Drive

Research background The city as phenomena has often been presented as a space of alienation, or conversely utopianism, and has been the subject of art since the 19th Century. Drive investigated the idea of a city as an inconclusive space, familiar and habitual to those incessantly moving within the urban space; a location where one may experience narratives formed through a type of disembodied interiority. Drive posed the question: by stepping out of our conscious sense of predetermination and by drifting within our minds while driving, is our experience and sense of 'being' more subject to forces or choices that arbitrarily alter our sense of purpose, particularly as journeys by definition usually must go somewhere? Research contribution This project involved the research, development and production of a video installation investigating the concept of city as passageway, a site of fluidity. Drive presented ideas of moving image as 'painting' within a large multifaceted installation, to present multipart personal and social visions via fragmentary glimpses through sensory heuristic components. The research investigated the role of passivity within the act of producing and viewing. Passivity may be formed within a perpetual compulsion for mobility, dynamism or drive, a state formed through a condition based in viewing, in looking on, consuming, enacting and partaking through inaction, characterised and framed within contemporaneity, and specifically free market capitalism. The research investigated and examined the question of passivity as inherent to perpetual transition and as a notable conscious, or unconscious activity of our times within free market capitalism. Research significance The research and production of this installation was supported by a peer selection Arts Project Grant from The City of Melbourne. The exhibition of the installation at Blindside was selected through a peer selection process.