Achtung

Going from the loom to computer graphics was not an enormous step for Charlotte Johannesson. Both build pictures from dots. Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s loom with punch cards from 1805 is considered to be the first computer. The tapestry “Achtung” was made for a scandalous exhibition at Kulturhuset in 1976, with Christina Johannesson and her husband, Sture Johannesson. The exhibition was a tribute to the German journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who exchanged her pen for weapons as co-founder of the Red Army Faction (RAF). The personal ID number in the tapestry referred to a debate at the time challenging the government’s growing influence through collection of personal data. As a result of public concern about personal data storage the Swedish Data Protection Authority was established in 1973, as the world’s first government body of this kind.