Talk Show "individuality & madness" résumé Nordic Vibration (Tokyo Version) These days swedish pop-music is heard all over the world. Foreign bands are coming to Stockholm to record songs, executives from international record companies scout new acts in strange places all over the country. The swedish sound has become a phenomenon. But is the swedish sound - swedish? No, not really. You can't trace any special or typical sound. I'm sure that most of the people buying or listening to swedish pop-music dosen't know it's from Sweden. Well, sometimes the english is sung with a slight swedish accent. But the soundis international. The marketing is international. And the profit ends up in different international bank-accounts. So, why call it swedish? Hmmm, maybe the phenomenon is based upon nostalgia for cultural differences... But. In our global village today the difference between center and periphery has very much imploded. Through technology many of us are part of an international society where old national frontiers dosen't seem to exist. Information and entertainment, commodities and ideologies, are picked up all over the world independent of national or cultural heritage. Today, it seems, it's the access to technology (and information) that is the dividing-line between those who are part of the new society and those who are not. The Nordic countries have the highest densities of mobile phones in the world. In Finland, it is estimated that over 40 per cent of the population now have a mobile phone. In the other Nordic countries, subscriptions vary between 26 and 36 per cent. Of course, this is an indication that the Nordic countries are still an economically prosperous region. Ownership of computers and Internet access are also on the rise. Having an e-mail address will soon be as normal as having a mobile phone number. The explanations for this trend are more than just economic. It has occasionally been claimed that the key factor is a combination of the local geography and the number of inhabitants. Communities are situated far apart, which in turn creates distances between individuals. People make contact by phone or e-mail just as frequently as they actually meet in café or in their own homes. The spread of communication technology has drastically altered the way we view the world (and ourselves). This applies to the Nordic countries as much as it does to the rest of the world (at least the rich part of it). We live in a global village, in which the world has paradoxically both shrunk - and expanded! This has given rise to a new kind of closeness to - and curiosity about - formerly remote regions and marginalised cultures, for instance, the Nordic zone. It is no longer obvious what is centre and what is periphery. Last spring, the exhibition "Nuit Blanche" opened at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, consisting of about 30 young Scandinavian artists. In the introduction the curators Laurence Bossé and Hans-Ulrich Obrist writes: "The time when places could claim to be the centre of the art world has come and gone. Such a goal has become obsolete at a time when a multiplicity of dynamic art scenes are growing up around Europe and elsewhere, like so many centres with their own particular realities to explore. The nineties have seen Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavik and Stockholm, but also Bergen, Malmö and Oluo, make their own distinct contributions to this trend in an explosion of creativity that seems to signal a veritable 'Nordic miracle'. As sites of encounter and crossover, traversed and modulated by hosts of events, these towns constitute a system of networks that is both dense and loose and highly fluid." It is interesting to compare their statement with what Kim Levin, curator of the group show "The Scream", wrote about her selection of young, contemporary art from the Nordic countries: "In the past few years, the legendary northern communion with nature - cold purity, metaphysical solitude, conceptualized light and space - has ceased to suffice for many artists as a fertile ground for artistic production. It has given way to an art of social and psychological pressures." What Ms. Levin is suggesting is that the artistic self-understanding of the Nordic region has changed. The notion of Nature is not any longer a major driving-force for artistic production. And what Ms. Bossé and Mr. Obrist are saying is that the Nordic artists have "come home", in one way or another: they see their own local context without any nostalgia nor escapism. Let's investigate for a short while the cultural heritage found, for example, in Sweden: In 1649, during the reign of Christina, the French philosopher Rene Descartes was invited to Sweden to teach the Queen about Catholicism. Within two years, he had died of pneumonia. According to legend, he caught it because of the cold weather - and the lack of cultural stimulation! It wasn't until Gustav III became King in the late 18th century, that cultural life started to flourish. Many of the major cultural institutions, especially for music, opera and theatre, was founded during his time. And once again, it was France that most of the influences came from. He tried to keep court with great splendour and copied the Versaille court-life. He supported both artists and writers and one can say that Gustav III very much lay ground for the swedish cultural-life. During the 20th century, Sweden is neutral in both world-wars and the country is run by a socialdemocratic goverment for over 60 years in a row. The cultural politics these years tries to subvert the traditional view of culture being bourgeoise and elitistic. Many attempts, both structurally and economically, are made to broaden culture to the people. But one can say, not going into specific details, that culture in general during this period is not given any high priority. The reasons are probably many and very complex, but the goverment gave the most priority to the construction of a modern wellfare state, than to a vital and vibrant cultural-life. Unfourtently it didn't include artists, writers or filmmakers as much as it included engineers, economists and administrators. Materialistic thinking was, and still is, in power over spiritual thought. In an essay from 1982, The art of a sleeping beauty: Contemporary swedish painting, the art-historian Mats B. concludes the effects of the modern Swedish cultural politics on the contemporary art situation: "The swedish art during the 70's were characterized by a self-chosen isolation. A domestic, broad and durable tradition of 'intimate expressionism" - or shall we call it 'rustic impressionism'? - agreed with intellectual charged or socially dogmatic painting, and the continuity from earlier swedish generations was seen more explicit than from contemporary international modernism /.../ This isolation of swedish art during the 70's turned out to be very difficult to break. The cultural life - including the fraction of the alternative opposition - became during these years bureaucratic and disarmed by the State support-system. The aim by the official cultural politics to broaden amateur culture resulted in a feeling by many artists that they lacked a right to exist; the grants they got were often just a bad excuse since it was a interested public they rather wanted to have." But change happened... During the 1980s, there was a parallel development to that of international art. The Neo-Expressionism that focussed on the historical and the psychological produced numerous offshoots in the North. The metaphysical landscape was given new shape, but often with one eye on the melancholy Nordic tradition. Artists discussed the Nordic heritage in ambiguous fashion, with a mixture of irony and the profoundest solemnity. They played with the old stereotypes with postmodern elegance. The aim, of course, was to disrupt or distort these stereotypes. But, with a few exceptions, these artists failed to achieve visibility on the international art scene. But at least a new kind of closeness arose between the Nordic countries. And at the end of the 1990s, we can also discern a change in the intellectual climate of Nordic art. Ms Levin also takes up this question when she scans the Nordic art of the 1990s with her American eyes. "Moving beyond the formal and spatial landscape-based investigations that characterized much Nordic art in the 1970s and 80s, it investigates an inner landscape of extreme psychological states, psychosocial issues, and private sensations. It positions itself at cross purposes to nearly everything," she writes in her foreword to "The Scream". This development is linked to a broader global discourse. We cannot point unambiguously to the roots of identities. As the sociologist Paul Gilroy put it, it is equally both "routes" and "roots" that create a person's identity. The same applies to cultural identity. Nothing is simply black or white. Cultural identities are cobbled together out of adulterated nuances. They are hybrids of different expressions and influences created along the multifarious routes taken by cultures as they wander the planet. The Nordic miracle is rooted in paradox: the region has become aware of its peripheral status while liberating itself from its Nordic heritage. It is possible to detect a new brand of tacit individualism. Modern social welfare policy has created a secure, democratic cultural climate. On the other hand, it has resulted in a desire to transgress accepted norms. John Peter Nilsson

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