Here is a picture of the artificial traffic jam created by Maider López in 2005 (website, original article).
It should remind Week End (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) to anyone who has seen the movie. Here is a clip.
When in a millennia people will try to understand how the end of the 20th century was like, I hope they will look at these. The images of a traffic jam in the countryside represent in my opinion so well this era: lost in some chimeras, consumerist, short sighted, ‘free’ to do the same than anyone else. It seems there was much more than that in the 60s. Traffic jams were also the symbol of social progress. Public holidays were not that new and most people could afford to travel thanks to their new car. But as Jean-Luc Godard illustrates in his movie, cars didn’t mean the end of conflicts between social classes. And most of the illusions from the 60s are now gone.
I see these images as part of history. I don’t feel much personal attachment to them. Nonetheless, they are still part of today’s world. The car culture is still contemporary. Why is it still there?
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