---
title: "Race Car/Car Art"
author: "the scrapyard"
date: 2026-11-02
url: "https://1711.room.lc/race-car-car-art"
---

# Race Car/Car Art

Hi scavenger,

## *Race Car* 

On Thursday evening, after a mixed Yoga Asana class, a pit stop at a Conners Conners openings, a ride on the 421 bus, and then the 58 tram, I was at King's for *Race Car*. *Race Car* was sadly not the very epic object. It was a performance art piece. Ostensibly it explored "the mechanics of performance, audiences and wholeness," although considering all performance art does this I'm unclear why it needed to be specified. I actually don't have much to say about *Race Car* (I missed the first 20 minutes, so it would be a bit unfair). However, the nature of my anticipation for it did force me to reconsider some things. 

I was primarily excited for *Race Car* because of its titularly promised subject. I love cars – and especially artworks of cars. By nature of their historical position, the car very clearly embodies myriad sociocultural shifts and phenomena which it serves as either a catalyst for, or symptom of. Its existence, form, and function are children and agents of industrialism and capitalism. Contemporary urban spaces and everyday life are organised around its presence. Its foundational to suburbia's very existence. It's a foremost contributor to environmental destruction. It mobilises power; both patriarchal (its restriction denies women movement, yet its necessity envelops their lives) and colonial (providing settlers the ability to rapidly traverse and freely occupy stolen land). In Ballard's paradigm, its radical sensory affordances substitute for the 20th century's 'death of affect' – i.e. this is how we get our kicks now that daily life no longer presents lethal threats. It sits neatly at the nexus of theories of modernity, "post-modernity," and "post-post-modernity" or whatever, as a transcendent fixture of these era's respective achievements and crises. Then, of course, the personal nature of being in it, owning it, driving it, and living in its carved out world also makes it a potent means of self-exploration.

The car appeals to me so much as an artistic subject because it is an extremely economical one. The specificity of the car's formal attributes intersects with its proliferated significance. It's distinct qualities make it susceptible to diverse visual deformations while retaining its intimate familiarity and cultural connotations. Artistically representing the car provides an opportunity to evoke particular viewpoints on any of the aforementioned situations – all broader societal issues that happen to coalesce in the car-object – while effectively ensuring their translation. Simultaneously, the car's myriad appeal (in recognisability and identification), retained in its object-hood, means that any given representation presents the opportunity to derive references to any other associated meaning. It is extremely viable as an instrument for political expression. Finally, as in Ballard's case, in art popular understandings of the car can be probed to innovate new meanings that reside on the subconscious level of our mutual relationship. 

My enjoyment of car art lies in the potential opportunity to undertake this reading exercise of such a preeminent 'text.' I don't feel this way about art of any other singular object, maybe even more meaningful ones. The more concerning thought accompanying my hype for *Race Car* was that I was excited to see a car, not the artwork. I do not want to feel this way. I resent being excited about the conceptual subject of a work rather than what's happening or what it is. I would rather be excited by the prospect of an artwork more than anything else. I worry I might be sabotaging my experience of certain works by unconsciously preparing to judge them on a metric of the strength and originality of their evocation of the car. The basis of this flawed excitement is particularly problematic for *Race Car,* a work whose meaning was purportedly premised on its medium-specific qualities as a performance work, not its subject. 

Unfortunately, I am also of the belief that one of the most exciting subjects a performance artwork can tackle is representation of an object. Performance art is unlike nearly every other art medium in that it necessitates the artist's physical presence alongside you. There is no one-step of removal between the art-object you're experiencing and its being made by them. It is them, and therefore, nearly unavoidably personal. This makes personal feelings or experiences generic subjects. Same goes for the simulation or activation of social situations, the favored tactic of the bygone 'relational aesthetics'. I like when a work transgresses the boundaries of its medium to 'do' what it cannot. My highest compliment for a painting, sculpture, even film, is that "it's a situation," but a performance art piece is inherently a situation. It would be unremarkable for a painting to be simply 'of' a car, but how fantastic if a performance could be. 

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793342942/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/xuc3og1oiysgalefsnvl.gif)

The closest I can think of is Jim Dine's [*Car Crash*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5qRtTkVeWY) (1960) (which is still a situation, not an object). In it Dine IS a car, careening through the audience with accompanying sound effects as he drives a cross dressing couple to their destined end, concocting the inundation of the vehicular that characterises our lives. I didn't quite expect *Race Car* to be like that, but I was optimistic the markers of the race car's physicality and motion might emerge in the performers. 

To reiterate, I don't have extensive thoughts on *Race Car*, but suffice it to say it was not very race car. In contrast the defining characteristic of its namesake, the performance was anything but fast. It went on at least 45 minutes. It wasn't even a race car as much as a pit stop, although that is also a notoriously fast thing. I might be so bold as to blame this skirting outright representation of the car on my generation's growing resentment and rejection of the car (or at least its fetishisation). There is possibly an untapped wellspring of good car art to be made in critically considering those personal feelings about the car that inspire this rejection, be they frustration, neutrality, vitriol, etc. However, much antagonistic car art remains in the conventional stream; merely using the car to comment on the negative consequences of its use. Which is fine, but not very exciting. 

