Car Culture filmed a non-consenting driving public as Cotterrell covered
over two thousand miles of UK motorways in his Volvo Estate. Recording
tail-gaiters’ antics as he drove between 70 and 80 miles an hour in the
passing lane, Cotterrell used suction cups to attach a video camera to the interior of his car windscreen. With the lens pointing to the rear window, he was able to start and stop filming while still driving. The rationale
behind the editing of Car Culture dictated that, if an approaching car’s
license plate were close enough to be read, the footage would qualify for
inclusion in the work. All participating vehicles are credited, with their
individual licence plate details appearing before they make their entrance
onto Cotterrell’s playfully malevolent stage.
Accompanied by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a composition frequently
attributed with the ‘birth’ of the Modern age, Cotterrell’s work can be read
as a study of the current state of Modernism. Stravinsky’s atonal,
rhythmically ambiguous and repetitive work enraged its Parisian audience
at its premiere in 1913, where the cacophony of the orchestra was
eventually drowned out by the abusive shrieks from the stalls.
The aggressive and occasionally violent behaviour Cotterrell encountered
during his motorway filming is captured for a 21st century audience addled
with Post-modern disconnection and dystopia. But within this potential
misery, there is a sense of enchantment: as the car bounces from one tiny
bump to the next, the view from the rear window is oddly calm, despite the
flashing lights and raised fists. We watch the world moving backwards,
and, like children on a long journey home, become transfixed.
The film and its appropriated score inform response to the work and the
death throes of the orchestration are accompanied by the real-time death of
Cotterrell’s 1989 Volvo as its prop shaft shears in two just outside
Glasgow.
The car was subsequently towed 411 miles to an East London wrecker’s |