Mike Pare
Ride on
Vidéo expérimentale - 8’ - the Ex-change Project - USA - 1999





This work is about California. It is about the frontiers and all the Utopias ranging from creekbeds to cement brige overpasses. It is about the inventive nature of having time and space to make things and stories. Utopias for a juvenile delinquent or gold panner. A lot of it open parts of narratives. The characters I present in the drawings range from Joaquin Murrieta (old west calif horse thief), members of famous and amateur rock groups, cow-boys, japonese kogal, surfer girls and truckers. Some of the drawings are about places, Califormia in particular, composites of places really. They are mostly places that I’ve spent time at. These places are linked with characters, and this is where most drama (historical and fictional), takes place. For example, Joaquin Murrieta spent a lot of time in some of the creeks I draw, the same creeks where fictional bandmembers ride dirtbikes and drink beer.
On drawing of California landscapes: the ex-urbs, the compounds, and solar utopias “off the grid”. Everyone has their own mansion, and they even have yards. They can start gardening. Why? Because they have technology. Y2k bug in their 4x4 lincolns gonna shut em down. Gotta go solar, man… Electric cars are ultmately threatened by the Heavy Metal. It is like the view from personal outer space, constructed passionately from memory. It is simultaneously a view of the future, where everyone has a yard, everyone is off all the grids but the phone lines, and even that’s going digital wireless! But there is comfort, even in mediated isolation. Liquor stores and conveniences rest below in the valleys of services and malls. This is a mostly safe place, isn’t it?