1) I used to love urban people. They dress smart and they act cool. Urban people are never out of place, because their position is not defined by place. Urban people cannot be out of place, because urban people are on the move. They are entities that fill the subways, the buses, the pavements, the office buildings and the occasional apartment buildings. At night, they hang around in bars, cafÈs, cinemas and they make the apartment buildings glitter at night, eating, watching television, coming or leaving home. They live the city and, through this, the city comes alive. Urban people live in a melting pot. Urban people talk slang ó different slang in different areas, which partly is what makes them the same type of urban people. Urban people walk the walk and they talk the talk. Urban people are cool without being detached. Most urban people don't care if it rains or snows. Urban people are Adam and Eve, sexual preferences notwithstanding. Urban people are Adam and Eve, because they are always first. They are always first because there are no successors, just a constant flow of new beginnings. Urban people live in a structure that lacks ending, direction and goal. Urban people are Adam and Eve because they live in Eden.

2) I used to love urban people, but I fear they live under the threat of extinction. This has partly to do with the city as such, which is developing in two different directions - both of which threaten the existence of urban people. One is the tendency toward preservation at any cost, mostly a problem in cities that are fairly old. City planners (a weird occupation) in old cities seem to think that the old is better than the new. Hence, they get rid of the new, when they can, and make the city into a big museum. Museums do not live. Museums are open and closed according to the customs in the area and they attract visitors, tourists. Tourists aren't part of the melting pot. Tourists are all the same. The other tendency is that the city rents are getting so high that only offices and rich people can afford to rent space there. Rich people can be urban people, (it is not a class issue) but most of them aren't. Some of them pretend to be, but basically they don't walk the walk and they don't talk the talk. Rich people aren't smart, they are aware. They are aware that they look like urban people. Tourists don't look like urban people, but they too are aware - of how urban people look. Like the Garden of Eden, awareness means the fall from Grace. It must have been pretty awkward for poor Adam and Eve, realizing all of a sudden that they were buck-naked. Likewise, it is awkward for urban people to realize that they are urban people, acting like urban people do. This turns them into clichÈs. It freezes the structure, making it all stale and boring. It creates a new structure of true and false, of right and wrong. It creates an identity, and in the world of global capitalistic make-believe, no commodity is better than identity. The Urban People Kit. This is why urban people seem so jumpy from time to time.

3) Self-awareness is perhaps what constitutes the postmodern culture more than anything else. The idea before was that artists used an art form to formulate a new expression, to find new ground within the field. Art for art´s sake, as they had it. But since the sixties, artists have focused on a broader context, on politics, gender, and power. Much theorizing and work has examined what position a certain art form holds within a larger scheme. Art became self-aware, and this self-awareness became a kind of freedom. A rhizomatic structure, much like the city, which allowed for excursions backwards and forwards, inwards and outwards, crossover, transmedial, transgressive. And then this too, became a structure. And then this too became stale and boring. And then this also turned into a clichÈ. Self-awareness became aware of itself. The Self-Awareness Kit. The Very Interesting Show Concept. This is why artists seem so jumpy from time to time.

4) Now isn't what it used to be, and Eden is but a fading memory. But as you may remember, the fall from Grace wasn't the end of the world, it was the very beginning. Since then, now will never be what it used to be. In this age of innocence lost, the secret longing for a virgin forest will not do. In the co-operative work between choreographer Ina Johannesen/scenographer Jens Sethzman and the legendary ambient group Zoviet-France, meaning is produced and questioned at the same time. Construction is concealed and revealed. Scenic symmetry is met by low frequencies. Self-confident urban people act out their nervousness. Agony is obvious but not even the deepest brevity can keep the humor back. It's a little bit like you and me. This isn't the latest of the new, let´s face it, because there is no such thing. But that doesn't mean that there is no point in saying anything any more. Nothing lasts for ever and everything goes and comes around. The self-awareness in contemporary culture looks more and more like a parody of Nietzsche's famous "eternal return", either paralysed by the fact that there's nothing that can remain "outside" or completely lost in a naive affirmation of the inclusive new order. No wonder, then, that we all feel a bit jumpy from time to time. Still, each moment has its possibilities. One just has to be aware. Ever changing within the eternal return. Poor Adam and Eve, they were condemned to work by the sweat of their brow. But hey, what else is new?

Håkan Nilsson