CARMADA
Beside the static city of Los Angeles a steadily moving city exists. Living in Los Angeles
often equates to living in a car, as many people spend hours each day in long distance
commutes and unavoidable traffic jams.
Exploring the car as a “living room” as well as a symbol of personal freedom, identity,
and privacy, a group-show was developed, where exhibitions and performances took
place within a convoy of vehicles.
This driving exhibition poses the question of what happens when the rooms of a fixed
museum begin to independently circulate and find their way to the city and its residents.
15 Local and international artists were generating their own work within a car interior.
The relationship between the car, the human being, and the city was a major subject
connecting various works and approaches.
For one whole day on August 26th 2006, the mobile exhibition, consisting of individual
units, did start from one point and swarmed out into the city and its traffic, had a merging
point at the parking deck of Arc Light Movie Theater, another one in front of the closed
gates of Dodger Stadium and last stop in downtown Los Angeles.
There, the end of the action was celebrated with many guests in a huge Hangar inside
a developing Cold Storage space. All cars were circling in a round before being parked
in formation. Videos of the different performances, made during the day, were being
projected on the large concrete walls.
Don’t Break Down, 2006 (A piece made for the CARMADA exhibition)
Using sound, voice and text in conjunction with the specific site of the car, Don’t Break Down raises questions around the intersection of such mundane daily routines as driving and the unavoidable presence of human emotions within those routines. Focusing on how this reoccurring intersection affects the ways we move through our daily lives.
In the visual portion of Don’t Break Down the front windshield of the car reads MAKE NO MISTAKE in bold red vinyl letters. This idiom acts as a humorous yet sincere reminder to be a cautious driver, a sentiment furthered by the dented hood and sunken right headlight, blemishes on an otherwise pristine new car. In bold yellow text the back window reads, TAKE ME BY SURPRISE! This acts as a comical plea for an event out of the ordinary to occur, begging for relief from the monotony of daily routine and congested traffic. However, depending on interpretation, the text can come dangerously close to inviting a fender bender.
The sound piece portion is designed for broadcast on the car stereo with the listener seated within the car. The structure of incremental sounds native to the auto, such as turn signals, no seatbelt dings, etc., is used in combination with the direct address of second person narration to organize a series of spoken story fragments around both the emotional and physical circumstances of mistakes, accidents, surprises, and monotony.
