A manually operated music box with still images of road construction edited together with techno tracks.
I had always been fascinated by roads, and the backstage mundanity. In this case the spectacle of constructing a layer of tarmac, something usually unseen, entranced me. I took the title from a Dutch corporate trade show I had been to. I had been sponsored by a groundworks and engineering company for one of my two years at the Rjksakademie – Grontmeij Groep- and enjoyed the spurious conjunction of the music played in our car rolling over the roads, in part made by this company.
Originally it was shown at the Rijksakademie open studios with a large photograph (originated at On-Site, London) and a house tent made of african fabric (originated at ‘Tenq’ triangle workshop in Senegal – Africa 95). Subsequently shown as part of Vauxhall pleasure. In my work at this time, I was concerned with the contradictions of itinerancy, mobility and the human relation to globalisation. Living in Amsterdam, to and from London, I was simultaneously working on live performance projects involving global chains of petrol stations.
This video, sound and image, is shown in a purpose built plywood box, like a small fridge, and the monitor flickers to life when the door is opened, enabling the viewer to also then close the door on the video. The images come from a brochure picked up at a corporate fair called Intertraffic that i visited while in Amsterdam in 1994. The music is from Jules Mylius, each track is a fragment of a different single in his collection of rare hard core garage/techno.
Details
1994
Credits
Jules Mylius
Tempered Ground – The Museum of Garden History and Parabola
Archive
The video loop is 60 minutes long, in 3 sections