SLOW-MOTION CAR CRASH

(SLOW INEVITABLE DEATH OF AMERICAN MUSCLE)

A simulation of a head-on collision at the rate of one millimeter per hour.

Chicago - 2009

Slow-Motion Car Crash, a death ritual written in oil and sheet metal.

Cars reflect our desires, what we want to be or be seen as. When we step inside, the vehicle becomes an extension of our body, id, and ego. When we see an automobile destroyed, we see a reflection of our inevitable death.

Slow-Motion Car Crash is a physical simulation of a head-on collision using two full-sized automobiles. Each car moves one meter into the other at the rate of about a millimeter an hour. The constant movement is so slow as to be invisible. This sculpture expands an event that usually takes a fraction of a second into months.

The ritualization of the car crash is common. We find this spectacle at the racetrack, movie theater, and arena. At the racetrack, we sit safely in the audience, watching as an honored few test and touch the edge of the envelope; death and destruction near at any moment, knowing at some point, they will lose their hold and be thrown completely into chaos. We see in films where again and again cars are flung off cliffs, smashed into each other, and set ablaze. We see it at the arena where cars are set against each other in combat. We slow down when we see it on the highway, stretching our bodies and compromising our safety to glimpse the carnage. It is the transformation of highly organized material into disorder. We find ourselves mesmerized again and again.

In the Slow-Motion Car Crash, the speed and danger are distilled out. The audience can touch and examine the object and event in detail. The speed has been removed; it still sits like an erased De Kooning, ever present in the work. The energy still transforms the metal and glass but at a tectonic pace. The molecules individually push one another and, in mass, push order toward entropy. We are given not only a front-row seat but something even better – we are given a lens that expands time. What normally happens in a moment is now almost too slow to comprehend. We see an object in motion that appears to be static. We have the leisure to see the crash from all angles. The drama and danger are gone, and we are left with a three-dimensional time machine. The event is moved from the oblongata to the cerebrum. At our leisure, we may decide exactly when the car will transform from an object of desire into trash. Can we catch death by the tail if we slow things down enough?

ARTEFACT

STUK Arts Center - Leuven Belgium - 2009

IRREVSERBILTY

The Boiler - Brooklyn NY - 2009

CONFLICT

Today’s Art - The Hague Holland - 2009

UNDER DESTRUCTION

Museum Tinguely - Basel Switzerland - 2010

Notable artists in the show: Martin Kersels, Christian Marclay, Roman Signer, Ariel Schlesinger, Monica Bonvicini, Arcangelo Sassolino, Alexander Gutke

THE ART OF DECELERATION

Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Germany - 2011

Notable artists in the show: Ai Weiwei, Marcel Duchamp, Douglas Gordon, Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, Jean Tinguely, Anselm Kiefer, Nam June Paik, Christian Marclay