

Me? Martin? No, obviously an established person already in the media would be pictured. Our whole thought is about getting new interesting artists, in a new field using new technology. The idea is to be one of the first exhibition places for these people. NOT to let old established artists profit from what we are building with so much effort. At another meeting they’re even suggesting we should ”merge” with some of the projects, since we ”are so similar” (Stockholm City). Wouldn’t it be great for us to move in with, for example, ArtNode at Skeppsholmen? At a later meeting with the Culture Council, instead, they dare to suggest that it might be a good idea to have Peter Hagdahl in our board, since he is a professor at the Royal Art College and also chairman of CRAC.

My way of manoeuvring in this dilemma is to appoint an ”artistic council” of interesting people who can bring in new ideas, suggest artists and broaden our minds, while this also removes the “quality problem” (which seems to worry many bureaucrats) from the agenda.

Almost the entire year of 1998 is spent anchoring this new project on every possible level. An immense amount of time is spent on trying to figure out how the systems operate. Who can be influenced through lobbying, who is opposed to this, who is to be influenced etc. This is a vast job and I’m taking it very seriously. I don’t want to step on anybodies toes. I’m starting off with a sort of home-made strategy. I’m simply calling every authority, foundation or institution, asking for a meeting with the person I believe to be suitable. I decide beforehand to give correct information to the one I have identified as decision maker. Furthermore, I decide not to try and influence committees, boards or others; that is to avoid working on a second line as well. I want to have a limit, so I want fall into a compromising hole later on. I know that the ideas will become popular some day. I think it would be unethical. Against my principles. I strongly believe that the idea creates the possibilities.

I want a just process of work, and I trust the system. Though, it soon shows that the decision process in the cultural system is not transparent at all. It is on the contrary a swarm of characters, people with opinions and without formal authority, appearing at all the meetings.

There are also often pundits on all levels giving advice, who think that they have reasonable insights or just want a chat. Some of these bureaucrats in the cultural establishments want us to contact other institutions. Why don’t we contact NUTEK[7] or ALMI[8]? My eyes turn empty.

No way.

Despite what some people might think, I have actually been in touch with them a few years earlier. None of them understood anything at all at that time. And if I may generalise, I have to say; the knowledge of the IT and New Media areas are not exactly deep. Not to mention the knowledge that might exist at these institutions, in combination – this, I understand, would be almost impossible. I see this as a complete waste of time. I let go of that track a long time ago. Not because they can’t see what we want, I can accept that in some way. No, I think it is unacceptable because no cultural bureaucrat would come up with the absurd idea of sending, for example, a new dance performance to NUTEK or ALMI! I wonder what the director in question, Kristina Lugn for instance, would tell the media? Would it be possible to watch Kristina Lugn’s new unique idea – by ALMI?

All these opinions and good advice in so many directions mess things up for me, since I can never know who is really in charge and who is to be trusted. Is it the civil servant, the unit manager, the managing director, the director general, the board, or could it be the political layer which is often present, that makes the final decisions? Or does this vary from case to case? The simple reason for wanting ”the right person” to get the material is that the aims and activities of Beeoff / nonTVTvstation are very hard to relate. It is more or less impossible for one civil servant to present the matter in, let’s say; 5 minutes, thus receiving the answer he/she/we want(s). There are no similar organisations or cases. So within which frame of reference, file, box or headline would we appear, in a presentation for a politician or director general?

On the business side of matters, the case is more simple. At the first connection you either get a YES or a NO. If you get no, you might just accept that, though I, on several occasions, move on within the hierarchies or switch to one of their competitors. The processes are much more simple. When someone bites at what you have, the cards are open. The costs are looked into as well as the potential profits for the company. In each separate case, I try to study ”everything” about the company to try and create an angle to their taste. I sometimes use ”sponsoring” as an argument, but it often has a bigger effect to present “a big issue that no one has done before”. We’re the first to do this. We’re onto something new. We can become one of those garage companies creating happiness. This makes several operators support what I want.

The meetings with Telia proceed, steps are slowly but steadily taken. We meet frequently during this year and speak a lot over the phone. I often ring Lasse Lindblad to ask about this or that. I get close to him, and through him to the S-Lab as well. A lab consisting of only five people, but which has made big turn-ups in the media. Their profile is very high, they’ve created a ”Carte Blanche Mandate” for themselves within Telia, and report directly to the Group Director, Marianne Nivert. Their internal position is very strong. They can do practically anything and question anything. I think this is what makes us so suitable for one another. Two small organisations, on a mission into the future, without an exact target. It also seems like we both enjoy working just for the sake of it. Through S-Lab we also get in touch with other companies, among others Stokab[9] . I have to learn a lot of things I never knew about.

