SLOW INEVITABLE DEATH OF AMERICAN MUSCLE
SLOW MOTION CAR CRASH

This sculpture is a machine that advances two full sized automobiles slowly into one another over a period of 6 days, simulating a head on automobile collision.  Each car moves about three feet into the other.  The movement is so slow as to be invisible.
It is almost impossible to watch a modern action film without at least one automobile wreck. Why do we find interest and excitement it new versions of the same event?  Why are we not satisfied? Cars are extensions of our body and our ego.  We buy or modify cars that reflect our personalities and egos.  When we see an automobile destroyed, in a way we are looking at our own inevitable death. This moment is, because of it's inherent speed, almost invisible. We have slowed the event via film and video but only from a cameras perspective. We never get to see the transformation of living breathing car too wreck in its entirety, in detail. This piece offers the viewer the ability to examine in three dimensions the collision of these cars. A moment that might take a fraction of a second in an actual collision will be expanded to take days.
Car wrecks are spectacular moments.  This piece by changing one of the key variables removes and changes the nature of the event.   What was life threatening is now rendered safe.  What was supremely spectacular is now almost static.   The wreck has been broken down to its Newtonian components.  We are left to contemplate our own mortality our own Newtonian components.

 

Made with engineering by Karl Biewald

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Produced by STUK arts centre and City of Leuven
Supported by LMS international

Shown at:
STUK art center in Leuven Belgium FEB 12-17 2008
NEXT art fair Chicago APRIL 24-28 2008