One important aspect of the phenomenon of the abandoned car was the notion t cars are used by people for more than merely getting around; they are used to expr personality traits, taste, and social position. The interior of the car constitutes a priva cell in which the driver is privileged and perceives a degree of self-determination. B contrast, a commuter taking a train is subject to codes of conduct dictated by the sharing of space and the compromise of a predetermined route and timetable. Our piece occupied a thirty-two foot long by five foot high expanse of wall near the entrance of a New York City subway station, an area typically filled with advertisements. The piece stood in contrast to automobile advertisements which offer consumers fantasies 0 identification, permanence, and luxury. We wanted to short circuit these fantasies by depicting the automobile at the other end of its life cycle, in a material which impli all the flexibility the car lacks, and in a space which is oriented away from the values which foster the proliferation of the automobile. Luckily, we were allotted a space large enough to present the image of the automobile at full scale. To facilitate production, we decided to make sixteen sheets of paper HA; ID PAP�Kl ;C Steven Brower working on one of the large panels of Autoparticulates. measuring five feet high by two feet wide, which were to be placed side by side and to act as a base for additional pieces. These smaller, "component" pieces were casts taken directly from car parts or made from molds taken from cars. We returned to a vacant lot in Brooklyn we had previously chosen as particularly well-endowed with abandoned cars. There we loaded a rented van with crushed fenders, flat tires, dismantled engines and drive trains, deteriorated instrument panels, used brake shoes, clogged filters, broken ornaments, and fatigued gaskets. We established a sort of anti-repair shop at Dieu Donne Papermill's new site on Broome Street in Manhattan and produced a series of plaster and rubber molds, a two-by-five foot deckle box and vat, and several boxes of chopped up rubber, plastic, metal, and glass. Each of the base sheets was made with a different proportion of cotton pulp, sugar cane, and car parts. From the molds and smaller parts, such as spark plugs and hub caps, we executed pieces in linen and cotton, mixing in shredded car parts and, occasionally, pigment. We embossed sheets by crushing them together with car parts in the press, by forming wet pulp over the parts, and by couching large sheets directly onto the parts. A few pieces were made by forming pulp over parts in a working automobile. By leaving these paper "skins" in the car for a few weeks, we were able to record the presence of people as they used the car, through dirt stains left on the steering wheel, coffee spills on the floor mat, and cigarettes extinguished in the ashtray. The base sheets and the component parts were then arranged to emphasize the disorganized state in which they were originally found. The continuity of the material lowered the contrast between the large, rectangular base sheets and the smaller, irregularly-shaped component pieces. SUMMER 1995 The artists installing Autoparticulates Interestingly, the presence of rust on and in the work created a final link betw the piece and the subway. The difference between the organic tactility of the pa and the smoothly machined surfaces of the automobile was negotiated by the oran blooms of rust creeping outward from the bits of metal embedded in the paper. Over period of weeks, the lower third of the piece gradually became covered with t dust, which tends to cover every surface in the subway, an unavoidable result of the train's wheels on the tracks. The steel dust then began to oxidize, resulting in yet another patina of rust. As the process of oxidation continued, even under the protectio of Plexiglass, one got the sense that the piece was not stable. Autoparticulates takes a look at the image of the car dismantled, "spoiled" by hUlllaP contact and use. The identity of the driver, who occupies her or his own space at ar points in a journey, is opposed to that of the commuter, who is maneuvered through a public space. The individual is invited to find her-or himself somewhere between th predetermined personality offered by the ownership of an automobile and the generalized status of one who pays a fare to use a public service. The piece brings to a sanctioned, public space the remnants of objects which delineated a luxurious, pri a space but were abandoned to a vacant space, neither public nor private. Autoparticulates, an installation in the Bowling Green Subway Station in Lower Manhattan of sixteen handmade paper panels by artists Marco Breuer and Steven Brower, p~ sen ted by Dieu Donne Papermill, Inc. and the New York Metropolitan Transportatio A uthority's Arts for Transit Exhibition Centers Program, was on view November 199 through March 1995.
