I was interested in oil companies as global corporations, I wanted to use their star logo (star/shell) and fuel the tension of working with a politically incorrect subject in an ambiguous way. I was fascinated in petrol stations in their capacity as social spaces and as potential arenas for social activity – the way they’re lit, they’re like a stage. They have a captive passing audience and reveal something of the late-night psyche. They are an after party venue for revellers past their best, everyone who drives has to use them.
I wanted to use their symbol for my own purposes and undo its associations – in being very politically incorrect with the whole subject of oil companies and petrol, it wasn’t an obvious critique of the Texaco Corporation. I was also interested in how I could make a relationship on some level with the corporation, what would happen, using the attempt to get sponsorship as a kind of Trojan horse – “Co-mingling the format of a love affair with an attempt to get corporate sponsorship”.
The video is meant to be like a love song, and focuses on the full moon, their star, and red lighting, which links to another starting point. My love lived by a Texaco in East London, while I was living in Amsterdam, also by a Texaco, and I enjoyed the romantic fact that we shared the corporate star as well as the constellations in the sky.
I took the video to the Texaco headquarters and showed the PR people, expecting them to say, “You can’t use our logo, you can’t show this film”, and in fact in Holland they said they’d like a copy to show it to their new employees, because it was harmless and wasn’t a critique of their activities. In Britain they were more patronising, maybe because art practice was less integrated in everyday life in Britain then than in Holland. In Holland I somewhat befriended the PR person. She was quite extraordinary and had even commissioned a Texaco tulip and I found the corporate world quite absurd and ridiculous as well as everything else that is on a more serious level. The project was about this surreal appropriation and I was trying to work with the absurdity in a critical way.
With flatmates, artist-friends, I did a series of performances in Texaco garages on the nights of the full moon leading up to the exhibition (in a project space in Utrecht – Casco). They were called ‘garage gate-crashes’. I went with a group of friends and everyone dressed in red clothes, and handed out flyers for the exhibition to the passing drivers, so it was a marketing exercise to a different audience and a way of trying to occupy and use the space of the garage without permission. (see – Statoil Moonlight Ball in Poland). We went to Texaco’s in the months prior to the show, one in Amsterdam and one in Utrecht where the gallery was located.
The exhibition consisted of the ‘road movie’ of visits to Texaco petrol stations, shown in a popup cinema, the newsletter with anecdotal stories and images from the research parodying the promotional newsletter of the company; a driving soundtrack cassette tape for sale; giveaway promo items from Texaco; as series of hand sewn collages; black and white hand-printed photographs of the research trips.
‘Anna Best reveals her personal attachment to something as anonymous as a chain of petrol stations: their ‘absurd glamour’, non-places along the way which are nonetheless solid, attractive and very definite and which, in their unreality satisfy some part of the late night psyche. In the video Texaco garage gatecrashes she goes to Texaco garages at full moon to invite motorists to the exhibition as Casco. The newsletter contians photographs, stories, anecdotes and associations centred around the theme of Texaco, including a number of ‘fainting stories’.
Date
1996
Aknowledgements
Casco Projects, Utrecht, Netherlands
Texacos in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Wapping, London
Texaco Netherlands and Gerry Gysbers for sponsorship of the Newsletter
Sylvia Hammacher for Design and Desktop Publishing
Mariette Dolle and Lisetter Smits and Casco
Texaco UK and Dan England
Newsletter contributors:
Annie Toop
Bastienne Kramer
Bettina Wilhelm
David Lillington
Ian Bayer
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Sandra Sterle
Sylvia Hammacher
Dik Groot and the Rijksakademie Apple Mac facilities
Roy Taylor and the Rijksakademie video facilities
Mebo Print BV, Amsterdam Apple Mac facilities and Offset Printing
Garage Gatecrashes:
Andi Elsner
Annie Toop
Apolonija Sustersic
Bettina Wilhelm
Fleur van Dissel
Ian Bayer
Lisette Smits
Mariette Dolle
Saskia Olde Wolbers
Sabine Kappler
Syliva Hammacher
Owen Oppenheimer
Media
Performances
Videos
Installation
Publication: Deep in the Heart of Texaco Love
Screenprint: Wherever you go: Texaco Love – coming soon
Photographs, black and white hand printed
Collages, hand sewn, multi media, 2d, size A0 x 5
Links
Archive
- Casco ’96 Booklet
- Video and stills from ‘garage gatecrash’
- Exhibition invite card
- Videos of ‘garage gatecrash’ performances
- Texaco Love video SD
- Audio of driver’s soundtrack from cassette
- Photographs from ‘night of ten texacos’
- Black and white photographs
- collages
- Review of Traffic by Richard Reynolds
- Deep in the heart of texaco love newsletter