Of course I don't know anything about technique

[Emelie Bardon]

Tomorrow is the day of the Volt festival in Uppsala. Christian and I will set up a CCTV music installation there, and I went there today to hang the camera, and speak to the caretaker/technician. He was very easy to work with. After a while, when we'd been climbing, hanging, arranging, and discussing, another technician showed up. He was not very easy to work with. I know how the patriarchy works but it's quite rare to get such an obvious example. The second technician (male of course) started asking the first technician about my stuff. I replied - because it was my stuff we/they were talking about. The second technician didn't give a shit about me. He just kept addressing the first technician, and didn't even look at me. Totally rude but true.

The second technician and I went down with the lift to put something on the floor to be able to find the camera focus. I went off the lift to put my bag there, and while I was on the floor (like 15 s), the second technician went up again, leaving me on the floor totally unable to do anything. He started messing about with the focus and zoom, and of course he had no fine motor control at all. Maximum or minimum of everything. I tried to instruct him from the floor until I realised how ridiculous this was, and got annoyed. I asked him quite roughly if I could come up. When I was up there, he wouldn't agree on which was the zoom, and which was the focus. It was so obvious to him that he would know better. Grrrrr....

Well, at least I felt quite competent, and in the end he had to admit that I knew my own gear better than he did.