kagablog

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.

“Psychedelia keeps going; its resistance never becomes rationalized in static conditions
or concepts.”
— Lars Bang Larsen, “Struggles and Vibes”

Sture Johannesson was an active ‘cultural producer’ (as he prefers to be titled) in the Swedish underground culture in the 1960s and ‘70s. Through his psychedelic poster making, gallery and event organization, he proved to be as difficult for proper leftists as for the establishment. Johannesson and his cohorts merged a wilful blend of anarchism, whimsy, and the hippie ethos, their goal being “to change consciousness in order to change reality,” as Lars Bang Larsen writes in his recent monograph on the artist. This became particularly political as Johannesson sought to bring this spirit up from the underground and to the mainstream.

Conversely, psychedelia’s current return to fashion in the art world seems to be content only with splashes of color and an overabundance of media imagery. These accumulations don’t add up to a greater experience, and much of it lacks the burst of energy and hysterical blend of messages that accompanied psychedelia in its original incarnation. Instead, the result is a dispersal of energies and messages, an irony-laden flattening out of experience and numbness. It seems the desire to expand the range of human sensory realms has passed, and all that is left is a faded rainbow of historic novelty. This situation could be remedied if Sture Johannesson’s work received greater recognition in the canon of psychedelic art. Larsen’s essays, coupled with plates of Johannesson’s work are an excellent start toward this goal.

Johannesson’s early psychedelic posters differed from the more mainstream work of his American and English contemporaries of the 1960s. Artists such as Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, and Hapshash And The Coloured Coat obscured language, prioritizing its pictorial qualities and making it a secret code to the initiated. Johannesson, however, brought words and language to the foreground, emphasizing the messages he presented. His influences included Constructivism and propaganda posters, in comparison to the more decorative influence of Art Nouveau on other psychedelic poster artists. Instead of trying to maintain a separate counter culture, Johannesson’s goal was to enlighten and radically alter the minds of the general populace.

Johannesson was an instigator, advocating action and change. Larsen writes that Johannesson’s brand of “Radical psychedelia is hallucination technology that aims to make a lack of rationality in the world productive.” His posters and exhibitions frequently confronted the establishment head on, in one case nearly causing the ruin of Lund’s Konsthall as he mobilized the Swedish art community against the institute’s censorship of his commissioned exhibition poster, Revolution Means Revolutionary Consciousness!

Lars Bang Larsen’s essays in this volume are extraordinary and insightful views on the roles psychedelia and counter culture can play in society. In examining Johannesson’s production in the past and his transmogrification via computer imaging technology, he re-opens the opportunity for artists with psychedelic inclinations to move far beyond kitsch and teenage bubblegum graphics. Contemporary psychedelia doesn’t necessarily need to take on overt political themes, but it must act as if something is at stake. It is time to look through the psychotomimetic surface of the psychedelic past. This way, we can learn from the lessons of Johannesson and his ilk who acted on their belief that there were realms of experience beyond what we know, and that rubbing up against them could alter us all.

Sture Johannesson by Lars Bang Larsen
Lukas & Sternberg, New York and nifca, Helsinki 2002

Cakewalk Art Magazine, Los Angeles, #8 2004
Book review by Karl Erickson

this review first appeared here

1967, 76×56 cm.

…and then began experimenting in expressing myself in conceptual art forms and actions; with posters, graphics, paintings, happenings, performances, media freaking etc. I learned how free art or 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. I believe that art should be well adapted and fused to rock the establishment, opposed to the ruling Party’s desirous ideology production. The notion of ‘entartete kunst’ and its corrupt spirit is still alive in the conglomerated governmental ‘Swedish State Art Control Stations’*. Yeah. I recognize that — by experience. I was born in 1935 as an orphan in the eugenics regime and endured ‘the Gulag Archipelago for Children’. And survived my childhood…
*REICHSKULTURKAMMER
��������������������

CONTACT: sture.johannesson@tele2.se

check out sture johannesson’s website here

Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden

In 1968 Sture Johannesson’s poster for a planned exhibition at Lunds Konsthall upset the Board of Directors so much they ordered all copies to be confiscated and destroyed. The show was cancelled, the Director resigned and an artists’ boycott kept the Konsthall closed for months. Now, after 36 years of internal exile from the mainstream Swedish art world, Johannesson has returned to the scene of the crime with Counterclockwise Circumambulation – both a retrospective and a première.

