kagablog

God Save The Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe
Launching party 1977. Photo: Per Roland

un international year of the children
1979, 70×100cm
photo: ove hallin

1976, 70×100cm
kulturhuset stockholm

a model for a qualitative society
1968, 70×100cm
moderna museet stockholm

see sture’s website for more info

Dear Aryan,

The Brilloboxes were delivered back from the konsthall and I gave them back to the pupils. I took some pictures when the children were leaving school, spreading all the boxes to homes in Skanör/Falsterbo.

Still, I am reading your article in The Times, I hope it will be notified in Sweden – it is the first time the connection of ‘body inspection’ and ‘Mind examination’ are linked together here, racebiology and State Art Control. It is very hard to get the article on the net from here, so I have made a transcript file for the homepage.

Sture

Sture Johannesson grips his cigarette tightly and draws from it as if it’s his last drag. The cigarette is tiny in his massive hand; smoke curls up and spirals into the end of his snow white pig-tailed hair, drawn back tightly from a forehead deeply creased with lines of concentration. My camera is running, I’ve got a tight frame that has tilted from the cigarette up to his face and back again for over four minutes of unbearably painful silence. I’ve asked him to talk about his years in the Swedish state orphanage, years that fuelled his passionately anti-establishmentarian approach to art but also years that taught him to rock the boat with great subtlety and humour.

Suddenly Johannesson looks up at me, directly into the camera lens and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t talk about those days right now. There’s too much. It’s impossible to find a place to start.”

Let’s start right now. It’s summer 2008 and Johannesson has been invited by the new Director of the Malmo Konsthall to participate in a group show called AUTO STOP which will take place all over Sweden throughout the holiday season. Works of art will travel across the country, carried by hitchhikers, the idea being to break open the sanctity of the gallery, of the museum as mausoleum, and inject some fun into the sterile Swedish art world. Johannesson’s contribution is a ruthlessly scathing re-enactment of the Brillo Box scandal that rocked the Malmo Konsthall in the late nineties when it was discovered that the Gallery was manufacturing fake Warhols. But instead of producing the replicas of the Brillo Boxes himself, Sture has arranged for a classroom full of ten year olds at a primary school in the seaside town of Skanor to hand paint the “fakes” as part of their official art assignment.

The 73 year old’s face suddenly breaks into an impish and utterly charming grin, “It’s the best art work of mine that I never made.” He is excited about this new chapter in his heavily censored career. When I interview the Director of the Malmo Konsthall, Jacob Fabricius, he is at a loss to explain Johannesson’s peculiar history. “I’m Danish, and think Sture is a really great artist.If he had been in any other country but Sweden he would have exhibited a lot more, made a lot more money. He is much better known outside Sweden.”

Johannesson continues his story about the orphanage in our second interview session that takes place in the university town of Lund. I’ve brought extra blank tapes with me, alerted to the silence-filled speaking patterns of this extraordinary man whose every word seems to cost him pain. Working in the kitchen of the orphanage Johannesson discovered that sedatives were mixed in with the butter in order to keep the kids docile and easy to control. Of course butter was immediately removed from his list of dietary neccessities. A decade later, in the early sixties, Sture and his wife Ann-Charlotte started the legendary Cannabis Gallery in Malmo, the third largest city of Sweden, where Johannesson’s Situationist and Dada influences fused with his reading of Marshall McLuhan to produce the radical psychedelic poster series that made him a counter-culture icon as well as public enemy number one of the conservative Social Democrat state.

The poster he designed for the planned February 1969 Underground Art exhibition at the prestigious Lund Konsthall created a furore. Entitled “Revolution Means Revolutionary Consciousness!” the poster foregrounds a naked woman smoking an elongated hash pipe, next to her is a marijuana leaf symbol. It’s an image that would have made perfect sense in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury or swinging London’s Soho but it wasn’t time for the Summer Of Love in Sweden yet. The board of the gallery fired the director, the gallery was closed down and Johannesson was ordered by the police to destroy all 1000 copies of the poster. It was a scandal the likes of which the Swedish art world had never seen. In any other country the event would have rocketed Johannesson into the A-league. In conformist Sweden the galleries closed ranks and Sture found it impossible to have his colourful and socially relevant work exhibited.

