My last car
By Ed Mitchell 30th June 2011
We have a complex relationship with cars. On the one hand they have enabled us to travel far and wide, on the other they have made us even more dependent on oil, and weakened local relationships.
My Last Car looks to be a charming project helping us explore this relationship. You can have a look at the My Last Car website, and here’s the outline:
Some of you will know of My Last Car – a creative project that explores the place of the motor car in a changing world. A few of us have been working on it for some time and with the support of Warwick Arts Centre, TippingPoint Commissions, Arts Council England and the Yorkshire Cultural Olympiad My Last Car will soon become a reality.
It’s a production that looks at our love and loathing of the motor car, how some people are working to be less dependent upon it (and not just because of climate change), and the extraordinary ways in which it has changed the way we look at the world. Many of us have had the most important moments of our lives in cars and they continue to shape our relationships with one another and the way we feel about our own bodies. So My Last Car is a bit of an epic road trip that takes in love, loss, landscape and the future.
At the heart of My Last Car is a Rover 216 Cabriolet that we have lovingly dismantled. Over the coming weeks we will be transforming the car and its secret interior into a major gallery exhibition which will be animated by live performance and digital display.
My Last Car will open at Warwick Arts Centre in October 2011. After that it goes up to Bentham and Ryedale in North Yorkshire for the Cultural Olympiad in 2012.