Give Rise To Marta Navaridas, Alex Deutinger & Manuel Riegler

MOTORA This Day is not Promised

16.–17.6.2023

In a sense not only our cars, but all the machines that we build are mirrors of our own desires and of the ways in which we think about ourselves and our relationship to the world. While we seem to be making progress, the cars we make are becoming safer, more artificially intelligent, more autonomous, and increasingly networked, and above all they are becoming exponentially more numerous, just as is humankind itself. In a way, automobiles are the ultimate stereotype for the promise of capitalism. This is a promise of a dream come true, with a potential nightmare following on its heels. 

In MOTORA This Day Is Not Promised, Marta Navaridas interacts with a Volvo V60 and attempts to establish a real relationship between two sentient bodies – one of them organic and the other not. Burdened by an awareness of her own vulnerability that is inherent to such a relationship, she studies her own emotions toward the machine and creates a poetic image of the fatalism that meanders between erotic seduction, wishful thinking, pragmatic realism, and tender anthropomorphism. Inspired by J. G. Ballard’s Crash, MOTORA draws on stereotypical desires, death wishes, and tropes such as drive-in cinema, car sex, car parties, carwash, and car-share karaōke, mixing these with intimate reflection by the artist, who decides to plunge headlong into a new adventure, in the hope that if things go wrong the built-in airbags will certainly inflate. 

HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark and brut in Vienna are pleased to offer these artists a larger stage in the city park adjacent to the museum for their vibrant performance.

Curated by Jan Tappe