Our third interview session is once again in Johannesson’s house in Skanor. He pulls out an archived box of letters dating back to the orphanage years. He’s kept in contact with other survivors of this harsh period, has all the documentation necessary to back up his grim tale of how the ostensibly nurturing social state in fact treated those who were dependent on her. He talks about beatings that were commonplace, about psychological torture, and most horrific, about medical experiments that closely resemble what we associate with the Nazi period. His voice is level and measured and his eyes gaze directly into my camera while he speaks, “The Worlds first Race-Biological Institute was founded 1922 at Uppsala University. The German Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Race Biology came later and the whole project culminated in the Holocaust! ”

It’s creepy information and as I walk through the radically segregated ghettoes of Malmo that remind me of the apartheid South Africa I grew up in it’s ironic to remember how Sweden profiled itself as an anti-apartheid voice in the United Nations in the sixties and seventies and still claims for itself a position on the cutting edge of progressive politics.

But the story of Sture Johannesson is evidence of a very different Sweden, a country that has more in common with the Jackboot dictatorships of Communist Eastern Europe. 1976 sees the Police closing down a group exhibition at the Stockholm KulturHuset where Johannesson has made an installation in homage to Ulrike Meinhof, a co-founder member of the anti-capitalist resistance movement Rote Armee Fraktion. Despite the Swedish state’s rhetoric of democracy, when it comes to the crunch, real dissidence is not tolerated at all. A dark cloud hangs over Johannesson for decades. He becomes an untouchable.

But after decades of neglect from the official Swedish art circuit, Johannesson is considered worthy of rehabilitation - after all times have apparently changed and psychedelia hardly seems as threatening to the state as it did in 1968. The re-opened Lund Konsthall presents a complete retrospective of Johannesson’s career in May 2004, and then, inexplicably, maddeningly, the police raid the premises the day before the opening and confiscate one of the central exhibits of the show, a display of (legal) hemp plants. Johannesson is devastated, he had after all phoned the police with his intentions and cleared the event with them, had made sure that everything in the exhibit was strictly legal. The police give no explanation for their actions, nobody is called to order, no apology is made.

There is a bitter tinge to his voice as Johannesson recounts how he’s had enough of Sweden, how he doesn’t want to die holding a Swedish passport, doesn’t want to be claimed by posterity as a “great Swedish artist”.

“I would rather change nationality, become Danish!”.

Johannesson explains his tactics, “Violence doesn’t pay in resistance and attacks on the authorities in power, but humour and
playfulness can work - that is something I learnt and experienced in the orphanage. And now, grown up and as an old man, I still practice this technique.”

As the AUTO STOP show begins it seems for a moment that Johannesson is going to break out of the peculiar exile within Sweden that his been his lot for forty years. But then the recurring pattern of authoritarian intervention with this iconoclastic artist’s career manifests itself again. At the end of June 2008 Johannesson is ordered into hospital for acute surgery on the arteries of both legs. Sture takes up the story, “and just after I left the hospital I took a tour through the Konsthall to check how my project description was published. And yes, as usual, it was completely washed out, only four silly meaningless questions and my answer were left. Everything else about the project was censored.”

My final meeting with Sture Johannesson is in a harbourside coffee bar in Malmo. We discuss his love of the Sex Pistols. “I interviewed Johnny Rotten when the Sex Pistols toured Sweden in 1977. He sang “Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it”, my own take on that is “Don’t know where I’m going but I know how to get there.” The interview lasts two hours. My final question is about the orphanage. What kind of experiments were performed on the kids? Johannesson describes how a swimming pool was filled up and allowed to go bracken; how the children were forced to swim in it - their resulting ailments monitored by the orphanage staff. My camera zooms in to a close up of his face.

“Were you forced to swim in that pool?”

He stares back at me unflinchingly, “We all were.”

Sture Johannesson’s orphanage years forged an attitude of resistance to state authority and control that is unbroken to this day. When we shake hands goodbye, his grip as firm as steel, his eyes steady, with just the slightest hint of a smile, he gives me a final piece of advice: “It’s important not to give up.”

aryan kaganof

(an abridged version of this article first appeared in the sunday times lifestyle of 7 september 2008

more detailed information about sture johannesson on his website

sture johannessoon and bo cavefors, malmo, june 2008

sture johannesson, malmo, sweden, june 2008

Dear Aryan!

