I had my first day of work at the Apollo. The bike wheels are still there, but I am drawn to the discarded automobile parts. They are piled up in the lot. The glass windows and metal hoods are interesting, but I know for this project I don’t have the set up of tools, workshop or assistance (or budget) to handle these materials.
The bumpers appeal to me: curvy, metallic-like, spooning, human body-length.
So I have bike and car parts. Both symbolic of motion of the site, as well trains and even planes- they all circulate, over, under, around through it, and can be heard and seen. The gravel path follows the train track as a primary pedestrian and bicycle artery that cuts travel time east west, the zooming underpass of Clark, is the Main’s south sister dividing the city traditionally, the CP rail is the same track that built Confederation, and of course the plane route that takes you to your dreams.
This project is about urban movement, and as an ecologist, designer, performer the car is the most strange, disturbing and fascinating of machines, in its ubiquitousness, capacity for object obsession and heated debates (which will only get literally hotter).
Think of what they look from above when you are in plane, like insects, army ants, thousands following each other around ravaging the landscape. And at the heart of each one there is a human or two…
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