Okay, so, the entire mess started waaaaaay back, so long ago that I forgot how long ago it actualy was. But it started with my sister-in-law. Okay, not _actualy_ my sister-in-law, she's just my girlfriend's sister, but... erm... never mind...

So, she approached me one day and started telling me about this new "European Youth Association of Serbia" thing, how she is a part of it, and how they were thinking of making an exhibition about what they had, badly, dubbed "cyberpunk art". She asked for my help. I agreed. I was in.

After the first meeting with the EYAS crowd at Dushan's place (he is the head of EYAS) where we drunk lots of tea and made zero useful conclusions, Urm, who came along, and myself decided that all we actualy can do is ask three groups of people for help; CoRRoSioN, JuiCe and Hyperopia, the only three active demo groups in our country, at the time. So, we did. I called Domin8r, and soon after had a face2face chat with him about the potential project, immediately connecting him with Dushan, and thus loosing most of the contact with CoRRoSioN's bit of the whole organisation, for the time being. I called, or was, to be more precise, called by Pain/JuiCe and had a nice chat with him, although we came to no concrete conclusions (we never did, after that, and all JuiCe contributed to the whole event were their entries at Scene Strike 1, as far as I know) and I contacted two members of Hyperopia, which were, at that time, in a weird elite-trip, or at least so it seemed, so they sent me to hell... whatever... their contribution was the same as JuiCe's, which was much better than none...

Anyway, I connected Dominator with Dusan, and then there was a loooong period of hybernation. The Student's Protest begun, we were all very active in it, and the exhibition just got delayed more and more, some of us even loosing faith, believing that it will remain just another good idea that never got actualy done. But then, one day, something started moving. A word here, a word there, I came onto information that showed how CRS and EYAS are starting to make preparations for the exhibition... I promptly contacted Dominator, and then it begun... though I did nothing much at that point, it was interesting to see how an undefined idea we had months ago grows and develops into - Creative Tech Week. Finaly, quite a few weeks later, we had a date set. All we had to do is worry about the tech stuff.

And so we did. To skip the bullshit, on May the 26th, we were all in Cinema Rex. CoRRoSioN, myself (since back then I wasn't part of tha posse), EYAS, and a few guys from C-Rex. We dragged lots of equipment down there, all of CoRRoSioN's Amigas, a couple of their PC's some of Radio B92's PC's, a couple of machines from S-Soft, and of course, my faithful "Motherfucker" 286... We connected most of the equipment that night, and because of minor (ha!) tech problems went home around 03:00AM that morning. Fun, fun, fun, for the first night in Rex. Arhimed wasn't laughing, though, and neither were Dominator and Marcus, poking around (of course) a PC with a gfx card that was constantly refusing to work the way it should've...

The next day was the Grand Opening. CoRRoSioN and EYAS were supposed to do a warm welcome speech, but, unfortunately, I wasn't there to see it, because I had classes I couldn't skip. Those that were there, say I missed zilch. So, around four I dropped in, and promptly started coding an ASCII slideshow for my computer, since there was practicaly nothing else we could display on it, and I had to justify putting Dominator and Paranoid through so much trouble getting it down there. An hour or so and one pissed Dushan later, I had the bloody thing going, and, as it turned out, not a moment too soon. People actualy started appearing. Visitors!

Squirming around our computers, looking at the pixel slideshows on the other machines, at my ascii slideshow, at the X-Windows screen saver that was running on the (only) one Linux box we had because we found nothing else we could show off on the bloody thing, and a kid from the neighbourhood playing games on Gyro's A1200. Exciting, and weird...

Soon after that, we placed all the chairs in front of the video beam... then, some boring lecture commenced, held by some famous video-artist that I never heard of, so most of us chilled in the hallway in front of the projection room... They went on and on and on and on, and just at the right moment, when we all started getting bored stiff, it finaly came to an end... We hung around with the visitors, explaining here and there how some of the stuff we were displaying is made and what it actualy is, several people were amazed by my ascii show, of course ;-) and we actualy made a couple of interesting contacts... hell, interesting is a weak word, one of the lady visitors seems to have tryied to get me connected with her sister's daughter, for hell knows what reason (wink, wink, nudge, nudge... SAY NO MORE!!!)

Anyway, at 08:00 sharp... okay, so, NOT so sharp... well... actually, at 08:00 dull... it was time to see Akira... I saw it for the first time, and was like... blasted out of my seat... amazing... cyberpunk at it's best... The following day we showed Ghost in the Shell, which was even better, true, hard core cyberpunk, while the last projection, on the third day, Tetsuo the Iron Man, was the ultimate perverted heavy duty lost-in-space kickass hell of a movie. Some of the people hated it, some thought it was just soooooooooooo funny, and us - we loved it.

