JORGE CONDE

<TST> "The Scarred Transporter" project

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The Scarred Transporter is a work-in-progress, interdisciplinary, collaborative project which aims to explore the notion of technological utopia and how it affects the landscape and our behaviour as consumers. To do so, I focus my research on motor vehicles of all versions and purposes. We present the automobile as a source of endless emotions and experiences, a sexy and yet “scarred” machine which incarnates the technological utopia of its time and confirms the supremacy of a declining global socioeconomic model. As it can be seen, I search for and photograph shabby, useless, scrapped vehicles in order to highlight their built-in obsolescence quality, a widely used strategy in contemporary market economies which promises ephemeral well-being and serves the purpose of creating new needs by constantly putting pressure on individuals and altering the landscape.

 

Nonetheless, it is hard to think that in a context of severe crisis, built-in obsolescence can be a desirable or even sustainable strategy. Rather, it seems more appropriate to sometimes go back to the old repair-reuse-and-recycle strategy applied to obsolete items, including technology. The economic uncertainty many countries have been facing in the past few years, along with the misery that for decades has plagued vast areas of the world, demand from all of us a more responsible use of technology and more ethical production and consumption practices.

 

TST is a collaborative, expanded evolution of Everyday Impostor (2009-11), a photo-project exhibited in PHotoEspaña’11, the International Photography & Visual Arts Festival held in Madrid (Spain).

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Created, developed and produced with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and with a Visual Arts grant awarded by the Catalan Department of Culture (CoNCA).