In the first room were the 11 posters of ‘The Danish Collection’, printed in Copenhagen between 1967 and 1969. Some were made to advertise exhibitions – notably Palle Nielsen’s Model for a Qualitative Society (1968) at the Moderna Museet – but all have the same underlying subject and sensibility. In contrast to the typical psychedelic art of the period, which took its cues from Art Nouveau and 19th-century handbills, Johannesson’s work combines a typographic, collage style inspired by John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch with the clarity and impact of commercial publicity. Turning on and tuning in doesn’t mean dropping out but stepping into the future, and the posters are invitations to engage with the business of changing society. Turn On the Institutions (1967) is the message, with a proposal to fix a sign on the roof of the Royal Palace in Stockholm that reads ‘The Kingdom is within You’. We are encouraged to bring about an Art Crisis (1968) for ‘art’s monetary system’, with free exchange made possible because ‘art is easy’. Art is not only something that everybody can do but, in the new world being offered, it’s an intrinsic condition. In Johannesson’s entry for an architectural competition to design a new Copenhagen planetarium the necessary technical precision is accompanied by kaleidoscopic graphic invention, the meticulous plans and cross-sections of the proposed building lit up with dense, Op art detail.

By the time the psychedelic aesthetic went mainstream Johannesson had moved on, but the subject, and objectives, remained similar. Working with programmer Sten Kallin, he began exploring digital technology. The second room of the Konsthall was lined with a series of computer-generated drawings from 1973, their broken symmetries and hypnotic, alien-life-form geometries derived from an attempt to find the equation whose graphical solution is the outline of a cannabis leaf. Another work from the same period, Off Line, is a neat, spirographic figure that suddenly sprouts a two-metre-long angled line as the pen-plotter responds to a glitch in the mathematics, a crack in the system.

Johannesson’s digital experiments continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with the founding of the ‘Digital Theatre’, an art collective powered by a DIY network of first-generation Apple microcomputers, and the EPICS project (Exploring PICture Space), another collaboration with Sten Kallin. The EPICS images on show were large-format prints of esoteric symbols whose outlines melt and morph into multicoloured fractal-like fields reminiscent of electrophotography or video feedback. As the only works here made with the formal history of modern art as their explicit subject – they were accompanied by quotations from artists, from Wassily Kandinsky to Sol LeWitt, who used pre-digital ‘systems aesthetics’ – they sat the happiest in the Konsthall’s Modernist space. In the 20 years since the project began, however, the genre art of cyber-psychedelia has grown up and retrospectively claimed their aesthetic.

The majority of the works were not produced to be hung in neat rows on white walls but are the result of a practice of artistic, technological and chemical experimentation that has been integral to Johannesson’s daily life – a practice enabled by the discourse of radical social politics that emerged in the 1960s but that went on to constitute part of the discourse in following years. Two scenes from this wider history are replayed here: the first is an interview recorded with Johnny Rotten in 1977 – ‘I hate art,’ Rotten says, ‘it’s too institutionalized’ – while the second revolves around the death of Ulrike Meinhof. Johannesson was involved in organizing a show dedicated to Meinhof at KulturHuset, Stockholm, in 1976, which was closed down almost immediately – the irony being that the project was intended to highlight new West German censorship laws. In Lund an image of Meinhof’s grave hung in a darkened space to be viewed through a hole cut in the wall, a melodramatic staging that nonetheless suggested the social and political space that art, under museum conditions, cannot enter. A framed placard, salvaged after Meinhof’s funeral, read ‘Freiheit ist nur möglich im Kampf um Befreiung’ (‘Freedom is only possible in the struggle for liberation’).

The show concluded with works made at the Cannabis Gallery in Malmö, a space started by Johannesson and his partner Ann-Charlotte in 1965 that functioned as a meeting point and production house for the self-styled underground. Two large collaborative drawings, both titled Agent Knallrup med rätt att knuffas (Agent Browbeat – Licensed to Push and Shove) (1966–7), are giant psychedelic comic books, the narrative not sequenced or framed but bursting out all over the place and collapsing into tripped-out zones of convoluted pattern. Now and then the hapless agents of the local police appear, always too late and left out of the party. A film made around the same time shows Johannesson as a model citizen, looking after his new-born child, working studiously on his drawings, drinking tea with friends and reading newspaper reports of his scandalous activities.

The Counterclockwise Circumambulation of the show’s title made visitors aware both of their own participation and of the time that has elapsed since the controversy over the Hashflicka (Hash Girl) (1968). The poster – a bright pink naked woman holding a long-stem pipe with Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) floating somewhere over her left shoulder – hangs undisturbed near the entrance. It recently turned up in Lukas Moodysson’s film Tillsammans (Together, 2000) and in the Ikea catalogue, and UK teen-girl outfitter Top Shop even bootlegged the hand-lettered slogan – ‘Revolution means revolutionary consciousness’ – for a T-shirt design. As Johannesson writes in the catalogue, ‘at first they didn’t want it all, now it seems they can’t get rid of it’. A lot has changed in 36 years.

Right on cue, however, as if eager to prove that time does indeed run in circles, the local police raided the exhibition and cut down the few dozen legal industrial hemp plants growing in terracotta pots in the Konsthall’s courtyard. Once again a gentle provocation draws a disproportionate response; once again the authorities withdraw, looking slightly foolish, the exact limits of a specific freedom disclosed. It’s an old game, but it’s far from over.

Will Bradley

this article first appeared on frieze magazine Issue 86 October 2004