The Black Hornet. I-76 Speedway, Fort Morgan, Colorado. 2009. Dirt track racecar and environment.
From 2009 to 2013, M12 Studio partnered with the Hall family racing team in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Together, we created The Black Hornet, a dirt track racecar —one that in addition to being a legitimate race car operated as a connective object, threading art as performance event and participatory social action. The work explored cultural exchange at a country dirt track, far outside the city, far from any art institution. This project mobilizes collective knowledge in the broader rural sphere, and highlights M12’s “connective aesthetic” attitude and methodology—taking the art object past its basic level and insisting on part of its role as catalyst for cultural discourse. The Black Hornet was humble and slightly subversive. The racecar literally set a new pace for forms of cultural expression in rural communities. The M12/Hall family collaboration reveals the importance of intergenerational knowledge, gives value to notions of rural family and community, and sustains cultural livelihood beyond the metropolis and expected forums. In 2014, materials archived from the project were exhibited at the Galleries of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs, Colorado. An accompanying documentary video was also created.
