Kieran Boland's ‘You Carnt’
Art, Laneways
Blogged by: Melbourne Central 16 Mar 2016
Kieran Boland
 
Kieran Boland is a Melbourne-based artist. His work with the moving image often explores disjunctions between private narrative and collective memory played out in public spaces. In addition to his work both behind the camera and in post-production digital effects, his single- and multi-channel video pieces can feature his own performances in contrast with those of professional actors from the stage and screen.
 
Boland has exhibited locally and internationally over the past 15 years and has received a number of grants and residencies. Most recently he was an artist in residence at AIR-Krems, Austria where he produced Jestertag, which was exhibited in 2013 at MARS and NÖ DOK für Moderne Kunst, St. Pölten Austria. He was also the recipient of the Australia Council Los Angeles studio residency in 2007 and an Australia Council New Work Grant in 2006. 
 
Kieran Boland
‘You Carnt’

2009. HD video with colour and sound, 5:00 minutes.
 
Early in the 20th century, Marinetti celebrated the birth of the car in a Futurist Manifesto that mixed fascism and anarchism. Towards the end of the 20th century, Carl Sagan suggested that if aliens were to look down on our planet they would conclude that the dominant life form was the car and that humans were merely the fuel, leaving one to wonder what will be driving the cars if the human species disappears.
 
The video features a parking inspector wearing a uniform made from recycled hessian, and a mechanic driving a car and seeking space to park. The mechanic’s light blue overalls appear from time to time under the car parking inspector’s uniform, unsettling any ‘suspension of disbelief’ that the piece is a costume drama. The work is shot mostly in the Melbourne CBD, within full view of an alternately perplexed, dismayed, bemused or bored public.
 
First shown at Kings ARI, Melbourne, 13 March 2009–4 April 2009

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