During a period in the 90s the ozone hole in the atmosphere appeared to be one of the major environmental threats. Before this time ozone was only mentioned in chemistry books’ in high school. Now, ozone were on everyones lips. It seemed as dangerous as cancer or smoking. Children were dressed in long sleeves on the beach and regular reports in the media announced the thickness of the ozone layer. We felt sorry for the people of Australia, where the ozone layer was reported to be especially thin. We blamed the ozone for killing Tage Danielsson. Without the protective ozone layer the sun had corroded down his ruddy skin and given him skin cancer.

Meanwhile, alarming reports came about ground-level ozone, a kind of ozone, abundant in urban traffic areas. The right thing but at the wrong place. Much like dirt. Ozone was a current topic when we were invited to take part in the city exhibition New Stockholm.

Our simple idea was to make a ozon healer, a device positioned at traffic that could haul up the dangerous ground level ozone towards the atmosphere where it would mend the broken ozone hole. With the help of some yellow marking color we separated a place at the traffic roundabout at Sergelstorg and called it “OZONE”. Inside this area, we put eight gigantic yellow industrial fans, in units of four and four, which blew against each other. The space between the fans was very windy and was frequently used by visitors.

We published a press release in which we described the project as part of a series of experiments to determine how to fix the ozone hole. We signed with Monika Gora, landscape architect, and Gunilla Bandolin, professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences – Gunilla had just taken the job – to give the experiment weight. A newspaper published the message exactly as we had written it.