Date: 2004

Medium: Private performance (handmade rope, pickup truck and mixed media)

Duration: 60 Minutes

A private performance commissioned DI.E.N.S., a group exhibition curated by Lise Grobler and held at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, 2004, Oudtshoorn, South Africa.

The artist towed a pickup truck on a deserted dust road outside Oudsthoorn – dragging behind it a pile of rubbish (branches, plastic, rope – a disfigured effigy of sorts). At the time there was extensive media coverage of a criminal case where his employers and his fellow workers had dragged a farm worker to death behind a pickup truck. Sadly this was not an isolated incident – farm killings of both workers and their employers are commonplace in South Africa. It is also a known fact that a pickup truck or ‘bakkie’ as its commonly known in South Africa, is one of the most dangerous vehicles to own in SA as they are often violently hijacked and/or stolen.

This brings to question what kind of contemporary mythology these vehicles could be said to embody – that of the “boer” (the white farmer, the racist, the capitalist, the landowner); of land (the ownership of land and of contemporary land reform or the lack thereof); of crime (hijackings, theft); of trade (the vehicle is after all a utility vehicle designed to transport large quantities of materials and goods); of the gung-ho South African city slicker who so desperately wants to seem in control of his surroundings? Pickup trucks are simultaneously detestable – and – desirable objects.