At the halfway point of bike wrecking, my carefully composed installation has become a visitor attraction with tourists photographing and discussing it's contribution to the expressive art world.
What I need is a grandiose statement about what inspired it, it's meaning, and my reasons for choosing this form and materials - what it all represents - and I shall submit it for exhibition at the next Venice Biennale.
What it really represents is a pile of wrecked bikes, the stupidity of some bike builders in fitting rubbish components to very good frames, the idiocy of others manufacturing frames so heavy that riding them must have been like pedalling a tank. It also represents built-in obsolescence; little parts that break but are no longer obtainable (and while we might fabricate or find a work around, the work involved is worth more than the bike). It also represents changing fashions.
I have rebuilt beautifully made English bikes from the 1970s only to have them rejected by the target market - too old, not trendy.
Enough of what it really represents - send me your version of a highbrow artists blurb which includes the word existential (or some derivative of it) that I can plagiarise for my art show submission. There isn't a prize unless you want a free vintage bike and can collect it from Ashburton New Zealand.
So this is what AI (Google Gemini) came up with:
ReplyDeleteExistential Debris: A Reclamation of the Urban Soul
This sculptural assemblage, a poignant meditation on the ephemeral nature of human endeavor, invites contemplation of the cyclical rhythm of creation and decay. Once vessels of individual purpose and urban mobility, these discarded bicycle components now coalesce into a haunting monument to the passage of time and the impermanence of material existence. A stark reminder of our collective impact on the environment, this installation probes the profound questions of our place within the grand tapestry of existence.
PS Later today, Gail will mine some other sources, as she feels the AI result is insufficiently pretentious!
ReplyDeleteNone-the-less I would award it the prize just for finding a suitable employment for AI generated prose. It gave me a good laugh out loud moment.
DeleteIt sounds pretentious enough to me 😁
DeleteHow about:
ReplyDeleteHere we present an artwork representing the intersections between critical theory and sustainable transport, exploring the ways in which movement can enable a reordering of our subjectivity, allowing relationality, pleasure and physical affect to determine our understanding of the potential for the material world to become 'undone'. Interweaving of twisted metals allows contemplation of non-binary spatial, emotional, and experiential chaos, allowing it to coalesce into a quantum field of potential entanglement that speaks to our fractured universes.
Cheers! Gail.
PS The first part is heavily plagiarized from the profile of my friend Marse's niece Soroa, a modern dancer at the über-cool Tanzfabrik in Berlin!
Gobsmacked. That's bound to win a place in the exhibition.🤣🤣🤣🤫
DeleteI think Gail takes the prize, both times.
ReplyDeleteJust looks like a heap of junk to me……rather expensive junk. Are there any old kids chopper bikes there. I saw a chap in England just rode one from Wales to Scotland as a fund raiser. I bet they’d be too old and un trendy as well
ReplyDeleteNo choppers - they are way to valuable these days to donate to charity. This is mostly cheap and nasty steel framed (and enormously heavy) modernish mountain bikes
DeleteUpcycle?
ReplyDeleteI love it. I shall entitle the entry Upcycle and adopt one of Gail's contributions to 'explain' it.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDelete"The Cyclone" by FTM... a mound of metal and rubber collected as if by the tides of a tsunami, created by a tornado, and reaching into the empirical experience of life; that we are tossed and battered by it, yet are still recognisably ourselves. Bent out of shape we still manage to cycle through and remain active, if in somewhat altered capacity. (Reviewed by YAM xx)
Cyclone - I love that.
Deletesince I have no clue at all what the word means, and even after looking it up still don't know, I say forget naming it and advertise it for some artist to come and take it and make ART out of it. the pile seems to be worthless as is, but I know someone here that would make all kinds of things out of that pile. that is a lot of work you did just to gather and sort.
ReplyDeleteThe scrap metal dealer is coming this week. I could think of lots of uses too but there is a limit to how much we can keep lying around and we are too far from population centres where artists and creators might make a living off converting it, so no one will collect it.
DeleteA mountain of sadness
ReplyDeleteWe are very happy to have it out of the shade house. It's a mountain of evidence for the temporary nature of what humans make and the wastefulness of the way we employ the planet's resources.
DeleteThat's alot of bikes, I guess it depends on how you look at it.
ReplyDeleteYou mean up close or from a distance? (Same number, different detail). If we trashed 200 bikes from a population of about 21,000, imagine how many redundant bikes are languishing in back yards in Christchurch!
DeleteIt really is sad that as much as we try to recycle, repair and reuse. Businesses are desperate to make their products just inferior enough that we will have to upgrade in a few years do to the breakages they know will happen and not have replacement parts. We see it at the workshop. Cars are known to have weak areas. Although you can get the parts to replace them, mostly, you can’t just buy the little part. You have to buy a “kit” and replace the whole section. Costing hundreds of dollars instead of just one hundred.
ReplyDeleteIt’s criminal
Right on - that is exactly it with so many of these bikes. A broken or worn out, unobtainable tiny part. Usually Chinese made. I spent half a day today trying to fix gear selectors that rotate round the handle bars. What an enormous waste of time. The bike was probably donated because a bike mechanic quoted hours of his time to fix it, or an entire new gear and brake fitting both front and back. I haven't trashed it yet but might swap the handlebars and all the fittings for a better system off a trashed bike. GRRRR
Delete