The film, featuring the artist as protagonist on a dystopian road trip, was documented using a series of hand-made and modified cameras. Typical to the genre, our hero sets off for a better life just over the Horizon, meeting challenges and obstacles along the way, most of his own invention. While the journey begins with a traditional sense of expansion and promise, things quickly breakdown. The protagonist continues doggedly on, first traveling in the breakdown lane and finally relegating forward motion to remote control probes sending video feedback to his disabled car. As we all know most road movies come to a disappointing end. This one begins in disappointment yet our hero/artist/”artifice mechanic” refuses to accept the inevitable. Through a series of performances the artist pimps his ride customizing the car first to serve as mission control and finally altering it to the point the driver is seated backward in order to face the video monitors in the rear. The car moves, or seems to, but the driver’s experience is completely mediated and motion not necessarily forward.
The exercise serves as a prompt for the genesis of a performance, sculpture and exploration of video as a medium, while proposing an alternate end to a not so “Easy Rider”. The video will be accompanied by a custom designed viewing space and exhibited with props and discreet objects spun from the film including a series of modified working cameras.
Greg Smith was awarded a Guggenheim Grant in 2012 to realize BREAKDOWN LANE which debuted earlier in the year at Grinnell College in his first museum solo exhibition, "Quality Uncertainty: The Market for Lemons".
