Crash Course (2000)
3D animation. DVD colour video with sound.10'. Collection MUSAC.
The trip offered by Crash Course explores car culture as an everyday feature of our civilisation. The work seamlessly combines various aspects stemming from the idea of how technological progress has generated a number of new needs in people. By combining three-dimensional infographic images and manipulated videographic reproductions, Pählsson imitates the complex networks of roads which, on various levels and in a way recalling the intricate language of computers, are established as an indispensable element underpinning the automotive complex. These are uninhabited spaces, far from the places where social exchanges and relations are pursued, yet also necessary for those exchanges and relations to occur. On a different level, though still related to the foregoing, police footage is shown of car-chase and accident scenes that seem to be taken from video games and which reflect the wretchedness that human alienation leads to in the face of technological development running on out of our control, with individuals as its victims.
