Do you remember your first car? What’s your car story? The fact is, love ’em or loath ’em, our lives are inextricably intertwined with cars. Think about the significant and insignificant moments you’ve had in cars – the long, hot journeys to summer holiday destinations with your parents chain smoking up front and you and your siblings squabbling over who sits in the middle; the first time you took your newborn child home from the hospital and how overwhelmed you felt; the joyous freedom and independence it gave you as a teenager when you first passed your test; the dangerous thrill of the bad boy in the low-rise car with the go-faster stripes…
Cars have fundamentally altered our lives and bodies. Where we were once physically active and self propelled we are now passive and mechanically dependent. We don’t walk, we ride; we don’t exert, we control; we don’t step out, we get in. We drive to the gym.
Our social relationships are mediated by the machine; self image is depicted by choice of car; intimacy and privacy are boundaried by steel and glass. Walking and running are optional recreational activities rather than necessities.
The car is a metaphor for the transformation we have wrought upon ourselves. It is an extraordinary object: an ever present demonstration of humanity’s capacity to reshape and remake the world. It is a source of ugliness and beauty; it is a bringer of heartbreak and exhilaration. It is so extraordinarily seductive that few of us can resist its charms.
So, what happens when the oil runs out?
My Last Car explores the life and death of the car and what the future might hold, with live performances, exhibition and carnival celebrations in Bentham in the Yorkshire Dales this week, 30th May – 2nd June. Bentham is a beautiful small market town on the edge of the Dales (and on the train line to Morcambe from Leeds!) and the perfect setting for an exploration of what life means with and without cars in a rural environment.
At the heart of the project is a Rover 316 Cabriolet, lovingly dismantled by Bryan Tweddle and Steve Gumbley, and exhibited in Bentham Tow Hall in all its internal glory – from wipers and cogs, windows and springs to camshafts, pistons and filters.
Each part of the exhibition is labeled with messages and stories, facts and dreams about cars. The car then becomes becomes the stage set for live performances each day, directed by Shipley-based Al Dix and developed from stories collected from members of the public over the last year. You can read some of those car stories here.
The whole of High Bentham will be overtaken with My Last CARnival Celebrations on Sat 2nd June from 10am-5pm, with plenty of family activities led by locally based Pioneer Projects including a Car Bizarre trail, Astronaut’s caravan, boom bike, film, sculpture and performances.
The project continues at the beautiful Ryedale Folk Museum from 30th July to 5th August and is part of imove, Yorkshire’s cultural programme for 2012.