The Boiler | 191 North 14th Street (Pierogi’s new adjunct exhibition space) Opening Reception | May 15, 2009. 7-10pm
Slow Motion Car Crash
This sculpture is a machine that advances two full sized automobiles slowly into one another, simulating a head on automobile collision. The gear system can be adjusted so that the crash occurs over the period of a few days, up to one year or more. The movement can be made 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 in 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 camera’s perspective. We never get to see the transformation of living breathing car to 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.
—Jonathan Schipper Made with engineering by Karl Biewald
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