Self Starter
Still from Self Starter
Self Starter      Installation view at Rosewood Gallery

As part of an exhibition at Rosewood Gallery in Kettering OH,  I agreed to  create a new video piece specifically for the show that  responded to the history of Kettering.   I  eventually settled on Self Starter a video that references Charles Kettering’s invention and development of the electrical starting systems for automobiles.  When I began the project I thought that the transition from the hand crank to the electrical starter was an interesting metaphor for what is often referred to as “dash board knowledge,” the ways in which people are increasingly unaware of and distanced from the workings of the technology we create.   However, as the project progressed it became much more about closing metaphysical  distances  than showing the ways that the technology distances us from our physical surroundings.  The video is a short silent vignette of a couple in the morning. The physics involved in cold cranking a car serves as a metaphor for their strained marriage. The left channel of this two-channel installation can be viewed below.  The right channel featured archival footage of the moving of "Deeds Barn" in 1973. This is the house where Charles Kettering and his associates (who would eventually form DELCO) perfected the first commercially viable electrical starter for the automotive industry. This seemed a fitting companion as it depicts the clumsy and slow uprooting of a household as it rolls slowly through the streets of Kettering.

Self Starter Left Channel
Self Starter Right Channel
Self Starter      Installation view at Rosewood Gallery

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