Disqueuse à essence
Another work implying potential use and a need for polluting fuel is his Disqueuse à essence (Petrol-Driven Circular Saw, 2007). The distinguishing feature here is that the object – coming from a hardware store and presented as is – remains out of the viewer’s reach. This is because it is enclosed in a galvanized steel plate housing, into which a picture window has been pierced. On one side we see a small metallic instrument, in red, which immediately brings to mind the “in case of emergency, break glass” warning associated with a rescue gesture in case of accident. Here, however, to follow the emergency instructions would be to provide access to a powerful machine customarily serving to cut through metal or pierce walls. It is an object suited to providing life-saving openings, or else to enabling prison escapes by sawing through jail cell bars or again, in a more dramatic situation still, to spreading terror in the fashion of Jack Nicholson’s hysteria- driven antics in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Excerpt from a text by Jean-Paul Felley & Olivier Kaeser, Luc Mattenberger – The Toxic Poetics of Petrol Engines