Ant farm, architects collective, set the ultimate media event called Media Burn  in 4 July 1975. They made the poster to invite people to parking lot of Cow Palace where the event was held near San Francisco. They made press release to have local news come to cover it. More than 300 people attended the event to see “Media Burn”. They sold their posters and t-shirts. The documenting crews interviewed people who attended the event. Before the artist dummies started, the Artist-president walked on the stage and addressed about the American life of media.

”Who can deny we are a nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media…..Now I ask you, my fellow Americans, haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?’’

The Art-President introduced artist dummies. Two artist dummies slided into the “Phantom Dream Car”made with 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz and crashed into the burning wall of televisions. After the crash, they got out of the car and sat on the backseat of driving car to wave their hands to audiences, like a hero.

This work shows the power of images that the two icons of 1960s America burned and crashed.  Remodeled Cadillac was literally “phantom” that was representative of the American culture.

A broadcaster covered the event on the news and ended with a question about the event, “Get it?” and a news anchor said “I don’t think I want to get it.” It was exactly what the artist-president anticipated in his speech. He said “the world may never understand what was done here today but the image created here shall never be forgotten.”

Ant Farm made the whole event, not just a crashing image. They set all the stages, narratives and order of the event. It was just like a political event that we can see on a broadcast. I think that a series of narratives (including inviting local news, artist-president’s speech, and introducing artist dummies etc.) was the process to persuade people to immerse in the Media Burn. They made people believe this event seriously as a real, not a funny, joking black comedy show. If the cadillac had just crashed on the burning television sets, it couldn’t have made this powerful impact. People might have said “So what?”. But through the series of  narratives, Ant Farm made it as a real. And the image with the whole process  made a huge influence.

“It was a project that was about creating one image, just this image that you see here. But,… first imagined 1973 and It took two and a half of years to realize this. In the course of that period of time, it became not just a photo shoot to create this image , but became a public performance before live audience…we wanted to have local news come out to cover it as if it was a real. And we had our own video crews there. And it became a expanding kind of project that had all this different components….”

-Chip Lord live from the NMC Media Lounge at the College Art Association conference

“The group well understood that the object is nothing without its performative aura.”

-Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architexture, Michael Sorkin

In my opinion, this event was captured the ambivalent emotion to the new technology at that time. In 1960s, it was the period when the technology-based  products became common in daily life that we take for granted these days. People felt anxiety of different way of life, enjoying television show at the same time. “Media Burn” is a performative artwork that catch that anxiety and visualize it hilariously.