Until now I’ve thought that Telia possessed the ”cables” for making transmissions as well. But this is not the case in Stockholm, I’m told. I contact Stokab, the cable retailer of this city. They are playing a waiting game, but seem positive. But since I don’t have a permanent address, the whole thing will be hard to arrange. Problem. During the second half of 1998, things that affect our project negatively start happening. Locally, at the District Administration Office in Skärholmen, people are starting to think it’s time we move out. The whole of Bodholmsplan 1 is to be rebuilt, and many businesses removed. Things are to be relocated. After many turns and one deceit from a seemingly indifferent District Manager we hastily leave and end up at a place by the tube station “Vårberg”. A habitat which would give the Working Environment Board goose bumps.

It’s big anyway, and we have windows overlooking the tube station. Several works are created here. We can stay for a while; until the local boss of the District Office lets us down, telling us we’re using their copying machine too much. They can’t find the right account for this cost. Which account are we actually under? And so the circus is on, discomfort grows until the boss tells us to move out since they want these rooms anyway. Locales have actually been promised to us by the pretty slippery District Director. When 1999 has just started, we realise we will be without a place to be. We are not getting answers anymore as to why the promise is never fulfilled. It is a big risk since we desperately need a permanent address. It is a necessary prerequisite – where else does the fibre optic cable lead?

During the last part of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, I focus on preparing the ground for and development of the artistic idea. Which is to be the program format? How will the transmissions take place and how do we create continuity? During this period, Martin Thulin and I also have the opportunity of creating unique works of our own. Works that will be exhibited in Asia and Australia for example, many years later. We have so little money. More exactly 15.000 SEK, as a base for making it all! In the decision from Stockholm City Culture it reads: ”B Off receives 15.000 kronor for building a multimedia studio” !! Despite how humble this amount is for fulfilling our ambitions, it does feel good. We have a good laugh at how on earth we are supposed to accomplish everything with 15.000:-. But it’s there anyway. We use this money to buy what is absolutely necessary and for which we can’t find sponsoring. I contact both Sony and Panasonic to create a base for obtaining cheap equipment. We manage to get a connection at Panasonic who provide us with some supervision cameras. We also soon get sponsored with a few computers. We use our money for a simple studio, so we can finally start building a production and transmitting structure for video works.

As for ourselves, we are barely surviving on the project funds we have managed to get from the Culture Workers Agency, for starting a new art organisation. There is something called ”nontraditional funds”, which can be applied for by innovative projects with a potential of supporting themselves later on. It is like an investment in innovation. It works like a kind of start-your-own-business allowance. But that is not officially mentioned. Work meetings with the Ericsson Media Lab are initiated by Telia and take place in Liljeholmen. In a number of meetings with and without Telia representatives present, we’re trying to get a seed of financing going through them into our activity. Telia S-Lab also tries to get our ideas to rub off on this structure, since this would mean they had a common project. In this context, Telia wants to try and create a new ”AXE”. Though it seems like Ericsson wants to remain aloof. They’re pretty self-righteous and cocky. The titles on their business cards are things like ”Innovation Driver” or ”Media Wizard”. They are themselves presenting a number of more or less crazy “media ideas”. Many of these are so dry and lacking in a vision that I and Lasse have to laugh. Most meetings of this kind result in nothing at all. Ericsson Media Lab seems utterly enclosed in their own small world, sure to have all the answers and all the unique ideas. They even neglect meetings, arriving too late or not at all.

They’re acting extremely arrogantly.

I get fed up with this, and conclude that Ericsson Media Lab is unlikely to be a part of this.

(I think Ericsson Media Lab was closed down a few years later. For all I know, nothing of all the things I heard of and saw at this time became part of the Ericsson to come. ) During the year I try my luck in writing a number of applications for The Swedish Institute[10], The National Council for Cultural Affairs and The Swedish Artists Council[11], along with a few other foundations. This is not my area and I think it sucks. I feel I am pretty bad at this. I don’t get whether I should stick to the various themes and guidelines that never seem to suit us anyway or not, but how else I should do it?

They’re all turned down this year too.

Frequent telephone contacts as well as meetings with people at S-Lab are continuing. Gradually the contact surfaces at Telia are broadened. A new connection that is absolutely phenomenal when it comes to technique, Björn Landelius, appears and is actively helping the project.

