The Time Document: clashes between visions and reality in relation to new technologies in Sweden at the turn of the millennium 2000
By examining the rise and fall of the Swedish Millennium Monument, this book aims to explore the clash between visions and reality in relation to the emergence of new technologies in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. The monument illustrates a new kind of lavish public art that emerged in the mid 1990s and consisted of large physical interactive monuments. Although meant to last forever, they often became short-lived.
The book tells a story of visions of new technology, interdisciplinary research and urban regeneration. It is also a story about what happens when these visions clash with reality. The book builds on research from two previous projects on digital art, funded by the Swedish Research Council, and compiles previously unexplored archival material. By approaching the monument not primarily as public art, but as a technological artefact, this book challenges the notion of these kinds of lavish ventures as failures. Instead, they are examined as physical manifestations of their time.
The project uses art to examine a crucial change in our time. This is important as it contributes to a critical examination of the impact of digital technology in Sweden during a time permeated by visions of digitalization.
A research stay at Cornell University will strengthen the book’s international perspective, and lay the foundation for a potential future collaboration on doctoral level between Uppsala University and Cornell University.
The book tells a story of visions of new technology, interdisciplinary research and urban regeneration. It is also a story about what happens when these visions clash with reality. The book builds on research from two previous projects on digital art, funded by the Swedish Research Council, and compiles previously unexplored archival material. By approaching the monument not primarily as public art, but as a technological artefact, this book challenges the notion of these kinds of lavish ventures as failures. Instead, they are examined as physical manifestations of their time.
The project uses art to examine a crucial change in our time. This is important as it contributes to a critical examination of the impact of digital technology in Sweden during a time permeated by visions of digitalization.
A research stay at Cornell University will strengthen the book’s international perspective, and lay the foundation for a potential future collaboration on doctoral level between Uppsala University and Cornell University.
Final report
I have spent my sabbatical year writing a monograph on the Swedish millennium monument, The Time Document (Tidsdokumentet). The main results of the research year are a book manuscript (expected to be completed in 2028), an article, and a book chapter, as well as invaluable experiences from a longer stay as a visiting scholar at a world-leading American university. The sabbatical year, especially the part of being a visiting scholar, has further led to new research questions, new research collaborations, and new research applications.
The working title for my book project was "The Time Document: Clashes between Visions and
Reality in Relation to New Technology in Sweden around the Turn of the Millennium in 2000." By examining the rise and fall of the Swedish millennium monument, the book project aims to explore the clash between visions and reality in relation to the emergence of new technology in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. In the book, I argue that there often seems to be an uncertainty about what new technology is and that the emergence of new technologies therefore is surrounded by a kind of interpretative flexibility, which in turn leads to uncertainty about how the new technology should be managed. I argue that this uncertainty is an important reason for the clash that often arises between visions and reality in relation to the emergence of new technology.
When I presented the book project to my colleagues at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University (see below), I received highly constructive feedback, particularly regarding the project's international significance and contribution to the historiography of digital art. This has led me to rethink the choice of publisher, language, and content. As a result, two changes have been made to the original plan.
The first change concerns that I have decided to publish the book with an international publisher, primarily an American university press, instead of a Swedish publisher (which was the original plan). The book will therefore be published in English instead of Swedish, which means that the writing process will require more time and that the manuscript will need to undergo additional language review. Production costs will therefore be higher than according to the original budget. For this reason, I will request that unused funds be transferred to the production support fund.
The second change concerns the context of the book manuscript. My decision to publish the upcoming book with an international publisher means that I will be rewriting parts of the context. According to the application, the plan was to place the millennium monument primarily in relation to other monuments. I will still do that. However, as an addition, I will expand on the section about the history of digital art to show that the Swedish millennium monument is in fact part of a tradition of international digital public art that dates back to the 1960s. This means that I will write about the Swedish millennium monument both as part of an international context of similar initiatives around the turn of the millennium and as part of an art-historical context of digital public art that dates back to the 1960s, especially cybernetic art. The implication of this is that parts of the time I initially set aside for writing, have been spent on reading and gaining knowledge on the new context and thinking about how to reorganize the book manuscript. An important part of this change has been to write an article in which I relate the Swedish millennium monument to the cybernetic art of the 1960s. The article “The Swedish Millennium Monument: a cybernetic tower in the 21st century” (submitted for language review in February 2026) has been a way for me to try out writing the new content.
