In Roland Barthe’s Mythologies (1972), the brand-new Citroën DS 19, nicknamed “the goddess” of the era, is described as an object somehow fallen from the heavens, almost magically sleek with its seamless body and windows, the latter, as Barthes saw them, akin to “the spread and the brilliance of soap-bubbles,” showing off an almost spiritual lightness. As its role at the heart of our contemporary societies has evolved, the automobile has continued its seduction, emerging as a symbol of progress, speed, individual freedom, and social success.
The Carcasse XR project stages a scene far removed from such idealistic notions. Disjointed remains of a 2004 Toyota Matrix destined for the junkyard are pumped with various automobile fluids, a kind of artificial life support, evoking both murdered machinery and an almost human instance of roadkill. On the margins of the space, there are bunches of common reeds (Phragmites australis), an invasive plant species that is particularly destructive to the biodiversity of the ecosystems it invades.
The intimate proximity of a car and the common reed, suggestive of a highway shoulder, highlights the dominant relationship of each element to the landscape. Hand in hand with the market economy and urban sprawl, the car and its infrastructures have become the default choices in our individualistic societies, inflicting themselves on our lifestyles and on the land. This ascension has enabled the propagation of the common reed, especially along major roadways like the Trans-Canada Highway, where seeds of the plant are spread, in part, by the gusts of wind created by traffic. These two phenomena have evolved in tandem to perpetuate a homogenization of the landscape, a drying up of the soil, and a threat to biodiversity. Evoking this link between the influence of automobiles and the transformation of the land, a series of videos hung off a tire heap display various reed colonies. Decidedly plant-like in their presentation at first, the reeds gradually hybridize toward more mechanized bodies, representing a techno-natural landscape in the full bloom of mutation.
By working with refuse as with a modern artefact, the Carcasse XR project surveys the discards of our ideologies and reveals their materiality. The filth, the rust, the oils, and the metals destined for the depths of the scrapyard are made tangible to subvert the polished symbology of the automobile and to lay bare its more realistic underside. While outdated technologies may be considered useless by the market, the materials that constitute them continue to modify our environment, just as the carcasses of cars pollute the ground as they pile up in landfills. In a state between active agent and obsolete body, between life and death, these technologies represent a form of what Jussi Parikka and Garnet Hertz call “zombie media.” These same discards pushed to the margins have also been described by Slavoj Zizek as a kind of “spectre,” incorporating our displaced realities, the ruins upon which our social edifice rests.
Bibliography
Barthes, R., tr. by Annette Lavers. Mythologies, “The New Citroën.” New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,1972.
Bourriaud, N., tr. by Erik Butler. The Exform. London: Verso, 2016.
Demoli, Y. et Lannoy, P. Sociologie de l’automobile. Paris: La Découverte, 2019.
Ministère de l’Environnement de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs. Roseau commun. Gouvernement du Québec, 2026
Parikka, J. A Geology of Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Zizek S. (dir.). Mapping ideology. London: Verso, 1994. https://analepsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/415_mapping-ideology-slavoj-zizek.pdf
This text was written by Roxane Lafrance to accompany Pierre-Olivier Déry’s exhibition “Carcasse XR,” on view from March 12 to April 18 at Galerie ELEKTRA.
Bouton "En savoir plus sur l'exposition"
