Independent Rider, On The Lam

Robert Hengeveld

May 14 to June 12, 2004

The shopping cart is an elusive object. We see it everywhere and yet it is almost invisible, so banal that it falls off of our aesthetic radar. Unlike the consumer goods they faithfully cart around the store and out to the waiting old beater or polished BMW, the shopping cart itself says little about its user. It has no sign-value attached to it, no glamour, no esteem of its own, no message to convey, except for, perhaps, as the scaffolding for an advertising motto: Wal*Mart – always low prices! It is not even for sale. Despite its trite stature, the shopping cart has become the primary icon of consumerism. This is not without a degree of irony: it is hard to imagine stopping at a store window to view this ordinary beast. But it’s this very innocuousness that allows it to be filled, in our fantasies, with whatever we wish.

The derelict shopping cart – the runaway not fastened in a row by lock and chain – is not as amenable to fantasy as its assembly line mates. When in their proper spot, these humble servants facilitate the smooth movement of capital, but when they are on the loose, they more often than not bespeak economic travesty – as portable shelters for the homeless, as suitcases for the perpetually mobile, and as other various life support systems for the destitute. They are used to gather discarded recyclables, reusables and collectibles, or to transport the tools of a trade to and fro, Mr. Clean, mop and bucket, but never room service. Each cart tells a story of its current proprietor, who has co-opted the wheeled basket to gain greater independence and freedom of movement. Due to its association with dirt and poverty, however, derelict carts are deemed an eye sore. Far from being invisible, they become an icon of another sort, of urban detritus.

When Robert Hengeveld takes one such shopping cart and sets it in the gallery, it brings with it this double reference of over- and underdevelopment. But no one pushes the Independent Rider around. Unlike its peers, it’s a bit of a bully, insubordinate to all command. In sudden jerked movements, it darts toward us, then spins around and comes to a full stop. It waits, lurks about… Then rolls forward and bangs into the wall with a thud: it is also a bit of a simpleton. This shopping cart lacks grace, we could say, and although it has a mind of its own, choreography is not its forte. Its erratic movements look frustrated and aimless. Under the stage lighting, which casts large shadows of its skeletal structure onto the wall, this derelict cart circles around continuously, constantly running into the walls and never seeming to find the door.

On the front grill of the Independent Rider, in the frame of a former advertising placard, is a small video monitor. It plays black and white footage of the Rider’s brave escape from an underground parking lot into the light of day, its determined rush through traffic, along sidewalks, through fields and yonder. It hits a few dead ends along the way but always seems to sort itself out, finding an alternate route or slipping by the end of a fence. This romantic tale of transgression and better days gone by is bittersweet: 25 cents bought its escape but it never seems to arrive anywhere: the video loops before we discover its destination. The Rider’s life story, precluded by its capture, is only ever understood as an imaginary potential.

Documenting the lifecycle of objects is a longstanding interest of Robert Hengeveld. Most often he has concentrated on the end of the cycle, when the object is left to vicissitudes of time in an abandoned corner of the cityscape. He has collected these objects or cast them in situ as a way of bringing the tales of their history into the gallery. A pillow, for example, which is sinking into the ground around the trunk of a tree, makes us wonder, who slept here? and why did they leave their pillow behind? It functions as an index that something happened, that an event, no matter how insignificant, took place. Now cast in epoxy resin, the pillow becomes animated by this layer of memory, along with the space around it. Similarly, the discarded shopping cart that “pollutes” the city between uses is an object of wonder: how did it come to be where it is – on top of a bus shelter, buried in a snow bank, or propped precariously against an industrial vent?

The dramatic presentation of this delinquent object in the gallery space emphasizes its mnemonic dimension. The Independent Rider becomes the main actor and takes on the characteristics of its fictionalized former owner, who might have used it as an escape-mobile or makeshift RV. It is not a critique of consumerism, nor an aestheticization of the fallout of global capitalism; it is an animated version of well-known tale of thwarted desire. It found its way out only to find itself stuck. On the bottom rack of the shopping cart, which once held the flats of Coca-Cola or boxes of kitty litter, it now carries a large battery – the Independent Rider can fuel itself – but its greater mobility doesn’t earn it the independence it seeks. It has become a charming objet d’art that we bemuse, literally, walking around it and wondering what it means. But the Independent Rider is cantankerous and refuses to sit passively by the side, waiting for our judgment: it asserts itself on our interpretive process, moving around unpredictably, demanding that we negotiate it on the terms it establishes.

Essay written by Anja Bock