In -22 conditions my first steps were precautious. You could see gaping layers and trickles underneath . The hole through the ice is three meters away. Maybe it just gets deeper there. Or maybe a pocket of air forced a poor fox to its death. Anyway. I put doubt behind me and science in front (as every man should) and stepped out in the river, which I had previously waded across in the summer. I was Jesus, walking on water. Did anyone ever consider that that fateful lake might have just been frozen when old Jesus performed that miracle? He just didn’t tell his mates what time of year he did it?
Back to the main point. I was back on my way to Hausmania for some follow up of another type of documentation. The camera would provide some kind of credible proof. Even if photography can’t capture voices it allows a playground for your mind to wonder in, whilst I explain the insane liberal genius that lies in the centre of Oslo.
I had heard through various sources that there was an underground indoor skatepark in the middle of Oslo that very few people knew about. To me that was a gold mine, something in the true spirit of skating, somewhere that everybody is welcome to skate anytime, I headed out there, with a Swedish companion, 8pm bitter arctic winds blowing in, not knowing what I was getting my brain into.
The very small details that I had managed to squeeze from the stone were ones stemming from fear.
Comments like: “thats a crazy place”, “things happen there”, “good luck getting a key”. All with heavily negative undertones. I had to go. My curiosity wouldn’t let me rest.
As we walked along the river, all the buildings changed from being of Neo-Classical Architecture to turn of the century, old industrial. Heavily covered in what could be described not as graffiti, but colour, messages, as if there was a creative lion wanted to be released on to the dusty African plains. These people were definitely caged, protected in a prison, not by force but by choice. The graffiti isn’t of the commonly recognised tagging artists usually do around town. They are provocative images, messages, emotions. These were not done out of gang warfare but lust and necessity for creativity.
With music powering my subconscious in one ear, I walked in confident. Your pace slowed as you walked through the exterior of the complex, your steps soft, hushing noise, conscious of the sounds your body makes. Your brain perceiving, careful to judge everything, with an open mind. Amongst run down caravans, trash art and snow there were creations scattered. A giant ice block, perfectly smoothed into a miniature bolder. It had had air bubbles previously dragged through it. Forced to meet a cryogenic fate until the spring, with a purple light wired into it, to illuminate the freak of nature. Things had been twisted and bent here, way out of proportion.
Wandering through the two and a half meter iron gate, with heavy chains on it, my heart beat raced. I wasn’t thinking of skating anymore. Although it was certainly still my legitimate excuse for being there. The courtyard seemed to be roughly sectioned. Artwork hanging everywhere, not made for permanence, just to represent the mood of the moment, ice and snow weathering the makeshift canvas’. It seemed that this was a place where psychedelia had become concentrated, carried on, progressively taking steps since the golden era of the sixties.
There was no sign posts. Things were labelled, but not in a geographically useful way. There was a motor cycle garage, theatre and stage. All realised through groups of iconic representation. Mechanical parts sprawled, the Norwegian spelling for theatre and the raising of a platform which commanded the attention of the area. A number of other doors had unknown purposes. I decided to explore further, to make other people aware of our presence. I called into the empty corridors, hello?! .... using English only as a cover. Purposefully knowing that I would be more accepted even, if it were just because of my pre supposed ignorance. But I was ignorant to the situation.
Nothing called back. There was a stair way which led up and down. I didn’t dare venture either way. My eyes were attracted to everything. Focus was hard to achieve. I was certainly intimidated. I carried on exploring autonomously. My hand grasped the handle opposite the entrance. I again repeated the procedure .. hello?! ... nothing. I felt that if I had stepped in I might become a victim to the rabbit hole before it was my time. Alice should wait.
I backed out like a small curious rabbit entering a foxes den. Realising I was seriously out of my depth. I was almost too intensely affected by the emotions pouring and screaming out of the walls. I think it was time for me to leave and render this information.
As I led us out, weaving though the potential scattered manmade art, I was confident that we had tried as hard as we could to skate. I had fooled my brain. Not admitting that I was leaving because I was terrified.
Someone else came into our comfort zone of the empty courtyard. Wheeling an old bicycle, wearing heavy protection against the cold and displaying signs of subpar cleanliness, I again presented ... hello?! This time a response was granted. The man began a conversation at rapid speed in Norske. I spat out the few words of Norwegian I knew to make a peace offering and to show I had bothered to learn a few words of the forgotten Nordic language. I questioned whether it was possible to skate here and wondered if he knew where the skate park was? He responded with movement towards entrances we were yet to explore. He explained that he didn’t skate but he liked it. All three of the doors were locked and bolted- I recalled the thought, “good luck getting a key”. As he ignored the signs on the door, as if he had looked at many instructional things in his life and he got where he was by ignoring signs of any kind, he got his phone and immediately started calling another resident. Brief words were exchanged. He then explained that the park was closed due to structural problems with the load bearing wall. “The government are fixing it ....” I saw no signs of government activity here since the planning permission was made back in industrial times. I accepted fate and thanked him for his help. He began to walk back before my mouth blurted out “What is this place anyway?” He turned around, looked me up and down, judged me and saw if I was ready for the exposure to a place that was so infinitely liberal that it scared everyone except its residents.
