Saab Cycle

On Saturday, I met Folke Kobberling at Jack Hanley Gallery in NYC.  Folke and her partner, Martin Kaltwasser are German.  They spent a year in Los Angeles with their family using only public transportation and working on their project "Postautomobilzeitalter."

 With a Saab 900 Turbo donated; Folke and Martin worked with students from College of Design in Pasadena taking the car apart, separating the useful from the not useful, welding and making two bicycles.  The result: A WORK OF ART. 

The exhibition also features a video of the deconstruction of the car and the making of cycles. 
Yes, you can ride the cycles.

Folke spoke about her experiences living in LA with no car and using either a bicycle or public transportation.  "The bus service in LA is really good.  I don't know why more people don't use it."  Part of the exhibition and the reason, I went was to participate in the "workshop" Folke held with the people in the gallery.  The idea was to talk about cars, the impact on people, the environment and the health of the planet. 

Folke had drawn a brain-storming diagram on the wall. We were asked to react to her experience by adding drawings and words to the wall in the gallery. "The result will be a collaborative work that proposes what would happen without individual motorized transportation and how such a change might affect our urban landscape."

Folke told us they had asked Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Governor of California to donate one of his 15 Hummers for demolition.  As Folke said, "Maria Shriver weights maybe 120 pounds, why does she have to ride around in all that metal?"  Why do we?