15. Motorheart

ARTIST: Arijana Kajfes och Anders Boqvist (2017)
TECHNIQUE: Gas pump of stainless stell working by solar energy

On the ground there is a lone gas pump of stainless steel whose counter is slowly ticking on like a pulse. The flow of the pump is working by solar energy via a solar cell on a galvanized pole. A rubber hose welded to the pump handle at the opening of the pipe system connects what is visible above earth with the heart below in the shape of a buried red Ford V8 motor from 1932, one of motor culture´s most loaded icons, the very symbol of the extreme consumption of oil characteristic of naïve motor optimism.

Arijana Kajfes born in 1963 is a Swedish artist, one of the creators behind Motorheart here on the mount. Her works often exist in a borderland between art, natural sciences and technology. She is a typical concept artist manifest in an elegant minimalism and in place-specific works. She has done research on light and perception and that is why her works also take the shape of research projects. She is often aiming at creating something without intended meaning or direction, that is, free art.

Anders Boqvist is the second name behind Motorheart. Besides being an artist he is also project leader at the National Public Art Council. He is interested in the aesthetics occurring between art and the social sphere. By that is meant that art is created together with people who normally do not work with art. The art situation brings about patterns and processes, connections and events that otherwise would not have been visible to those involved. It is all about gaining insight through social interaction.

Both Boqvist and Kajfes wer trained at the Royal College of Fine Arts in Stockholm.

Boqvist is also interested in the borderland between art and technique. Together with Kajfes and others he started CRAC, which stands for Creative Room for Art and Computing.

You might say that this work of art is the “Heart of Darkness on the Oil Mount”. Everything we people do is turned to heat in the end, since movement equals heat. The second main principle of thermodynamics is that disorder in the universe is increasing. Perhaps this is sentencing us to this destiny, an ever increasing chaos. The entire mount is an enormous heap of ashes that once upon a time helped to give us an industrial society. Everything was intended to become quicker, cheaper, bigger, simpler, higher and nicer.

Motorheart is a contemporary and suitable title for the lone gas pump. There it stands with its dreary neon light and its ticking counter-heart, shining in all its solitude.

Perhaps you experience an apocalyptic feeling as you stand in front of this work. What will happen? The glowing inner part, that once gave us oil, is symbolized by the work. And its ticking counter reminds us of other places where oil is constantly produced for the blood circulation of the industrialized world. Symbolically the motor is fed with new nourishment through the handle of the gas pump.

The work tells us something about the soon outdated internal combustion engines. The world´s oil reserves are ebbing and the emission of greenhouse gases is increasing. Perhaps the work is a monument of times long gone, or a dirge over the future of the climate.