ARTIST TURNS HUMMER INTO HORSE CARRIAGE
By Melanie Huggett
Inspired by the fuel crisis, New York artist Jeremy Dean is turning a Hummer H2 into a horse carriage. The project, called "Back to the Futurama," will explore "historical amnesia, sustainability, consumption, and the future."
"I have always been interested in exploring contemporary issues by deconstructing and re-contextualizing iconic symbols to gain perspective and understanding about the world in which we live," wrote Dean on his blog. "This has been even more important to me in the current state of global economic, environmental, and security instability. This project uses an American symbols of power and status to questions our future by looking at a past response to excess and subsequent collapse."
A Hummer H2, which Dean calls "a monument to America’s consumption, greed, and arrogance," was bought by Dean for $15,000 in Orlando, Florida in order to be stripped of its 325 horsepower engine, which will be replaced by horses in harness, for a total of two horsepower. The chrome rims, GPS, sound system, DVD player and screens will remain. Dean hopes to sell the project once he is finished to recoup his costs.
"Taking the logic of the past and putting it in the context of our current economic and environmental disaster, I am making my own satirical prediction of the future - Unless we come up with alternative fuel sources and rethink our reliance on a hyper inflated consumption based economy; we may be left with no other options than to hook our cars up to a horse," wrote Dean.
Hummer Horse Carriage Needs New York Horses
Melanie — Thanks so much for covering Jeremy’s project!
Jeremy is a true artist and hopefully this conceptual work, with its strong visual reference to the Hoovercarts and Bennett Buggies of the Great Depression, is going to make a lot of people think hard about the way the world is going. Back in the Great Depression many people could not afford gasoline and cut up cars like the Ford Model T so they could pull them with mules and donkeys and horses. They even had Hoovercart rallies. Even though we may be emerging from The Great Recession, many of the fundamental problems of over-consumption and pollution remain.
BTW, if any of your readers in the New York City area have cart-horse expertise (sorry if cart-horse is not the right term) Jeremy is going to need some help in that department. He can be reached at http://jeremydean.net/jcontact.html.
Thanks again for the coverage.
Stephen Cobb, Producer
Dare Not Walk Alone
A Film by Jeremy Dean
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