Yes, I have been thinking of you too! I have been sitting with my computer and writing about what happened with the Brillo project. In Swedish.

http://www.sturejohannesson.com/artworks/brillo_catalog1.html

Julia Svensson at Sydsvenskan culture wrote about the censorship of my project description, telling about the risks that you can pick up a troublesome passenger, and have to throw him/her out of the car halfways. And that’s how I felt reading this, sitting here looking at my wounded bloody legs and bluemarks (hematomes), not aware of how it happened when I was under narcose four hours and had 12 hours to wake up, so all the wounds came from when I was thrown out of the car!

The Brillo experience was the last chapter for me with Malmö konsthall.

Was happy to hear from you!

Sture

Dear Aryan,

Guess that you are back with your family in South Africa and everything is well! Charlotte and I had to leave the screening quickly, I had an appointment with our house doctor here in Skanör. She sent me acute to Malmö Hospital, where I had surgery, operations in both legs. It is first today in the afternoon I am back home in Skanör again. And tomorrow is the opening of the Auto-Stop exhibition in Malmö Konsthall. And just after I left the hospital I took a tour through the konsthall to check how my project description was published. And Yes, as usual, it was completely washed out, only the four silly meaningless questions and my answer were left. Like: this is the best Art work I didn’t do. …

Hope you get this mail!

Best of all,

Sture & Charlotte

About Arthur Engberg: for the socialdemokrats he was a ‘working class hero’ although as a rich farmer, and has given name to many places in Sweden, Arthur Engbergs Väg, Sundsvall, Arthur Engbergskolan, Hassela etc.

As a chief editor of the newspaper Arbetet he expressed the party’s views and political aims, known for his anti-Semitic leading articles, and his engagement for ‘racial hygienics’.

The Worlds first Race-Biological Institute was founded 1922 at Uppsala University. The German Kaiser Wilhelminstute for Rassenbiologie came later and the whole project culminated in the Holocaust!

You can see a photo of him and Joseph Goebbels on

http://www.sturejohannesson.com/artworks/kulturkameng3.html

In repressive societies
The quality of the transgression
Is always directly proportional
To the quantity of the repression

Dear Aryan,

The Auto Stop project has now began, from June 10, and Konsthallen has printed a small card with all the boxes photographed in the hall. The school is tomorrow closing with a ceremony in the Skanör Church. Today, all the classes had a final sport contest event, they had different names on the groups representing different ‘nations’, like Zlatanien, and the class 3 was ‘Brilloniien’!

Best,

Sture

Dear Aryan,

Your understanding and analysis of sweden’s past and the connection with
today’s conditions are very clear. And how the concept and ideas between
state art control and state race biology are connected, where I have
experienced both. It is something that I have carried my whole life, but
which was impossible to mention until 1988. Sensationally for me, the at
that time social democratic newspaper Aftonbladet surprisingly published a
book review of the American professor Steven Koblik and his book:
‘The stones cry out’ (in Swedish: ‘Om vi teg skulle stenarna ropa’ a quote
from the Bible). After that I could began tell as a witness.

But it took ten years more, until 1997, before the World got to know about
the sterilization program and Swedish race biology, in articles in DN
(Dagens Nyheter) by Maciej Zaremba.
Best,
Sture

Dear Aryan,

I am very happy that you clearly see and understand the point and technique
in my project! The playful game with ’sting’. This is a technique I have
used in many of my earlier works and happenings, violence doesn’t pay in
resistance and attacks on the authorities in power, but humour and
playfulness can work - that is something I learnt and experienced in the
Gulag Archipelago. As I write on my homepage: ‘even a mischief performance
aroused archetypal behaviour of the authorities in power, bringing about
faces of the Watchmen; the Guardians of the Camp, with censorship, police
brutality, and political persecution of dissidents’. And now, grown up and
as an old man, I still practice this technique. It will be some kind of “media freaking”, like Abbie Hoffman coined in the 60s.
Best regards,
Sture

Dear Aryan!

