Kees de Groot: I love pioneering. This area did not have a network of actual contemporary visual art, but there was certainly a foundation for it. There was an interesting group of artists living and working in Hengelo who like me, were a bit stuck after leaving the academy but had no forum. It was a challenge to get something like that off the ground. I graduated from the Academy of Art and Industrial Design (aki), in nearby Enschede, as one of the first video artists, in 1983. Then I organized art parties in my studio. At the beginning of the nineties, I'd had it with video art, the challenge wasn't there anymore. So I turned my studio into a monthly art café, a combination of meeting place, 'happenings' and nightclub. That's what Planetart still is in fact, broadened each year with one or more large events and projects in a public space. The fact that there was a stimulating climate at that time, also played a part. A national discussion about artists initiatives had just begun, there was a dedicated forum and the magazine HTV de IJsberg had been set up. My most crucial starting point was that I wanted to be surprised, as artist and visitor. I want to experience art as an adventure, without the limits imposed by museums, and reach a new audience beyond the group already interested in art and youth culture. And make no mistake about the label 'provincial town'. The conglomerate Almelo-Hengelo-Enschede, gradually getting lumped together as one big city, consists of a quarter of a million Dutch people, and it's still growing. The economic 'boost' is present here too with all its consequences. And cities like Osnabrück and Munster are close by.

We're presenting a combination of live performances by artists working with images and sound and live-mixing vjs, including Arno Coenen and René Bosma and young vjs from the AKI, who combine new equipment with Amigas from the seventies. The group fckn'bstrds ('fucking bastards') is appearing with 'the first bionic music computer', a combination of noise with theatrical performance and objects. They create a kind of 'environment', that's different each time. We ourselves will improvise perhaps. It's part of Planetart to be always reinventing the wheel a bit. Apart from that, I'll be presenting Internet art again, but different than the last time. At that time, Peter Luining brought together a collection of works by established artists like jodi, Blank & Jeron and the Ascii Art Ensemble. That's more classic Internet art, whilst for some time now there's been a new generation. We want to put them in the spotlight.

I strongly believe in new networks of young self made artists like Mark van Elburg who I work with a lot. He is a spider in a huge, underground web of enormously active people who make and do all kinds of things, drawings, small books, magazines, performances, music, audio art, noise. They're often self-taught and pleasantly open and innovative. The fckn'bstrds are a couple of these types of artist. Their music is somewhat comparable to that of the Japanese Merzbow. They don't actually produce songs but more atmospheric sound, a wall of noise, more of an experience, and a very physical one at that. It's completely abstract and entirely unpredictable in the turns it takes. At the moment this music is still something for connoisseurs and they're unappreciated. But I'm convinced that in a couple of years noise will be in the Top 40, it'll develop like house did previously. More and more artists are taking this route, Speedy J, for instance, also makes atmospheric noise.

We're going for art as a total adventure. By that I mean that the door opens and you are overwhelmed by a total experience, a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' that's put together by a number of artists. In the Netherlands, Eboman is on the right track, his work is highly sophisticated but yet not completely abstract.

Now and then I'll make an installation. It remains an exciting challenge to create things and to surprise the public and myself. At the same time, I'm concerned about the current cultural decline. We're going through an enormous economic revival but meanwhile 99% of the population sits like a consuming materialist in front of the tube watching rubbish. That makes culture all the more important. It's part of the artist's job to agitate, raise issues and to hold up a mirror to society. That's what my work is about at least. I'm worried about the complete indifference of a small group of affluent people to the rest of the world. Exposing, for example bad practices by multinationals is more pertinent today than ever.

The fact that more and more opportunities are arising for large and relatively cheap distribution, can only benefit art's position. An almost unnoticed mixture of cultures can take place within digital networks. And I believe firmly in the freedom, unpredictability and elusiveness of the artist. I'm not so afraid of too much entertainment and not enough content. It's great that people can be confronted by art in other places and not just at a museum, on the street whilst they're drinking a beer on a terrace.

Yes, but we're also ambivalent. We rage against overproduction and over-consumption, but at the same time we're fascinated by ICT and 'state-of-the-art' technology. The cultural decline of western society, as well as having its unpleasant aspects, also has exciting and aesthetic ones. A collection of keyboards, cables, insides of computer monitors and speakers can be just as beautiful as whatever modernistic masterpiece you care to mention… simultaneous order and chaos, a fantastic area to explore. We're looking forward to it with a healthy mistrust and a strong dose of madness. Just as the Impressionists sought another experience of reality, we're creating an experience in the cyber era of the year 2000.