We’ve found a new address now, in an almost deserted former old people’s home. The place is in a corridor on the ground floor, with an air of County Council. A former “internal” hairdressers for the patients. It consists of one room with a kitchen plus some subspaces. The locale is perfect since it is very close to a tube station. The fibre cables are placed in connection to that.

The new address is Vårbergsplan, in Vårberg, a Stockholm suburb. As soon as we have the contract and a physical address, the work with getting the place connected begins. Stokab agrees to pull a cable out there. It’s a pretty expensive project for them. It feels pretty natural that they are taking care of this. That’s just the way I feel. At numerous meetings by the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence, the District Authorities, the County Council and the Culture Council everybody, that’s right; EVERYBODY, gets the bright idea that I really ought to ”try and ask xxx, since they…oh, they have money, and they are meant for this type of activities.” During most of 1998 and the first part of 1999, I’m trying to figure out whether I should ”re-write my project presentations”, or try and explain straight up what the purpose is. The strategy that comes out is sort of a mixture, and it’s not working at all.

If I talk to operator A, the meeting very often ends with ”oh this is absolutely fascinating, and no doubt necessary, but it’s not my pigeon really, you need to talk to operator B”. Then the same reasoning occurs by operator B who, if I’m lucky, refers to operator C. Who in turn often refers back to operators A or B. All of this becomes a circular farce, where at every meeting I am asked to present an even more clearly defined project presentation.

”Tell us what it is you want– for real.”

So I return home, write again, and ask for new meetings.

At the following round of meetings, containing a yet more refined project presentation, new arguments start popping up. Now several operators start talking about that this just might be their pigeons, but…no funds are earmarked for this. So at least we are this far, there is talk of this, but there are no funds. I bring this to the next round of meetings. It starts off a year later.

Our situation is worrying. Everyone is blaming someone else. Everyone has this bright idea about going somewhere else.

The impression is very distinct.

We are a problem.

A problem in every possible dimension.

We are a hot potato.

Out in society, the IT boom is at full blast. Things are born parallel to us; web magazines, sites, web art, internet companies, consultative businesses, and every magazine runs stories on ”the new economy”. Companies are presented on one A4 paper, a minute later receiving fresh millions. I, having studied business economics, start wondering about it all. What was that about companies being built over centuries? Could this be such a different matter? Well, maybe. There is talk of a new logic.

Everything seems to be going up, and I love it, but I’m having a bit of a hard time trying to get all this positivism to stick to my own ambitions. In our area art is exploding, forming many different branches such as net art, web art, internet communities, art radio, net casting etc. Internationally, IT art projects are popping up like mushrooms, simply because it is all possible in a different way than ever before. At this time, money is also flowing into extreme exhibition projects. Parallel to the IT explosion, new institutions and exhibitions appear as well. Many of the big IT and Telecom companies are behind major ventures out in the world, with a focus on this new area. Kodac Labs[12] and NTTICC[13] (Tokyo), Eyebeam[14] (NYC), Ars Electronica[15] (Lintz), Kiasma[16] (Helsinki) and many more are created or about to be created. We have a vague knowledge of some of them, but we don’t really care that much. None of the places have anything much like us. It might also be that we don’t dare to contact these fixed stars. These are all world metropolises with unattainable demands anyway.

We’re not feeling artistically ready for steps of this kind. Ok so we’ve got the confidence, but we haven’t got anything good to show. We’re simply busy just being in the process.

What also happens is that some star curators, philosophers and art critics, particularly in the US, start - together with others active on the web – to acknowledge this phenomenon. There is talk of cyberspace, cyber art, and a context free of all the connotations of time and space. We read about this, but it feels quite theoretical and alien. There are also a number of different veins and currents out there in the art world, but we don’t have a clear picture.

We sometimes run into interesting stuff on the web, but most seem like empty projects, made by people of technical skill but without any underlying idea about why they are producing ”art”. We do try again and again, searching and scanning the field, but it is completely differentiated, very hard to find, let alone get an overview on. Projects, artists and underground organisations are not exactly marketing themselves but rather talk of themselves as ”net-activists”. Many want to stay by themselves, and are suspicious of supranationality, laws and regulations. They mostly seem to consist of many small and isolated islands all over the planet, who have limited contact with one another. It is a bit like ”grafitti”, but on the web, with the active having artistic ambitions. In Sweden, the IT sector is hotter than ever. Everybody wants a broadband. But people are also starting to ask themselves what these cables are actually for. What is meant to flow through them? There is one crazy suggestion after the other. ”You could book your laundry room at home…” is a HSB[17] suggestion we have a good laugh at. Pictures, music and, later on, TV enter the discussions.