The viewing of your films click here to unsubscribe

and

techno: space and flow in the radical frame

was most interesting to me! You are a Master in editing, mixing sound and images, and your speech also gave me a another angle on the theories of Guy Debord. In the beginning of the 60s I was together with the Swedish situationists, Jörgen Nash, brother to Asger Jorn in the Cobra-group, the Danish art critic Jens Jörgen Thorsen who made a
film about the sex life of Jesus, he also made a film of Henry Milller’s ..quiet days in Clichy…

Now I will be happy to meet you again, any day you suggest - I think!
Best of everything,
Sture

Johnny Rotten (John Lydon): That thing scares me. I hate talking to microphones because you can´t tell it the same way as I would normally.

Sture Johannesson: Have you been to Berlin?

JR: Yeah, I went there for a holiday, for a week, just to see what it was like. I had to go there, I had to see the wall…and it scared me. Those Russians, they terrified me. Horrible. I have written a song about it. It goes holidays in the sun.

SJ: Are you familiar with the West German political scene, the anarchist of Bader-Meinhof.

JR: Oh, Bader Meinhof, yes. I don´t know what they are in to. I never bothered to find out. Because it´s like English papers didn´t print it. They started the stories but they never finished them. And I don´t have any other way of finding out. Unless I go to socialist meetings which I´m not going to.

SJ: There have been written some glimpses about

JR: She killed people, didn´t she? I bet, didn´t they?

SJ: Yes, they made attacks it was in solidarity with the Vietnam people. They made attacks on they American headquarters.

JR: Yeah but they killed people and that´s no way to get your point across. Because they killed innocent people. They must have

SJ: In a way you could say that. Because they were military people…

X: They did a thing in Stockholm with the West German embassy, blew up the whole place.

SJ: I was at a literary meeting in West Germany and it was about literature that reflects changes in society and so is it with your texts and your songs…is it a reflection of the society and the political scene that you find?

JR: Well it must be, because I´m part of the society, you know.

SJ: but…

JR: I don´t know…. I avoid all that political stuff because it´s too heavy.
(You will get the flu off me, yes I got the flu and still I carry on like a brave young soldier)

SJ: I would like if you could make a short story, if you could tell a little about your background, it has been written some glimpses in the papers.

JR: There´s been a lot of rubbish written about us but…. You know like they say we´re like a record company owned band and they tell us what to do. That´s not true. We are total English working class. None of us have had what you could call an education. Because in Britain you don´t get one unless you got rich parents or know the right people. We´re the first rock movement, since I suppose the 50´s, not the 60´s. 60´s had it very easy. It was like swinging London, you know, money was all over the place. We´re much much closer to early rockn´roll. That´s where our energy comes from. It´s the same kind of energy, except that our songs aren´t about long tall Sally. They are about being bored to death, nothing to, do nowhere to go after 11o´clock when the pub´s closed. In England they don´t like you to be entertained, because it means your brain would begin to think for itself and this they don´t like. That´s why they are trying to stamp out punk movement. Because it´s a whole generation thinking about everything.

SJ: It´s a fantastic concept you have in your artwork. You have renewed the rock music; you have put it back to cellar clubs like this one.

JR: This is what we are about.

SJ: Yes you have given it a provocative meaning to rock again.

JR: A lot of people don´t like us for that either. But I think that´s because they don´t understand. They don´t bother. I think they should. We are about making people think for themselves once again - if they ever did. Just get up and do it. If you feel like you want to be in the band, you should. When we started, it was impossible in England to play in small clubs. Rock music had died and we started it up again.

SJ: But now your latest record is played on the radio stations.

JR: Not in England. No they won´t touch it.

SJ: So it´s the group more than the record they ban?

JR: It is what we stand for, or what they think we stand for…
JR: yes, and..the next question.

SJ: In the 60´ s there was a slogan: ìwhen the mood of the music changes, the walls of the cities shakesî. Do you think that with your music you can change society or are you just commenting?

JR: (sighing) Change society, yeah that´s difficult. You see, I´m in a rockband, I´m not a politician. What I am about it´s just letting people live the life they lead. Don´t judge people by their clothes but by what they do…

SJ: I read a quotation from you ìit´s not what you wear, it´s what you are that countsî, that´s why I put my suit and tie on when I went to visit you today.