Now, I will not bore you with the guests and what they did... all but one discussion was waaaaaay too boring for me, and quite sincerely, though I admire what the guys are doing, listening to how someone tells you about a dude who set up a car without it's doors onto four concrete slabs inside a house and played a recording of his grandma explaining how to plant flowers from a tape recorder inside it, well... you judge for yourself...

Anyway, as I said, there was one interesting discussion... the one about cyberpunk... Zoran Zivkovic proved what a fuckhead he is, Vladimir Vesovic was his usual poetic self when talking about cyberpunk, though his vision differs from the _real_ stuff, there were a couple of other guys I never heard of, and of course, PARANOID!!! Who tried to explain to all the people there how cyberpunks are not awkward people with lots of wires strapped to them and with their hair cut in an odd shreaded way, walking around on neon shoes in fluorescent shirts, but normal-looking people who differ mostly on the inside... not a popular attitude, it proved to be, but who the fuck cares... anyway, right after all this, some form of life, with zero intelligence I could detect rose from the audience and requested to be allowed to speak. This guy deserves a separate paragraph...

He was a student of electrical engineering, for which I am currently very ashamed of being his colleague, who has, as he told us, "done a bit of hacking around"... The poor sorry ass looser probably thought he was going to impress us all with his tales of visits to the US, where everyone told him to keep silent about his hacking career, where people had "virtual money", and where... well, to tell you the truth, I didn't find one bloody point in all the bullshit he told us. But...

The big screen behind him... Alex and Dominator by the computer... as he started talking about his hacking, an odd little bullshit character appeared on the screen, with the title "I am a hacker, too..." then, as he talked on about his days in the US, they added somthing like "Paranoid is a bit nervous... don't give up, Par... for little money... virtual money..." etc, etc, writing stuff that made us laugh our asses off, while the poor idiot thought we laughed at his lousy attempts of being amusing. At the end, as a culmination, they blasted Terry Gilliam's blank "fat" face from "The Meaning of Life" on the screen, and everyone died of laughter, which finaly made the fucking idiot stop his rap. You should have seen him l8r, walking through the crowd, so fuckin' full of himself...

Anyway, everything went on fine, all three days passed, and the exhibitionary part of CTW passed without any incidents, everything went more or less smoothly...

Some remarks should be added here, though, just so that I can do a bit of gossip... Firstly, I never knew that so little people can get so pissed at stuff and flame so energetically... secondly, blasting the 1kW amp to hell was a brilliant idea. We should do that again. Thirdly, Arhimed and Becha didn't waste any time - they got busy whenever they could ;-> Fourthly, Dushan wasted a lot of time. =;->> Fifthly, I discovered the odd relationship Q and Dominator have. No, nothing sexualy perverted, they just have this sort of "fight-peace-fight-peace-fight-peace-etc" sort of interaction which, amazingly, produces lots of results. Though makes for a lot of "c'mon, guys, why doncha make up already?!" Sixtly, shouts must go to Marcus, who was there, on the spot, working hard even though he had some real tough personal problems. Seventhly, I never knew I could enjoy not sleeping for four nights so much... actualy, six nights, but that came l8r... Eightly, Simargl, better known as "PANTA THE AMAZING" was truly amazing and proved to be a true "Vrhunski Majstor Smora"... (private joke, pay no attention) Ninthly, the CoRRoSioN animation kicks fuckin' ass... Tenthly... oh, hell, no, this goes into a separate p'graph...

WE WERE ON TV!!! YEAH!!! All of us, although not at the same time, and not on the same channel... Dominator and Marcus did some bullshit for PTC, for which we hated them... gosh, you people have no idea what idiots the PTC people are... they created such a lousy ambient, with everything being blank, no background music, fuckin' STERILE environment, and my only comment was - no wonder noone but dumbass peasants watches them. Zero style.

Alex and myself were on BK, where he spoke and I acted as a decoration... the roles were supposed to be reversed on Studio B, where I should've talked and he should've acted as a decoration, but he never showed up there, so I did the whole thing solo... Jurnalists from many papers came by, took interviews, took pictures, and we were relieved to find that the people from "SK" thought no good of our exhibition and SS1, because that is *THE* sign that we had a bloody good thing going...

So, that about covers it... oh, yeah, the illustrations on the walls were pretty damn cool, done by some of the greatest illustrators in Yugoslavia... and the illustrators themselves proved to be pretty cool people...

Akhem, I just remembered, credits must be given to the ladies from the bakery upstreet from C-Rex, who make kickass pizza-croissants and chocolate-croi's, as well as great burek... as well as the C-Rex staff, who helped us out as much as they could.

Now, this should be *IT*... I think I said everything... except that you should stand by for CTW2, very, VERY soon... with a better look, and better equipment... Hmh... yeah... okay... nuff bullshit, I think this article is getting too long already, although I am far from saying everything I should... If I remember something, I will DEFINITELY NOT update this article... fuck that... now go check out my scene strike report, if I got around to writing it already...

Phuzzy Logik of CoRRoSioN