In addition to changes in the book’s language and context, I have chosen to partially restructure the existing content. Originally, the book manuscript consisted of an introduction followed by six chapters. According to the new outline, I have instead chosen to divide the book into three chapters, I) Commission, II) Installation, and III) Removal, with a shorter introduction and conclusion. The purpose of the restructuring is to focus more clearly on the book manuscript's thesis regarding the uncertainty that arises around new technology. The new structure further facilitates international comparisons of monuments that have undergone a similar process, but also with similar processes linked to the emergence and implementation of new technology that does not necessarily concern monuments. The content of the original chapters will still be included, but will be partially rearranged and rewritten for an international readership, and supplemented with the changed context. This means that the structure has been altered and the new context has been added.
The most significant part of my sabbatical year, which also changed my book project, was my stay as a visiting scholar at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. In total, I was a visiting scholar at Cornell for 12 months, eight of which were part of my sabbatical year. The first four months of my stay were funded by other scholarships. My host at Cornell was Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor of History of Art and Chair of Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences.
During my stay at Cornell, I presented my research on six occasions. Twice I presented papers at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies' monthly research seminar, Research in Art and Visual Culture (RAVC) workshop, led by Assistant Professor Nancy P. Lin. On the first occasion, I presented the book project I was working on during my sabbatical, and on the second, a draft of a new research proposal on museums' collection practices regarding digital art, “Managing the New” (see below), which was developed from my book project. During the presentations, I received very valuable feedback from my colleagues, not least from Associate Professor María Fernandez, who has long worked with similar issues. María Fernandez drew my attention to the similarity between the Swedish millennium monument and art created within the cybernetic movement in the 1960s, which was important in demonstrating the international relevance of the book manuscript and led me to rethink the content of the book. The insights from Assistant Professor Andrew Moisey, whose research on photography, digital media, film, and moving images helped me understand the book's content in a broader technological-historical perspective, has also been very valuable. The department's younger researchers also contributed to my decision to make changes, in particular Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano, a doctoral student specializing in art, technology, and science.
On three occasions, I was given the opportunity to participate in teaching at the department, presenting my research to students and doctoral candidates in the courses “History and Theory of Digital Art” by led by María Fernandez and "Contemporary Art: 1960 – Present“ led by Iftikhar Dadi, and on the doctoral course ”Graduate Research Methods in Art History" led by Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the department, Benjamin Anderson. In addition, I also presented my research at other departments at Cornell. For example, researcher Anna Davidsson invited me to present the project to her research group, Cornell EcoArts, at Cornell Cals, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. These presentations gave me the opportunity to further formulate my project in relation to an international – especially American – context, which helped me to rethink the tone and content in the context according to the changed outline of the book manuscript.
Moreover, I led one of the seminars at RAVC in connection with Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano's presentation of his dissertation project, and participated in academic seminars, workshops, and lecture series organized by both my host institution and other units at Cornell, in addition to the RAVC workshop, these included Pulse of Art History and Visual Culture Colloquium. During my sabbatical year, I also participated in two conferences. In the spring of 2025, I presented one of the new research ideas I had been working on during my stay at the CAA (College Art Association) 113th Annual Conference in New York City, and after returning to Sweden, I presented the same research idea in the fall at the Conference on the occasion of the 150th anniversary for Art History at the University of Oslo.
In order to understand the Swedish millennium monument in relation to an international context of both other monuments and art history in general, an important part of my stay has been visiting various museums and public monuments to see and experience them in situ. During my stay at Cornell, I therefore made study visits to museums and monuments in both Ithaca and other parts of the US, including: Herbert F. Johnsons Museum of Art and Handwerker Gallery in Ithaca; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA: The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim, Neue Galerie, 9/11 Memorial & Museum and a number of minor art galleries in New York City; Smithsonian and The National Mall in Washington DC; The George Eastman Museum in Rochester; Corning Museum of Glass in Corning; Buffalo AKG Art Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo.