JR: Well it is. I never judge people ever by their clothes. Our audiences in England are widely different. We get all of them, the lot every kind of person. And that´s the way it should be. It´s not just about people who come in a safety pin jackets and stuff. It´s not just what I miss for everyone, it is just to make people happy about music, it´s to be excited to sing in a live band, I mean it is an exiting thing, it is a good thing, it´s fresh. It is real, it doesn´t like come straight out of a studio and like you never see the people that play on the records. That´s horrible, you should. You should be given the chance. I hope we do give them a chance.

SJ: Yes you have renewed this rock music to run again.

JR: And people say that we are negative. I think we are totally positive. There´s nothing negative in what we are doing. It is negative if they not accept us without even hearing us.
You know in Sweden there´s a lot of the gangs…I don´t know what you call them…they go around with their flashy cars.

SJ: Raggare.

JR: Apparently they don´t like us. But theyëve never seen us live, I doubt they have even heard the record. So what are they basing their opinions on? I think it´s very silly of them. I think they should come and see us…if they don´t like us, well, too bad .

X: It is because they think you´re…. That punk is imitating them in an ironically way.

JR: It´s very silly.

X: That´s how they feel.

JR: But what are they doing? They do nothing. They drive around in cars forever and ever and that´s getting them nowhere.

SJ: Have you seen them?

JR: Yes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

JR: They are against themselves basically.

X: Yes, against everybody in society.

JR: That´s silly. Because they´ve got nothing to replace it with. They have no amusement…of their own. And if they want to drive around in their cars the rest of their lives, wonderful…

X: No but they really liked the old rock music but.

2 3 4 5 6

JR: So do I.

X: But they never understood that you are continuing that.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

JR: We are just a different version of rock´n roll.

JR:I don´t have a university degree. I think it´s very stupid of them. And if anything, they have got a better education than I ever had….the thing is,
I question what I do, what I like, which I think everyone should do. I don´t accept things blindly…anyway I´m bored with that subject, next one.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

X: That´s the thing you tried today, the red thing, the wine, that´s what they started to drink ,Kir, instead of that.

JR: That´s quite nice, it´s got a nice taste.

X: It´s a substitute. You see that´s why everyone is getting drunk on it. You see, regularly red or white wine is quite hard to drink alone but that´s very easy to drink.

JR: It tastes like blackcurrant juice. It tastes like fruit juice.

X: It´s really strong.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4

JR: They just walk the streets. Hell´s Angels, we have no trouble from

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4…

SJ: Your music is an art concept?

JR: I don´t know. I hate art. It´s too institutionalized. Too much big business.

SJ: Yes it is.

JR: It shouldn´t be.

SJ: We have a very small gallery in our town Malm, opposite Copenhagen and we want to show … the process behind the art, not the product.

JR: It´s the same with us. It´s not planned what we do. It comes natural; it´s what we feel. That´s the way it should be.
Not all artists painted the way they felt, they didn´t do it just for money, some of them did, people like Van Gogh and alike…

SJ: Naturally, you have a concept that has influenced not only in music but also in attitudes…

2 1 2 1 2 1…

JR: When I was in school they banned me from the art classes for what I used to paint, and for the way I used to paint.

SJ: Would you like to exhibit your paintings in our art gallery?

JR: No, I have no interest. No, I just do it for my own amusement.

SJ: Our idea was that we saw a man, a photographer in Helsingborg, when we went there and heard your concert. And we thought that this photographer was going with you all the tour. And our idea was to make a documentation of this Scandinavian tour that you´re making, because I think it must take some months before people realize how unique this thing is.

JR: Yeah, but that´s always the way it is, isn´t it? I don´t know. I don´t know, people will appreciate this probably when we´re dead. When the plane crashes on the way back to England or something.

SJ: It will just take a couple of months before people start to realize.

JR: Yeah. Well, you can´t expect everything to be easy. You will always have to fight for what you believe in.

SJ: I´ve seen your portrait in Times, the magazine…there´s a color picture of you in Time magazine.

