The Land Rover – a temporary sculpture
When I came to the fish factory I had the intention of making a UFO. This sort of happened, but so did lots of other things.
I did a collaboration with Rachel Saxby. I handed over some test videos and we discussed how she could play with the video content, and do as she wanted with it. The results were interesting, and we ended up with an audiovisual composition that somehow works.
While walking around the village, I saw a Mk1 Land Rover, and wished I had one to explore Iceland with. So I decided to make one using my temporary cardboard sculpture technique.
During the build I modified it, mounting it on a computer chair to make it mobile. I spent a few hours a day constructing the Land Rover while thinking, why the hell am I doing this? I could just go for a walk or something, but regardless, I continued. To stabilise and hold it together, I used some ratchet straps from the metal workshop.
Now it was time to take it outside, to go exploring. We spun the Land Rover around, discussing what to do with it. We pushed it around and parked it for a while. After more discussion, we took it to a small hill and pushed it down. 1-2-3, action: the Land Rover speeds down the hill, starts to drift, skids. Doink. It collapses on its side. The aerial view shows the action from above and some phone camera footage captures it passing at ground level.
In other news, the UFO was, in some ways, a failure. I’d anticipated taking it deeper into the landscape, but something did happen: the UFO was inflated, and this balloon-type structure was moved around on the pier, almost abducting some participants, swallowing them into a metallic blob. It danced around a bit, then deflated, rolled up and disappeared. All captured by drone pilot in aerial view.
I also made some classic Test videos using a hot water bottle as the subject. I’m still not sure what it means.
To give some context as to what the tests are, they are an ongoing archive of kinetic installations that use various materials and objects as a subject and then record the actions.
Thank you, Lee! :)