He began to explain what the different sections of the courtyard represented. Telling stories of bands playing in the summer, him helping build a friends motor bike and that there were short movies and productions happening all the time in the basement theatre. As he walked away I instinctively followed, giving him the impression he was now our tour guide and our key to getting in.
We were about to get in from this acrid cold, thank god. He pulled out a key, attached to a grimy lanyard of door opening devices. They seemed like keys to portals not rooms. The door was the front door. A big heavy door. The type you find in an iron works. We stepped up and in. As the latch clicked behind us, there was an understanding that no one else would enter that wasn’t supposed to be here. I kept conversation flowing with light hearted expected questions. “Do people live here?”, “how long have you lived here?”, “what’s in that room?” etc. He answered all of them in detail. Exclaiming there are 63 rooms here, a large, high demand waiting list, he has lived here 9 years and that the specific room was a cafe. He asked if we would like to see his room and of course the offer was graciously accepted. On the way we met people in the corridors, he explained the rest of the complex, justifying that a place like this is needed to rehabilitate the lower than low and support the higher then high. Homeless people were taken in, artists were allowed to flourish. Anything went as long as there was an eventual purpose. Eventual didn’t have any time limit. There was a cafe, yoga area, martial arts dojo, musical practice rooms and art littering every pixel of my eyes.
You could hear people, I felt comforted, there was a much warmer feeling indoors. A feeling of sanity, unlimited creation and no judgement. Creation here affected you, even without explanation. You couldn’t even consider the state of the mind of the people that had been in these spaces. It wasn’t a prison, it was a school.
He led us up a series of staircases of which I was left with only mental traces like breadcrumbs. We walked over rubbish, the creations of the desperate, and numerous bicycles. We came out at the end of the corridor on what I thought was the third floor.
His room looked like a collection of unfinished inventions and ideas that had never quite made it into society.
His first question was a predictable one, one that I had thought about before even entering the building. Drug related. Do you smoke hash? I replied with a relaxed “yes”. Then offering my dope which I had previously acquired, with this situation in mind. He decided to mix both and roll a joint. I had already made myself at home, trying on strange items of clothing and asking kind but probing questions about the artefacts. As he sat down I made a point to introduce myself. Saying short but poignant facts about myself. That I was from Oxford, England, I pose as a Chef, I was very liberally minded and curious, I make music, write and paint. A dormant thought awoke in his brain. “Most people call me Kanute”. The name given to him after an extensive period actually spent in Oxford at a Medical facility. Kanute the Flute. I said I liked it and that I wished I also had a name associated with a musical instrument. The truth is that I didn’t know what I thought. So I though it was best to just be positive and kind.
As the evening progressed, hours whittled away. He told stories. Like of travelling on his own boat up and down the fjords, the Oxford mental health medical facility, his periods of success with his poetry, living out on an island with hippies in summer, battling his addiction with meth-amphetamines, constantly stopping to explain objects in his room e.g. The First solarium ever invented. A bulb the size of a human head, with a metallic claw around it, which he claimed reflected the UV rays as to achieve perfect skin tone. I doubted its function until he illuminated the whole room with it. I’m sure that the energy from an entire power grid was needed to power this contraption.
I cannot recall the details of every conversation but I’ll let the readers imagination play with the subject matters, imagine the most twisted yet beautiful use of English, from a man that only spoke in poetry. Both Phillip and I felt like we had witnessed something very heavy. We judged the amount of time we had been there and I expressed a want to pick my girlfriend up from work. He saw the evening was closing, clearly sad to lose his conversational resources then showed us his favourite possession. It was a miniature, portable, tape recorder, that had four, three and a half millimetre inputs. This surely must have been one of the first portable music recorders. Jealousy struck. It was in safe hands though.
I followed the artistic breadcrumbs out. Relief struck me when the icy air began to freeze my beard again. Space, freedom, enlightenment. My brain then began processing. When I first passed the initial negative connotations, that I realised the media had given me; ideas that this was a bad place, that people shouldn’t squat, you shouldn’t be weird, graffiti is the devil and a source of crime, modern art wasn’t and isn’t talent, people shouldn’t live without a healthy income of money to sustain your land lord and your eventual children. (A bank is just a cooperate landlord if your old)- and when I started thinking about what the world would be like if this laissez faire model of socio-economic structure had never been created, I was able to apply this mentality to regular society in my imagination. I considered that with the right support, these people could flourish. There was everything I liked about modern culture here, respect, understanding, balance, trust. The bourgeoisie are going to get a hell of a shock if this place was exposed on a major mainstream medium of which we have zero power over, protected by layers of corruption.
Kanute expressed that “Some people just need more time to develop than others, we just provide them with that opportunity”. I felt a strong significance when this was told to me. I began questioning how rigid our education had been. How outdated the subjects and mentality of teaching are (far too broad and narrow minded at the same time). How ninety percent of my peers left school scared of the world not knowing their eventual fate. There was no fear here. Kanute had helped me see that this was the key. The portal to where I wanted to be could be found in his words. Development is individual, and state bound education will never support this, but support for our creativity doesn’t always have to come from one centralised source.
