…The Nut Behind The Wheel

After I wrote about the film making of Chris Petit, in connection with my own tentative experiments with shooting video from a moving car, I started to think a bit about how different means of transport affect our perceptions of the environments we traverse.

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, December 2013

I’ve already discussed the advantages of cycling for those who wish to carry out urban observations, dérives, or just getting out there and collecting visual material, as an alternative to the psychogeographer’s traditional default of a good long walk.  It remains the nearest thing we have to the environmental immersion afforded by walking, (or running I guess, - but that seems to have a more directed agenda), and an obvious way of preserving the relationship between physical body and surroundings.  However, for now, I’m thinking about the far more mediated ways that car journeys affect our perceptions and, in particular, the relationship between them and film (or video), typically highlighted in Petit’s work.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

Most drivers, or indeed car passengers, take for granted the sense of being insulated from their surroundings in a protective capsule of metal, plastic, rubber and glass.  Indeed, car manufacturers and automotive proselytisers make a point of stressing the Clarksonian cliché of a car’s interior as ‘a nice place to be’ [1.].  To travel in a car is thus, inevitably, to experience a heavily mediated visual world.  It often seems that the ‘better’ the car, the more involving the interior becomes, (mood lighting, information screens, entertainment centres, massage seating, etc).  Often, in extreme high performance cars, the rear view is completely sacrificed and any side view severely compromised whilst vast expanses of windscreen emphasise the road ahead.  If only through the ludicrous velocities they can achieve, such vehicles seem to direct the occupants’ attention, (and particularly the driver’s, of course), to some point on the far horizon that might be reached with as little reference to the intervening terrain as possible.

Supermarket Car Park, Belgrave Road, Leicester, December 2013

In the majority of workaday vehicles however, there is a more interesting balance between the dual perceptions of interior and exterior space and the way the first edits the second.  The landscape becomes sectioned into the portions visible through the vehicle’s windows; framed by bodywork; filtered by tinted glass, condensation, raindrops, frost and grimy wipers traces.  In both ‘London Orbital’ [2.] and ‘Radio On’ [3.] Chris Petit allows these elements to intrude into his framed image.  In the latter, this not only draws our attention to the idea of any car but also to the cultural signifiers pertaining to a particular car.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

If the film could be seen as a poem to the stalled state of Post-War Britain just prior to the massive upheavals of Thatcherism and the dubious landscape we now inhabit, the choice of R’s old Rover seems masterful.  The wood, chrome, leather and iconic badging of that car’s interior speak volumes about an older, more comforting past and Petit allows his camera to linger on the huge steering wheel and the dash, from which R’s all important music and news bulletins emerge.  Thus, not only is his view of Britain around the A4 physically cropped, but contextually framed too, by the vehicle he occupies.  When the tired, heavy old car stalls and is abandoned on the quarry’s edge, with no way forward or back, at the end of the film, he is forced to seek a completely different means to exit, (on a soon to be privatised train).

Richard Smithson, 1969

Thinking about this reminded me of a piece by the American Conceptual Land Artist, Robert Smithson, that I referred to some time ago but which seems worth quoting again.  Although clearly separate from the Continental European and British traditions, Smithson’s documentations of early visits to New Jersey are clearly psychogeographic in intent.  ‘The Crystal Land’ [4.], whilst ostensibly an account of a geological field trip, captures Smithson’s subjective relationship to his surroundings through multiple gear-changes in viewpoint and literary style.  Particularly effective, is the passage in which he relates the macrocosmic environment of the great outdoors, the crystalline structures he seeks within it, and it’s formation through geological time, to the microcosmic environment of the vehicle occupied by his party.

"My eyes glanced over the dashboard, it became a complex of chrome fixed into an embankment of steel.  A glass disc covered the clock.  The speedometer was broken.  Cigarettes were packed into the ashtray.  Faint reflections slid over the windshield.  Out of sight in the glove compartment was a silver flashlight and an Esso map of Vermont.  Under the radio dial (55-7-9-11-14-16) was a row of five plastic buttons in the shape of cantilevered cubes.  The rearview mirror dislocated the road behind us.  While listening to the radio some of us read the Sunday newspapers.  The pages made slight noises as they turned; each sheet folded over their laps forming temporary geographies of paper.  A valley of print or a ridge of photographs might come and go in an instant." [5.]