My sabbatical has further resulted in other publications, new research questions, new research collaborations, and new research applications. Firstly, research into the management of digital public art led me to the question of how museums manage digital art. In the spring of 2026, I submitted an application to the Swedish Research Council, “Managing the New,” which is related to the issue of managing digital art and develops the theoretical arguments about the interpretive flexibility that arises around new technology when it is new, which I apply in the book manuscript. A reference group consisting of international and national experts has been tied to the project. Three of its members are scholars and other experts I established contact with during my stay at Cornell: Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell, Christiane Paul, curator of digital art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Hannah Star Rogers, PhD from Cornell, currently a researcher at the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen. At Cornell, I further discussed the project with Professor Tim Murray at the Department of Literatures in English, who has experience of running a similar project.
Secondly, I am part of a research group that has been awarded funding from the Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS) at Uppsala University (main applicant Erika Sigvardsdotter) to write research applications on the theme of artist residencies in academia. The project “Artists in residence in academic settings” ties in with the issue of interdisciplinarity and collaboration between artists and researchers in academia that characterizes the production process of the Swedish Millennium Monument and has resulted in a co-authored book chapter (with Erika Sigvardsdotter). In the spring of 2026, I will be the main applicant for a grant on a similar theme.
Finally, it should be mentioned that, thanks to my sabbatical year, in January 2026, I have submitted an application for promotion to become professor of art history at Uppsala University.
In addition to sharing knowledge about my book project, I approached my stay abroad as an opportunity to promote international exchange between the US and Sweden in the longer term. One of the goals of my stay at Cornell was therefore to explore the possibility of developing future collaboration in the form of exchange at the doctoral level between my host department at Cornell and my department at Uppsala University. My host, Iftikhar Dadi, has given me a standing invitation to allow doctoral students from my home department to be visiting graduate students at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies, and my colleagues at Cornell (both graduate students and senior researchers) have received a similar invitation from me to be visiting researchers at the Department of Art History at Uppsala University.
Another example of similar knowledge exchange that came about thanks to my sabbatical abroad was that my colleague Andrew Moisey chose to publish an article in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture (Taylor & Francis), of which I am the editor-in-chief. In addition, I donated two anthologies (“Swedish Art Historiography” and “Swedish Art History”) and a newly published dissertation (“The Making of Ways of Being an Artist”) on Swedish art history to the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library at Cornell, which was greatly appreciated. During the year, I further became a member of CAA (College Art Association).
Finally, I would like to emphasize the importance of researchers having the opportunity to be part of a leading international research environment, as I did during my sabbatical year. In addition to providing me with uninterrupted writing time and the opportunity to discuss my research with world-leading researchers in my field, it has changed my approach and given me new and crucial perspectives on my own research, and has thus been invaluable. I would also like to emphasize the importance of becoming part of a social context during a stay abroad. Thanks to that was given the opportunity to present my research early on in various contexts, I quickly became part of the research environment at the department, which in turn led to that I was invited to social events such as the department's gatherings at the start of the semester, Christmas celebrations, and graduation ceremonies, as well as dinners with guest lecturers in my field of research, which in turn led to valuable contacts. My established contact with Christiane Paul and Hannah Star Rogers, mentioned above and at the time guest lecturers at Cornell, and them agreeing to be part of the reference group in the application for one of my new research projects is a direct result of my being invited to dinners with them. All in all, this meant that I quickly became an integral part of both the academic and social community at and around Cornell.
The working title for my book project was "The Time Document: Clashes between Visions and
Reality in Relation to New Technology in Sweden around the Turn of the Millennium in 2000." By examining the rise and fall of the Swedish millennium monument, the book project aims to explore the clash between visions and reality in relation to the emergence of new technology in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. In the book, I argue that there often seems to be an uncertainty about what new technology is and that the emergence of new technologies therefore is surrounded by a kind of interpretative flexibility, which in turn leads to uncertainty about how the new technology should be managed. I argue that this uncertainty is an important reason for the clash that often arises between visions and reality in relation to the emergence of new technology.
When I presented the book project to my colleagues at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University (see below), I received highly constructive feedback, particularly regarding the project's international significance and contribution to the historiography of digital art. This has led me to rethink the choice of publisher, language, and content. As a result, two changes have been made to the original plan.
