11 - 17 January 2001
Issue No.516
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 11 - 17 January 2001 Issue No.516 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Belt up but beautiful
Big antiseptic space, big uncluttered floor, a wide open expanse surrounded by plain white walls and containing a few, highly priced objects: there are a great many similarities between the car showroom and the art gallery. Not that cars are any stranger to the latter, having starred, controversially at the time, in their compressed, pre-smelted, scrap iron form. Cubes of cars, a quintessential '60s sculptural statement.
Whatever problems afflict the local automotive assembly industry -- it is ripe for consolidation, so my colleague the economic editor tells me -- the local car accessories market appears to be as healthy as ever, and that means very, very healthy. In the pink, in its prime, the bonny bouncing baby of the retail sector, growing as fast as a eucalyptus tree.
By accessories I don't mean wheel hubs, or smart new tyres, or faux walnut veneer steering wheels. Nothing so tame or mundanely practical. By accessories I mean those mechanical toys that plugged into a cigarette lighter will recite some suitably Qur'anic verse to bless the journey, or wired mysteriously into the dashboard will flash a red heart surrounded by multi-coloured arrows and illuminated letters spelling L-O-V-E. Accessories can include velveteen paper tissue dispensers contained within an elaborate filigree of golden plastic, a symphony of synthetics, or an illuminated alabaster mosque. The more prosaic sticker abounds: the glove compartment, a favoured location for these, may boast anything from a leaping tiger to a frowning pope, a demure virgin and child to those slightly risqué '50s femme fatales that were once such a feature of Fiorucci advertising campaigns. Fiorucci subsequently filed for bankruptcy, whereas the femme fatale sticker has not just survived but flourished.
Of course, the dedicated car accesorisor, among whom one must count many taxi drivers -- whose cars are, after all, a way of making a living, which in today's terminally material world is almost the same as a way of life -- has his or her fads. Some are seasonal -- witness the tiny, Taiwanese-made fanous that appeared in such numbers last month -- while others mysteriously appear for no apparent reason almost overnight, only to disappear as quickly.
The nodding dog is one recent example of the latter. In recent weeks he has materialised in vast numbers, sitting in packs on improvised trays carried by itinerant vendors only to be thrust temptingly through open car windows at busy intersections. He sits benignly on dashboards, nodding endlessly, a blandly hypnotic piece of miniature kinetic sculpture. This particular fad represents something of a canine comeback, similarly nodding dogs enjoying their first popularity during my early childhood which would date them, I'm increasingly sorry to say, to roughly the same period as the cubed car.
While it would be foolish to assume that there is any simple connection to be made between decorative excessives of the interior of any given taxi and the character of the driver, it is equally foolish to ignore the fact that a connection might exist between the two. No one, as far as I am aware, has undertaken to research the possible correlations. One thing is certain, though: any linkages that can be made should be done so with an appropriate degree of caution.
Avoid the obvious: a nodding dog does not automatically mean the owner of the car is a dog lover. A thin, lean, greyhoundy kind of nodding dog need not imply that your driver will speed around the streets as if on a greyhound track. Neither does a podgy, contented, doe-eyed Labrador suggest that your taxi driver will roll over and expect you to tickle his tummy. The symbolism of these accessories, which may well maketh the man as much as manners ever did, is likely to be far more subtle, far more roundabout than that.
Nothing is more dangerous than to assume the obvious. So what better place for these simple interiors, which are at the same time a complex exteriorising of a primary, expressive need, than the contemporary art gallery, a site that has for many years now insisted on obfuscating the obvious. The crushed car of the '60s could very easily be replaced by its post-modern equivalent, the Cairo taxi interior, an installation that, from 1 January this year, would have at least one mandatory feature, the seat belt, an object which those who choose to ride in the front of a car are now legally bound to don.
Not that the seat belt is in anyway a neutral object. It, too, has become a focus for the exercise in ingenuity. Only this morning I was strapped into a taxi by a nylon sports bag handle, attached by clips to two hand beaten semicircular hoops that may well have been fabricated from old fork handles, one welded onto the side of the car, the other attached by a piece of string to the metal supports of the passenger seat. And even when the seat belt does not have to be made from scratch, this seemingly bland and officially ordained content of the interior is unlikely to remain for long the plain, black, woven nylon strip of mass manufacture. It provides, after all, one more surface to be adorned, and a flexible one to boot.
As noted above, the car accessory retail (do I dare call it sector?) is thriving, and it is thriving on imaginatively meeting the ever changing needs of a particularly fickle and fastidious clientele. And that client base is unlikely to remain content with black straps: soon, no doubt, seat belts will be made in a variety of colours, textures and finishes, as varied as any multicoloured dreamcoat. A perfect opportunity, one might suggest, for the smaller galleries to get in on the act, and supplement the larger, whole car interior installations their larger competitors should be staging with more selective exhibitions of their own. Edited highlights from the interior; coiled miniatures; legislation into art -- there are any number of approaches that might be taken. Discreet, portable -- the lifeblood of the commercial art scene. What could be more tempting?
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
