There’s a really busy intersection just outside of my apartment in Malmö, Sweden. It used to be a spot where I would always find thrown away cassettes. If I was out for a walk, not looking for anything in particular, I would find a magnetic tape clinging onto a lamppost in that junction. If I was out specifically looking for tape salads, I would find them there. It was as if people in cars where stopping for a red light, and finally got rid of that old, destroyed cassette that had been lingering in the car for so long.

Last month I really wanted to find a new one to add to my collection. But tape salads get fewer and fewer. It’s a disappearing format. Alice Baker wrote, in 2005: “Due to the growing trend towards the use of digital media, the demand for audiocassettes has declined all over the world. Since 2002, forecasts have accurately anticipated a 20% annual decline in global demand.1 The British Phonographic Industry reported that 83 million cassettes were sold in the UK in 1989. In 2004 the number had dropped to 900,000. Additionally, "sales" of pirated audiocassettes fell 20% in 2002, mirroring drops in the legitimate market.” http://www.loc.gov/nls/technical/cassettecomponents.html

At the same time I found out that a new usb-memory stick has been launched in the form of a cassette. A cassette as a beholder of things to remember. http://www.makeamixa.com/makeamixa.php Just like my initial idea with the tape salads. Cassettes are so strongly connected to the idea of being able to record, edit, re-record, appropriate your own story. Storing your own stories. Remembering your memories. And when the cassettes were spread outside of the military circuits they became a widespread and affordable medium. However, the tape salads often have a blurry sound from being rained on and from the wind. Digital formats don’t really get that worn sound.

I’ve also recently gone to record stores and found newly released music on cassettes. I have one by "Secret Diary" and I can see the advantages of releasing something onto cassette. If you reveal something private and personal, the digital format is not very well equipped to handle that, whereas a cassette in itself can represent something more intimate.

The other week I was visiting Glasgow. There was a guy standing with something really neat in his hands. I went up to him to tell him that I collect what he had just found. He answered:

-    I was just saying: I wonder what’s on it.

He wrote a note: Glasgow. Outside the Primary. Gibbon st.

I’ve got it here and I’ll wind it up and make it available for you the coming days.

And if you happen to find a tape salad, please write me a note. I’m hoping to be able to make a mix tape salad with some of your help. And I’m thinking of bringing it with me into Rangoon, since I’m going there in a few weeks on a residency.