The first change concerns that I have decided to publish the book with an international publisher, primarily an American university press, instead of a Swedish publisher (which was the original plan). The book will therefore be published in English instead of Swedish, which means that the writing process will require more time and that the manuscript will need to undergo additional language review. Production costs will therefore be higher than according to the original budget. For this reason, I will request that unused funds be transferred to the production support fund.
The second change concerns the context of the book manuscript. My decision to publish the upcoming book with an international publisher means that I will be rewriting parts of the context. According to the application, the plan was to place the millennium monument primarily in relation to other monuments. I will still do that. However, as an addition, I will expand on the section about the history of digital art to show that the Swedish millennium monument is in fact part of a tradition of international digital public art that dates back to the 1960s. This means that I will write about the Swedish millennium monument both as part of an international context of similar initiatives around the turn of the millennium and as part of an art-historical context of digital public art that dates back to the 1960s, especially cybernetic art. The implication of this is that parts of the time I initially set aside for writing, have been spent on reading and gaining knowledge on the new context and thinking about how to reorganize the book manuscript. An important part of this change has been to write an article in which I relate the Swedish millennium monument to the cybernetic art of the 1960s. The article “The Swedish Millennium Monument: a cybernetic tower in the 21st century” (submitted for language review in February 2026) has been a way for me to try out writing the new content.
In addition to changes in the book’s language and context, I have chosen to partially restructure the existing content. Originally, the book manuscript consisted of an introduction followed by six chapters. According to the new outline, I have instead chosen to divide the book into three chapters, I) Commission, II) Installation, and III) Removal, with a shorter introduction and conclusion. The purpose of the restructuring is to focus more clearly on the book manuscript's thesis regarding the uncertainty that arises around new technology. The new structure further facilitates international comparisons of monuments that have undergone a similar process, but also with similar processes linked to the emergence and implementation of new technology that does not necessarily concern monuments. The content of the original chapters will still be included, but will be partially rearranged and rewritten for an international readership, and supplemented with the changed context. This means that the structure has been altered and the new context has been added.
The most significant part of my sabbatical year, which also changed my book project, was my stay as a visiting scholar at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. In total, I was a visiting scholar at Cornell for 12 months, eight of which were part of my sabbatical year. The first four months of my stay were funded by other scholarships. My host at Cornell was Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor of History of Art and Chair of Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences.
During my stay at Cornell, I presented my research on six occasions. Twice I presented papers at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies' monthly research seminar, Research in Art and Visual Culture (RAVC) workshop, led by Assistant Professor Nancy P. Lin. On the first occasion, I presented the book project I was working on during my sabbatical, and on the second, a draft of a new research proposal on museums' collection practices regarding digital art, “Managing the New” (see below), which was developed from my book project. During the presentations, I received very valuable feedback from my colleagues, not least from Associate Professor María Fernandez, who has long worked with similar issues. María Fernandez drew my attention to the similarity between the Swedish millennium monument and art created within the cybernetic movement in the 1960s, which was important in demonstrating the international relevance of the book manuscript and led me to rethink the content of the book. The insights from Assistant Professor Andrew Moisey, whose research on photography, digital media, film, and moving images helped me understand the book's content in a broader technological-historical perspective, has also been very valuable. The department's younger researchers also contributed to my decision to make changes, in particular Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano, a doctoral student specializing in art, technology, and science.
On three occasions, I was given the opportunity to participate in teaching at the department, presenting my research to students and doctoral candidates in the courses “History and Theory of Digital Art” by led by María Fernandez and "Contemporary Art: 1960 – Present“ led by Iftikhar Dadi, and on the doctoral course ”Graduate Research Methods in Art History" led by Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the department, Benjamin Anderson. In addition, I also presented my research at other departments at Cornell. For example, researcher Anna Davidsson invited me to present the project to her research group, Cornell EcoArts, at Cornell Cals, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. These presentations gave me the opportunity to further formulate my project in relation to an international – especially American – context, which helped me to rethink the tone and content in the context according to the changed outline of the book manuscript.
Moreover, I led one of the seminars at RAVC in connection with Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano's presentation of his dissertation project, and participated in academic seminars, workshops, and lecture series organized by both my host institution and other units at Cornell, in addition to the RAVC workshop, these included Pulse of Art History and Visual Culture Colloquium. During my sabbatical year, I also participated in two conferences. In the spring of 2025, I presented one of the new research ideas I had been working on during my stay at the CAA (College Art Association) 113th Annual Conference in New York City, and after returning to Sweden, I presented the same research idea in the fall at the Conference on the occasion of the 150th anniversary for Art History at the University of Oslo.