JR: What´s that, is it English?

SJ: No it´s American, Time international.

JR: No, I haven´t seen it.

SJ: It´s on the front page. A special article on punk rock.

JR: Have you got a picture of it? Have you got one with you?

SJ: I didn´t take one with me. I thought you had seen it already.

JR: No.

SJ: It was published two weeks ago, I think, before you released your third single.

JR: No, I haven´t seen it.

SJ: I read about…

JR: I don´t read much press anymore, because most of it is rubbish and I just say let the music speak for itself and I hope you can hear the words.

SJ: Yes, but the establishment is watching you after only two single records.

JR: Yes, In England it´s very heavy for us. I cannot walk the streets without the police start hustling me. Even leaving England, they check our passports, leaving the country. Which is unheard of.

X: Did it happen in Sweden, that they checked the passport when you were leaving?

JR: No I mean, like, they kept us waiting.

X: But the reason why they checked your passports here was to check that you have a passport.

JR: Well they wanted to know, our names and addresses before we left and when we were coming back, you know, obviously so they can be ready for us.

SJ: But you have experienced a more positive attitude from the public and the people in Sweden than you have in England?

JR: No. In England our audiences are very big. We could sell out easy ten fifteen thousand every town. But we don´t want to play huge big cinemas and concert halls, because, the people at the back just don´t feel anything. I mean, whenever I used to go to big concerts I just didn´t feel anything. It´s not on. I much rather play 20 nights a row than a huge auditorium. The only problem with that is my voice wouldn´t be able to take it. Already it´s gone, can you tell? From playing every night. That´s alright. I don´t mind. I don´t mind wrecking it. If it´s for a good cause I will do it. You only live once .

SJ: What are you going to do when you´re coming back to London again?

JR: (sighs)

SJ: What are your plans?

JR: God knows…(laughs) I don´t know. London…We are gonna rehearse a bit, we are gonna make a film. A proper feature film, since we´re not allowed to play in England … we are gonna make a proper movie and have us playing live on the film and show around cinemas to people that can´t see us normally. I hope it takes off.

SJ: Are you going to produce the film yourself?

JR: Yes and … Russ Meyer, have you ever heard of him? Well he´s a loony.

JR: We only like people working with us who have a sense of fun. Some of the songs are really serious, but they have a moment of fun at the same time … because music is for fun, not sitting down and being miserable. Fun, it´s rock´n roll…it´s…get up and dance. That´s what I want. And as soon as we get to be boring out farts, then we quit, I quit, anyway. I mean I´ve done that very clear. I don´t want to be like Mick Jagger. You know the untouchable, who wouldn´t talk to you unless he has forty bodyguards around him. This I don´t like. I think it´s unnecessary and stupid. And, what creates a lot of trouble. We have to break it all down, bring it back to reality. Just make people happy. I´m no superstar, I never will be, I´m just like anybody else.

SJ: You´re a superstar in your own way…

JR: I hope people understand that…it won´t effect my lifestyle. I don´t want to clothe myself in loads of money and hide away, that´s not me. I couldn´t live like that; I´d gotten completely insane from the bottom of it. If I ever did have a lot of money, the first thing I would do is that I would buy probably a recording studio and let new bands recording there free, so they could hear themselves when they start. That is a good thing to do, I don´t see why the Stones don´t do that. They have the money - Led Zeppelin and all those bands, What do they do with their money? They don´t help new bands. They should. That´s music, that´s what it is supposed to be all about.
…

JR: It was like having a new family. They couldn´t appreciate or understand, because it was kids doing something for themselves. This always frightens any kind of government because they think…oh look, they are doing that for themselves, What are they really up to? What do they want?

X: You mean, instead of being commercialized something…

JR: We are totally anti commercial. When we had a number one single,that wasn´t even played on the radio and advertised very little.
…

SJ: It was only sold in the small underground.

JR: That´s where they sell most of our records, we sell hundreds of thousands but the charts weren´t acknowledged…

JR: They sell a bit of reggae, a bit punk a bit rock´n roll, a bit of everything, music is music. It´s only certain idiots who like separating it up to different categories that destroy it. Music is music either you like or you don´t. You shouldn´t have categorizations or limitations; you should be there.

