With the Free Rider into the oil age and beyond
Eline McGeorge
The rewriting of some of the plot in the Norwegian science fiction television series Blindpassasjer (1978) is essential in the project. The plot in Blindpassasjer, which means Stowaway and is referred to in these works as the Free Rider, is simple: After a completed research project on an unknown planet, a Norwegian starship returns to headquarters. While the ship accelerates beyond the speed of light, and the crew lies dormant, the silhouette of a figure appears on the surveillance monitors. The figure is known as the “biomat”. It is an artificial human made from a cloud of programmable molecules, which entered the starship from the unknown planet. Its mission is to protect the planet’s ecological balance. Both the starship and the headquarters are considered a potential treat.
The plot from Blindpassasjer is rewritten into a timeline that takes as a startingpoint the construction of the High-rise governmental building in Oslo (constructed in the 50s and damaged in the 2011 bombing) and the social democratic ideas coded into its architecture. The High-rise building plays the role of the headquarters in the rewritten Blindpassasjer plot. The video and the artist’s book text follow some of the principles that laid the foundation of the Norwegian social democratic model, the organization of Statoil and the distribution of the oil wealth. The Blindpassasjer film represents some of the questions that came up at the start of the oil age in 1978 when the oil industry grew and started to change the society. The timeline continues up to today’s version of Statoil as a multinational corporation and further into a paradoxical future still haunted by the “biomat’.
Eline McGeorge
The rewriting of some of the plot in the Norwegian science fiction television series Blindpassasjer (1978) is essential in the project. The plot in Blindpassasjer, which means Stowaway and is referred to in these works as the Free Rider, is simple: After a completed research project on an unknown planet, a Norwegian starship returns to headquarters. While the ship accelerates beyond the speed of light, and the crew lies dormant, the silhouette of a figure appears on the surveillance monitors. The figure is known as the “biomat”. It is an artificial human made from a cloud of programmable molecules, which entered the starship from the unknown planet. Its mission is to protect the planet’s ecological balance. Both the starship and the headquarters are considered a potential treat.
The plot from Blindpassasjer is rewritten into a timeline that takes as a startingpoint the construction of the High-rise governmental building in Oslo (constructed in the 50s and damaged in the 2011 bombing) and the social democratic ideas coded into its architecture. The High-rise building plays the role of the headquarters in the rewritten Blindpassasjer plot. The video and the artist’s book text follow some of the principles that laid the foundation of the Norwegian social democratic model, the organization of Statoil and the distribution of the oil wealth. The Blindpassasjer film represents some of the questions that came up at the start of the oil age in 1978 when the oil industry grew and started to change the society. The timeline continues up to today’s version of Statoil as a multinational corporation and further into a paradoxical future still haunted by the “biomat’.