In order to understand the Swedish millennium monument in relation to an international context of both other monuments and art history in general, an important part of my stay has been visiting various museums and public monuments to see and experience them in situ. During my stay at Cornell, I therefore made study visits to museums and monuments in both Ithaca and other parts of the US, including: Herbert F. Johnsons Museum of Art and Handwerker Gallery in Ithaca; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA: The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim, Neue Galerie, 9/11 Memorial & Museum and a number of minor art galleries in New York City; Smithsonian and The National Mall in Washington DC; The George Eastman Museum in Rochester; Corning Museum of Glass in Corning; Buffalo AKG Art Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo.
My sabbatical has further resulted in other publications, new research questions, new research collaborations, and new research applications. Firstly, research into the management of digital public art led me to the question of how museums manage digital art. In the spring of 2026, I submitted an application to the Swedish Research Council, “Managing the New,” which is related to the issue of managing digital art and develops the theoretical arguments about the interpretive flexibility that arises around new technology when it is new, which I apply in the book manuscript. A reference group consisting of international and national experts has been tied to the project. Three of its members are scholars and other experts I established contact with during my stay at Cornell: Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell, Christiane Paul, curator of digital art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Hannah Star Rogers, PhD from Cornell, currently a researcher at the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen. At Cornell, I further discussed the project with Professor Tim Murray at the Department of Literatures in English, who has experience of running a similar project.
Secondly, I am part of a research group that has been awarded funding from the Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS) at Uppsala University (main applicant Erika Sigvardsdotter) to write research applications on the theme of artist residencies in academia. The project “Artists in residence in academic settings” ties in with the issue of interdisciplinarity and collaboration between artists and researchers in academia that characterizes the production process of the Swedish Millennium Monument and has resulted in a co-authored book chapter (with Erika Sigvardsdotter). In the spring of 2026, I will be the main applicant for a grant on a similar theme.
Finally, it should be mentioned that, thanks to my sabbatical year, in January 2026, I have submitted an application for promotion to become professor of art history at Uppsala University.
In addition to sharing knowledge about my book project, I approached my stay abroad as an opportunity to promote international exchange between the US and Sweden in the longer term. One of the goals of my stay at Cornell was therefore to explore the possibility of developing future collaboration in the form of exchange at the doctoral level between my host department at Cornell and my department at Uppsala University. My host, Iftikhar Dadi, has given me a standing invitation to allow doctoral students from my home department to be visiting graduate students at the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies, and my colleagues at Cornell (both graduate students and senior researchers) have received a similar invitation from me to be visiting researchers at the Department of Art History at Uppsala University.
Another example of similar knowledge exchange that came about thanks to my sabbatical abroad was that my colleague Andrew Moisey chose to publish an article in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture (Taylor & Francis), of which I am the editor-in-chief. In addition, I donated two anthologies (“Swedish Art Historiography” and “Swedish Art History”) and a newly published dissertation (“The Making of Ways of Being an Artist”) on Swedish art history to the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library at Cornell, which was greatly appreciated. During the year, I further became a member of CAA (College Art Association).
Finally, I would like to emphasize the importance of researchers having the opportunity to be part of a leading international research environment, as I did during my sabbatical year. In addition to providing me with uninterrupted writing time and the opportunity to discuss my research with world-leading researchers in my field, it has changed my approach and given me new and crucial perspectives on my own research, and has thus been invaluable. I would also like to emphasize the importance of becoming part of a social context during a stay abroad. Thanks to that was given the opportunity to present my research early on in various contexts, I quickly became part of the research environment at the department, which in turn led to that I was invited to social events such as the department's gatherings at the start of the semester, Christmas celebrations, and graduation ceremonies, as well as dinners with guest lecturers in my field of research, which in turn led to valuable contacts. My established contact with Christiane Paul and Hannah Star Rogers, mentioned above and at the time guest lecturers at Cornell, and them agreeing to be part of the reference group in the application for one of my new research projects is a direct result of my being invited to dinners with them. All in all, this meant that I quickly became an integral part of both the academic and social community at and around Cornell.