The French Road, Detroit MI

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Overview

"What's going on here?" "I'm filming." "Police?" "No, I'm an artist from Austria interested in your street racing culture." Transpiring in the dark night of a city later identified as Detroit, Michigan, this conversation serves as a kind of establishing shot introducing the theme of Arthur Summereder's The French Road: illegal auto races held at night on regular public streets. The darkness that perfectly obscures these races simultaneously indicates problems of representation: How do you represent a ritual, a culture, a community that firstly does not want to be shown, and secondly, is not your own – a world briefly encountered that remains foreign. How to show something without falling into the trap of an exoticising gaze? To this end the artistic intervention that provides the context remains offscreen: the city, location and protagonists are present, but are never seen.