I have been extremely scant on supporting evidence for all my grand ideas about the car-in-art. This is a because I plan for the subsequent newsletter to be an archive of some of my favorite car artworks. An initial dump will hit inboxes, and I will add to it in my showroom homepage continually.

## Newsletter, and Goings On

I was going to include a second, far less personally relevant diatribe on the ongoing semantic bleaching of the word 'niche.' This was most recently evidenced to me by people bemoaning their precious, award winning, theatrically released and studio backed 2002 film *Secretary* was going 'mainstream' as Charli XCX dressed as the main character for Halloween. 

However my friend [Ava](https://ava.room.lc/), the progenitor of this newsletter software, has been very clear that she does not want Showroom to blend with the new popular, discourse ridden form of written internet content, best embodied in Substack. It is to remain, in the true sense of the word, 'niche' (or at least the content produced using it shall, I think she hopes to make some money). Thankfully the format of the email newsletter lends itself to this. Like the zine, there has to be a level of personal initiative in consuming and producing it. There is no external incentive like widespread observable responses. You have to be here because you care a little bit about what I have to say. 

In keeping with this I intend *the scrapyard* to remain dedicated to very personal and current interests. I am not instituting a format beyond the confines of Email plain text. I hope for some weeks just to be lists of curious things, although generally they will be informative. Upcoming topics may include WWII era code-breaking computers, interfaces, or Peter Roehr (the newsletter's header). I also want to include superficial favorites and new discoveries. See below. 

## Music

Why does no one sing over club tracks anymore. Not just vocal clips, like real lyrics. I've been rediscovering a late 80s-90s golden age of more complex verbal accompaniments to electronic club music. I am particularly tickled by those with lyrics detailed enough they will you to defy the unconscious adherence to rhythm and/or social environment of the club, just so you can get the joke. 

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793658752/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/ulluiyesvfctimmvddci.png)

[Unique (N.Y. Underground Mix) (1991)](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=LMB-eE_VFWQ&list=OLAK5uy_nLTSaykGEb9lw7zK5kroHWjRXbvOdUdqE)

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793658609/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/revwtw2mm6yjpolsrzso.png)

[People are Still Having Sex (1991)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ImRyPymRAM)

There's an excellently rogue sample of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor in the middle of Latour's dystopian sex anthem. 

I've also been on Pharoah Sanders kick for my evening walks.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793658792/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/qmo9ehwwhvyacqppsl12.png)

[Pharoah (1976)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NeW4AH3nwM)

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793658910/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/z59xukn0kusmwnrpz9qr.png)

[Promises (2021)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn8x0QbN4f8)

## Artworks 

A couple of weeks ago I (re?)discovered Harris Rosenblum through his [DNR piece](https://donotresearch.substack.com/p/hypermaterialism). Big fan of his work [*Immanent Causes*](https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/project/harris-rosenblum-peter-fischli-david-weiss-at-timeshare-los-angeles-61325?from=%2Fartist%2Fharris-rosenblum-42029), (exhibited with the iconic Fischli/Weiss video work [*The Way Things Go*](https://vimeo.com/828477072)), mainly because it enacts my favorite method, interfaces. In this case, the 'absolute' interface: Rosenblum's idea that all the technologies; base substances, instruments, and constructed forms, of contemporary built reality are an interface to God, his natural world or possible worlds, that preempts humanity's contributions and additions.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793606175/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/zp40cixssztlcgyb8zyq.png)

Even more beautiful built objects at Max Goelitz by glass artist [Ju Young Kim](https://ofluxo.net/addresses-without-names-ju-young-kim-max-goelitz-munich): stained glass reconstructions of parts of the architecture and machines that comprise transitory zones – like airplanes (another kind of interface actually). I enjoy when the concrete function of a medium aligns and relays that of its subject. Some great car art also does this. 

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793606446/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/tack6wd2dezkpk1ug6tz.png)

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793606431/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/zcb85fqigwndt73yufie.png)

I also re-experienced the master Peter Tscherkassky's film works when putting together a program for Palomino for Halloween. I won't go into detail here since I hope to talk extensively about him at some point.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/he9zcukum/image/upload/v1793606561/showroom/3819643d-2e12-42d3-8972-3e43f6748e83/gmtgeyvagxblvx0spgab.png)

In the future, this section of relevant interests will also include food I've been eating. I just don't have any good pictures from this past week. I especially don't have a picture of the plant-based Lemon curd and Poppyseed cake slice from Yolanda's bakesale at the co-op. Just wow. As a life long no-egg and no-milk eater, I do not understand how that got cream to taste like that, or made it so moist. 

## You can come join me...

**Thursday Nov 5th**: 

**3PM @ HAIR ARI** for the launch of *Unfolding* Anthology, which I have a piece about new artist/filmmakers films in.

**7PM @ LIBRARY PORTAL** for Keyword Film Club Season 2 Candle 4! Watching a fucked little movie I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994). With a special experimental Ken Jacob's piece before hand.

**Friday Nov 6th:**

**7PM @ BELL CITY**: For the 115 House party out of the house (and then back at the house again)!

This is everything for the first newsletter. It's a bit all over the place since there is no defined window of time for me to derive the subjects from. Next one (after the Car-Art archive launch) will be everything since this one. And hopefully out sooner rather than later so I don't forget things.