autoakinning: passive abduction n°. 1

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"He gets a hard-on thinking about all of those networks and transfers and switchings. Yearning for more than a light
bulb (although in a pinch that might do), he jacks off dreaming electricity and fibre-optic cables, the disembodied
Eros lurking behind these crumbling, merely material walls. He thinks, I want out of this dungeon and into the
mysteries behind the walls, returning to the core of life today rather than persisting in this vile body of which only
remains the husk. It isn't going to be easy, but after so many years of deliberate, patient scheming, he imagines that
he just might make it to the True Reality".
>>David Rimanelli, Monster
from Peter Halley, Maintain Speed, Distributed Art Publishers, New York, 2000. Pg 153

COVer \maLQeS:AlrbagArchitecture
2001
Side St. Projects,
Los Angeles, USA
mixed media

Design by: *rhizomic

I once lived in a car. While living in the car I was generally struck by the variety
of the architecture when I allowed myself the space for such contemplation.
Admittedly confining when compared to the dimensions of a dumpster the car
affords multiple uses and if managed correctly enables one to live a life of
comfort beyond that which can be imagined. Yes there is no way one can have
guests over but then that is not the point. One can always go out when guests
arrive. The point was that within the car life was ordered, predictable and

No Harmful Side-Effects
2000
Platform,
Melbourne, Australia
mixed media
safe. The car in question was a station wagon and even then not really
a station wagon but more of "an estate". A Triumph Herald Estate to be
precise. The vehicle was once owned by Sir Mountford Tosswill
Woollaston and thus conveyed more than just the mundane, it
conveyed an air of authority albeit related to the notion that
Woollaston drove up and down the west coast of the South Island of
New Zealand, Haast to Hokatika and beyond, hawking his Rawleigh
products to the general population and dreaming of painting.
The vehicle was acquired by pure chance. A random advertisement in
the newspaper on a day when I was looking for something like a car.
The vehicle became an abode when I travelled beyond the city to visit
points north. It was 1986 and I had no job, no prospect of a job and
didn't even want one. This was before air-bags, before mammoth turbo
diesel four by four wheel drive Japanese imports, before GPS assisted
navigation and before the advent of daily/morning motorway crash
reports via the National Radio Network.
The car was my safety net, until the chassis detached from the body on
Auckland's Southern Motorway sometime in 1989, it enabled me to
experience a space in which to travel and to think and to dream. I was
forced to live in it for months on end and when it did finally die I still
lived in it, even when I had the god forsaken job I still lived in it and
used a skateboard to get to work. The attachment and reliance was
that strong. I was finally forced into a proper suburban existence when

the vehicle was stolen while I was at work. A major organisational feat
considering there was no petrol in the fuel tank and there was still the problem
with the chassis/body relationship. I had toyed with the idea that I should live in
the city and forgo the daily ritual of the skateboard into town, but as I would
spend my Friday nights, on my way home, drunkenly throwing empty beer cans
from the Hopetown Bridge onto the streaming motorway traffic below, I was
reluctantly forced into suburbia.
Now I wouldn't want to give you the wrong impression, living in a real house was
pretty normal for me really and I had done it before. I enjoyed the comforts of
the television, the viewing device that replaced my windscreen, except
everything happens just a little faster. There was the obvious increase in
available physical space. One could lounge rather than perch and I was able to
acquire complete junk in order to furnish my surroundings. On bombing forays
into the city I was able to pick up stuff all the time; bookshelves, oil paintings,
lamps, glassware, crockery, plants, bicycles, stereos and tables. The sort of thing
that wears out fast and is easily replaced by a short trip to the "store". The

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incumbent upon us to investigate in detail the nature of the reality surrounding the
object. This search cannot but help to abstract the physical reality and enable us to
view the very beating heart of the beast as something other than a steaming bloody
mess of tissue and fluid.

connection between the inner city work place environment and
the inner city suburban residence became blurred when I was
finally "let go" as an act of contrition perpetrated by
management. Finally again free to explore the diverse intricacies
of modern life I once again fled to the motorcar for safety and
sustenance.
The enveloping warmth of the vehicle enabled me to reconsider
the notion of the vehicle as a device for transformation. The
ability to go from one part of the world to a completely different
other no matter how small or great the distance. The only real
constraint being time and we are all confronted by this problem
at some point in our lives. The vehicle becomes the device by
which our banal existence does mutate into this other, the exotic
traveller, the wandering minstrel, the carpetbagger, the explorer,
the idyll wanderer, the fervent capitalist, it operates as a medium
in which we can conduct the eternal search for real meaning.
Having spent some time experiencing the somnambulist cradling
of technology the motorcar does still represent the perfect
expression of our free and simultaneously controlling society. At
once the expression of freedom, the symbol of individuality and
the target of thieves and government, the vehicle retains its
other role as a cocoon for our daily transformation from blind
sedentary drone to highly mobile voyeur. If we are to ever
understand how this metamorphosis assists our very existence it is

"There was an old woman, Ignatevna, who cured children of hunger. She
gave them a potion of mushrooms cut with sweet grass and the children
died peacefully away, dry foam flecked on their lips. The mother would
kiss the child on its aged, wrinkled forehead and whisper, "He's through
suffering, praise God!". Ignatevna stood there and said "He's passed on,
the quiet little thing... He's better off than the living, lying there like
that... now he's listening to the silver winds in heaven..."
Andrei Platonov, Chevengur, 1928
Michael Morley, Dunedin, 7 April 2001

centre paaes:
Passive Restraint Systems
2001
Galerie Clark,
:ada
mixed media

[left]
Poi.n-t

2001
Galerie Articule,
Montreal, Canada
mixed media

[right]
No Harmful
Side-Effects
2000
Platform,
IMelbourne, Australia
mixed media

thanks to:
Vincent George House of Travel
Carlson
Farrys Hotel
Montana
Emily Barr
Ali B.

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