Proposal
John Landewe 152 Douglass St. Brooklyn, NY 917.676.950
Breakdown: A Prototypical Monument to the Open Road
Breakdown is a self-contained, nomadic monument dedicated to industrial-strength mobility and the acceleration of the postmodern condition of displacement. Breakdown is a video projection housed in a truncated school bus. In this instance, for purpose of this proposal, the bus is “parked” in Socrates Sculpture Park. As a hallmark of the counter- cultural movement’s nomadic lifestyle, the bus itself is a "vehicle" for representing the frontier myths of the "open road."
The video contained within the bus depicts a character on a deserted highway testing out various body poses and facial expressions. His location is a seemingly endless highway that stretches out to a horizon of both hope and desolation, a landscape that is quintessential to a certain notion of freedom. His movements in the landscape are a search for an adequate response to the incongruity of a "limit" situation (i.e. mechanical breakdown) in the presence of the ambiguous promises of an interminable horizon. His gesticulations and grimaces evoke wildly disparate notions of the "open road": escape and conquest as well as frustration and vulnerability. Dressed in mechanic-style coveralls, the “everyman” character suggests that human ingenuity ultimately transcends industrial know-how.
Breakdown is an attempt to make a vehicle that will hold seemingly contradictory notions about a location while proposing a new understanding of the dislocation of a mediated landscape. In Breakdown, the plurality of meanings of the "open road" resonates as geographic location, cinematic trope, and cultural metaphor. Using the landmark cues at Socrates Sculpture Park, Breakdown triangulates a postmodern cultural geography between the specific New York location, the visual desolation of the open road, and the psychological attitude of the video character. Breakdown expresses the convergence of meaning in the transient medium of video and the nomadic quality of the bus. The technologies of video representation and mechanical transportation collapse distances. The medium of video flattens the perspective of the landscape, and human gestures are mapped onto the landscape, in a conflation of choreography and cartography. Against a backdrop of a deserted highway and refracted through the lens of visual culture, the video character acts out questions about frontier myths and meanings--the possibility for transformation. Affecting a mood of restraint, the character attempts to reconcile a desire for autonomy with his sense of isolation and a longing to feel rooted in space.
Proposal
John Landewe 152 Douglass St. Brooklyn, NY 917.676.950
Breakdown: A Prototypical Monument to the Open Road
Breakdown is a self-contained, nomadic monument dedicated to industrial-strength mobility and the acceleration of the postmodern condition of displacement. Breakdown is a video projection housed in a truncated school bus. In this instance, for purpose of this proposal, the bus is “parked” in Socrates Sculpture Park. As a hallmark of the counter- cultural movement’s nomadic lifestyle, the bus itself is a "vehicle" for representing the frontier myths of the "open road."
The video contained within the bus depicts a character on a deserted highway testing out various body poses and facial expressions. His location is a seemingly endless highway that stretches out to a horizon of both hope and desolation, a landscape that is quintessential to a certain notion of freedom. His movements in the landscape are a search for an adequate response to the incongruity of a "limit" situation (i.e. mechanical breakdown) in the presence of the ambiguous promises of an interminable horizon. His gesticulations and grimaces evoke wildly disparate notions of the "open road": escape and conquest as well as frustration and vulnerability. Dressed in mechanic-style coveralls, the “everyman” character suggests that human ingenuity ultimately transcends industrial know-how.
Breakdown is an attempt to make a vehicle that will hold seemingly contradictory notions about a location while proposing a new understanding of the dislocation of a mediated landscape. In Breakdown, the plurality of meanings of the "open road" resonates as geographic location, cinematic trope, and cultural metaphor. Using the landmark cues at Socrates Sculpture Park, Breakdown triangulates a postmodern cultural geography between the specific New York location, the visual desolation of the open road, and the psychological attitude of the video character. Breakdown expresses the convergence of meaning in the transient medium of video and the nomadic quality of the bus. The technologies of video representation and mechanical transportation collapse distances. The medium of video flattens the perspective of the landscape, and human gestures are mapped onto the landscape, in a conflation of choreography and cartography. Against a backdrop of a deserted highway and refracted through the lens of visual culture, the video character acts out questions about frontier myths and meanings--the possibility for transformation. Affecting a mood of restraint, the character attempts to reconcile a desire for autonomy with his sense of isolation and a longing to feel rooted in space.