impossible vehicle

World Map, Overpass and Bed, installation at spiral garden tokyo

‘Eupkecha’, a fictional insect in a novel by Kobo Ade, is described as a leg-less beetle who lives within a completely enclosed ecosystem, slowly rotating the body, while simultaneously eating, digesting, and di

scharging its own shit. The home of this insect is somewhere in the African dessert in a village where people use the eupkecha like a clock. The whole town consumption cycle is determined by this tiny animal’s diet. Every year, just before the Spring rains, the clock flies around the village searching for a partner and time disappears for a week.

Impossible vehicle was first shown in the Spiral Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo in the Spring of 1994, following the installation in the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1992. It is an over-scale clock that turns the public arena into a space which, by conducting speed and movement of floor and sound, is imbued  with a sense of anticipation. Waste from the cities consumption-such as scrap metal, bricks, floor boards, timber beams, railway sleepers and pig skin- was mapped and collected, using construction methods that are about to disappear form the world of contemporary architecture.

69 parts where put together to form three types of objects essential for vehicular travel: Bed is an engine for making love, World Map is a musical score fo

r navigation and Overpass allows for each object to be passed independently of one another, yet to function as a whole. Each element is distinct, like scattered piece of puzzles, waiting to be put together.