Then it was soda and buns, and we showed the van. Nothing was connected at that time of course, but the children could look around and among other things, play acoustically on the long string I had mounted back in Stockholm.

All the children were invited to play with us during part of the performance the next day.

After lunch we met with the cooperators that we had asked the organizer to find for us: Anders Dahl, sound artist, Lena Kimming and Alexandra Wingate dancers. They all had very good ideas. Anders thought we could be outside and the audience inside or moving through the van. The dancers wanted to use the van as a performative object, which of course is exactly what we had envisaged. I said I had been on top of the van and that it works. Luc thought it would be wise to not be more than one there, so Alexandra was elected since she is the smallest one. They wanted, among other things, to do a cheerleader dance! and also use costumes and paint on the bodies and clothes.

It was dripping hot so I couldn’t resist jumping into the water outside the school. I hadn’t thought of bringing a swimsuit, so it became skinny-dipping. I managed to avoid the jelly-fish!

Then I got the pleasant surprise of meeting two good friends from Göteborg: Fredrik and Joanna Hagstedt! Fredrik would be part of a seminar called “where does music come from?” Me and a colleague have a project going with Fredrik, Katarina Widell and Eva Erbenius.

In the evening, me and Luc saw two fantastic and totally different performances during the festival. The first was a “dadaistic children’s party” with Tomas Halling and the new acquaintance Krian Aronsson. Refreshingly wonderful and poetic improvisation and slapstick! The other was Carmen Olsson’s performance with her three workshop students that made a butoh dance in the middle of the clover field. Strong and completely without music!

-performance: The day before, Johannes and I met two dancers, and a sound artist who plays electronics and amplified objects. We showed them the van and the specific system that is mounted in it. Two hours before the performance the weather was a bit rainy. Then we decided to park the van in front of a room that has large opening windows, following a suggestion of one of the dancers. Finally we didn't use any external P-A, only the specific system of the van which uses the steelwork as a wide speaker membrane. The three sound performers were acting into the van and the two dancers were moving around and above the van. I sat behind the wheel, as if I would drive. I played with a digital system generating very simple tones and white noises. All the sounds were tranformed by the resonance of the steelwork, with the addition of the resonance of wires that were tautened on the steelwork. The audience were mostly children with their parents. As the audience was suggested to enter into the van and try to produce sounds with wires and springs mounted in it I turned my sounds into longer and progressive frequency sweeping ones with a reverberation effect.

After having watched a video that was shot during the performance some new ideas appear to me. The general impression I have is an evocation of what the invention of circus could have been. Little by little the audience is not in front of the van any more but more all around the van (circus-->circle). There are two or three different things happening at the same time, each in its own autonomous way. The performance of the dancers is very interesting in that way. There's a time one of the two dancers is standing on the roof, keeping her arms largely open. That makes me think the van could become a structure for dancers to make specific movements. I'm not sure the van would comply with usual ways of artistic shows, with a stage to park it and the audience sitting quietly in front of what is happening.

We continued planning at breakfast. First, we were puzzled because of the sudden rain, in the middle of the heat wave! Alexandra had the smart idea to let the audience, if it wanted to avoid rain, be in a free studio. Outside the windows, there is a road from the parking lot so that the van could stand just outside without the audience having to become wet. It felt good to not have to move indoors and make a conventional performance, and to be able to keep the van according to the plan. Smart!

We drove it down and started setting up. When we eventually got sound, it turned out that the system Luc had built so far worked perfectly fine! I felt a euforic relief! Now it really felt that the project had come to its destination! And when the rain stopped, the audience could, in spite of all, be very close and we decided to skip the external PA. Except for a long cable with 230V to Anders’ equipment, we were entirely self-serving! For a small audience, this is ideal.

About 25 people came, of which were about 10 children. Since we were prepared for rain, all the soundmakers (Luc doesn’t call himself a musician, and I’d rather avoid it too) inside the van. Unfortunately, thus, we only saw fragments of the dance, but we noticed it anyway, not the least when Alexandra started rocking the whole van! Anders had recorded sounds from the Hitchcock-inspired gang of jackdaws that had gathered in the barn of the “angry farmer” nearby, and from the water. This mixed with the live sounds in a fascinating way. Jesper had an introduction, and we started. Luc played his PD patches with his own constructed hand held midi interface, Anders his prepared speakers with lentils and cassette tape reversing machine prepared with a beer can, and more things I can’t describe. He had mounted a contact mike on the left inner wall, as had I on the right one. Thus, both had feedback possibilities to work with. Our own PA had bass elements on the left channel and the piezo buzzers on the right, so we could play acousmatically between these different systems. I had earlier in Stockholm cut slots in on the under side of my Platforms, which work like hooks for hinging them on a steel bar situated in the lower end of the inner sides of the side walls. Thus, they also come into direct contact with the steelworks of the van, and thus they also have feedback possibilities to play with, at the same time as the walls of course also amplify the sounds acoustically.

I started with playing the long piano string, with two bows and harmonics, the straps in the ceiling and then the Platforms. I also scratched and combed the wall directly. It was many occasions where the dense sound mass was replaced by sudden stillness or just a single feedback whistle. Beautiful, brutal and rich music. I’ve played quite a lot with Luc now, but though I had heard of him, this was the first time I met and played with Anders. A lovely meeting which I hope will happen again! The performance ended with the dancers inviting the children to paint on them, and then into the sound making in the van. It became an open end, where I, like in the workshop, showed, helped and gave tips while they tried everything they could see. Even Anders’ beer can was adjusted. One girl played long and intensely on the string until her parents almost had to rip her away.

I had some time left to see some performances. I was particularly interested by a dance performance that took place in a prairie next to Botnik Studio. During the ten minutes that the audience was arriving and sitting there was some resonating sounds that came to disappear little by little. People in the audience, who were babbling with each other stopped talking and became silent. We could see only three dark round forms in the grass. Then two of those forms began to move as if they were waves. We could hear soft noises of the wind, some cars passing on the road. I couldn't describe the choregraphy step by step but what I can say is that I really appreciated how some of the movements were progressive, thus playing with human perception. Another thing is that most of the time each of the three dancers were autonomous and separated in a large square of cut grass. Then looking at each of them, one after another, we could have the impression of changing photographs of each dancer. All that converged in giving me the impression that in front of me there were three strange beings in their strange natural element, as if I would have been on another planet.

This first date was very easy for us: a relaxing place, good for holidays, and a very nice audience of young curious, imaginative and funny people. It was good for us to discover our own project in those circumstances but I think that now it would also be good to go further and enhance what are the specific possibilities with this project. I would like to discover new ways of working with sound and volumes. I'd like to surprise, and maybe disturb, myself more.

Now I'd like to go further in one direction which is to develop the van in itself in order to have something specific for other artists to work with. For the moment, the van is used for performance but I'd like it to be used as a stand-alone phenomenon, a kind of a sculpture that would transform any park place into an exhibition place.

We could also develop one way to go further in the direction of a circus: to work on short forms that would be inserted into a total show.

Another thing I thought about is my involvment as an artist, especially as a sculptor, in that project. I consider this project with the van as a situation that proceeds as an everyday life situation, a kind of a small transformation of my everyday life. I realize how in non-defined situations there are many things happening around that are not considered to have any link with art but becoming the starting point for possible artpieces. As a sculptor I usually create minimal pieces which are very precise, made of very minimal signals. The van works totally opposite to such a minimal way for me. Then I consider it as a starting point, as a noisy experience both on the sounding and visual aspects, a messy situation. It is a good way for re-discovering one's own activity.