At that point, Jan Aman thought of Mia Hagg and of her boyfriend of those days Jean Nouvel. I called Mia and we agreed to meet them at Le Fondation Cartier where Nouvel was invited to a dialogue with theorist Paul Virilio. The two were conversing in French and I couldn't understand anything apart of a few words. So I sit back on my armchair and I start writing subtitles in my mind, fantasizing about what Nouvel and Virilio were talking about. I had never read any of Virilio's… books, but at some point, - "L'écran du Désert"...- I start feeling I knew exactly what he was saying..
I knew nothing about Virilio's ideas, yet his arguments, his obsessions and his paranoia, suddenly start parading around me, circulating me up to the point that I began growing uncomfortable with my very own convictions! Slipping into some kind of "psychoanalysis on speed" I start realizing that I have a big problem, an addiction and that I have become somewhat of a victim, a victim of computers. The last 10 years, I have really become a computer junkie. In addition, my relationship to the Internet wasn't as glamorous as I had convinced myself and others... When finally the talk was over, I had forgotten Jean Nouvel and the reason that had brought me to meet him. I now knew, that the Internet of the Pavilion that I was about to build, wasn't the Internet I really wanted.
"We need another Internet" I kept repeating to myself a few days later while I was flying to New York.
"This network we are using now isn't "internet"enough, its just some kind of "desert".
A "Desert of Computer Screens"...