SJ: But you have managed to provoke the society and knock them off at the same time, your record are the best sellers in England.

JR: mm… Which is good…because times they are a changing. And let´s face it, they had to.

SJ: Very few artists can manage to do this today to provoke the society…

JR: I think it has to do because they don´t try. We don´t set out to provoke society, we set out to do what we want to do and say what we say without people interfering, you should be allowed free speech after all England claim it´s democratic. I think we have proved that wrong, it is not. It is a very very controlled state.

SJ: Would you say it´s a fascist regime?

JR: Yes, I would actually, yes. I really believe that. There are so many police on the street and gangs and kids that are…

(god save the queen)

The conversation between Sture Johannesson and Johnny Rotten from the band Sex Pistols took place in 1977 at Barbarella in Växjö.

X is an unidentified person.

this interview was first published on the net here

Av Sara Frostberg Lowery

Att ta upp liftare brukar räknas som något riskfyllt. I sommar kan den som ändå vågar nappa på en utsträckt tumme belönas med ett konstnärligt möte. Ett tiotal konstverk ger sig nämligen ut på luffen i Sommar-Skåne.

Som ledsagare har konstverken chefen för Malmö konsthall, Jacob Fabricius och hans personal.
– Vi har bjudit in konstnärer att göra konstverk som personalen kan frakta runt på stan, säger Jacob Fabricius, som egentligen hade velat hålla projektet hemligt ett tag till.

Tillsammans med utställningen The Hamster Wheel, som öppnar den 17 maj, är projektet Auto-Stop sommarens stora satsning på konsthallen. Tio inbjudna gör var sitt verk speciellt för Auto-Stop, bland dem finns österrikiske konstnären Franz West, amerikanen Slater Bradley och Malmökonstnären Runo Lagomarsino. Även Sture Johannesson, känd bland annat för de hampaplantor han ställde ut i Lunds konsthall 2004, deltar. Johannessons bidrag blir ett antal så kallade Brilloboxar.

Konstnärerna vet att deras verk helst ska vara anpassade till livet på vägarna och de har accepterat risken det medför.
– På grund av projektets natur kan vi inte med hundra procents säkerhet garantera hur det kommer att sluta. Det är en del av projektet och jag tror också att konstnärerna gör verk som är anpassade till situationen, säger Jacob Fabricius.

Inte heller vilka orter personalen och konstverken får besöka styr konsthallschefen över.
– Destinationen är det bilisten som avgör, säger han.

Kan det inte vara farligt för personalen att lifta?
– Jag har själv liftat. Vill man se faror så kan man se faror. Det är självklart frivilligt för personalen. Man ska vara medveten om situationen, det är klart.

Konstnärerna bestämmer själva hur de utformar sina konstverk men också om och hur resorna ska dokumenteras.
– Om konstnären säger ”du ska filma din resa på video”, då gör vi det, säger Fabricius.

Många av konstverken och historien om deras resor i Skåne ska senare ställas ut på Konsthallen. Varför skickar ni ut konsten på vägarna?
– Det är den klassiska frågeställningen om att experimentera med hur man upplever konst.

Skolklass gjorde Johannessons Brilloboxar
Sture Johannessons bidrag till utställningen Auto-Stop blir 44 Brilloboxar. För ett år sedan avslöjades en konstskandal då konstnären Andy Warhols Brilloboxar hade kopierats av en snickare i konsthallens verkstad och senare sålts för dyra pengar. Sture Johannesson har låtit barnen i en tredjeklass i Falsterbo göra nya boxar.

Gav du barnen noggranna instruktioner?
– Inte alltför noggranna. Jag hade förberett genom att skaffa vita kartonger. De är inte i naturlig storlek utan lite mindre. Jag gjorde en mall och ritade ungefär var de skulle måla. De var väldigt engagerade, säger Sture Johannesson.

Varför tog du hjälp av en skolklass?
– Om jag ska arbeta i Andy Warhols anda så måste jag också ha en ”factory”. Det blev alltså skolklassen, säger Johannesson.

Endast en av de nytillverkade Brilloboxarna ska ut och lifta i sommar. Övriga finns att se på utställningen Auto-Stop.