We feel like this is going our way.

Many people in the connection network we’ve worked so hard for consider our idea brilliant. It has a future before it. It has come just at the right time. We have one of the leading IT operators, which many projects have tried in vain to connect to, behind us. With Telia backing us up, I use their name as a key in the cultural sphere as well as in the business sphere. It is impressive. Especially now as the new economy appears. It is time to connect to the high-speed web. The S-Lab arrives, bringing a bunch of odd fellows with them. Björn Landelius measures fibre cable off, and installs all sorts of stuff necessary for really starting up this place. From then on he comes to visit every once in a while, and also to install software in our computers so that he can help us from a distance, from home, should anything go wrong. Björn’s importance to us increases as we move into more advanced technical areas. During the autumn we try to have a sort of exhibition opening at the new place in Vårbergsplan 23, to show off our start.

We barely know how to run the machines, and the cables are set some three hours before the opening. Everything is chaos, really. We’ve created a larger work, a complete installation, or real-time piece, in one of the rooms. “The Drop Work”. A whole room containing all sorts of stuff constituting ”the machine” producing work. At the opening of the exhibition Bengt Wittgren, from the State Culture Council, shows up. Numerous underground figures also show up; many with cultural projects of their own, some of which are famous today. Shimo (”at home with Shimo”) and the poet Bob Hansson for example.

They arrive, have some wine, and understand as little as everybody else what this is. Although, it feels like a big difference anyway, compared to other leading personalities in the cultural sphere. The people here appreciate our work, maybe because it’s not their own field. Or maybe because they are simply honest practitioners, appreciating honesty? This opening becomes a publicly pretty weak matter, but in the media it’s a grand slam.

The big newspaper Svenska Dagbladet[18] calls, wishing to publish a feature on us, as part of a series. They find it interesting highlighting culture and the new media. We get front pages, several pages inside SVD, and a lot of attention around this article. This is an attempt from SVD to talk more about the contents than the cables.

The debate has so far been mostly about the need for ”high-speed networks”. The headline is set as ”Art 100 Mbit per second”. As a sequel to this, the big radio station P1 come by as well and make a major feature for the radio show ”Godmorgon Världen” (“Good Morning, World”).

Right then we are working on a trial version of a software using the physical movement patterns from animals (ants for instance) to create electro acoustic music. All this attention from the media during a short period gives us a certain impetus forward.

We get a certain ”cred” and in a way a quality label. I don’t want to get fooled again or passed on into any more circles. I don’t want to get lost and so I go for a pincer move. It is soon time to try and get a few key figures into the same conference room. I contact, and after some time of ”mail shouting”, get in touch with; Jonas Andersson, MD at Culture of the Future[19], Erik Åström, Unit Manager at the Swedish Culture Council and Anders Gillner at the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence.

I manage to convene all three of them, in an attempt to get them to talk without ”blaming the other”. Before the meeting I carry an illusion about these three gentlemen living in their own spheres, independent of one another. I haven’t really got any reason for this; it just goes along with me trusting the system. I have some sort of respect for the establishment. Although, at the meeting I realise that the three gentlemen know each other quite well.

In this situation I have a high fever and am having a hard time keeping my head clear. However, I simply could not miss this meeting now, having worked hard some three months for it to take place. If I cannot give a presentation today it would take several months before I ever got the chance again. The only way is to try and make the presentation as good as possible while hiding my terrible flu.

I introduce what we want, how we are organised and where we aim to go. They ask questions, we discuss, and at the end of the meeting it is concluded that our case is probably, in the short term, in the realm of the KK foundation. There are no promises. There are only hints that the KK foundation does have a small amount left for a culture venture, which is actually just closing down. It is also hinted that if we’re lucky we might be one of the last projects embraced by this. And so I am pleased with my presentation despite my condition, and take my leave. As far as I can remember, the three of them stay at the KK foundation as I leave. They say they have other business to discuss. Now our project is known in the very centre of the culture circles, and whatever anchorage could possibly be done, at as high a level as possible, has been done. We have reached these selected few, and there are potential carriers for our ideas.

The goal I have had for this year has been reached: to get the inner circles of power to make decisions to acknowledge our ideas.