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Mobile49
outfitted with low-gear power supply for Flag Day Parade
tow.
Deep Cycle, a project about a post-oil landscape, included a mobile broadcast
that took place along a stretch of US route 23, NY. A publication drawing text, image and other materials into book format
is available HERE Mobile49
is a retrofit emergency communications truck, central in producing projects conceived for area-responsive mobile transmission: Deep Cycle began with Mobile49 participating in the annual Elks Lodge Flag Day Parade in Hudson, NY among the fire
brigades and marching corps of Columbia County. The parade terminated at the Hudson River for an evening Fireworks display
and a radionet demonstration. During the following cross-county transit, the Deep Cycle program was presented as online radio
stream and documented in photographs by Nicholas Kahn and others.
Deep Cycle places topics of critical discussion into an active field of engagement.
Vehicle, performances and publication altogether serve as a model for concepts presented.
A conceptual origin for this project is the Gordon Matta-Clark film, Fresh
Kill 1972, in which Matta-Clark documents driving his ‘Emergency Services’ utility truck, Herman Meydag to the
Fresh Kills Landfill. Upon arrival, the truck is cremated and contributed to the landfill as part of a lifecycle of consumption,
waste and reuse imbedded in the urban landscape. Same year Mobile49, assembled by Grumman-Olson in Greene County, NY, became
a local fire department communications truck. Once retired, the truck was utilized as a utility shed, until acquired for renovation
into a mobile experimental radio laboratory at MIT.
Many additional conceptual, political and literary references
are overlayed to build the fabric of the program including examinations and interpretations of James Kunstlers', 'Long Emergency'
and Washington Irving's, 'Rip Van Winkle'.
Overall,
Deep Cycle includes performances, readings interviews and incidents by several artists, writers, designers and theorists addressing
the subject of a ‘post-oil’ landscape. Topics of these presentations include: consumption, waste, transit, energy,
transformation, and disaster preparedness. This unconventional platform for discussion presents urgent ideas about cultural
conditions to local audiences, while simultaneously transmitting via online radio to a wide listener base. With a practice
intersecting conceptual and constructed projects, in the context of Transmission Arts, this work overlays a framework of communications
environment with the landscape subject. The Mobile49 vehicle has been a device utilized in numerous area-specific projects
centered on the mobile broadcast platform.
Participants
and contributers in the program include: Max Goldfarb, Tom Cody (WE2G), Brian Dewan, John Ashbery, Christina Linden, Brett
Balogh, Bodega Algae, Ryder Cooley, John Cooley, Daniel Berry, Paul Elliman, Dan Beachy-Quick, Lance Duerfahrd, David Koehn,
James Howard Kunstler and Garrett Phelan. M49 Personnel for the project: Sound: Tom Roe...Video: Nick Goldfarb...Photography: Nicholas Kahn...Flag
Bearers: Matt Bua, Laura Nancy Anderson, Tom Cody (WE2G)...Dispatch: Christophe Vilaghy, Joe Romero...Teamster: Herb Trombley...Engine
(Oxen): Gus, Pete...Uniforms: Dan Berry...Storytellers: Gili Melamed-Lev,...Graham Convenienceware...Semaphor: Tom Cody, Lance
Duerfahrd...Emergency Helipad Support: Chief John J. Ferrell of the West Athens / Lime Street Fire Company #1.
Though carrying the M-Mobile designation, Mobile 49, or M49 should not be confused
with the 2.5ton M49 gasoline tanker used by the United States military. The Mobile 49 employed in the Deep Cycle project is
a civilian operated radio-utility truck. Wending westward along the armature of US route 23, across the Rip Van Winkle bridge,
M49 threads together various elements of the landscape. Deep Cycle has received support from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Harpo Foundation
and from the Experimental Television Center, ETC. The Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds program is supported
by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts. Deep Cycle is co-presented
by free103point9.org and WGXC.org. Project Performance Documentation of Parade and Mobile Incidents: HERE
Still images from Fresh Kill, 1972; Gordon Matta Clark
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