'Yours' Supermarket, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

If one way in which the view from a car can be likened to film is through cropping and framing, the other is, of course, through the editing of an ongoing dynamic view.  This notion of an environment passed through and viewed in a constant state of flux is intrinsic to any form of vehicular travel.  However, some of the features specific to driving, (certainly in cities) are the multiple changes of pace, and of direction, the punctuations of junctions and traffic control measures and the rhythms of stop-start progress through heavily regulated systems.  My own domestic journeys, from which the 'Belgrave GateProject’ originate, could be said to break down, perceptually, into those views remembered as tracking, panning or zooming sequences and those static views apprehended repeatedly as I wait at the same stop lights each day.  Many of these are now indelibly burnt into my visual memory, just as a film editor can ensure certain images become memorialised as resonant landmarks within a film’s overall forward motion through time, space and narrative.

Supermarket Car Park, Belgrave Road, December 2013

Petit certainly captures plenty of this in his films, albeit in a rather hypnotic, Euopean Art-cinema manner.  Ironically, another memorable example comes from a dramatically different tradition.  The cop-thriller, ‘Bullitt’ [6.] is a clichéd favourite of most boy racers and usually scores highly in fatuous lists of ‘Top 10 Car Chases’ etc.  Whilst clearly a love song to the overpowered, under-steering, macho delights of the American muscle car, the film’s chase sequence interests me far more as an account of the specific, sunlit environment that is Urban San Francisco, when viewed from a moving vehicle.

Stills From: 'Bullitt', Peter Yates (Dir.), 1968

There can be few streets more distinctive in character, nor demanding to drive through, than those climbing and descending that city’s precipitous, terraced hillsides.  The sequence cuts in numerous views from within the two vehicles and is particularly effective at describing those numerous occasions when a San Franciscan driver must find their car’s radiator pointing at the sky or into a deep chasm with a severely compromised views.  For all the unbridled dynamism of the chase, it’s also notable, (and relatively realistic), just how often Steve McQueen and the baddies he pursues, are forced to slow for a junction or take account of oncoming traffic.  In terms of painted imagery, if ‘Radio On’ finds some kind of analogue in the work of Jock McFadyen, I can’t watch ‘Bullitt’ without thinking of Wayne Thiebaud’s and Richard Diebenkorn’s views of Californian streets.

Jock McFadyen, 'Looking West', Oil On Canvas, 2003

Jock McFadyen, 'Roman Road', Oil On Canvas, 2007

Wayne Thiebaud, '24th Street Intersection', Oil On Canvas, 1977

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Hill Street (Day City)', Oil On Canvas, 1981

With apologies for yet another mammoth post, there’s one other example I would cite of the relationship between car travel and the cinematic view.  It’s the old technique of projecting film of a passing scene beyond the windows of a static vehicle, (often being rocked by studio technicians).  Such a familiar and dated film technique has become both reassuringly quaint and, in these deconstructed times, an ironic reminder of the very artifice that is central to the medium.  It’s a wonderful instance of a version of the outside world being edited and mediated by the windows of a vehicle as part of a wider cinematic illusion.  Watch something like that at a drive-in (as many routinely once did), and you could easily get lost in all those contextual frames.

Still From: 'Detour',  Edgar G. Ulmer (Dir.), 1945

It occurs to me that many modern cars now feature built-in cameras to relay heavily mediated views to the driver from outside the vehicle.  I’m also struck by how often I read reports of the latest breakthrough in driverless car technology.  With no actual need to monitor the road ahead, how long, I wonder, before the windows of such a vehicle might be transformed into large video screens?  The passing view might actually be selected from anywhere in the world, I suppose, or the whole car just be transformed into a moving cinema or games station.  Would that break the relationship between a car’s occupants and the physical world outside for good?  What would be preferable, I wonder, – to ride from London to Bristol with ‘Radio On’ playing on the windscreen, or to study the actual view, put on some music, and create your own mental road movie, heading west on the old A4?


Postscript:

Although I have only a modest understanding of mathematics, I am slightly anal about finding order within numbers.  Therefore, as this is post No.100 in 2013, - I'll make it the last of the year.

See you in 2014.





[1.]:  Jeremy Clarkson, Numerous Episodes Of 'Top Gear', BBC 2.  Re-Running Ad-Nausiam On Various Channels Around The World, At Pretty Much Any Hour Of The Day.

[2.]:  Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair (Co-Dirs.), 'London Orbital', Illuminations, 2004

[3.]:  Chris Petit (Dir.), 'Radio On', BFI Production Board/Road Movies Filmproduktion GmbH, 1979

[4.] & [5.]:  Robert Smithson, 'The Crystal Land', Harpers Bazaar, May 1966.  In: Jack Flam (Ed.), 'Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings', Berkeley/L.A., University Of California Press Ltd, 1996

[6.]:  Peter Yates (Dir.), 'Bullitt', Solar Productions/Warner Bros. - Seven Arts, 1968