A few weeks back, we asked Buffalo, NY artist Julian Montague a few questions related to his Stray Shopping Cart Project, an art project that involves classifying stray shopping carts based on the conditions in which they are found. In addition to photos of stray carts found in their native habitat, the project also includes a detailed classification system that identifies the carts by their state of discovery. The project has been featured by The New York Times, The Independent (UK) and many other publications, and exhibited by galleries from New York City to Miami.
Montague is also a graphic artist and designer. At his Montague Projects Blog, he's been posting a different graphic element from a book he owns once each day since Feb. 21. (The posting project will run until next Feb. 21.) You can also visit his website proper, Montague Projects, which features his other design and art projects -- including To Know the Spiders, which I like a lot even though spiders are scary.
FoundClothing: Your website says you're focusing on the spider portraits, and not working so much on the shopping cart
project. Even when you're on a break from the carts, do you still
classify in your head the carts you encounter?
Julian Montague: Yes, I do. But more than anything, when I see a cart in some really
strange setting or situation, I regret that I don’t have a camera with
me, or that it’s too late to get it into my book.
FC: When you encounter a cart that has been utterly destroyed by "plow crush" or some other event, what comes to mind, or what feeling do you have? Sadness? Disappointment? A sort of detached curiosity as to what might have happened?
JM: It’s mostly detached curiosity. I’m like a coroner, who, on a professional level, is thrilled to see the effects of some rare disease on a corpse.
FC: Do you ever develop stories as to how carts end up where they do?
JM:
Part of applying my “System of Identification” requires the user to
make some educated guesses about how a cart came to be in a certain
situation. So I definitely try to think through the possibilities, but
I don’t go too far into making up a back-story. In a way, I’m
fascinated by the fact that most cart stories are ultimately
unknowable.
FC: Do your friends, family and colleagues use the taxonomy system around you? How about fans of your work?
JM: It
happens in a limited way. I have had people send me their shopping cart
photos and ask me if they got the identification right. Most commonly,
people will tell me that after encountering my project they become
super-sensitized to the presence of stray carts. Even if they don’t
know the classification, they know that such a designation exists -- and
that makes them wonder what it is. That effect is really one of my main
goals with the project. On one level, it’s not about becoming more aware
of stray shopping carts, but about becoming more aware of the ways in which
language and classification shape our perception of things.
FC: Prior to the Buffalo "intersection incident" in 1999 that largely
inspired your project, had you followed or collected any other type of
object? Did you have any prior interest in shopping carts, or
interesting personal experiences with carts that might have inspired
this project?
JM:
Before the project, my relationship to shopping carts was totally
normal. No racing, stealing or vandalism, just shopping. As far as
collecting things, I’ve always had a bit of a collector’s mentality; I
really like thrifting for records and books. In my mind there is some
sort of aesthetic connection between thrift stores and the search for
shopping carts.
FC: In reading your category names, I kept
thinking, "that would make a great band name": Plaza Drift, Transient
Imposters, and [the] True Strays being examples. Has
anyone pointed that out yet, or honored your project by naming
their band, or something else, after one of your classification terms?
JM:
That idea has been brought up, but I don’t think anyone has ever done it. If I had a band, I’d definitely call it Plaza Drift.
Comments