It’s all about context. Meal with friends: normal. Meal with food gathered in a one mile radius: art. Traffic jam on highway: normal (and boring). Traffic jam in the Spanish mountains: art (and very curious). In 2005, artist Maider López put the call out for willing participants to create an intentional car cluster muck in the Aralar Mountains. In response, more than 400 folks drove up to the countryside in 160 vehicles to get stuck. The result: an unexpected invasion to illustrate the automobile’s impact on the landscape.
Participants in the art installation clogged up the winding mountain roads for some 5 hours of a mid-September day, directed by López’s team. The visual effect of the project looks is something like a Monty Python sketch. It feels like it could either be a lot of people going to a mountaintop festival, or a horde of car-animals being herded into a new field. It puts the car in the context of the environment it effects: directly and hilariously.
Photos of the art installation are currently on display at the Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain as part of the exhibition AUTO. DREAM AND MATERIAL.
The exhibition will be available for contemplation and contextualization until September of this year.
