AV Festival – Slow Motion Car Crash

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, 2012. DAY 16 © The Locus+ Archive

You know how survivors of a car crash sometimes say that they experienced the few seconds before and during the collision as a stretched period of time and how cinema often depicts road accidents in slow motion? You might experience a similar feeling in Newcastle right now. The main difference is that the car crash is taking place over the course of a whole month.

A white VW Golf is currently hitting the wall of a shop painted entirely in white at the pace of seven millimetres per hour. So slowly you don’t really notice that anything is taking place. You can enter and see the collision from up close during the opening times of the shop/gallery or watch the crash 24/7 from the street.

The car was emptied of any fuel that might spark an explosion and installed on hydraulic tracks that push and crush its front end against the wall.

The car crash is an artwork by Jonathan Schipper. It’s his first slow motion car crash involving only one car. He’s more used to wrecking two vehicles at a time.

The piece is a perfect match for the ongoing AV Festival which theme this year is As Slow As Possible. I’ll blog a full report of the festival as soon as i’ve received more images from the press office. The ones i took are unfortunately as lame as usual. Besides i’ve deleted half of them by mistake. Hurray!

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, 2012 © The Locus+ Archive

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, 2012. DAY 1 © The Locus+ Archive

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, 2012. DAY 3 © The Locus+ Archive

Time lapse footage of the first week of the collision:

Slow Motion Car Crash was commissioned by Locus+, a Newcastle-based art production agency for the AV Festival that takes place in Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland throughout the month.

Share this: