HYSTERESIS by Dani Ploeger

14.09.2022 - 15.11.2022

Mixed media installation (modified bumper car, Virtual Reality app, digital video)

The term "car tuning" is used for the practice of independently modifying the technical and aesthetic characteristics of standard, mass-produced cars. Some aspects of the tuning scene seem contradictory. On the one hand, the loud-mouthed converted engines and exhausts - usually accompanied by huge audio systems - often make a crude, sometimes even violent, impression on outsiders, and news media regularly report accidents involving fast-driving tuned cars. At the same time, the optical and technical details of the cars and their presentation suggest a refined and precise creative practice, carried out in a social structure of close cooperation and solidarity.

HYSTERESIS consists of a bumper car which has been modified in collaboration with cartuners in Zeeland, a rural area in the Netherlands. The car is equipped with a Virtual Reality headset and accompanied by a video projection. After a virtual race in a Golf Mk4 over a dike road, a tuner talks about his car. Meanwhile, an endlessly repeating video recording of a burnout with an Mk4 is projected. Burnouts are performed to warm up tires for a drag race, as a spectacular public intervention, and as a memorial for fellow tuners who have crashed.

Hysteresis - "The energy lost and not returned, when tire materials are subjected to stress in any direction. Lost energy is converted to heat through molecular interaction, and since rubber has poor thermal conductivity, internal temperatures of a tire can build up rapidly under repeated flexing." (The Automotive Dictionary)